Friday, October 10, 2008 A glimpse of the 22nd annual Haramhee Dinner held at McGarvey Commons The 22nd annual Harambee Dinner took place in McGarvey Commons Thursday night. The dinner fea- tured renowned s. that took the stage after dinner. The commons were filled with a variety of students, staff and others who filled the room for the catered dinner. Erie city continued from from page. attended a monthly neighborhood watch meeting in which many of the residents were complaining about the college students in the area. Haas and her roommates says that out of five or six houses in the neighborhood that are occupied by college students, one or two of them have been consistently disruptive in the community. Some problems include loud and late partying, parking on other residents’ front lawns, and leaving drink ing debris in the area. The students involved feel that neighbors have been reporting houses occupied by four or more students as a way to target college students and remove them from the neighborhood. More than that, they feel that the neighbors want to remove all college students from the area, not just the ones who have been disruptive. Robert Haas, Ashton’s father, agrees that this ordinance has been enforced selectively. “It’s just not fair. They're just four good young adults who have been together since day one, since they were freshmen.” Robert Haas has talked with many city offi- cials about this action, and is displeased with how they are handling the situation. Haas says that the city should sin- gle out the “problem houses”. and use local law enforce- ment to take care of the issues in the neighborhood. “What I’m dealing with here is just complete igno rance, and people jumping to conclusions, and not doing research, and not doing their jobs properly,” says Haas. Andy Zimmerman, Manager of Code Enforcement for Erie says that the city has been enforcing this ordinance consistently, not selec tively. “This is absolutely nothing new,” says Zimmerman. “We’ve been doing this for quite a while now.” The ordinance has been in place for many years. Zimmerman says that when more than three stu dents are living in the same house, it results in problems in the community, like parking. According to Zimmerman, the relatively new Rental Licensing program has brought some of the properties in question forward. This program was set up in 2007 to ensure that all rental residences in Erie are within code. Every two years, a residence with an authentic Si >eaker Azeem, alon t “When students live off-campus, they citizen of Erie first, and a student second. ” Manager of Code Enforcement ordinance is inspected by the city to make sure that it meets proper safety requirements. Inspectors, during their evaluations, will become aware that more than the allowed three people are living in a house. However. Zimmerman says that neighbor com plaints have brought most of these cases to the city's attention. "Our office is complaint-driven." he says. Zimmerman also says that out of all of the complaints pertaining to this ordinance, most of them have been about college students. "When stu dents live off-campus, they become a citizen of Erie first, and a student second." Mercyhurst College has been working closely with the city of Erie on this issue. According to Zimmerman, the college will turn over a list of stu dents who live off campus, including their address es, to the city. The city will then look through the list, and see which address es have more than three become a - Andy Zimmerman, beginning of every semester. According to Zimmerman, Penn State Behrend has become more proactive with this issue within the past three weeks. He says that Behrend has contacted the city, and wishes to sit down with them. “They would like to be a good neighbor as well.” Zimmerman says. However, the timing of this issue has raised opposition from at least one Behrend administator. This administrator believes that although these would be reasonable measures during the summer, disrupting students' living arrangements midse mester is unfair and unreasonable. Cara Jones, who has been a roommate of Haas for more than just this year, knows that finding new housing would be incredibly difficult at this point during the year. "We're not moving," she says." We just don’t have the money to find a new place and new roommates in the middle of the semester." Campus News himenco dancer with two guitarists names. Zimmerman also says that the Mercyhurst handbook mentions the ordinance, so that students can be aware of the law when they are looking for housing Zimmerman says that no other university or col lege in the area makes this information known to its students, but that the city is planning on ways to make people more aware. One idea is a meet-and-greet with new residents at the DAMN, SMITH /The Hehreml Beacon McGarvey hosts ‘The Magic of Life’ Bv Mike (). Wehrer copy alitor miws() l M(" psu.atu On Tuesday. October 2nd. Michael Gershe performed his "Magic of Life" alcohol aware ness program in McGarvey Commons. Gershe started his routine with stand up comedy. He made jokes about being Jewish and his col lege swimming career. "1 picked the one sport where everyone knew my religion." he said. Gershe also included some audience participa