8 The Daily Collegian Mixed messages Administration must examine CES students' views of diversity Editors note: This is the fifth in a semester-long series of editorials that respond to the Collegian's Diversity or Division project. This editorial focuses on the articles last week on diversity bz the Com monwealth Educational System. Fall Semester 1995 at Universi ty Park: Swastikas. KKK mes sages. Ethnic intimidation inci dents. Anti-Semitic remarks. The picture of intolerance. Its message radiated beyond the confines of Happy Valley. Stu dents and faculty members throughout the University's Com monwealth Educational System heard. They compared the stories to their own troubles with racial intolerance and campus segrega tion. And some of them there's no telling how many wondered about their impending future at University Park. Administrators tried to rectify the situation. From the beginning of the semester, even before the incidents occurred, they attempt ed to construct a model of unity. Early in the semester, newly inaugurated University President Graham Spanier's smiling face adorned the cover of the Penn Stater, the Alumni Association's official publication. Several stu dents of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds surrounded the new president. The picture of multiculturalism. CES students have received a mixed message. The Penn Stater cover's mes sage of happy acceptance we all get along at this University The opinions page is an open forum for discussion for the entire Penn State community. Diverse viewpoints in columns, reader forums and letters to the editor are encouraged to promote an ongoing intellectual dialogue on issues important to our readers. Collegian Tuesday, Feb. 27, 1996 01996 Collegian Inc. Editor In Chief Courtney Calms Business Manager Randy Abrams The Daily Collegian's editorial opinion is deter mined by its Board of Opinion, with the editor holding final responsibility. Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not nec essarily those of The Daily Collegian, Colle gian Inc. or The Pennsylvania State University. Collegian Inc., publishers of The Daily Colle gian and related publications, is a separate corporate institution from Penn State. Apathetic students deserve childish USG election antics What a wonderful time of year it is. The clouds are breaking. The sun is shin ing. The smell of Spring is in the air. Unfortunately, that isn't the only odor wafting across campus. If you take a deep breath, you can just make out the slightest tinge of stench beginning to emanate from the center of campus, right around the HUB. No, I'm, not referring to the sweet smell of coffee and bagels from Dough To Go. I'm talking about the foul stink of Undergraduate Student Govern ment elections. It's beginning to seep out of the second floor HUB corridors and windows like a fresh ly uncovered corpse revealed by the melting snows of winter. For many of us students, USG carries that odor year round, like a bad case of 8.0. This time of year is what turns the student body into the disaffected masses USG spends the better part of its time trying to shake the image it creates for itself every March. In the next several weeks, we was a gross misrepresentation of the University's minority popula tion. The University community responded to the intolerant acts through a rally, swearing that it would crack down harder on any one who discriminated. But the incidents continued. Some minority students at Com monwealth Campuses have start ed to ask questions. Is Penn State the right place for me? Do I real ly want to go to a campus where people don't want me? Not all minority students are asking those questions, and not all CES students plan to go to Uni versity Park. Some may accept intolerance as an unfortunate fact of life. But if anyone is questioning transferring to University Park, then our administration has more work to do. If the community does not start standing up to discrimination, we are letting the bigots who domi nated the news last semester win. It's no secret that Penn State has trouble attracting minority students to enroll, and retention seems to be just as difficult. The administration has an imperative duty to provide an accepting atmosphere for all students and should look into the problem that students in the CES are wary of coming to University Park. Solving that problem will be dif ficult and may be impossible. But it will start with realizing that this University is not yet the picture of acceptance and toler ance. Complaints: News and editorial complaints should be presented to the editor. Business and advertising complaints should be presented to the business manager. If a complaint is not satisfactorily resolved, some grievances may be filed with the Accuracy and Fair Play Committee of Collegian Inc. Information on filing grievances is available from Gerry Lynn Hamil ton, executive secretary, Collegian Inc. Letters Policy: The Daily Collegian encourages com ments on news coverage, editorial policy and Univer sity affairs. Letters must be typewritten, double spaced and no longer than two pages. Forums must also be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than three pages. Students' letters should include semester standing, major and campus of the writer. Letters from alumni should include the major and year of graduation of the writer. All writers should provide their address and phone number for verification of the letter. Let ters should be signed by no more than two people. Names may be withheld on request. The Collegian reserves the right to edit letters for length and to reject letters if they are libelous. will all be bombarded with a slew of candidates and their minions wearing buttons, stumping on the Willard steps, and handing out fliers, handbills, and palm cards. The men and women running as teams for the "honor" of the Presi dency will spend every waking moment speaking at every meeting of students on campus to convince you that their version of a platform which will include one gimmick idea (like a Free Loop), one Women's issue (like a tougher stance on sexual assault), and one promise to keep up the fight to Opini ns Letters to the editor .'