PAGE 2 — THE DECREE — APRIL 12,1991
OFFICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF
NORTH CAROLINA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
Editors^ Dhana Ghesson and John Pernell
Staff — Jamie Stump, James Oakley,
Alan Felton, Trey Davis
The Decree is located in the: Student Union, North Carolina
Wesleyan College, Wesleyan College Station^ Rocky Mount,
NC 27801. Policy is determined by the Editorial Board of The
Decree. Re-publication of any matter herein without the ex'^
press consent of the Editorial Board is strictly forbidden. The
Decree is composed and printed; by Ripley Newspapers of
Spring Hope.
Opinions published donot necessarilyreflectthoseof North
Carolina Wesleyan College.
The Decree
American woods
need saving first
Recently, North Carolina
Wesleyan College pre
sented a plan to cut down a
number of trees on campus.
Before long, a group of
people rose up to protest
the thinning of the trees.
Those few people were
enough to cause die school
to reconsider the cutting
down of those trees.
Henry David Thoreau,
over a hundred years ago in
his book Walden: Or Life in
the Woods, argued that the
wilderness of the world
(Walden Woods in particu
lar) should be preserved.
Since the presentation of
his work, Thoreau has been
known as the father of the
conservation movement.
Today, 60 percent of
Walden Woods is protected
CPS^
1 ' ^
DM)DYl”
Sense of *Other^ fosters abuses
from industrial develop
ment This portion of the
woods remains much the
way it was in Thoreau’s
time, naturally undevel
oped. The other 40 percent
of Walden Woods, how
ever, has fallen prey to the
greater industrial steam
roller. There are plans to
build an office park and a
condominium complex on
the remaining 40 percent of
the woods.
These woods are an im
portant part of our
American heritage and must
be preserved. Before we
travel to South America to
teU its people to stop raping
the rain forest, we must
continue to stop the de
struction of the woodlands
of America.
Feminism a growing force
By DR. STEVE FEREBEE
I recently read a study of the
increasing occurrence of gang
rapes on college campuses.
Groups of young men — usu
ally acting within the fraternity
or athletic team bond — force
young women to submit to in
tercourse while the others cheer
them on.
You can argue that the gang
rapes aren’t happening any more
often, just being reported more
often. Even if that is true, I
don’t feel any better. I also read
about increasing reports of anti
homosexual, anti-Jewish, anti
black, and anti-Hispanic hate
crimes.
What these groups have in
common is that they are what
Simone de Beauvoir called the
Dr. Steve
Other, the groups perceived by
the white, heterosexual, Chris
tian, western European male
power base as the aberration.
Therefore these Others appear to
be legitimate targets for attack
— especially when they start
trying to move out of their
prescribed behavior patterns.
Certainly, not all people in
this power base participate in,
condone, or excuse hate crimes
against the Others, but one of
the lessons of our time is that
hidden in many of us is an un
conscious complicity that per-
'Sisters of Mercy' hits cult status
By KEITH GORDON
Stare for a moment, into the
fire. Look past the flames, to the
embers burning ever so brightly,
performing the mesmerizing fi
nal dance of their short lives as
they turn and soar toward their
infinite sleep, burning ever to
ward darkness. That’s the dark,
somber sound of The Sisters of
Mercy.
With the release of “Vision
Thing,” the band’s third album.
The Sisters is building upon a
cult status that has elevat^ vo
calist Andrew Eldritch, his woik.
and his off-stage antics to near-
mythical proportions.
Eldritch, who has a deep,
growling, tortured vocal style, is
the brains behind The Sisters of
Mercy, as well as its founder,
songwriter, and constant focal
point.
He started it all in 1980 in
Leeds, England.
“There was a gap,” Eldritch
explains. “Everybody in London,
which is where the whole
English music industry is, was
promoting at the time very
much like they are today, in fact,
a rather hideous blend of cocktail
and disco music. Nobody I knew
grew up in Northern England
could relate to that. We had our
own different thing going.”
So Eldritch, along with orig
inal guitarist Gary Marx, formed
The sisters of Mercy.
“We had a fuzz bass, a very
cheap drum machine, and I used
to shout a lot through an echo
machine,” he recalled. “People
really got ofif on it.”
A few months later, “Damage
Done,” the Sisters’ first single,
was released on their own
Merciful Release label, to in
stant acceptance.
“We spent the following 10
years trying to keep as much of
that as possible,” says Eldritch
of the early sound, “while fitting
it into song at the same time,
which is not easy.”
Eldritch originally got into
music, he says, “because it
seemed the natural thing to do if
you were a punk rocker.
Everybody was in a band then.
Someone asked me to play on
their record, so I did and it just
kind of grew from there.
“Long after that,” he contin
ued, “people started saying,
(Continued on Page 3)
petuates the system which al
lows for such behaviors. Many
feminist thinkers, for example,
want us to ask why violence
against the Others happen.
That word —feminist. Be
cause I told Charles Creegan that
I would speak about feminism at
a colloquium sponsored by the
Nash/Edgecombe Research and
Dialectical Society (NERDS), I
have been asking people what
the word means to them. Not
many know what it is, but most
think that it threatens the status
quo.
And so it does.
Feminism puts women and
their concerns at the forefront of
social change.
The assumption behind femi
nism is that those people who
are in power determine the
norms and expectations and
methodologies of the culture. If
men have been in power, and I
judge the norms and expectations
and methodologies to be less
than desirable, then it is men
who must bear the burden of my
criticism and women who must
bear the burden of change.
An important idea in femi
nism is that human identity —^
including and probably most of
all gender — is a social con
struct. Feminism does not deny
biological differences; but it
shows how gender behavior roles
are constructed by those in
power to create and to protect
their power base. If you can ac
cept this idea (and many do not),
then you might believe that the
roles are artificial and can be
(Continued on Page 3)