Newspapers / Elizabeth City State University … / Dec. 1, 2004, edition 1 / Page 6
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Page 6 The Compass, Dec. 2004 pinion Dr. Condoleeza Rice: A trophy wife? Impressive back ground reveals more than meets the eye By Rene Finkenkeller Columnist A few months ago I watched a cherished author, Toni Morrison, and a talented professor, Dr. Cornel West, on C- Span, sit before an audience at Princeton University to have a heart to heart chat about Ms. Morrison’s latest book, revelations, and more concerning world affairs today. During the chat, they allowed questions from the audience, and one young woman asked Ms. Morrison, “Considering the 911 commission testimonies and the attention Condoleezza Rice is receiving, what advice would you give her if you could talk with her?” Ms. Morrison took a long pause. Long enough for the audience to begin laughing, as it was obvious her answer wasn’t going to be flattering. She carefully said, “You know, my first comment to her would have to be ‘Get another job!’ I just don’t understand why she would accept the position she’s in right now, and I certainly can’t wrap my mind around how she could work for whom she’s working for.” Naturally, she received a loud applause and laughter. I, however, was not amused. I know Ms. Morrison is a national treasure for the books and poetry she has written, but I felt like listening to her speak of Dr. Rice in that manner was a lot like listening to Britney Spears give Beethoven advice on how to write music. Since the announcement of Dr. Rice’s recent nomination to Secretary of State, the media has been bombarded with one commentator after another revealing their dissatisfaction. The common echo is “Is she even qualified to handle such a task?” Yesterday, I was listening to ‘The Neal Boortz’ show on talk radio, and a caller who felt the need to offer his commentary on politics announced, “No one is even noticing that Condoleezza Rice is nothing more than a trophy wife to this administration right now.” To my dismay, Neal Boortz, a Libertarian who has sided with the Bush Administration on issues since 91 11, didn’t disagree with the caller. People, people, people! This “little woman” that so many perceive as being a pretty window dressing to the big, bad, racist Republicans, has lived about 30 lifetimes in her short 50 years, and she’s probably got another 20 lifetimes in her to go, one Lord wilUng being our next president! This phenomenon of a human being took “girls can grow up to be anything they want” to such an extreme, I almost wonder if being president isn’t a tad beneath her at this point. If people wanted to get honest about their misgivings concerning Dr. Rice, they would just come out and say, “I’m jealous of her! She’s got more information in her head than ten computers, more class and sophistication than a royal heiress, and more integrity than, well, me!” But, since they don’t have any integrity, they attempt to belittle her by attacking her background in the hopes that absolutely no one will dare look up the facts for themselves. Below is a condensed version of the bio the White House displays on their web site for every staff member. If this doesn’t make someone a believer in Dr. Rice’s accomplishments, knowledge, and international authority, nothing will: Dr. Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at 15, and graduated with her first degree, a bachelor’s in political science (cum laude) at 19. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame, and a doctorate from the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her advanced degrees are in political science. She also speaks/writes many different languages. She became the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs on January 22, 2001. However, it’s not the first time she’s served in a president’s administration. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender — Integrated Training in the Military. She also wrote 3 books in this time concerning the Iron Curtain and Germany’s reunification, as well as multiple articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy. In June 1999, she completed a six-year tenure as Stanford University ‘s Provost, during which she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $ 1.5 billion aimual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students. As professor of political science. Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors — the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. In Brian Kilmeade’s recent New York Time’s Best Seller The Games Do Count: America’s Best and Brightest on the Powers of Sports, he devotes a segment to Dr. Rice’s battle to perfect her sport in her teens- twenties; figure ice-skating. This woman is an astonishing, inspiring American! Personally, I think she can more than handle the current tasks at hand! *For more information concerning current administration staff members, go to www.whitehouse.gov Students dissatisfied with dorms, cafeteria hours Requests for help go unanswered By Kimberly Lilly Staff writer It’s the end of the semester here at Elizabeth City State University, and with the new dormitories and new renovations of the cafeteria, you would expect students to be happy and comfortable. But surprisingly, many students are still not satisfied with the way they’re living at ECSU. University Suites is one of the new co-ed dormitories on campus, a three-story housing complex with suite style rooms and a capacity to hold 196 upper- class students. University Suites opened during the fall semester of 2004, with new updated technology such as key cards that not only let students into their dormitories, but also provides access to their room. Unfortunately, many students have complained because their key card does not work and they have to be let into their rooms by the dormitory’s resident assistant. At times this can be a problem to both the student and the RA, because while an RA may be opening another student’s door, one or more students may have to wait to enter their room. This causes the RA to be away from his or her position at the front desk. Although this problem has been reported to the appropriate officials, and even to the Chancellor by one of the students, with the end of the semester facing us this problem still has not been fixed. Another issue that students complain about is the Cafeteria. Although it’s been remodeled to have four different stations, which should speed up the process of distribution of the food, students complain that while the cafe opens at the same time for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, they still have to wait in long lines while the food is being prepared. Students are also complaining about the Monday- Friday breakfast hours, from 7- 8:30am, which many feel is not enough time. One