The Capita] Times
TMI screams danger, mumbles routine and
Sometimes, technology simply outglows nature
By Crispin Sartwell
For the Cap Times
The first time I rolled to work up Route
441 and passed Three Mile Island, I was in
timidated. The thing seemed monstrous. As
well as being “a name synonymous with
nuclear disaster,” it is of a size that dwarfs
the human. The gigantic bleak concrete stacks
suggest an engineering project in the old So
viet bloc: the relic of a five-year plan of some
two-bit American Stalin.
And it feels radically dislocated from its
setting. An island rendered over into concrete
on a particularly lovely stretch of the
Susquehanna, rising over small farms and
small towns to transform the horizon, it seems
to have been built on the wrong scale.
TMI is moving toward the distinction of
being the first used nuclear plant to be sold.
GPU has signed a letter of intent to peddle
the thing to PECO and British Energy for
$ 100 million. The transfer has drawn the pre
dictable outcry from folks who want an oc
casion to attack nuclear energy, and indeed
if the thing were disassembled rather than
sold and kept in service, I would be happy
about it.
On the other hand, we folks who live or
work near TMI don’t worry much about it
Mamas, don't let your students grow up to be babies
Do you want a lollipop with that grade?
By Matt Bowman
Editor
No one ever said college was supposed to
be easy. Yet in many classes, students seem
to think professors should feel obligated to
produce study guides, review for exams and
even postpone tests and projects to allow for
more time. What was everyone doing the past
few weeks before the project was due? Most
students would have to admit, including my
self, they were simply procrastinating.
Don’t get the wrong impression here. There
are times when an individual exception can
and should be made due to conflicting sched
ules, personal dilemmas, etc. But in no way
should any student here at PSH expect every
thing to be handed to them from their pro
Letters: If you have a problem with this campus, do something about it
The people in the Student Government Association office
(room 216) are the people that you elected to help make life
here at Penn State Harrisburg a little bit better. They are regular
students who have jobs, families, outside responsibilities and
obligations, yet they find time to do one of the hardest jobs that
any student can take on: They try to represent you. They take
your problems and concerns to the faculty and staff here at Har
risburg and at University Park. If you would take the time to
look at what the SGA does, (and judging by the election results
you haven’t) many of you would be very surprised.
The SGA is the voice of the students. Any time you have a
problem with either a policy or a professor it’s the SG A’s job to
try and address that problem. Does SGA always succeed? Of
course not, but it is never for a lack of trying.
SGA helps fund clubs and organizations. Is SGA always per-
OPINION/EDITORIAL Monday, October 26,1998 J|
anymore. After that first flush of fear on see
ing the words “Three Mile Island,” the sense
of impending doom fades. Now the thing is
just there, looming over the campus, the in
spiration for the odd joke about glowing
cows.
In all honesty I know next to nothing about
nuclear power and am in no position to as
sess the safety of TMI. But even folks who
live with things that regularly spin off disas
ters, folks who live in flood plains or near
geological faults or war zones or the worst
public housing projects, learn a nice fatalism
and get on with their lives. The fearsome
becomes ordinary.
Human life is not lived in disasters; it’s
lived in the everyday routine: the commute,
lunch at Kuppy’s diner, the kids, the dog, the
television. Within a few weeks of a disaster,
life is again a routine, though perhaps an al
tered one.
It’s been almost twenty years since my col
leagues started tasting the fillings in their
teeth and it slowly dawned on everybody that
something was wrong, almost twenty years
since TMI started to melt down and 50,000
people removed themselves from the area.
And if you can’t get back into your routine
after twenty years, you can’t live a human
life.
fessors.
Don't go to a professor and say they ruined
your future because they gave you a "C." First
of all, your future isn't ruined, and secondly,
you're the one to blame.
If students want to be fed, burped and
changed by professors, then go to school
somewhere else. We need to realize that we
are studying at a university here, not a
daycare.
Most of us came to PSH for reasons of con
venience with the underlying motive of get
ting that degree with Pennsylvania State
University written on it. That degree will
mean something someday, and it very well
may put you ahead of your competition for
employment down the road.
But please, earn that degree.
feet in distributing money? Again, of course not, the finance
committee and the Student Government Senate always tries to
be equitable. But when it comes to money, people are always
going to get upset.
The members of SGA also sit on many committees here at
Harrisburg and at University Park. Did you know that any stu
dent can sit on committees (you should, it has been posted alt
over campus). Unfortunately, it is the SGA officers who wind
up on those committees. Why? No other students came forward.
If there is no student representation, who knows what the fac
ulty and staff could get away with?