*"=0,1111111 The real gun control The recent allegations against Pat Buchanan campaign worker Larry Pratt raise two important issues. The first is guilt by association and the second is the use of racism in the gun control debate. Using the same loose standard for guilt by association could cause mayhem and division. President Clinton could be consid ered a terrorist based on his meetings with leader of the IRA and PLO. Anyone who supported Louis Far rakhan's Million Man March could be accused of backing Libyan and Iranian ter rorists or Saddam Hussein's efforts to develop biological weapons that make AIDS look like the sniffles. I, a white male, agree with some of Far rakhan's ideas but you cannot leap to the conclusion that I am in favor of Far rakhan's ideas on ethnic/religious warfare. The same rule applies for Larry Pratt who may agree with extremists on one issue, gun control, but disagree with everything else that they believe. The issue of racism in the gun control debate is even more important. Guilt by association has been used to falsely por tray gun control opponents as racists. The media will quote one racist idiot and then claim the 80 million gun owners in Ameri ca must agree with him. This has been done as an intentional effort to hide the racism inherent in gun control policies. The 400 year history of gun control in America has one dominant theme: Disarming minorities so they can not resist oppression by a misguided majority backed by corrupt authorities. An 1825 gun control law serves as a per fect example. White citizen patrols "shall enter into all negro houses and suspected places, and search for arms." You may argue that this was almost 200 years ago; however, two years ago the federal gov ernment tried the same policy in Chicago. They merely replaced "negro houses" with the words "housing projects." When the Supreme Court overruled this policy, Pres ident Clinton instructed the Justice Department to find a way around the Con stitution. No where has this smear campaign been more evident than in the coverage of mili tias. The current batch of militias has formed for one reason. For thirty years the gun control advo cates have claimed the militia has the right to own guns. This caused people to claim "OK then we're the militia." When Ameri- keep tuition down (which never quite seems to work), is better than the next ticket's repackaging of the same ideas. I worked on the last two • victorious campaigns for USG's top slot (one of whom I'm proud of, and one of whom I'm ashamed of), and I've witnessed this foul-smelling event first-hand. This entire process is conducted in a manner which is both childish and comical. Last week Josh Pechter and his cronies on the Senate sat in on the interviews for the elections com missioners, whose job it is to ensure that our student government elec tions are free and fair. The only problem is that if you do that, according to the USG elections code, then you are ineligible for the post of president. This sent the whole second floor of the HUB into a tizzy, because, if we all played by the rules, all those senators would be disqualified from running. SHHH! I'll let you in on a BIG secret one of them was consider ing running until the Elections . i. ,,,, c „,„,e, ....."2.- 47940 1 0, -,""*.."-" (711wa4.,C>P-4 -NO, I DON'T LC NE YOU... 1 BRQJGWT MY OW DRigy,„ Commssion decided to uphold the code. So anyway, the USG Supreme Court tried to find a way to nullify this little mishap and prevent an embarrassing scandal from bring ing down someone who is eminent ly qualified to be USG president, and would likely win the upcoming election. If anyone out there has been following these stories, it isn't hard to see the links I'm draw ing. None of this is Oliver Stone caliber conspiracy, but, sure as hell, we're talking about bending the rules. And we're talking about bending the rules so that a member of the USG senate, the body which approved the election code in the first place, can attempt to carry on with his campaign for the presi- "This whole fiasco makes USG look like a self-serving bunch of crybabies. Every year, something like this happens, and we have one more reason to believe that USG is worthless." cans guarantee that "people" means peo ple, not militia, then these groups will dry up. Arguments stating that the militia of Thomas Jefferson is not relevant in the 20th century ignore the most important militia movement in American history. Thirty years ago black minutemen ral lied around civil rights leaders in the South. The largest militia was The Dea cons for Defense and Justice. It had sixty units, some as large as 1,000 men. The civil rights militias had three main missions; guarding