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North Carolina Wesleyan College Rocky Mount, North Carolina 27804 OPINION 7,20% Is North Carolina Wesleyan a Homophobic Campus? By Jessica D. Jones Decree Opinion Editor Imagine waking up one morning and walking out of your dorm room. You walk down the hallway headed towards the bathroom. As you are walking towards the bathroom, your peers, who have just woke up the same way you have and are headed towards the bathroom, too. pause in their tracks. They pause in their tracks waiting to see which bathroom you are headed to. After they realize what bathroom you are headed to, they all seem to mumble simultaneously. "He or she is going to that bathroom, so I'm going to go to this one.” as they walk to the other end of the hall. Just for a moment, really think about how you would feel if this was to occur. Now imagine that this event did not just occur one morning, but as an every-moming ritual. Unfortunately, this is an every momina ritual for one African-.American NCWC ho mosexual student, who would like to remain anonymous. The event that you imagine is a part of a typical day for him that he likes to call, The A.M. Whispers. ‘‘1 have my own The Decree Since 1960 of. by. and for the Wesleyan commuiuty. bathroom. My own time,” stated the student. Surprisingly, this homosexual male still enjoys living on campus and being a part of the student body despite, ‘‘the whispers and gawking” that he receives during a typical day. ‘‘It's pretty good, not a big crowd. It’s nice here,” he stated. '“[I just] hate the homophobic vibe, because you’re under a looking glass. It's like you're a minority and because of that you have to be over prepped for evers-'thing, because you're a gay man.” But why? Why does a homophobic mentality exist on the NC Wesleyan Cam pus? Recently. I walked into the cafeteria and randomly picked one African-American hetero.sexual male and privately asked him this question. His response was: “I don’t have problems with [homosexuals]; as long as they don't force their sexuality on another f)erson—they re good.” W'hile interv'iewing the heterosexual male, another heterosexual male sat beside us, and to my surprise my original interviewee’s attitude and answers changed. ‘‘They’re not a real man if they’re gay. ’ he said. “I can’t be around that s#@t. It s not a good environment to be around.” I was amazed to see this change in attitude in the same person in a matter of minutes. That was when it hit me: are people so scared of being labeled a homosexual that they change their persona in front of their peers? According to one African-American female NCWC student, who is a practicing homosexual. “As an African-American it’s hard [to be a homosexual]. White people are more accepting of homosexuality. I guess black people try to prove themselves. There are still a lot of Bible-toting fools, who see homosexuality as a weakness. It’s like a stigma.” In contrast to the homosexual male student, the NC Wesleyan community is not aware of this African-Americans female’s preference. “It bums me up,’' she stated. ■‘I hate when they say that they can spot them. I've been here for years and not been spotted!” Day in and day out, she listens to people glorify the lesbian and downgrade the gay male, “It bothers me w'hen boys say that they can turn you. They are not remotely attractive to me.” Another question that gets me as a journalist and a heterosexual female is wh • are some heterosexual females more prone to accept homosexual males, while a greater population of heterosexual males finds it difficult to befriend them? According to one heterosexual female, “Males have a problem accepting homosexual males because they’re not confident in their sexualities. Females are comfortable in their sexuality and do not have a problem being in the vicinity of homosexuals.” Another heterosexual female stated, “They find comfort in homosexual maleL because straight males tend not to under stand heterosexual females.” Another female student added, “The homosexual male w'ants to be so much like the female. Their lifestyle is the same as far as both seek to find Mr. Right,’ and their outward appearance and physical characteristics are pretty’ much the same.” It s clear that the NCW'C campus needs to wake up and get over their “whispers and gaw'king” because like it or not, homosexuals are a large part of the campus community. Staff Here’s What’s Real: Of Cindy Sheeiian, Dubai Ports Deal Writers-Photographers Janay Carpenter Matthew Esterline Evelyn Hunter Annanda Landi Nicholas Lynch Zachary Marks Richard Smith Erika Stallings Senior Staff Writer Christine Werfelman Sports Editors Anthony DeGregorio Trevor Seibert Opinion Editor Jessica D. Jones Email: JJ281625''^^mail.ncwc.odu Editor-at-Large Ron Fitzwater Managing Editor Jessica Bowen Office hour«:Tuesday & Thursday 11:30 a.m.