'ChG PeNbuluM
Serving the Elon College community
olume XIV, No. 25
Thursday, April 21, 1988
Elon College, NC
% ;
b Borgstrom - President
Phil Murdock - V. President
Kent Pond - Treasurer
IIDS: a threat to today’s youth
by Margaret Allen
Staff Writer
in the sixties when rebellion was
By of life and the sexual revolu-
was in full swing, the AIDS
B was nonexistent.
I, the phrase “sexual revolu-
f has been redefined and taken
new meaning. This is because
)S threatens everyone, especial-
ttenagers and college students
do not take proper precautions
protect themselves,
to the AIDS virus becoming
ke prevalent among young peo-
students need to be aware of
ta that they aren’t immune to
)S, and that having casual sex
evolve into a life threatening
lase.
Ilavid Brumbach, director of the
[yland AIDS Foundation, said,
ihey are having sex with multi-
prtners or experimenting with
le drugs, they are in a fire
k. and the enemy^is a virus. It’s
|ly.”
is estimated that by 1991, the
iber of diagnosed AIDS cases
ipected to increase to 270,000;
119,000 deaths are predicted to
have occurred because of the
disease.
According to the Center for
Disease Control, there are now 1,5
million people who have been ex
posed to the AIDS virus which is
known to cause the breakdown of
the body’s immune system.
The center also reports that 20
to 30 percent of those infected will
contract AIDS, and that all of the
infected people are capable of
transmitting the disease for the rest
of their lives.
Experts say teenagers engage in
high risk activities because they
feel invulnerable to danger and
don’t believe that doing drugs or
catching an infectious disease will
hurt them.
However, reports from the
Center for Disease Control say that
teenagers are at risk, and that a
total of 168 AIDS victims are bet
ween the ages of 13 and 19. This
is slightly less than half of one per
cent of all AIDS cases in the U.S.
The center also revealed that one
out of every five people with AIDS
are between the ages of 20 and 29.
The AIDS scare among college
students has prompted some
universities and colleges in or near
urban areas across the country to
begin programs to educate the stu
dent body about the risks of con
tracting AIDS. These programs en
courage students to practice safe
sex, if they must have sex at all.
Dr. William Wade of the Kansas
AIDS Network said, “Heterosex
uals are not changing their
behavior as far as safe sex is con
cerned.”
He said that, instead, they have
fewer sexual encounters and their
partners are people they know. He
also said, “Heterosexuals are not
talking to prospective partners
about the disease and past partners
as much as homosexuals now are.”
George MacDonald, executive
director of the AIDS council, at
tributes students’ decisions not to
change their sexual habits, despite
the AIDS fear, to “idealism and op
timism,” saying that these are
qualities one associates with youth.
He also said, “The fact that a
deadly virus might be among them
and that they may be susceptible to
it just doesn’t occur to them.”
Borgstrom, Murdock,
Pond take SGA office
by Aleta Sinkfield
Staff Writer
Student Government Association
elections were held Ttiesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday of last
week. The winners were: Presi
dent, Rob Borgstrom; Vice Presi
dent, Phil Murdock; Treasurer,
Kent Pond.
"We had a very high turn out in
comparison to other years,” said
David Atkins, Director of Student
Center/Activities.
It is estimated that 832 students
voted in deciding who would hold
SGA offices for the upcoming
academic year.
As SGA president for the
1988-89 academic year, Borgstrom
holds much concern for making the
whole campus accessible to han
dicapped students.
An upcoming senior from
Media. PA, he feels that getting this
goal accomplished “will be a great
achievement for Elon in its 100th
year because it would broaden the
college’s population.”
Instead of dealing with the
number of handicapped students
here at Elon, their classes have
been scheduled around those
buildings having facilities which
benefit the handicapped. Present
ly first floor Mooney, McEwen
Library, Duke, Fine Arts Center,
see S.G.A. page 2
Minorities: judged on
grades more than SAT
^ INSIDE
tottrell named new department head ..
... see page 2
:
'/ynton Marsalis concert review
.. see page 5
by John Hoyle
Senior Writer
The decline in minority enroll
ment over the past four years at
Elon has raised much concern
among students, faculty and ad
ministrators. In up-coming Pen
dulum issues, there will be related
articles on the decline.
“Even though Elon’s average
SAT score rose by 100 points last
year, in-coming students are
evaluated by their grades first,” said
Dean of Admissions Joanne Soli-
day. “No student with good grades
will be turned away because of a
low SAT score,” Soliday added.
Dean Soliday brought this up to
clarify the confusion of a related
article in the April 7 issue of The
Pendulum. The statement in that
article vras as follows: “We raised
the SAT aceptance by 100 points.”
Entrance requirements are
crucial to the issue of black enroll-
mentj and Soliday was among
several campus administrators,
faculty, and students who have
commented on the article on black
enrollment.
There are, however, other pro
blems that colleges and universities
are facing with declining minority
enrollment.
Statistics show that fewer black
students are graduating from high
school.
“From 1980 to 1984, North
Carolina black high school
graduates were down 3.9 percent,”
Soliday said. “Also, black student
enrollment in colleges nation-wide
are down because more and more
blacks are going into the military.”
Guilford College admissions
counselor Jimmy Williams has also
stated that blacks are turning to the
military instead of college. “They
are going to the armed services or
technical schools,” Williams said.
“It’s not a free choice because they
need to get immediate skills so they
can get a job as soon as they get
out.”
Working to solve the issue of
declining minority enrollment is a
continuing effort. Dean Soliday
added, “The nation has found it
difficult to solve this problem, and
Elon has found the same difficul
ty”