New Housing Burys
Campus Bailfield
New student housing being built at
PSH will be located on a field near the
Olmsted building that was previously
used as a baseball field. But not any ordi
nary baseball field. PSH's newest dorms
will soon conceal the interesting history
that lies behind that baseball field -- a his
tory of community effort and pride.
All that remains of the baseball field tons of diamond-text and then mixed dia
now is the backstop, so it is easy to forget ' mond-text and clay together to form the
that, over the years, the field served as pitcher's mound. Next, Smitley recruited
"home field" for children's summer a local company to install a backstop.
pproku... _
Harmon, a former PSH engineering pro
fessor, for help. Harmon happily lent his
services and, applying his engineering
skills, designed the field so that a 3 p.m.
sun would not be in a batter's eyes.
Once Harmon decided how the field
should be positioned, it was time to build
it. Armed with an athletic handbook he
bought for a dollar, Smitley went about
turning a rocky field into one of the best
baseball fields in the area.
Time is a great teacher,
but unfortunately
it kills all its pupils.
Hector Louis Berlioz
By Jaclyn Talarico
Capital Times Staff Writer
All summer long, Smitley and Freddie
Clark, a high school student, worked on
the field. (Clark is now a member of the
Harrisburg School District's
Empowerment Team). Smitley rented a
sod cutter, and he and Clark peeled back
the land to create the baseball diamond.
They replaced the sod with two hundred
than the university's $lOO,OOO estimate.
Smitley says he is definitely excited
about the new dormitories, but at the same
time, he is a little sad the baseball field
will no longer be there. Smitley smiles
when he remembers how the campus and
community came together to build the
field, all the hard work that went into the
project, and the many years of enjoyment
it brought to its baseball players. After all,
it truly was a field of dreams.
Campus Reacts
To Presidential Election
Continued from Page 1
turned 18 in October, the paperwork need
ed for him to register for this year's vote
did not arrive in time, so McDonough felt
her vote carried double value.
McDonough's observation that "we
live in a society where computers are
taken for granted and here we are poking
holes in ballots" is balanced by voters'
recent introduction to the complex diver
sity of "dimpled," "hinged," and "preg
nant chads," and the intricacies of "butter
fly ballots."
Although Bresler believes the machin
ery of voting needs to be changed, he feels
that "rushing to high-tech solutions like
optical scanners is not necessarily the
answer." Bresler advocates the low-tech
solution offered in the levered voting
machines first introduced in 1892 and still
in production.
Lisa Nagele, a dual secondary educa
tion/social studies and public policy
major, would like to see "things more pro
portionate with the popular vote" and
declares "there's something wrong in this
country when the candidate who receives
a majority of popular votes is not elected
president."
The example of past close or contro
versial elections prompts Peterson to
"guarantee" that this election will provoke
discussion in the near future about elimi
nating the electoral college but that "noth
ing will happen." Bresler concurs, adding
that while "some states may make some
changes in the way they choose their elec
tors," he doesn't foresee wholesale modi
fications to a system that most states con
sider fundamentally essential. In addition
to the extreme difficulty of amending the
Constitution, Bresler submits that "sur
prisingly enough, this election didn't raise
the clamor [needed to amend the
Constitution] and if this election didn't
incite a 'wild fire' call for change, which
one would?"
Whether this latest exercise of democ
racy in action solidifies national confi
dence in the political system as well as
each citizen's role in it or fosters a cyn
ical indifference toward the process
remains a question.
Nagele had first-hand experience in
this exceptional civics lesson as she
taught American government to high
school seniors as the campaign and elec
tion unfolded. Nagele recalls that as the
election approached, she stressed the
importance of voting to her students and
was impressed by their interest and enthu
siasm in analyzing the unusual election
developments and the procedures under
taken to resolve them. However, as her
student teaching assignment came to an
end and the next president still had not
been named, Nagele says her students'
attitudes deteriorated to complacency and
disillusionment, regardless of her efforts
to impart the significance and uniqueness
of the ensuing scenarios.
Disillusionment with the situation was
certainly not limited to Nagele's students.
In particular, repeated missteps by the
Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts elicited
unfavorable evaluations at PSH.
While Nagele and Qiong Liu
approved of the U.S. Supreme Court's
intervention in deciding the election,
Nagele expressed disappointment with
the Supreme Court's action. Nagele was
encouraged by the U.S. Supreme Court's
Dec. 4 directive returning the Florida
Supreme Court's decision on recount
deadlines for clarification. Nagele saw the
Supreme Court's action as a demonstra
tion that "the court was trying to use fed
eralism in the way it should be used."
However, when the matter again appeared
before the Supreme Court justices, Nagele
felt "the judges should've reached a con
sensus decision" and "come back with a
way of counting the votes so that every
one would feel their vote was counted and
that it mattered." A united decision,
Nagele believes, would have re-affirmed
the impartial nature of this highly-respect
ed judicial institution for the American
public.
Peterson states that while it was "with
in the purview of the U.S. Supreme Court
to get involved in a matter such as this,"
he nevertheless believes the court "should
have declined to hear the case, at least
until it had run its course through the
Florida Supreme Court." "The high
court's intervention," Peterson says, "cre
ated a dynamic that was not terribly con
structive." Bresler speculates the U.S.
Supreme Court "thought it was riding to
the rescue," and "tried to bring finality to
the chaos caused by the Florida Supreme
Court." Bresler indicts Florida's Supreme
Court for "making a hash of things," and
explains that "by not mandating a stan
dard list as a basis for counting ballots
and requiring [the recount] to be done too
quickly by untrained counters," the state
court wrote "a prescription for disaster."
Bresler, however, is ambivalent about
the efficacy of the U.S. Supreme Court's
remedy. While the court's ruling over
turned the Florida Supreme Court's
recount, it "left questions about what the
Supreme Court could've done [to resolve
the election]," and cast an "unnecessary
cloud over the outcome of the vote." Still,
Bresler points out that "with all the mis
takes the courts made, they were listened
to, demonstrating the power of the rule of
law in this country."