October 14, 1970 To Meade Heights Residents: Our Little Corner of the Earth Many Meade Heights residents might like to know how they can do their part for ecology. Here are some practical tips. Compiled by Libby Marsh The reason to be careful about the kind of soap or detergent you use is that the high-phosphate kinds do over-fertilize the river and the ocean. Worse in the long run is that all the phosphorous is lost forever to the ocean and some day our kids rhight wish we’d left them some to fertilize food. It is the familiar brands of deter gents which are the highest in phos phorous, Tide, Cheer, and the rest. However your friendly neighborhood Food Fair now stocks a low-phos phate brand called Ecology which should be less harmful. The chief advantage of the deter gents has been that they function in cold or hard water. However old fashioned soap like Fels does a good job, smells clean, and breaks down naturally after it’s gone down the drain. Soap like this must be dis solved in advance in the machine or it leaves lumps in your shirts. However our water here on campus comes through limestone caverns and is full of calcium. This water is good for you but in the laundry, with soap, it just sits there like grey pota toe soup. So you should add washing soda, not Calgonite, to the wash water. Dishwashing detergent is useful for dishes of course and also for min or laundry. It’s low in phosphorous and gets things clean in hard water by cutting surface tension around water and grease. The cheapest kind of this stuff, and of other gro ceries, is the house brand put out by the grocery company. A drawback to using dishwashing detergent is that it comes in those plastic bottles which are indestructible in nature. Some day the whole Earth will be paved with plastic bottles; if you burn them they emit poisonous fumes. Because oar water is so hard, the sink faucets and your glasses and pots will soon get a dull layer of calcium on them. Vinegar rubbed on or cooked in the pot will shine them up again. Vinegar will shine your hair too, if you put it in the last rinse and make you smell good like a pickle. As for other cleaning, ammonia combines with grease and makes its own soap. If you should ever clean the oven put some ammonia in over night and let the fumes make soap of the grease. You can save money and bottles by using ammonia for other cleaning jobs, windows and hairbrushes, but remember it’s hard on your living flesh and on linoleum. If you clean at all, the essential place to do it is around food. Bacter ia that can make you sick need the same living conditions you do, mod erate warmth, food, and water. So clean up the counter, dishes, and (continued in next column) THE CAPITOLIST Is The Board of How long will the students of Penn State Capitol Campus endure while a system of student government pulls them apart and encumbers on already frail unity? How long will the stu dents living in Meade Heights be asked to acknowledge allegiance to two student governing bodies? And how long will dorm students tolerate the “exclusiveness” of living in Meade Heights? These are just three of the questions left over from last year. A year which saw little, if any, progress in centralizing the student government but did see a dividing of the students between those living in Meade Heights and those living in the dorms. Meade Heights is a wonderful, pro gressive, challenging phenomena in student housing, despite the many problems that are arising out of such a neighborhood type of environment. All the students living in Meade Heights, I am sure, are glad to be part of this new endeavor. But let us not forget that sometimes to take two steps forward, we must take one step backward. By this I mean that if we find that we have chosen a mis taken path, let us have the courage to admit our mistake and change our direction. The idea that we can split into any conceivable factions several hundred student residents is beyond intelligence. How many parties and spaghetti dinners will the governing faction of Meade Heights hold this year while excluding the dorm stu dents or by making them pay some type of admission fee? Meade Heights, by no stretch of the imagin ation, is hallowed ground. It is an injustice to dorm students and other parts of the whole student body to dishcloth and let them dry before the next batch of food gets on them. Be especially tidy after handling raw chicken; it usually has salmonella. Put any damp, edible leftovers in the refrigerator and take them out again before too long. Governors Valid? Lewis have money allotted and spent for the enjoyment of a certain majority who happens to live in a particular place. This money should be spent for the enjoyment of everyone. Talk about discrimination of the highest order, this is the case in point, and what baffles me is how some people tolerate it. What, baffles me even more is how a student body can re sign itself to a course of becoming “clique-ish” realizing what a dead sentence that comes with such a di rection. Are we resigning ourselves con sciously or unconsciously to building walls in a time when our survival as persons, as a student body, as a nation depends on those walls crum bling into a better foundation of understanding. I would venture forth to ask each and every individual to ponder the question of whether the Board of Governors is a valid student govern ing body or whether it has become a wrong answer to questions still with us—how the students living in Meade Heights should be represented and speak for their particular prob lems, while at the same time not di vorcing them from their fellow stu dents. I would also speak out for a committee appointed by the student government association whose pur pose would be to investigate the pos sibilities and suggest for open discus sion the better ideas on how to bring Meade Heights back into perspective and foster unity among our student body. To delay would be error. Not so much for us as for future students. Let them not say about us that we could not forsee the problems and al leviate them. Norval Reece! OCTOBER 21, 1970 3-5 p.m., Auditorium
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