-l p.m. Email; JBiaiOTS^mail.ncwc.edu Editor Shannon Williams Office hours: Wednesday 6 -7:30 p.m. &Thursday. 11:30 a.m.-l o m. Email: SRW5384'^ahoo.com Faculty Advisor Dr. William Grattan 171 Brasvvell Pt>oae: 985-5336 Email: WJGrattan@ncwc.Mlu The Decree office is on the first floor of the Hartness Center. Office phone: 4s4-i6si Copyright Policy Th« Decree holds the copjrighi or even' article and graphic for one-time and future publication at the disc retion of tile editorial board. Submission implies agreement with this policy. Editorial Statement Cominentars'/opinion and letters to the editor repi^nt the individual author's views, and not necessarily tliose of .Noith Carolina Wesleyan College, the Decree stafT or the Decrec advisor. Submissions To suggest an article, or submit an opinion piece or letter to the editor, send an email attachment (.Microsoft Word) toWJGrattan@iKwc.edu. Note that the Decree staff checks all submissions for accuracy and edits in accordance with accepuble grammar and punctuation as well as AP Style. Corrections The Decree corrects mistakes of substance. If you would like to request a correction, send an email to WJGrattan@ncwc.edu, or call 985-5336 By Ron Fitzwater Decree Editor-at-Large Me vs. Cindy I want to touch on a couple issues in this installment. First, after looking at my fX)sition on Cindy Sheehan, and taking into consideration the offerings of those who replied to my editorial “Of Iraq and Cindy Sheehan” in Decree Vol. XXI, No, 3,1 concluded that my opinion is more personal than the average f)erson out there, Casey Sheehan was a Marine as am I. and Marines tend to take things that involve other Marines very personally As a Marine, I judge—yes, judge—Cindy Sheehan by a higher standard than I would a typical civilian who is against the war. It sounds odd to those w ho are not part of a military' family, but as Marines we're expected to conduct ourselves with more di^ty. than Mrs. Sheehan has done. It’s just how it is done. We live even' day knowing that .someone in our family may die. If Mrs. Sheehan was so against the war on principle, then why did she not begin to protest against it until her son died? I'll answer that, because her son would not have allowed it. ' That’s why I hold her in such contempt. Oh, by the way it was just announced in March that Susan Sarandon will be playing Cindy Sheehan in an up coming movie about her struggle. Milk that 15 minutes baby! Can t wait for Esterline to review that one. Last Time I Was in Dubai The last time I was in Dubai was 1991 and then it was pretty clo.se to being a westernized town, with the e.xception that they would sound the call to prayer a couple of times a day, which isn’t a bad thing. Dubai was like any other militarv' town on foreign soil; there were American fkst food restaurants (KFC, McDonald’s and Hardee’s), tape and CD vendors, discount stores, music stores bars, etc., and all because U.S. militaiy bases (a Naval base specifically) were there on a temporar}' basis. There was also some abso lutely beautiful architecture; you should .see my pictures! The people I met were friendly (even when I wasn’t carr>'ing a gun). Now why am I bringing this up? Because of the recent “Dubai Pwts Deal’ dust-up that brought out the ugly side of our collective paranoia as a people. Basically most people got them.selves all worked up last month concerning the “Dubai Ports Deal,’ a deal between two foreip-owned companies that the Bush administradon had figuratively signed off on. The thing that kills me about the whole hullabaltx) is that the general public picked up on just enough of a sound byte or two (some of which had been around since October of 2005) to come to the wrong conclusion, and then fed it till it grew into an uncontrollable monster that had pundits heading for microphones and politicians mnning for cover. Finally, it came down to a basic misunderstanding; Belief -The United Arab Emirates was going to own and manage 9 US Ports. —This would be bad because only the US should control the ports! —\\Tio would do the work, and what would happen to aU those longshoremen? —There will be an open express lane for terrorists to enter the countrv'! Fact -The United .Ajab Emirates was going to purchase 9 terminals located in 3 US Ports. —The US via the Department