Opinion BEHREND BEACON 7 April 23, 2010 www.thebehrendbeacon.com THE EDITOR'S BLURB How to stay cool during opinion editor MY VOICE out a few of my goals for next year with the Beacon organiza tion. Before I do so, I want to in- Tuesday, I accepted the posi- vite everyone reading to be a tion of Editor-in-Chief for the part of it. 2010-2011 year. We're going to need people This probably comes to the who can shoot video, people dismay of a lot of people who I who understand plastics engi have angered, Sorry: neering, people annoyed, and dis- who can run a appointed over protein analysis the past year. Ed Miseta, John Moore, of- of a snake's One advantage of ficial Behrend fraternities venom, people being a brand and sororities Stephen who understand , new editor-in- the complexities chief is the ability Burger, Kamille Watson, of international to blame the per- Amanda Miller, LEB, Jef- business, people son befor you for frey Pinto, Diane Parente, who can craft a last year's mis- poem that takes - next year, Connecticut, all of the un- makes the I'll have nobody heard and unmentioned reader feel. Over to blame but my- anything else, mistakes and misspellings, self. we're going to CONNOR SATTELY mit(n-in (/),(.! However, the advantages of having two years to accomplish long-term goals, set up the Bea con to continue to improve for years to come, and handle the changes happening within the school are enough to make me just as excited to have this po sition in fall as I was to have it this past year. In this column, I want to toss 4701 College Drive, Erie PA 16563 Room 10H THE BEHREND BEACON Executive Board Editor-in-Chief: Business Manager: Connor Sanely Bethany Long editor@psu.edu bjlso37@psu.edu Managing Editor: Faculty Advisor: Shawn Annarelli Kim Young smaslB9@psu.edu kjylo@psu.edu Web Editor: Marketing Manager Jeremy Korwek Katie Cook idksoo9@psu.edu klcs293@psu.edu The school year is drawing to such-awaited close, but that In't come without a little bit )re pain. In order to finally free, we all need to do battle h the dreaded finals week. regardless of your major, it's . a fun time and the stress line can drive you nuts. The :uliar thing about finals is A no matter how hard you idy, if you can't handle the .ress of it all, you won't do so lot. So as my final gift to the student body of PSB, here is a list of tricks that might help you cope and excel. 1. Exercise. When you're )eing crushed under a butt on of looming final exams, me of the best things you can m is hit the gym. Whether it's ing for a run, a swim or just [wing iron, anything is help :his is because exercise in •eases dopamine in the body, 'hitch heightens your endor lhin levels, your body's natu tl "happy drug." Sleep at least seven tours a night. It's really easy brush off sleep when you NEED to pass your final. How- I _4 lk\ le, To Pt Round two ... fight! need you. Next year, we want to involve as many students as possible to be a part of what the Beacon can be. Over the last two years, the staff size of the Beacon has quadrupled. We want it to con tinue to rise. The largest goal for next year is to cover this campus with im mediate, quality video online. News Editors: Ally Orlando acososl@psu.edu Rachelle Thompson rltso6sopsu.edu Asst. News Editor: Eric Peirce ewpsos2@psu.edu ever, all the studying in the world won't mean jack if you don't get at least seven hours of sleep. Think of your brain like a computer. Everything you do when you're awake is stored in your brains equivalent of RAM. After a while, you simply run out of disk space and you need to reboot your hard drive. When you sleep, your brain takes all of your RAM memory and stores it in your permanent memory. If you don't sleep, then you won't really remember any thing you studied. 3. Find a hobby to release stress: Whether you game, read, run, or anything else, use it to unwind from a day of hard core studying. I actually stress knit. Last finals week, I knitted two hats to keep myself from flipping out. I'd study for three hours, then take a break and knit for 45 minutes. As I'd knit, I'd think over the subject I just looked at as I worked my needles. And before you judge me for my hobby, just remember this: We are re-working our website, ning of next year to find out and we hope to have breaking what more students want. news coverage of every band, We will also be completely re comedian, sporting event, examining our distribution sys speaker, fraternity or sorority tern. Expect to see a whole lot event, and stu dent organiza tion outing. To do this, we will need your help. Next year, with the help of OrgSync - a new organizational tool provided by Student Activi ties - we will host a campus calendar on our website. This will allow us to know about everything that organizations do quickly and easily, and will also help us highlight students' events to the community. Our second main goal is to increase the efficiency and vis ibility of this newspaper. Al ready, we have held focus group meetings to find out how to improve. We plan to distrib ute a large survey at the begin- Edit • rial B • and Sports Editors: Nick Blake npbso4l@psu.edu Alec Italiano ajiso37@psu.edu Opinion Editor: Neil James opinton @psu .edu Culture Editor: Shannon Ehrin sbesol7@psu.edu Copy Editors: Jeff Kramer jsksl6l@psu.edu Marcus Yeagley mjysol2@psu.edu Videographer: Mike Fultz mjfs2o4@psu.edu finals knitting takes balls (of yarn). 