The Stetson Reporter

wed 02 OCt-02 I N S I D E http://reporter.stetson.edu WHAT'S INSIDE News 2A Opinions 4A Life IB Classifieds 2A Sports 6b Etcetera 8a issue 5 volume 115 Curriculum for honors classes incurs changes By Julie Farricker ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR Students currently participating in the university's honors program will find the curriculum changing next year. Newly admitted first-year students for the 2003-2004 school year will have a revamped curriculum which includes team teaching and different courses. -.. The current honors program consists of seven classes that cover the areas of the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and ethics. Students majoring in the natural sciences are only required to take one honors science class instead of two. * . The honors requirements are intended to substitute for the general education requirements for students in any of the three undergraduate colleges admitted to the program. "Due to many students who are eligible coming in with credit from high school programs such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual enrollment with local community colleges, these students are having a tendency to not finish or join the honors program," said Dr. Wayne Dickson, the honors program director. To students who are entering the university, the honors program aims "to provide academically enriched and intellectually stimulating experiences for selected students" according to the program's outline. Most of these students ranked in the top ten percent of their high school class where rigorous courses of study were taken, including Advanced Placement classes, and at least 1270 on the SAT. "For now, we will be finding professors who are ready and willing to teach under the new curriculum," said Dickson. "During the summer, we will have workshops that focus on the team-teaching idea." Under the new program, first-year students will be talcing a course entitled "Foundations of Understanding" that will be one course each semester for the first year. In that class, the students will be team-taught by professors from each of the three disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and students will see how various disciplines can be integrated in course work to apply to his/her own knowledge and understanding. . During the second year, the first semester will be "Self and Society in Western Thought." Students will learn , how the individual self plus moral, intellectual, and social values are formed in various cultures. The second semester , will be similar, but the course is called "Justice and Ethics in Global Perspective." - The third year, students have the option to participate in the study abroad program in- one of the seven countries available. This depends on the individual student's major since some the time constraints of some majors due to course selection might hinder a student from leaving the campus. . There will also be service learning Where students will participate in practical projects serving real community needs in the local area. see HONORS, page la 1 Florida's First Private College Newspaper SPORTS: Crew team prepares for winning season page 6b ■ OPINIONS: Emily Hall needs refurbishment to fix problems page 4a ^Reporter Contact Us 421 N. Woodland Blvd. #8409 DeLand, FL 32720-3751 386.822.7224 FAX 386.822.7233 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ■ [email protected] etcetera® stetson.edu sports© stetson.edu [email protected] advertise® stetson.edu SAFAC committee lacks balance on its board By Jamie Kinsley and Amy Rigdon GUEST WRITER AND NEWS EDITOR Every undergraduate student pays a student activities fee that aids in funding many of the student organizations. The Student Activities Fund Allocation Committee (SAFAC) is a committee in charge of deciding which organizations need funding and how much money they are, allocated. SAFAC funding is to be used by organizations to hold activities that are open to the entire student body. Ac cording to the SAFAC guidelines, the committee is composed of the Student Government Association (SGA) president, vice president, executive secretary, five SGA committee chairs, a. student representative from each class level, the director of the Studenf Life department, and the faculty chair of the Campus Life Committee. "There is good student representation, of all the students, at the SAFAC meetings," said SGA President Jonathan Martin. This year the SAFAC committee was not as diverse or as large as it is supposed to be according to the guidelines. There were only seven students on the committee in addition to Darald Stubbs, the director of the Student Life department. Of the seven students, all of them were males and only two minorities. The majority of the committee representatives are also members of Baptist Collegiate Ministries and republicans, which received the second and third highest allocated funding. All of the committee members did not sit through the entire sessions with the organizations. A few representatives on the committee came and went in the middle of sessions, and toward the end of all the sessions, more than half of the students on the SAFAC committee had left before hearing the remaining organizations' requests. "As a committee chair and a second-year senator, who has had experience with SAFAC because I have been on the board before, I feel that I should have been on the SAFAC committee," said sophomore psychology and Spanish major Maya Yankelevich, who is currently the committee chair for Academic Affairs in SGA. "You have to be asked by the president to be on the board, and I was not. I do not know why. I feel that the board was not proportional in the respect that there were no women representatives. see SAFAC, page 2a THURMAN lecture Lecture addresses black reparations LISTEN: Randall Robinson asks society to realize the problems and sufferings of the African Americans, photo by sean shaw By August Brown ASSOCIATE OPINIONS EDITOR While slavery may have been an abominable crime against Africans, an even greater one may be the stripping and sterilization of their history by Americans. But while author Randall Robinson didn't point any personal fingers during his speech Thursday night as part of the Howard Thurman Lecture Series, he did raise some difficult