PAGE 2 — THE DECREE — OCTOBER 14,1988
OF
NORTH CAROLINA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
Editor-in-Chief — Don Rhodes
Arts and Entertainment — Mike Trubey
Contributing Editor — Dell Lewis
Photographer — Margaret Culver
The Decree is located in the Student Union, North Carolina
Wesleyan College, Wesleyan College Station, RocIty Mount, NC
27801. Policy is determined by the Editorial Board of Decree.
Repubiiciation of any matter herein with6ut the express consent of
the Editorial Board is strictly forbidden^ T'Ae Decree is composed
and printed by The Spring Hope Enterprise.
Opinions published do not necessarily reflect those of North
Carolina Wesleyan College.
Gates would help
increase security
Allied Security joined the
Wesleyan Community in late
Aug. and for the first few
weeks of school, they were
doing an admirable job. Re
cently, however, there have
been several incidents which
demonstrate that having just
one security guard on duty,
even if there is somebody here
twenty-four hours, is not
enough.
Already, some of the cars
in the parking lots have been
vandalized, and two weeks
ago a visitor in one of the
dorms had a gun.
The office of Student Life
has decided that the best way
to handle the situation is to
hire students to work in each
of the dorm lobbies from 10
p.m. to 2 a.m. every night.
These students wiU answer
the phones and greet people as
they enter the lobby.
This plan, though well-in
tentioned, will be a dismal
failure for several reasons.
First, the plan does not begin
to address the problems in the
parking lots. Are vandals ex
pected to first walk into the
dorm lobby before they slash
someone’s tires?
Moreover, a student who
sits in the lobby and answers
the phone will not have the
slightest idea how to handle a
person who carries a gun into
a dorm. What good wiU it do
to have an unarmed student
sitting in the lobby? Is he or
she expected to jump in the
path of the bullet?
Finally, how wiU a student
who sits in the lobby be able
to watch every student who
walks into the dorm? Any
campus resident who has ever
tried to enter another dorm
after hours knows that the
easiest way in is not through
the lobby. He will use a side
door or a bathroom window.
So what is the solution? If
the CoUege Administration is
worried about visitors to the
campus, then the answer is
simple. A gate should be built
at both entrances to the cam
pus with security guards
posted there at night. When a
visitor arrives, the security
guard wiU write down the
driver’s name and the car’s
tag number, and then ask who
he is going to visit.
XOU TO
«5?
m k COUP m
Labels are unfair
’Liberal’ not a dirty word
By Dr. STEVE FEREBEE
I am a liberal. (Why do I feel as if '
I am admitting an addiction at Liber
als Anonymous?)
Remember Orwell’s 19841 What
has happened to the word “liberal” in
the last ten years in United States
politics is a calculated, cynical
(ab)use of language to brain wash the
people.
The original meaning of “liberal”
was, according to die OED, “the dis
tinctive epithet of those arts of sci
ences that were considered ‘worthy
of a free”’ people. It also means gen
erous, open-hearted, free in speech or
action, favorable to constitutional
reforms leading to freedom and de
mocracy. Conservatives preserve,
keep intact, maintain existing institu
tions.
Now, of course, liberal means big
government spending, special inter
est worshipping, anti-American-so-
cialist-Marxist-Leninist subverting,
ERA. Conservative means lower
taxes, free marlcets, anti-communist
battles, NRA.
And indeed the two do have dif
ferent spending priorities: social pro
grams vs. weapons programs; foreign
Bellemonte cost questioned
Dear Editor:
Scoop, did you see that rotten pile
of lumber scurrying across the front
lawn a couple of weeks ago? A
house, is & house, is a house! Or is it?
Wouldn’t Dr. Creegan certainly
question its existence? I definitely
question the ajjpearance of “The
House” on campus.
Forty-Thousand doUars is a little
much for a house moving party. I am
still wondering when the pool is gong
to show up on campus. For a brief
second I thought maybe the back-hoe
out front was going to be used for the
purpose of digging a glorious pool..
But Scoop, I was fooled again.
I wholeheartedly agree that Daisy
does need an art gallery, but we will
not be able to afford many col
lectables once the $300,00-500,00 is
spent. Oops, that fat cat is out of the
bag. That is roughly the cost of a new
Fine Arts building. Scoop, you can
put two and two together. On a more
positive, or should I say negative
note, I heard that the faculty had the
“Mighty Iceburg” float in on their
pay raise. I bet they think the honor
able house will turn out to be a real
bam burner!
The Archbishop
Dr. Steve
Muses
aid programs vs. intervention pro
grams; environmental safeguards vs.
short-term business gains. Both
spend needlessly large chunks of my
pay checks, but they spend them for
different reasons.
AAiTiat have liberals done for the
country with my money? Social Se
curity. Medicare. Civil Rights pro
grams. Work programs. Studies of
employee pay discrimination and
harassment and unsafe working con
ditions. The conservatives can, I
guess, boast of Grenada, corporate
tax cuts, and a low minimum wage.
Such a combination could be the
United States’ most admirable trait,
except for one problem — too many
of us quickly label those who dis
agree with us as insensitive or impa-
triotic. If I am for a compassionate
federal government program to house
the homeless, educate the jobless,
feed the hungry, offer medical care to
everyone, I am a knee-jerk bleeding
heart and therefore untrustworthy. If
I am against CONTRA aid, I am
cowardly pro-communist and there
fore unworthy of Clint Eastwood.
Ah! Clint Eastwood! The latest
tactic is to suggest that the American
people’s values are closer to those
perpetuated by the Dirty Harry out
law cop than by the Peter Fonda
“narcotics-wrapped-up” outlaw hip
pies in Easy Rider. The characters in
Easy Rider leave the mainstream
American dream world to search for
an essential American goodness they
feel authorities have obscured. They
break laws which seem to them un
just or unnecessary. Because they are
different and suggest that a smug
definition of America should change,
fearful men kill them. Dirty Harry,
frnstrated by “liberal” courts which
protect criminals’ rights, breaks laws
that seem to him to be unjust or un
necessary. Dirty Hany raises killing
to an iconic level each time he mas
sacres those whom he does not rec
ognize as human.
We are all human and thus pro
tected by the BUI of Rights. If the
conservative stance is, as former At
torney General Meese often argued,
that protection of individual rights is
not always important or, as the Iran-
CONTRA affair suggests, that the
laws do not always matter, then the
conservatives, not the liberals, are
calling for a radical change in the
Constitution. And so the “liberal”
American Civil Liberties Union pro
tects Oliver North’s right to a fair
trial as well as the small-fry
employee’s right to complain about
sexual or racial discrimination. Lib
erals respect traditions too.
Some liberals do accuse all con
servatives who vote against their
programs of being inhumane and
some conservatives accuse aU liber
als who vote for them of being anti-
American. I regret that tactic. The
debate between liberals and conser
vatives in the United States should
make us a better informed people.
But when one side attempts to tum
the mere mention of the opposition’s
label into a war cry for blood, no one
benefits.
Yes, I am a liberal, firmly behind
a generous social program “worthy
of a free” people, a people who in
clude conservatives to keep the
books and fret about the pace of
change and liberals to question the
books and spur the pace of progress.