local jails to ensure that police would not hand suspects over to lynch mobs, protecting blacks from police and Klan violence, and providing armed body guards for civil rights leaders. James Farmer, head of the Congress Of Racial Equality, said of such protection "... the Klan could only reach me if they were prepared to swap their lives for thine." The Deacons and other black militias saved hundreds of lives and discouraged government sanctioned violence at a very critical stage of the civil rights movement. This would have been impossible under the restrictions that Handgun Control Incorporated plans to shackle Americans with. One-hundred years ago the racism behind gun control was obvious. It is hid den better now but just as present. Instead of directly banning gun ownership by blacks, HCI recommends banning guns to poor and urban Americans. Before the 1994 elections, HCI laid out its plans to eliminate gun ownership in America: $2OOO a year for a license, tougher regulations for urban areas, and individual approval of the right to own a gun by a possibly discriminatory police official. To own a gun you would have to have money, live in the suburbs, and be friends with the police chief. How many of you think this program would be nondiscrimi natory? American law enforcement has a poor record for protecting and recognizing the rights of both poor and minority citizens. In spite of this record, gun control advo cates insist that Americans must surren der their right to self-defense in exchange for protection by a police state. The next time you hear someone say that the only person who can have a gun is a cop; remember, that cop might be Mark Fuhrman. Wade Theodore sophomore-liberal arts dency despite a bonehead mistake. Regardless of what happens to rectify this situation, the damage has already been done. It's no won der that the average student could care less about USG. This whole fiasco makes USG look like a self serving bunch of crybabies. Every year, something like this happens, and we have one more reason to believe that USG is worthless. The shame of it all is that there are indeed many motivated, generous people working their tails off year round as advocates to the adminis tration, policymakers, analysts, and program coordinators. They do things that none of us ever notice, like fighting to keep the Learning Resource Centers open, and the only reward they get for all of it is -ts Tuesday, Feb. 27, 1996 MMII Smells like the pits It's been said, "Opinions are like armpits, everyone has them and they usu ally stink." This connection has taken true form as one breathes in the recent cornu copia of letters written to address substan tial left vs. right issues. I think most might agree that whether it be right or left, many opinions sniffed in the Collegian have been quite pungent. It's striking, not only to the senses, but to the mind that everyone is really enjoying the act of sharing view points in an in-your -face approach. What am I getting at? Well, unlike a through-the-briefs movement that makes a car swerve somewhere in America, our delivery and not so much the position itself is seriously offending to the point of ver bal and physical hostility. And as so clearly pointed out by Karo line Gottschild in a column last fall, ridicule and lack of real consideration of differing opinions is not good. It may give a message that we're going somewhere together, but underneath the sheet of toler ance, difficult and often viable opposing notions lay idle, unexposed and undis cussed. And when having finally seasoned, as to spur someone to comment on the dif ficult issues such as abortion, homosexual ity, pornography or government, more effort is often given to ensuring that everyone who doesn't share this person's distinctive smell has been offended sensu ally instead of challenged intellectually. Let's lighten up a bit folks, we're not even exactly sure scientifically where we came from, far less if our smell is eternally superior to others. I understand that most all of us complete the bridge to deep con victions through some seemingly irrational jump, but before we take sides and do bat tle to pin our obviously ignorant opponents to the ground and suffocate them, lets cool down, open our pits slowly, and with care try not to offend. Senses will be less stim ulated, but in the long run, assuming there is one, we will all endure the ride together much better. me OPM/4W COMM their personal satisfaction of a job well done. But at the same time, they're infected with the same stench that rises from the USG elections and lingers until the next year. To all of you in student govern ment working to make Penn State a better place, I offer a pat on the back. You do more than you get credit for. To all of you more con cerned with winning an election, I give only my middle finger. You make the hard working members of your organization look bad. And to all you apathetic students out there that let this vicious cycle continue by your own inaction, I can only shake my head in disgust. It takes about 2,000 votes to win the USG presidency. If just one out of 20 of you that pick up a Colle gian each day decide to vote this year, you can elect anyone you want. Until we decide to do that, we'll get what we deserve. Jim Rodgers is a senior majoring in international politics and a Colle gian columnist. Paul Primrose graduate-chemistry
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