Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / March 16, 2000, edition 1 / Page 2
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The Banner ■ March Opinions The Banner - Editorial Let the music play Last Exit So, while we’re waiting for the Department of Tranportation to dig up $4 million in pocket change, let’s consider a few other things all that dough could go toward. Yes, we could spend the money to make a “aesthetically pleasing” entrance to the campus. But why in the world should we destroy the perfectly decent entrance we have now (one of the few features on campus which, we would like to note, no one ever complains about) when there are so many more pressing issues a sum of money like that could go to? If we are sticking with the transportation mode of thought, how about more pedestrian crossings? What about a sidewalk and/or bike path running alongside the entrance we have now? And, hey, why not throw in a few more parking spaces while you’re at it, just for good measure? Why not put more of that money toward making our univer sity more appealing to a broader range of students? Now there’s an issue that a lot of people would like to see more actively addressed. And then there’s the Highsmith Center. Need we say more? It is appalling how long those problems have gone unresolved. Why make our entranceway more appealing when our build ing are falling into disrepair? When it comes to universities, first impressions are not always the most important — it s a package deal, and if part of the package leaks every time it rains, you end up with one big messy package. Creating the false front of a spiffy new entrance before internal problems are dealt with will not miraculously solve any university issues. Let’s not turn ourselves into a used car lot — “Well, here’s a beautiful model we just got in. The paint’s really pretty and the license plate says ‘good stuff Just don’t look under the hood, folks, there’s a few broken parts.” Bum to shine On March 12, Pope John Paul II asked for forgiveness for the atrocities committed by Catholics throughout history. How ever, it is interesting to note that he did not involve the Catho lic Church, only Catholics. Instead of placing responsibility in the hands of the Church, he blamed the Catholic followers. He told the congregation that the Catholics who behaved in an evil manner contributed to the “disfigurement of the face of the church.” One has to wonder how the institution that lead the followers is absolved of guilt. Granted, the people had a choice of whether or not to follow the Church, but if they didn’t, wouldn’t they be going against the Church? The pope cleverly sidestepped the Church’s involvement in centuries of injustice. Isn’t the basic institution that people follow as guilty as the people themselves for the crimes? The purpose of omitting the Church from the apology was to keep the institution pure. If there was any hint that the Church itself did something wrong, then people would have to start wondering if it could be wrong on other issues, even the basic guidelines of the religion. Apologizing for Catholics is not the same as apologizing for the Catholic Church. The pope needs to lay it on the line and acknowledge that the Church, not just its followers, are to blame for centuries of misconduct and apathy. Excuse me, mister On March 16, a Washington, D.C. billionaire will announce , his plan to donate $100 million to a free, online university. Michael Saylor promises an “Ivy-League education” over the Internet. This presents us, as university students, with plenty of ques tions. How much do we value a learning environment? How much does personal contact with our professors influence our college experience? “Done right, this will impact the lives of millions of people forever. Done wrong, it’s just noise in a can,” said Saylor. Or $100 million down the drain. There are pros and cons to the advent of online education. A positive aspect is that, potentially, thousands of people who do not have the means to attend college will have access to college lectures and classes from their homes. The downside is that these thousands of people will never learn to have a real conversation with another human being. Aren’t communication and discussion the foundations on which we base our system of education? Without ever stepping outside your comfort zone, how can you ever learn a thing? As we retreat farther and farther into our own personalized, computerized worlds, our only respite is the daily contact with other students interested in learning and conversing. Take away that element and you are left with empty knowledge. Unfortunately, Saylor’s vision is no pipe dream. So horde your books and tape record your class discussions — otherwise your grandkids won’t bfclieve that higher education ever involved human interaction. A simple recipe for healthy, loving, lasting relationships Andrew Thomasson columnist was relatively short-lived, but the amount I learned from mense, and I consider it to be one of the absolute best I have ever been; part of, simply because it helped rtii develop into the person I am today, who I am