questions about who should take, the blame for the despondent situa tion of many blacks in America. "People in America feel disinclined to raise other issues," said Robinson, "because America doesn't want to talk about other issues." The backbone of these issues that Robinson raised included the need for slavery reparations for modern blacks and the racism that still forms a major part of American attitudes. His two books, "The Debt" and "The Reckoning," proposed the urgency of giving blacks the means to contend with whites in American society and how it would catalyze the black community. "When you take away every sense of significance, a people could have over 246 years, it's almost the equivalent of running a hundred-yard dash and saying 'you go, but you stay,'" said Robinson, gesticulating to the audience. "You let the other one run 50 yards ahead, and then you shoot them in both knees and say 'now. run.'" Robinson's call for reparations will be the basis of a forthcoming class- action lawsuit he and a number of prominent civil-rights lawyers, including Johnnie Cochran, will be filing against the United States government in the near future. "When I talk about reparations, I'm talking about repairing people," said Robinson. Arguing that the gap between white and black social statuses extends beyond conscious racism, Robinson alleged that white Americans have an ingrained sense of superiority over African Americans that has been instilled in them since birth by American society. Robinson offered that this superiority extends to the most common interactions of the races, such as a white person expecting a black to move out of his way when walking down a sidewalk. Robinson opposed the suggestion that the disproportionate racial makeup of the American prison system and poverty line is anything coincidental. Blaming the disparity on attitudes present in white America since slavery, Robinson argued that modern blacks are still feeling repercussions from crimes committed 246 years ago. Aside from reparations, Robinson touched on the callousness of American attitudes resulting in harm inflicted on more than just blacks. Advocating academic discourse as a means of resolving and comprehending 9.11.01, Robinson turned the guilt back toward American policies in explaining the attacks. "It's not that people hate America, it's that they've suffered from American behavior," said Robinson. "I naively believed it possible...that we would think about and examine these issues and what would cause people to loathe our society so much." The vigor of his arguments came with a stern warning against continuing the current policies and attitudes toward race relations. August Brown can be contacted at [email protected]. Asian Student Association obtains club status By Julie Farricker ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR The Asian Student Association, a club unofficially started last spring on campus, is now listed under Student Life as an organization. v It all began when five students: Wesley Sun, MaiLinh Nguyen, Julius Santiago, Jake Krawjewski, and Anh Vu Dinh were interested in having an Asian club. "We found two professors that were happy and willing to be our advisors: Dr. Jennifer Foo from the business school and Dr. Kenneth Lee from the religious studies department," said junior vocal major MaiLinh Nguyen, the club's president and one of tlje founding members. "They have both been very supportive through the beginning stages of Asian Student Association. After a lot of brainstorming, we figured, out a list of different Asian students that we could contact." The main goals of the organization at first were to find Asian students who were, according to Nguyen, "inter ested in being active in spreading their culture around the Stetson campus." "The purpose of our club is to educate the campus about our unique cultural and ethnic heritage, promote unity between our respective communities, and assist both international and resident students from their various backgrounds in becoming acquainted with the university community," said Nguyen. A meeting was called with all of the potential members, and a calendar of events was ere- s===3==ksss=s== ated. Before ASA became an official club, they were still active on campus. Last spring, ASA held an Asian Food Expo, as well as a judo demonstration in front of the CUB. "These events gave us a chance to give the school a little taste of what we are about and also proved the po- "I hope that we are able to share our culture with the campus and the community, and open some minds and hearts." tential that we had as a unique part of campus life," Nguyen said. ASA also coordinated the Asian Fashion show in conjunction with the Indian Student Association, which was performed at their "Night in Bollywood." "I hope that we are able to share our culture with the campus and the community, and open some minds and hearts," said senior psychology major and member Marisol Justice. "Wesley Sun and I got a hold of the constitutions for the Asian clubs at UCF and UF. ======5 We combined the ideas from both of these, plus a touch of our own thoughts to create our own constitution," said Nguyen. "I was certainly supportive in helping them through the process with the hope of them coming under the umbrella of the Multicultural Student Council (MSC) like other multicultural organizations on campus," said Consuela Pender, coordinator of Intercultural Programs. The finished constitution for ASA was then forwarded to the Campus Life Committee, where Dr. Becky Oliphant of the business school serves as chair. The committee reviewed their application and constitution and after some re-working, they were approved this fall. "I'd really like to see more people helping out with ASA this year," said Wesley Sun, a junior religious studies and history major. "Our membership participation fluctuated a lot last year." Upcoming events to be hosted by ASA include a fashion show to be held Oct. 12 at DeLand's Celebration of America, and another fashion show on Oct. 19 for parent weekend. On Oct. 23 there will be a Moon Cake festival in Nite Lights where skits will be performed explaining the history of the Moon Cake, and cakes will be distributed. Julie Farricker can be contacted at jfarrick@stetson. edu. http://reporter.stetson.edu -