SGA has many members who have very powerful positions
outside of student government that cold be utilized but go un
used. The only time SGA is ever brought up is when someone
feels that they need to complain. The Student Government be
Really, there’s been nothing wrong with
TMI as a neighbor in the year I’ve been work
ing in Middletown. It’s not noisy; it doesn’t
smell; it doesn’t set cows aglow or make Gei
ger counters start doing that clicking thing.
But TMI, sitting in the Susquehanna and
There are satanic beau
ties as well as sweet ones,
accidental ones as well as
works of art. The beauty of
Three Mile Island is mon
strous and unintentional,
but that makes it all the
more intense. Its danger is
part of its allure.
constituting the landscape, is as perverse and
as absorbing and as incomprehensible as a
sphinx rising out of the desert.
And believe it or not, as I’ve gotten more
distance from my initial fear, I’ve begun to
see that it has a certain beauty: the stacks are
gigantic hourglasses that possess a bizarre sen
suality, and the steam that rises from them is
a weather. The stacks release huge cumulus
What does it say for you and Penn State
when you are not competent to complete the
tasks set before you by your work supervi
sors because all through your education you
were spoon fed?
Everyone has classes that seem both diffi
cult and impossible. However, I learned
something during my past semesters that has
given me this outlook on college.
On a personal note, I was in a class at Har
risburg Area Community College studying
communications under the tutelage of
Thaddeus Sampson. I suffered through that
class all semester trying to complete every
thing. The work load was large, and Profes
sor Sampson was unforgiving. There was no
such thing as delaying assignment deadlines
or even a curve. But guess what? His class is
still my favorite class I have ever taken in
college. I got a “C” so it’s not because I did
comes an easy target because it is filled with people who put
themselves out on a limb to try and make Penn State Harrisburg
a little bit better.
While walking down the halls of Olmsted, one hears a lot of
complaining and disrespect for Penn State Harrisburg and its
SGA. What have you done to improve PSH? The squeaky wheel
will never get the oil it needs when it squeaks behind closed
doors, in a classroom, or to one’s classmates. If you want PSH
to change, voice your ideas in a forum where you can be heard,
where your concerns are considered to be legitimate and impor
tant. We challenge you to get involved in the government that
represents you and do something about the problems you see, or
do not complain at all.
More important than that is our attitudes as both students and
student leaders. To be effective in enacting change and improve
shines beauty
formations that merge into the sky.
There is beauty in our technology: a clean
ness and clarity and simplicity that you don’t
find in stuff that isn’t made by people. It is a
monochrome, modernist beauty: a reduction
of form to function so ruthless that the form
itself is perfectly stark, absolutely purified,
utterly abstract. A bird’s nest is a mess of
twigs and string: a shaggy, chaotic interweav
ing of things. TMI is a hyper-simplified con
crete sculpture on a scale beyond the monu
mental: an expression of almost perfect pu
rity.
There are satanic beauties as well as sweet
ones, accidental ones as well as works of art.
The beauty of Three Mile Island is monstrous
and unintentional, but that makes it all the
more intense. Its danger is part of its allure.
TMI is an expression of human pride on a
scale that boggles the brain. We are going to
take this island, pave it, raise these four gar
gantuan towers on it, and start a nuclear re-
action. We are going to use it to make power
for people, and above all to make power for
ourselves.
The folks who designed TMI were not
thinking about aesthetics; they were think
ing about power. But power itself can make
a dreadful beauty.
Sartwell teaches communications at PSH.
extremely well. I most enjoyed this class be
cause I had to work for everything I got, and
in doing so, I retained the facts that I received
from tests, papers, and lectures.
I learned, which is the whole purpose of
education. At least that is what I have come
up with so far.
Throughout our college experience, the
classes that we struggle with the most are
usually the ones that we learn the most in.
So, my suggestion is: work for what you get,
and then understand that you got what you
worked for. Take the initiative to complete
the tasks in front of you on time without com
plaining and grumbling.
After all, we look stupid walking around
these halls wearing diapers and training pants
when we are old enough to take care of our
selves.
I have to go now; it's nap time,
menl for the student body, we must change our attitude. We all
should be working for the betterment of PSH. This attitude would
mean that we put aside our persona) differences and work for
the common goal of the improvement of PSH.
The point of this ranting is to send out a wake-up call. To
everyone reading this paper I know that you are very busy, we
all are. But, take some responsibility for your community and
school. Walk into the SGA office and say, “I want to get in
volved and help my community.”
I guarantee that you will not be turned away.
Bob Woehr
senior senator Behavioral Sciences and Education
James Cushing
chief justice Student Court