quite happy with. A great illustration of how carry so many expectations into out le another ly people have of those three little words, “I love I’m sure many of you have seen the movie “Love Potion #9.” Imag ine having some of that “Love Po tion #9” and being able to have any man or woman in the world you wanted. However, such a miracle “cure” does not exist, at least to the extent of my knowledge. I know this sim ply because no one has made hun dreds of millions of dollars off of it, as would be the case if one was ever discovered. I do see, though, that a large per centage of the world’s population is .having problems getting into and maintaining healthy love relation ships. I don’t claim to be the all knowing on this subject, but I do have a few suggestions that are work ing very well for me at the moment. Society teaches us that the pur pose of any relationship is to make your partner happy, to sacrifice and compromise, and everything will turn out all hunky-dory. This model is exactly the opposite of the way it should be. Make yourself happy first. That’s the first ingredient, and probably the most important. If you’re not happy with what you’re doing, even though you may tell yourself you are, your relationship will inevita bly begin to drag you down. When that happens, we get such things as lying, cheating, and even desperate murder entering into the equation, none of which are components of a healthy relationship. Also, enter into the relationship for the right reason — namely, you think this person can help you grow into the person YOU want to be. If you enter for any other reason, (sex, boredom, desperation), eventually the other person will begin to tell you what THEY want you to be. It is also very likely that you will end up telling them the same thing. You may go along with their idea of to get about expectations and about relationships in general is that the length of a relationship has not a thing to do with how good it is/was. Being married for thirty years is not necessarily better than having been dating two months, especially if the old couple has stopped their growth. The amount you are currently grow ing and developing as a human being, and how conducive the rela tionship is to such growth are much better indicators of how “good” it is. The relationship I was in this fall “moving on,” though — we view them as “having lost.” And we all hate to lose. It’s ingrained in our heads from the time we are infants that “such and such is better/worse” or that the breakup is “his fault” or “her fault.” Though we absolutely hate to ad mit it, we view our significant oth ers as our possessions. Even those of relationships with us who consider ourselves people the incredible fear i who give their partner lots of lee way to do what they want still refer to them as “my” girlfriend or “that boy is mine.” Of course, “my” and “mine” are possessive pronouns, and since we hate to lose any of our other possessions, why should los ing that person be any different? The second major ingredient in healthy relationships is having NO EXPECTATIONS. This is also something ingrained in our heads, especially by our marriage vows. They make you swear to “honor, obey, and uphold as long as ye both said they liked, shall live” No wonder people are those things unhappy in marriages. Expectations and promises like that imply the greatest of relation ship evils, that of putting the de sires of the other individual in front of yours. One of the hardest things for There ii that nee> ultravioli youforawhile, untilyoucan’tstand it anymore, at which time all your pent-up frustrations, ambitions and personal desires explode out, creat ing an extremely volatile break-up situation. An important thing to understand about relationships is not only how to begin them, but how to recog nize they have ceased to let you grow as a person, and how to end them and move on. Our society doesn’t view break-ups as simply People are scared to tell others they love them. They’re scared that if they do say it, the other person won’t say it back. Then, if they actually do say it back, we often wonder, “Do they really mean that!” When we finally get past that part, and start to believein what they say, we then begin to worry “Okay, n how do I keep it going?” In that situation, your mind starts going back over things yOur partner nd you keep doing and over, which of course leads to boredom and the sai rifice of your desires for those of your partner. Which, as we have been over several times, is not a sign of a particularly healthy relationship. Folks, the relationship I just de scribed with the “I love you” story is not a love relationship. It is a fear^ KlIOW based partnership. Fear-based part nerships stifle growth, they do allow growth. And since personal growth is the entire point, well, they kind of defeat the purpose of having one to start with. So live for the moment. Don’t sweat the coulda-woulda-shouldas, Those things are over. Move oi illegitima mascot (I the anato ker-can. rolled ou retail ic s for a mal body gav sibility o though o Dear Edi dents ha\ campus. Live for yourself, love yourself, and cared allow others to love you. That’s the city best love potion anyone give you. ARTIC Sec. 3.: Putting old grievances to rest Jason Allen columnist Okay, so UNCA is not the Elysium Field that we all want it to be, but I’m sick and tired of everybody whining about it. Listen up. I’m going to list the major gripes that everybody continuously write about, and I want them to end this week. Let’s find some new lines of communication. 