PAGE 4 — THE DECREE — NOVEMBER 1,1996
OFFICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF
NORTH CAROUNA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
Editor-in-chief—Jessica Brown
Copy Editors — Kevin Corbett, Molly McCluskey
Staff—Tequila Moore, Karolyn Braun, Monica Alston,
Grant Long, James Bell
Contributing Writers — Steve Ferebee^ Benny Saint Romain
Advisor — Chris LaLonde
Thi Decree is located in the Hardees Building, North
Carolina Wesleyan College, 3400 Wesleyan Blvd., Rocky
Mount, NC 2780L Weekly staff meetings are held Wednes
day at noon in the Decree office. Re-publication of any
matter herein without the express consent of the Editorial
Board is strictly forbidden.
The Decree is composed and printed by the Spring
Hope Enterprise. Opinions published do not necessarily
reflect those of North Carolina Wesleyan College.
Too many students
acting immaturely
Recently in the dorms
some minor incidents have
occurred which, if not
stopped when they were,
could have led to serious
injury.
Students at Wesleyan
seem to have forgotten that
we are supposed to be
growing and maturing
adults. Instead, many of
them continue to display
childlike behavior, break
ing rules.
Understandably, nobody
expects complete adult be
havior, but come on, even
most children know not to
set things on fire or throw
things at people. What if
someone were to get hurt?
Would anyone care, or
would we finally begin to
see how dangerously we
are living?
As for the rules here at
Wesleyan, most likely a
student has to do some
thing very wrong, or else
no real punishment is
given. Wesleyan believes
in second chances, so most
students get away with rule
breaking easily —some
times even with things as
serious as drugs.
While it is nice that
Wesleyan believes in its
students enough to give
them another try, the stu
dents have shown they are
too immature to receive
such respect.
In the long run, these
second chances could hurt
us.
Think about it. If a stu
dent goes through his or
her entire four years (or
however many years it now
takes to graduate) here, all
the time getting away with
murder, do you seriously
think they will have any
respect for the law or the
authorities in “the real
world?”
How will they ever see
that what they are doing is
wrong if we continue to
simply slap their wrists and
say “don’t do it again”?
Wesleyan’s policies and
rules are for the most part
fine, however the actions
taken to punish for the
crimes are too loose. If
Wesleyan wants its stu
dents to get a real-life ex
perience (and maybe even
see them grow up a little)
then perhaps it should look
at reforming its disciplin
ary actions.
Apparently this is the
only way to see a spark of
adult behavior in some of
the student body who ob
viously refuse to grow up
on their own.
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Halloween has long tradition
Dressing up in our fantasies
By DR. STEVE FEREBEE
Halloween, for whatever rea
son, allows us to be silly. Several
years ago at a National Collegiate
Honors Association Conference
in Dallas 1 wore a yellow plastic
duck nose; 1 quacked with col
leagues while riding a bus to din
ner, my beak bouncing back
blinking neon lights.
What possessed me, 1 don’t
know.
When I was an undergraduate
studying in Gainsville, Fla., in the
early 70s, the students celebrated
Halloween at an annual midnight,
live-music bash. After a few
years, the parties became so popu
lar they spilled from the campus’
central plaza onto a nearby farm.
I remember people dressed as
packs of cards, as snakes, as lino
leum kitchen floors. As body
parts.
I used to wear this black tie-
dyed sheet, a kind of poncho
hemmed with these cool silver
stars I found in one of those in
teresting little shops that univer
sity towns used to have to pro
vide the paraphernalia of the
60s.... Well, as we keep saying
about the 60s lately: 1 guess you
had to be there.
Another Halloween in the late
70s found me going to grad school
in New Mexico, where even com
monplace night blue-back skies
spin with stars about which the
Indians weave sand stories.
1 was — and this is not a part
of the story I’m proud of— in a
disco where my dancing partner
fell asleep right on the dance floor,
music throbbing and lights
strobing. We fled from the absur-
Dr. Steve
Muses
dity of disco and ended up in the
dark green, fir-laden mountain
woods watching the Milky Way
dance across the sky. None of us
in grad school had time for such
frivolities, but it was, after all,
Halloween.
My childhood Halloweens, for
some reason, don’t stand out as
much. 1 remember scratchy masks
and polyester costumes and bags
of candy. It was weird that people
you didn’t know gave you good
stuff, but what the heck, it was
good stuff.
When the people later known
as the Celts spread from central
Europe (Dracula fans, take note)
to the British Isles even before
the Romans, they dreamed up a
night when witches and warlocks,
ghouls and ghosts partied down
(possibly around Stonehenge).
Memento mori. Christianity trans
formed Halloween into the
evening before All Saint’s Day,
when we feast to honor the saints,
both known and unknown.
But, frankly, I don't think we
pay much attention to where the
tradition comes from; we just
know that on Halloween we can
play dress up, we can make people
take note, and we can mock su
perstition at the same time we
pay it homage.
No one wants to be a bum, or
a monster, or a politicians but we
like to dress up as one to frighten
people. Actually, rather than
frighten, what we’re really trying
to do is to amuse, however briefly;
to make a few people in the pass
ing crowd laugh at an outrageous
side of ourselves that we usually
keep hidden, even from our inti
mates.
We limit ourselves if we do
not express — indeed, explore —
those selves within us that we
know we can’t live with every
day.
Once 1 went as Richard Nixon.
Talk about scary. I wore a tacky
gray suit two sizes too small, a
scruffy beard two shades too dark,
and a pointed nose two angles
too sensitive. I stood in a comer,
arms bunched against my chest,
hand on chin, and ordered bomb
ers into Cambodia. I mean Laos.
I mean Thailand. Oh, I mean not
the one we said we wouldn’t
bomb. This week, anyway.
Trick or Treat.
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