4. Just say "No:" This is not about drugs or alcohol, but pro crastination is just as addictive. If you really don't want to study, you will find a way out of it. Whether your roommate wants to run to Sheetz for a late night snack or some guys down the hall are having a Call of Duty tournament, you will be bombarded by distractions dur ing finals week. While it's really easy to say, "I'll do it later," the exams will creep up on you. Eventually, you just need to choose whether it's worth re taking a class for a night of merry making. Trust me, it's not worth it. Finals suck. There's no doubt about it. However, it is a necessary evil of college life. The best advice I can give is to grit your teeth, put your head down, and just push though it. Just think about the cool things you can do once you are home and officially on summer break. Unless you have a sum mer class, that is. In which case, good luck. • • Thanks: Jack Burke, Ken Miller, Randy Geering, all Behrend administrators, all four School Directors, Rod Troester, Bob Williams, Ed Miseta, William Lasher, Eu gene Cross, the incredible janitorial staff on Thursday nights in Reed, and each member of the four depart ments and eight sections of the Beacon. Hopefully, next year, we will be able to avoid making the same mistakes. I thank the Beacon Advisory Board for their trust in elegting me to this position for a second year, and I look forward to see ing what next year's staff will be able to do. Telephone' (814) 898-6488 Fax (814) 898-6019 Photo Editor Daniel J. Smith photoeditor(y'psu eds, Ast. Photo Editor: Stephen Fyt itch 5t1.5026P0u edu Engineering Editor Ryan Frankowski rslsos4(iepsu edu • -)- v:rf more of the Bea con around cam pus next year. Due to a lack of space, I cannot even come close to thanking the people who have helped us during this year, which even despite its failures may be the best year that this newspaper has ever had. I also cannot come close to ac knowledging this year's mistakes. Single copies of the Beacon are free and available at newsstands around campus. Additional copies can be pur chased with permission of the editor-in-chief for SI 50 each. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of all students. faculty or University administration. )pin ions expressed in columns, cartoons. and letters are not necessarily those of The Behrend Beacon unless °them ise Business Editor: indicated. Akeem Mclntosh Any letters intended for publication must be addressed to the editor, be no more than 350 words, and include ihi writer's name and phone number. Letters may he edited for content or length at the editor in chief's discretion aomsl43@psu.edu The Behrend Beacon does not publish anonymous letters to the editor. If students want their letters to he Humanities Editor: published, they must include their name. The Behrend Beacon intends for its Opinion page to he a forum for • Adam Spinelli discussion, not a screen to hide behind. Occasionally, The Behrend Beacon may request responses to online alsssB9@psu.edu queries in which responders will be identified by their username. Science Editor: The Behrend Beacon is editorially independent from the Penn State system. Fhe Behrend Beacon operates par- Ryan Gula tially 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 rggso29epsu.edu The editor-in-chief has the final authority on editorial decisions, including, hut not limited to. all columns, edito rials, and letters to the editor. Complaints regarding Beacon coverage of school events should he directed to the edi for at editor psu edu MISETA SAYS: Poverty in ED MISETA IN fillet in N inl()111u We often hear about poverty in America, and our minds are immediately filled with images of the poor, the downtrodden, and the homeless. We picture the unfortunate adults and children who must live on the street and dig through dumpsters to find their next meal. But is that really an accurate picture of poverty in America? I was thinking about this a few months ago while standing in line at the Country Fair. The young male in front of me, per haps 20 years old, was chatting on his Blackberry while scan ning through the songs on his iPod. Both the phone and the iPod were nicer than mine. When it came time to pay for his sub and Mountain Dew, he pulled out his handy Access card and paid for the items with my tax dollars. Afterwards I felt all warm and fuzzy inside knowing I was saving this poor rogue from certain starvation on the harsh streets of Erie. By doing a little research, I discovered a 2004 study on poverty in America. The