1 don’t want to get a bunch of angry letters com plaining about my lack of sensitiv ity or whatever else you want to complain about. I just want these topics dead and buried once and for all. Problem one is parking. Every body complains about the lack of parking on this campus. There are never enough spaces to go around, or we whine about how we have to walk so far from the parking spaces to where we have to go. Here are simple solutions. Solution one—don’t let the fresh men have parking spaces. UNC- Greensboro has been doing it for years and it seems to work okay. Solution two — first come, first serve. Once we use up the allotted spaces, that’s that and no one else gets one. Solution three—plow up the quad and stick a huge parking deck there. There is never going to be perfect parking around here un til the days that cars fold up into little suitcases like in the Jetsons cartoon. Problem two is diversity. Now, I should know better than to even get near this topic, because I would rather not wind up becoming the target of tons of hate mail, but I’m going to be brave and speak my mind. The problem, as I have heard it, is that we don’t have enough minority students on the campus and that we are being unfair to them, or something like that. Well, we don’t see a large public outrage at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro about a lack of white students, now do we? The reason there aren’t that many minority students here is that a lot of people have never even heard of this school, especially where I come from, where I am a minority in a racial demographic of 85 percent African-American and 15 percent other. In alotofplaces, when people ask what college I go to, and I reply “UNCA,” the first word out of their mouths is, “Where?” The problem is not that we are being unfair, it’s that we aren’t that well known. Besides that, look at the racial demographics of the mountains of North Carolina. You want more minorities? Then get more with high SAT and GPA scores to apply. Enough said. Problem three is Division One status. Now this is a topic I want to see die in a hurry with a marginal amount of pain and suffering. The complaint is that staying in Divi sion One is costing us a lot of money for little or no return. This is really easy to remedy. The ques tion is not, “Do. we need Division One?” The question we should be asking is, “Do we need athletics at all?” Now, I’m probably risking life and health here, but I’m going to say it. The only people who benefit from the athletics program around here are the athletes, the coaches and the old men who try to live out their dismal dreams of glory vicari ously through the teams here. If our teams had even a chance in Hades of winning against Duke’s second string players, then I might be saying different things, but I, for one, didn’t come here for athletics. I came here for what seemed to be a lack of athletics. I heard that there wasn’t a football team, and jumped at the chance to go somewhere that I had believed was not sports mad like the rest of this forsaken coun try. Let’s just ditch the athletics al' together and save that money we fork out each semester in student fees to get something that we can be proud of and enjoy, like maybe fixing that sorry roof on Highsmitn Center. Now that’s all I have to say abou: this, and normally I wouldn’ this, but I’m sick ofbiting my tonguf and just being funny all the time Humor only covers the frustration so long and then it erupts with. force that not even the coolest mini can contain. The Banner shouldn’i be a place for continual whining, but a forum for the news of ttf school and the discussion of ne» issues, not the kicking of old issufi that we are sick of reading eacl week. I challenge you all. Here is tk challenge: If you don’t like some thing about the school, compl to SGA (your elected representa tives), the chancellor, or other pow erful figures who might be able to do something to improve the school Don’t resort to whining about tin same topic for months and years ai a time here in The Banner. Do something useful or be quiet. In closing, I wish to say somethinj to all ofyou offended by these harsk words. Doesn’t being angry mak* you want to go out and do some thing aboi^t it? Harness that ange( and fix our school. And to yo* others who don’t care about tb school one way or the other M don’t do anything about it, don’t have any room to complai*! and gripe if yoii won’t do some thing about the things that yo“ be ne He Hs e-i @1 vij L( sir to mi foi U be au an tic I wi
University of North Carolina at Asheville Student Newspaper
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March 16, 2000, edition 1
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