tion in the act. bringing three people up on stage to act out a scenario about reckless drinking. Once they were up on stage, they were asked to choose from 3 cards. Each card had a bad conse quence of drinking on it. The girls on stage were assigned "Raped" and "Dead" while the only male student who volunteered drew the "Pregnant" card. Even when discussing such serious topics. Gershe kept the audience involved and enter tained. The mood grew serious once again when his own story came up. As Gershe told it. he was born in New York State. He would live there until he was 4 years old. but the turning point in his life came only 8 w'eeks in. His mother was holding him in the front seat "No one used ear seats in the 70 s when a drunk driver t-boned their ear." he said during his show. The crash caused him to break every bone in his body, and it ended his mother s life. She was 28 years old. "It isn't that hard to talk about my mother's death, because 1 never knew her," said Gershe. Gershe found it "much harder" to talk about his friend "Big" John Kelly. Kells was killed while driving drunk. "He knew my story." Gershe said, "he knew it and he got behind the wheel anyway." Michael Gershe's philosophy can be summed up best by a statement on his website: "A moth er should watch her son grow up. A son should know his mother. Neither of these events would happen due to a drunk driver." The Behrdiid Beacon I 3 Bruno’s Cafe hosts Debate Watch 2008 By Ryan P. Gallagher news editor rpgsoo4@psu.edu Brunos Cafe was flooded with students Tuesday night for the 2nd Presidential Debate of this year's election. The debate, hosted by former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brockaw, aired promptly at 9 p.m. as students from a diversified range of majors packed the cafe leaving little to no seating. “I showed up a little before nine and couldn’t believe how many people were there, I had never seen it like that before," said Sam DelVeme, a communica tions major at Behrend. DelVeme was required to be in attendance for a class of his taught by Professor Cathy Mester. Many others were there for similar class requirements, which was partly the reason for the immense crowd. “1 had to go for two of my classes and acted as a discussion leader after the debate had ended,” said senior Max Polinski. “Basically, I and about four others formed a small group, and we discussed questions that dealt with a wide variety of things concerning the debate. Professor Mester supplied the sheet for the stu dents that were there from the upper-level classes that served as discussion leaders.” Mester acted as the leader for this event, col lecting all of the sheets after students had ana lyzed and discussed for about 10-15 minutes. She was doing this for Debate Watch 2008, a program that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) initiated, which encourages people to watch the debate in groups and then collectively discuss what they saw immediate ly afterwards. In 2004, the National Communication Association teamed up with CPD and added questions that dealt with how the debate affects undecided voters or causes viewers to shift their stance on their candidate of choice. According to the NCA’s website, "the purpose of this study is to find out what you have learned about the candidates from the presidential debate, how you learn about polit ical issues, and if the debates influenced your voting choice." All of the feedback received from these Debate Watches is analyzed by the CPD and used to better future debates. “Most of the stu dents in my group agreed that there was no clear winner and that neither candidates really focused on issues that specifically dealt with college students concerns,” said Polinski. The Presidential Candidates, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Senator John McCain (R -AZ), debated at Belmont University in Nashville, TN where the University featured a town hall setting, giving the small crowd in attendance the opportunity to ask questions that they personally thought were significant. Many questions went unasked due to Obama and McCain constantly ignoring the time limit that was weakly enforced by Brockaw. Mike Wachter. a business major, thought that the debate was pretty even. “At the time, one candidate didn’t really stand out over the other, I thought the whole thing was even when it came to discussing their stances on the various issues mentioned.” Students unaware of this event found a tremendous surprise when they arrived at the Cafe for a normal dinner. “Well, this was required by some professors for class, plus we publicized the event, so we were expecting somewhere around 300 students to show,” said Dr. Rod Troester, a Professor of Communications who was in attendance with Mester. Troester went on to say that it was the 2nd time they held this event, and are planning a Debate Watch for the third and final debate on Oct. 15 The website http://debates.org /pages/dwoverview.html provides further explanation on what the Debate Watch 2008 strives for, and includes information on how to host your own debate watch since it is not fey a university; civic groups, neighbors, friends are all welcome to create their own group.
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