of Homeland Security Coast Guard, and the police at respec tive ports, would contmue to provide the sad level of securit>'just as they have been, —The Longshoremen would still work the same jobs and continue to operate the docks. Only some upper level management would change (but only in the particular TERMINALS that DPW purchased). It will be no easier for terrorists to get in via the port system than before. (That is not to say it is very hard to do so now.) So, allowing Dubai Ports Worid to operate a few American based terminals would be no different than other types of merchant traffic and shipping/receiving operations conducted by other foreign owned corporations. The big difference is that DPW is owned by the United Arab Emirates. In other words it is a state- owned company. Now, the Communist Chinese have control over various US port terminals where their goods amve for US consumers. These are not companies from Communist China; they are companies owned bv the gov ernment, just like DPW, There are Japanese Air caniers who have control over their terminals in US airports and they bombed us into WWII, but these seem to be fine with the American public because they are not connected in any way to Arabs or Muslims, In all honesty, I can .see no other reason why Dubai couldn't be permitted to operate their legal business, other than simple, prejudice, bigoti}', and fear. ‘God knows we can’t let those Arab people have control over our ports because.., they’re Arab.’ That seemed to be the battle cry for far-righties and far-lefties alike. George Bush and Jimmy Carter were on the ^e side to let the deal go through, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the sea began to boil. es it was the 4th sign of the apocaljpse; here conie the horsemen. But Wait! Congress saved us. Yea for Congress! Thank god it’s an election y^. The isolationists are wetting themselves in glee. Look, if we’re going to go about the world telling other countries that they should act like us and be open and welcoming to other cultures and beliefs, then shouldn’t we be doing that by example? The ,\merican people, swept up in a mob mentalit>', made a decision that free commerce between two companies from foreign nations would be dictated by the citizens of ,/\merica. And it worked like a charm. Even if the majorit)' of the population was against the deal because they didn’t really know what was going on, the will of the people still prevailed. That, dear reader, is the only .shining spot in the whole deal, that the government was pushed by the American people to do what they wanted, and not what the bureaucracy thought they wanted. Now if we could just figure out a way to get our elected officials to pay attention to everything else we want. Hey, I can dream, can’t I? And that’s what’s real. President Clark Offers Advice to His Successor By Jessica Bowen Decree Managing Editor As SGA President Kelvin Clark prepares for the end of his term, he described the qualities that his successor should possess. Clark believes his successor should have a goal in the beginning and stick to that goal throughout his/her term. Clark says his succes sor should have a sense of humor because at times this job is stressfiil, so you must look hard to see the humor in situations.” Along with a sense of humor, the next president should have advanced oratorical skills, and should be an analytical thinker, compromis ing, well-dressed, and well-mannered. Most importantly Clark feels his suc cessor must love NCWC. ‘‘I don't mean the next president should have to love all things,” says Clark, “but at least love the potential that NCWC has to become great.” Clark advises the future SGA President to be patient because often you’ll have to wait for things to go your way.” Clark believes he has accomplished two important objectives during his term as President: increased the role of the President as well as expanded the duties, Clark says, “For example, I not only give speeches at Freshmen Orientation, but I also have given speeches to interested .students during Open Houses,” In addition, Clark’s expanded duties consist of serx'ing on an interview' panel that evaluated potential Resident Directors, With SGA Vice President Shanisha Barnes, Clark has served with faculty, administration and staff on the college Strategic Planning Task Force, -And during the past year, Clark has remained the voice of the student body. “I alw'ays receive a call from some administrator asking me for my opinion on some present issue,” says Clark.
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