results were published in a paper titled How Poor are America's Poor? and revealed some surprising results. While most people would picture those in poverty as having no food, decent clothes, or shelter, we find that could not be further from the truth. Few of the 35 million classified as poor by the Census Bureau even come close to fit ting that description. A few of the findings: Almost half of all Americans in poverty own their own home. The aver age home owned by the poor is a three-bedroom house with 1.5 baths, a garage, and a patio. Coincidentally, I have a three bedroom home with 1.5 baths and a garage. I don't have a patio but I do have a deck, so we'll call that even. 66 percent of poor house- MY VOICE Skeptical of scheduling A few months ago, I wrote an article about scheduling, mock ingly suggesting a few new classes such as "Competitive Eating" and "Stick Figures and Finger Painting." Maybe the schedule makers didn't get the point I was trying to make The schedu tunities are that's making on them, unli ficulty I have in trying to p together schedule scheduling opportunities down- right terrible. If the peo ple behind making the times and opportunities to BRANDON BOYD give off a charge take classes are se- ,enint Wet similar to that of an rious about making Behrend electron - negative. Because I better, here's a few suggestions am forced to, I have started they might want to heed. looking into taking a science I. Less morning classes, class with a lab. These classes more mid-day classes. As expect me to meet a few times teenagers and young adults, we a week, plus have a 2 1 / 2 hour burrow into our blankets late at lab. night and go into quite a slum ber. How do you expect us to get up for an 8 a.m. class? I want more classes in-be tween 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Just because the teachers can't sleep in because their arthritic hips are acting up doesn't mean we want to get up with them (jok ing, of course. Don't want to ruin my chances at that A.) 2. More exciting choices. While looking for classes to schedule, I had to fight off the urge to doze off at the bland ness of them all. Sure, we have an offered class called "Ameri- Editorial Policies America holds have air conditioning. My last home, which I lived in as recently as 5 years ago, did not have air conditioning. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded, and 66 percent have more than two rooms per person. From this, the study concluded that the average poor American has more living space than the average (non poor) individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, and Athens. So much for the homeless poor. So what else do the poor in this country, have? 75 percent own a car. 30 percent own two or more cars. 97 percent have a color television 78 percent a VCR or DVD player, 73 percent own a microwave and 33 per cent an automatic dishwasher. Makes you long to be poor, doesn't it? Shortly thereafter, I was sur prised to learn that the majority of homeless children live in homes. Seriously. The AP re ported on a story by re searchers that looked into the living conditions of children classified as homeless. It turns out 56 percent of homeless chil dren live in conditions de scribed as "doubled-up". This means sharing housing with other persons due to economic hardship. If you watch the TV show Two and a Half Men, you'll know that Alan and his son live with Charlie in a beau tiful beach-side home in Mal ibu, Cali. Yet according to this story, both would be considered homeless. There are certainly Ameri cans out there who truly are poor and need our help. But this really makes you wonder the extent of the problem and how much of all the informa tion we hear is exaggerated or simply fabricated. It makes me want to live in a cardboard house for three days to raise money for them. Heaven forbid that some poor person doesn't have the latest iPod or Droid. can Comedy," but it needs more Larry the Cable Guy and less Mark Twain. I don't know about you, but I don't exactly bust out laughing while reading Huckleberry Finn. They need to rename this class "American Literature that will sort of make you Was there a leak somewhere in the chemistry department? Why would I, a communica tions major, want to spend so much time on science? I appre ciate those that learn about sci ence and help to discover new inventions and groundbreaking medicine, but that's just not for me. It's not like I'm asking for much, really. A few changes here and there would go a long way towards improving the quality of a Penn State Erie ed ucation, as well as improving how much we enjoy it. glimgagoireto•st•Rtgivr D. I-1S it /Be • • B•• • ut not really." even the worst sses, however. ozers such as orary Political ies" and "Ele ary Microbiol- on the board, n't help but to discouraged my choices. 3. Less time yen to science asses for non ;cience majors. When I'm in a cience class, I
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers