4 I The Behrend Beacon Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. - The First Ammendment to the U.S. Conslltution The Behrend Beacon Published weekly by the students of Penn State Behrend ",„ beacon Assistant News Editor Assistant Humor Editor Linn‘ Smith Jerry Pohl Opinion Editor Janet Niedenherui Food & Drink Editor Chrk Brown Photography Editor Mike Sharks) Penn State Erie, The Behrend College First Floor, The J. Elmer Reed Union Building Station Road, Erie. PA 16563 Contact the Beacon at: Telephone: (814) 898-6488 Fax: (814) 898-6019 THUMBS UP ♦, gir - School's out for summer - The van at University Gates that pays more for your used books - NBC's renewal of Scrubs - Having only one final - Appletinis THUMBS DOWN - Bad refunds for books in the bookstore - Realizing too late that you should have dropped 10110. a class "410 - Graduating seniors are leaving.... (Good Luck!) - Wal-mart - Bird poo Submission Guidelines The Beacon welcomes readers to share their views on this page. Letters and commentary pieces can be submitted by email to jan2l9@psu.edu or directly to the Beacon office, located in the Reed Building. Letters should be limited to 350 words and commentaries should be lim ited to 700 words. The more concise the submission, the less we will be forced to edit it for space concerns and the more likely we are to run the submission. All submissions must include the writer's year in school, major and name as The Beacon does not publish anonymous letters. Deadline for any sub mission is 5 p.m. Tuesday afternoon for inclusion in the Friday issue. All submissions are considered, but because of space limitations, some may not be published The Behrend Beacon reserves the right to edit any submissions prior to publication. Christopher Lai uric, Editor in Chief Patrick Webster. Managing Editor I.indsii\ Snyder. Advertising Manager Kim Young. Adviser News Editor 'hie Sports Editors Danielle 13rowt1 Kara Struski P [NI ON Humor Editor I3en Raymond Head Copy Editor Rachael Conway Copy Editors Chris Brown Janet Niedenberger Jessica Samol Student Life Editors Joshua Lane Scott Muska This By Chris Brown copy editor 3/30/07 Penn State Behrend has a lot to offer its students. The faculty here is helpful and support services like the Learning Resource Center's tutoring program help set students up to succeed. Behrend's campus is small enough to not be overwhelming, but has the resources of a big university with its affiliation to Penn State Main Campus. However, with all these positive attrib utes, Behrend has lots of room for improvement The most annoying aspect of this campus is all the posters that occupy every inch of open wall and bulletin board. Maybe I'm nitpicking here but I'll bet I'm not the only one that is annoyed at the amount of "Last Minute Fall Housing" and "Join our Band" posters that have been up since before we went home for winter break. Here's an easy solution, SGA should require all posters be turned in to the Reed Front Desk before posting, then one day a week SGA puts up the posters themselves, and then while they are putting them up they can take down the expired posters that have been up for two weeks. SGA should then limit the self-ads to a designated area in Reed; this will provide a central location for students to look at want ads and pre vent important school events like Lewis Black and the Speaker Series from being crowded out by useless posters on the wall. Problem solved. The thing that needs to change the Where's the security? Federal Bureau of Investigation Officials (FBI) revealed this past week that U.S. forces found documents indicating anoth er attack on U.S. soil by Al Qaeda. Intelligence officials said the documents revealed that members of Al Qaeda were plan ning to use student visas as a way to get potential terrorists into the U.S., the same method of entry used on 9 / 1 1. Officials also revealed that when the documents were found, immediate advisories were sent to state and local partners about the stu dent visas. With President Bush's idea of heightened U.S. security, one would certainly think that intelligence officials would have already traced the footsteps of how the 9/11 terrorists entered the U.S. However, now FBI officials said they are prompting universities to keep tabs on visiting students. This comes as a great relief to the American people, considering it is something that should have been taken care of five years ago! It seems unbelievable that five years after the 9/11 attacks, the security of the American people appears to be nowhere near Celebrities > Everyone else By Christopher LaFuria editor in chief 2/23/07 Hollywood's lawyers are back from the squash courts as they are set to take on their newest celebrity case. Mario Lavandeira, alias Perez Hilton, is being sued for using stolen topless pictures of Jennifer Aniston. According to the U.S. District Court, Lavandeira "posted all or parts of the stolen footage from the motion picture on his website." The pictures were stolen from the produc tion of The Break Up, which boasted sales of more than $llB million in the box office. Before the world and Elton John said "goodbye Norma Jean," the American society began their obsession with actors and actresses such as Marilyn Monroe. From the stalkerazzi to read ing about celebs in the news, the American public could not get enough of the newfound celebrity-obsession, which took the nation by storm. On every street corner, people could grab newspapers or magazines with their favorite celeb on the cover. Onto the 20th Century, where the obsession with celebrities has become a disease. Media outlets like MTV, VHI and E! constantly track celebrities, whether they are in vicious love trian- isn't high school most around Behrend is the increasing ly high school-like atmosphere of the campus and its students. Not a semes ter