. i Behrend Beacon i f" lIVV *1 |/A VI August 28, 2009 II fill II I I www.thebehrendbeacon.com | \# MY VIEW BY HEATHER MCGOVERN News Editor Out of all t lessons I learned at Penn Siate Behrend last year, one stands out more clearly than others 1 learned in my freshman year. This com mon lesson, often learned the hard way, involves eating at the on-campus Dobbins dining hall. As many students may al The Beacon Discussion THIS WEEK S QUESTION: Is the process of selling All-U Day tickets in need of a serious Email us at njpsoB3 and tell us what you think MY VIEW Get involved CHRISTINE NEWBY Managing Editor Getting involved on campus with an organization on cam pus is extremely important when you are in college. 1 highly recommend and encour age students to be part of one. When you are forced to use time management skills and deal with your academic classes along with being part of an organization, you discover a new side to your personality that you never knew existed. This also can uncover how much you can handle both as a person and as a professional. I am currently a sophomore and my involvement with the Behrend Beacon started in the beginning of my freshman year. Throughout my first year in col lege I learned how crucial it is to become engaged in some thing other than everday classes, homework, and exams. Of course, there are specific days and weeks that i am crazy busy and don’t know how 1 am going to accomplish everything while juggling my schoolwork and the Beacon. Overall, get ting involved with a club, specifically the Beacon for me, was the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve made a list of reasons why it is so essential to get in volved in a club or organiza tion. • You learn how to manage time efficiently and effectively. You find out what forms of studying work when you are pressed for time, and what doesn’t work. Additionally, you quickly find out that you cannot procrastinate. • You gain valuable experience in something that interests you. Due to being part of the partic ular club, you will be able to take the experiences with you after college and you will be more prepared and ready to face the expectations and chal The Dobbins Effect ready well know, food con sumption at Dobbins, for some, leads to immediate stomach aches and/or other health-re lated issues. However, what most students may not already know, is that the problem usually originates from students’ food choices rather than the dining estab lishments food preparations. In other words, Dobbins serves a variety of satisfactory food ranging from unhealthy to healthy selections. It is only a matter of choosing the health ier options and/or consuming less food in order to avoid the usual post-Dobbins symptoms. Although nutrition may not seem more important than the physical, mental, and physio- Panel overhaul? lenges in the work force • You find out more about yourself: how far you can go, how well you work with a group of people that want to ac complish goals, how you react under pressure, how you re solve problems so they don’t come up again, and how you can make a positive impact on the organization and Behrend. • You get a chance to get away from your everyday classes. Everyone needs a break and a place where they can go that feels like home. • You can add the position (s) that you held in the club to your resume. This will help you in the long run when trying to find that first job out of college. • Socially, you make and de velop more friendships with your peers. My experience with the Beacon was an instant way to make friends and get to know different people as a freshman and now as a sopho more. I don’t think students are aware of the large number of clubs and organizations offered at Behrend. There are over 110. The different types of clubs and organizations include academic, arts, Greek life, serv ice and honor, multicultural, recreation, and student life. In the academic club, there are a diverse amount of differ ent options ranging from ac counting, chemistry, marketing, plastics engineering, and many more. If you want or need a break from academic work there are recreation clubs. Examples are martial arts, hockey, and many more. Can’t find a club or organiza tion that interests you? This year, make it a goal to find that one specific organization or start your own. To find a list of all the clubs and organizations visit the Behrend website and click the student life tab. Then, on the left sidebar, click student activities followed by clubs and organizations. I’ve learned so much through my experience working with an organization already and I know that I will continue to learn every day with the Bea con. Challenge yourself and get involved. logical well-being of a person, nutrition is an essential staple in supporting all three of these important states of being. Bad habits of skipping meals or overindulging can result in many negative effects for stu dents. A few of the consequences for skipping meals fall along the lines of decreased concen tration, decreased energy, and increased irritability. Overindulging on junk or even healthy food on a regular basis highly increases the chance of gaining weight, de pending on the amount of phys ical activity partaken each day. Overeating, also, results in added stress to the body since it takes more energy to digest VIEW run DANIEL J. SMITH Photo Editor Some people say that run ning is a waste of time, or that it's just too hard to do; others say it’s one of the best methods to get physically fit, and it’s worth the time and pain to look physically fit. I agree with the positive aspect of running. I feel that running helps build character, not just muscle. Over the past few years, many people who loved run ning like I do expressed a con cern at the lack of a running club. So, over this past summer, a few other runners and I dis cussed a plaa to create oner It seemed simple at first, but planning out the basics took a while. We came to the conclusion that the club would meet three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We would do a one-to-three mile run for starters with a short stretching period in the begin- The Behrend Beacon Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Reed Union Building 4701 College Drive, Erie PA 16563 RoomloH Telephone: (814)898-6488 Fax: (814)898-6019 •xecutive Boari Editor-In-Chief: Connor Sattely cisso6o@psu.edu Managing Editor: Christine Newby censos6@psu. edu Web Editor: Marcus Yeagley mjysol2@psu.edu larger portions of food. Added stress to the body often results in decreased concentration or “clouded” thinking. Either way with both bad habits, the nega tive consequences add up to equate to an unnecessarily dif ficult semester. So before skipping breakfast or overindulging in between meals, ask