student said “For my 8:00 clock class I wake uf) around 6:45, I have to rush with my shower and getting dressed in order to go eat breakfast and be in class at 8:00. If the breakfast hours were extended longer than 8:30, I could attend breakfast after class.” As a student here at ECSU I feel it would be better for all ECSU students if the caf6 hours were extended to at least 10:30. Students are paying for these meals, so it’s only fair that the hours be convenient with their schedules. It should be the responsibility of the University to ensure that all students are satisfied. Singing tlie praises of Araf^: Leader of peace? Results of ECSU book rental program survey. Only 100 responses out of 350 could be obtained due to expense of the full survey. How informed are you on the issue? Informed 5% Slightly informed 22% Well informed 42% Fully informed 31% How interested are you to learn more about this issue? Rate the importance of this issue. Not important 2% Moderately important 15% Very important. Not interested Slightly interested Moderately interested. Very interested .9% How great a problem is this issue on campus? Not a problem 3% Small problem 4% Moderate problem 17% Major problem 76% . Please rate how well each of the following has performed in providing information. Very Unsatisfactory Unsatisfactory No opinion Satisfactory Very Satisfactory 1. Administration 27% 31% 31% 7% 4% 2. Dean of students 26% 29% 32% 11% 2% 3. Dean of ECSU 25% 27% 34% 10% 3% 4. Faculty 19% 21% 35% 23% 3% 5. Student government 3% 8% 20% 31% 37% 6. Campus newspaper 2% 5% What is your current position on this issue? 28% 43% 22% Strongly Moderately Moderately in favor of No opinion on the issue Strongly in favor of opposed opposed purchasing textbooks purchasmg textbooks 64% 14% 12% . 71 % of students also strongly favor a campus-wide vote, and fewer than 50 % favor peaceful demonstrations and student led discussions. By Rene Finkenkeller Columnist The cai^^l9 vigils and piles of flowers, the crying women in the streets, the stuimed faces of men who have lost a hero, the wearing of black, the elaborate plaiming and staging of a state funeral? It could have been President Kennedy’s assassination. It could have been Princess Diana’s car crash. But, no, it was the passing of a monster, hardly worth the air he selfishly breathed. Yasser Arafat, feared by Israel, friends of Israel, and many of his own people, passed away this month from a yet-to-be- disclosed illness at the age of 75. However, the overwhelming amount of gushing that took place by U.S.A./European media sources and world leaders over this brute was alarming. Joumahsts went far beyond their invisible boundaries of daring to call Arafat an important state leader to the Palestinians, by actually calling him a “man of peace”. They praised him for his shame of an award Noble Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords—an ultimately failed attempt to bring peace between Israel and Palestine in 1994, and mourned the fact that he would never see his life’s passion carried out—a sovereign Palestinian state. I don’t mean to break through the gloomy-gray haze of sadness with an obnoxious ray of sunshine, but I thought Arafat’s passion in life was to see every Jew dead? CNN saying that Arafat’s first prominent position as a Palestinian leader was when he was head of the PLO, which carried out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets, is awfully telling of just how twisted they have become. For those of you who love the movie Carlito’s Way as I do, Osama Bin Laden is the young punk Billy Blanco to Yasser Arafat’s Carlito Brigante. The PLO mastered the brainwashing technique of convincing young boys that if they blew themselves up standing next to an Israeli’s baby carriage, they would receive many treasures by Allah. This guerilla warfare on children’s playgrounds, bus stops, grocery stores, schools, weddings, hotels, has been mocked by every Islamic nation since its conception. Paternity tests for terrorism show Arafat as the father. He made it okay to blow up infants being nursed by their young mothers. He made it okay to target elderly men and women on their way to temple. He made it okay to stand on top of buildings with concrete boulders, and chuck them at the heads of kindergartners on their way to school. He made it okay to shove his own people’s young children in front of Israeli tanks, and if they were killed, the families were promised a “humble reward”. Although, we now know not nearly as humble a reward as what Arafat’s wife has been getting from the Palestinian Authority’s purse each month for the past several years. Even at the Olympics, a place where the world’s biggest enemies gathered for two weeks but still managed to remain cordial and carried on with good sportsmanship for the sake of their country’s pride, the brutal temperament of the Palestinians, controlled by Arafat, got away with horrific assassinations. When Bush announced after 9/11 that we were forced into a war with terrorism, what was meant was we are at war with the aftermath of Arafat’s psychotic ramblings to impressionable bloodthirsty thugs. I was raised in the military. As a nine year old, I can recall very vividly my feelings of dread and fear watching the news with my father and seeing a Yas^f (which means “easy-going” Arabic) Arafat every Katie Couric type must have forgotten about. His face was always red like a tomato, with blood vessels popping up from his forehead, yelling so hard he was hurhng spit into his audience with every word. To calm my fears at times, I would block out what he was saying and wish that he’d get so physically carried away, hi^ Pizza Hut napkin would fall qff his head! He would rant and rave to gigantic crowds of young men, chanting and burning American flags, calling for the deaths of every Jew, every Israeli, and every American. Knowing the possibility that my father could be called into action in an ar^a of the world where every person would want to see him hung, burned, stabbed, and beheaded all at the same time, I took the news reports very seriously then, and I take them very seriously now. If Hitler had died of a mysterious illness, oh let’s say syphilis, one year before the U.S. had ended WWII, would our news corespondents in radio or newspapers have attempted to discuss Hitler as a peaceful man who was just chasing after his passion of creating a strong, powerful Germany? I know some may argue the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict is more complicated than that. I know it is. It’s just as complicated as it was for the Jews in Germany, Poland, France, Italy, and Holland back in 1939.
Elizabeth City State University Student Newspaper
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Dec. 1, 2004, edition 1
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