goes by when I have to listen to the same complaints from the same type of students: Is there going to be a curve? Do we have to do a paper? Can't we have some multiple choice questions? Where's the study guide? This probably isn't going to score me points with my fellow students, but here is a novel idea every student should take to heart. Stop complaining and start learning. Do the assigned readings, take good notes, ask relevant questions, and practice good study habits. If you still have trouble under standing the course material, take advantage of the Learning Resource Center or *gasp* go talk to your pro fessor during his/her office hours (trust me it isn't all that scary). This isn't high school, you need to read, you need to study, and you need to be responsible for your own education. Welcome to By Jessica Samol copy editor 1/26/07 gles or taking their dogs out for a mid afternoon dookie. Even major news networks like FOX and CNN are shift ing their coverage to include celebrities and their lives. During much of 2006 and into 'O7, it was natural to turn your console televi sion to VHI and watch the latest install ment of "Celebrity Fit Club," where overweight and morbidly obese former celebrities lost minimal weight from pointless activities, or "Surreal Life," where has-been stars portray their own version of MTV's "The Real World. " On Feb. 8, the world gathered togeth er to mourn the loss of an American icon. Anna Nicole Smith, famous for This probably isn't going to score me points with my fellow students, but here is a novel idea every student should take to heart. Stop complaining and start learning. secure. The war in Iraq continues to show no signs of progress, and no relief for the future of the United States. Innocent lives continue to be lost daily, yet President Bush announced his plans to send more than an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq to counteract the sectarian violence there. The war in Iraq is spiraling out of control; support continues to be lost for both the president and the war. Bush needs to take advice wherever he can get it. He needs to stop trying to control the security of the Iraqi people and start opening his eyes to realize how he is risking the security of the United States. The war is becoming a war lost in translation; many Americans no longer understand what the United States is fighting for. Bush continues to say that he is trying to ensure the security of the American people, yet instances such as the current FBI report prove that he has made no progress in doing so. With no end predicted for the war in Iraq, there will contin ue to be no sense of security for the American people. The idea of security being a shared destiny makes sense, but when it comes from Al-Zawahiri (Al Qaeda's N 0.2 man) and not President Bush, it questions what the U.S. is really trying to Since wnenis t cleat' an Amen= celet*iti ty wveroi Wlrtt by the: 3 the (koth of °vermin t Friday, May 4, 2007 the real world It would be unfair to point the finger squarely at the students because some professors and administrative policies only add to the problem. For the pro fessors that do give out study guides and cave in to wimpy demands from students, you are not doing them a favor by teaching them that someone will be there to hold their hand every step of the way in their lives. I under stand part of the problem comes from the way professors are evaluated; they have an incentive to make class easy because that means higher evaluations from students. The university needs to place less emphasis on grade produc tion and student evaluations, they should instead focus on other areas like publishing and reviewing the syllabus es of its professors when evaluating professors to help solve this problem. Another administrative policy that needs changed is the way students schedule classes. Right now students are allowed to register without meeting with an advisor. I don't know if this is the university's idea of "collegiate Dar winism," where all the 'smart' college students meet with an advisor and get input on what they need to graduate and what will be most useful for them in the future, while all the 'clueless' students take classes that they hate, are out of their league, and that don't help them graduate. The university and its students would be better served if it made students obtain a registration code from their faculty advisor before allowing students to register for cours es and abandon its current policy. doing nothing and getting paid for mak ing a fool out of herself, died from com plications unknown to everyone. With this startling and mysterious death, the world sat in confusion and amazement that something like this happened. As this was happening, I sat in confusion and amazement since I was watching the news, FOX to be exact, and they could not stop talking about the tragedy. Later, I was reading online about how four American soldiers and over 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed in combat overseas. Let's get this straight. American sol diers dying or American celebrities dying? Clearly Americans have their priorities messed up. Since when is the death of an American celebrity covered more by the news than the death of sol diers fighting overseas? Mind-bog gling. Simply mind-boggling. It's bad enough that we need to see Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes walk their baby Suri in her stroller. It's even worse when we need to give such celebrity couples sin gle-entity names like Tom Kat. But to publicize Anna Nicole Smith's death more than the death of marines is unac- ceptable We, as a nation, need to figure out what is important so that we can contin ue to be informed and up to date with what is happening outside of our televi sion comfort zone.
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