yourself, “How well do I want to concentrate for that class, test, meeting, or game later today?” Sometimes extending the effort to eat more or less is as easy as grabbing a bag of cereal before class or storing food within the room out of plain eyesight. Take that extra initiative to eat healthier; your body will thank you for it. ning club ning, then slowly have the run ner’s progress in distance as their leg muscles develop. The club will continue throughout the academic year. Students, faculty, and staff will have the opportunity to be a part of this club. Each member will receive a club t-shirt, plus given opportunities to run in competitive road races and fun runs as a group in the regional area of northwestern Pennsyl vania. I think this club will be a great opportunity in many ways. It organizes people to keep a constant schedule of running and building stamina. It brings runners together on campus as one community. It also builds friendships and con fidence of those who are look ing for support with increasing their skill of running. We also have a group on Facebook titled Penn State Behrend Running Club and we already have a rapidly growing membership. This group will allow the group officers and Ltp with oar olub’s members as well as coordinate activities that will positively im pact the organization. If you’re interested in partic ipating or becoming a member of the club, contact myself, the creator of the club, djss223«j psu.edu, for further information and to sign-up. Business Manager: Bethany Long bjlso37@psu.edu Faculty Advisor: Kim Young kjylo@psu.edu News Editor: Mike O. Wehrer mjss3B7@psu.edu Heather McGovern hamsoB4 @psu. edu Arts Editor: Evan Koser emksllo@psu.edu Opinion Editor: Neil James njpsoB3@psu. edu Sports Editors: Nick Blake npbso4l@psu.edu Shawn Annarelli smaslB9@psu.edu Buisness Editors: Harmilee Cousin hxcso2o@psu. edu Garrett Carson gmcso2l @psu. edu OUR VIEW Beacon Tweets So far this year, the Bea con has introduced a brand new website at www.the behrendbeacon.com, new graphic design ideas within the paper, and shortly, we will be introducing several evolving sections, including pages dedicated towards each area of study at Behrend and a page which will cover fraternity and sorority life, among others. With these changes, though, comes an addition of new services through so cial media. While we realize that everyone has been using Twitter and Facebook long enough to not call it “new media” anymore, over the past few years the media industry has found out how to use these new services to their advantage. We want to cover news, and we want to do it fast. In 1880, the fastest way to break news was probably with the front page of the paper every morning. With the advent of radio, that be came the quickest way to know. Television took more away from a newspaper's ability to break news; now that the internet connects the world, newspapers can not cover news that breaks. They can break news, but when something crazy hap pens and you need to know, you're not going to wait until Friday morning. While we plan to cover breaking news on our web site immediately, we know that in many cases, it s not fast enough. The Beacon has created a Twitter ac count for each section of the newspaper - arts, news, sports, and opinion - and we will be updating them con starftly for each sections news. For opinion, we hope to offer an interesting opportu nity: our opinion editor will post a subject on Twitter each week, and students can reply to it with their opin ions on the subject - your re sponses will be posted in the il Boari Engineering Editors: Sid Carson socso77@psu.edu Kevin Koerbel ktkso3l@psu.edu Science Editor: Brian Carlson bmcso62@psu. edu Humanities Editor: Adam Spinelli alsssB9@psu. edu Photo Editor: Daniel J. Smith djss223@psu. edu Photographers: Jon Klein jekso34@psu.edu Mike Fultz mjfs2o4@psu. edu Sarah Baker sjbs273@psu.edu newspaper with minimal fil tering. We truly want to know what you think. As a base account, we have created “thebehrend beacon," which will post Twitter accounts during breaking news situations. This account will be used for breaking news situations only; if you subscribe to this, it will only be used to let you know when something very important is happening on campus. Speaking to other social networking media, we've also created a Facebook page for the Beacon where we hope to get more feed back about how to run the newspaper. After all, it's not our newspaper, or the school’s - it's yours. Above all. this is pretty much an experiment. We've never embraced media like we have this year. If you think it works, let us know. If it doesn't work, we ll prob ably realize it eventually, and shift what we're doing. More is on the way - stream ing video, short news clips summarizing the week's news on-campus, video tours of construction sites - but right now, we re focus ing on the media that is readily available. We hope you'll stick with us throughout the year, as we succeed and, more often, fail massively, at trying out new things to bring you your news. Connor Sattely for the Beacon Editorial Board Our Twitter Infy: Arts: beacon_arts Opinion: beacon opinion Sports: beacon_sports Breaking New: thebehreadbeacon Single copies of the Beacon are free and available al news stands around campus. Additional copies can be purchased with permission of the editor in chief for 5.511 each Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the stu dents, faculty or University administration. Opinions expressed in columns, cartoons, and letters are not necessarily those of The Behrend Beacon unless otherwise indicated Any letters intended lor publication must he addressed to the editor, be no more than 250 words, and include the writer's name and phone number. Letters may be edited for content at the editor in chief’s discretion. The Behrend Beacon does not publish anonymous letters to the editor. If students want their letters to he published, they must include their name. The Behrend Beacon intends for its Opinion page to be a forum for discussion, not a screen to hide behind. Occasionally, The Behrend Beacon may request re sponses to online queries in which responders will be identified by their username. The Behrend Beacon is editorially independent from the Penn State system. The Behrend Beacon operates partially on Student Activity Fee. and partially on advertising revenue. It is published every Friday during the school year except for before and during scheduled vacations, with exceptions for special issues. The editor-in-chief has the final authority on editorial decisions, including, but not limited to. all columns, editorials, and letters to the editor. Complaints regarding Beacon coverage of school events should be directed to the editor at editor <> psu.edu.