Newspapers / Elon University Student Newspaper / April 13, 1995, edition 1 / Page 2
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Editorials Viewpoint Elon's faculty is waking up to the ‘90s. In a recent faculty meeting, some members pushed to have a faculty member on the Board of Trustees. And to top it off, even the SGA President wants to design a bill to have a student on the Board. If this school looked at other colleges, it would see that's how trustee meetings work (please see the box on page 1). Why wouldn’t the college want to have faculty or students on the board? Isn't it a good idea to have everyone represented? But, don't the Board of Trustees know what this institution wants? They get sent a copy of The Pendulum every week. You know they read up on it. How could they not know what this college needs? The full board meets twice a year and they've all been on Elon's campus at one time or another. However, the board may think having other representation would cause problems. And we don't want to cause problems. Trustee Ernest Koury said most of the faculty are very liberal and the Board is conservative and he isn't sure both ideas should be expressed. It's nice to know that a board member doesn't think it's a good idea to mix ideas. Is he saying that the Board of Trustees, a bunch of old, white men, run this college the way they see fit without taking the students or faculty into consideration? Sounds that way. It would be a shame to have equal representation on the Board, now wouldn't it? Off The Record "You know, sometimes, I don't know why, but this old town just seems so hopeless." Tom Petty "Here Comes My Girl" THE Pendulum Informing the Elon College Community Kdilor in Chief Advertising Enck P Gill Michelle Riley Manafting Editor StafT Reporters Rob Mancuso AnJrea Schniidt Jon Campbell As.sistanl Managiiif; JeffWinck ICdilor Stacey Ward Amy Logcrwcll Sports Reporters A & E Editor Bob Gninmie Shannon Prater Jeff Dunlop Colleen Herndon Sports l!xlitor April Perkins A&E Reporters Chns Adams Opinion Editor Enc R Satier Scott Miller Graphic Artists Copy Editor Andrea Schmidt Tracey Stark Heather Coffey Photo Editor Adviser Tonya Huban Joey Senai The Pendulum, founded in 1974, is published by Elon students. Single copies of The Pendulum are free. If extra copies are needed, they can be purchased at The Pendulum office. Address: Campus Box 2800, Elon College, N.C., 27244. 584-2331. April 13.1995 2 Taking "Be fruitful and multiply" too far Tracey Stark Guest Columnist I’d like to paint a pretty picture of the state of the world 20 years from now. I’d love to tell you that there will be plenty of food and clean water for everyone, that our children and grandchildren have a great future on a safe, abundant planet. But 1 like you, so 1 can t lie to you! The truth is, the world is over- populated. With overpopulation comes over-consumption. With over-consumption comes deple tion. With depletion comes degra dation and starvation. With starva tion comes the end. A little bleak? Well don't worry, because it will lake a few more years to manifest itself in such a way as to make it obvious to you and me! It took the entire history of man to 1830 A.D. for this planet to reach the I billion-people mark. After that, it took a mere 100 years (1930) to reach 2 billion ! And from there, only 65 years to nearly triple that number to the current level: 5.7 billion people. This ex ponential increase is going tochoke us off. At a pace of 1 percent per year growth, the population would still double in about 70 years. The real istic number is over 2 percent world-wide, thanks to the uncon trollable growth in third-world na tions. (They can’t feed their chil dren, but man, can they make them I) Conservative estimates are for the world population to hit an unsustainable 10 billion people by 2050. That would be with the total implementation, worldwide, of family planning programs and edu cation for women in third world nations. The Vatican, always full of good intentions, would like to in terfere with family planning pro grams, believing that the world can just abstain from sex long enough to gel the population back in line. Worse than that, the Vatican be lieves that the Earth can sustain 40 billion people! What have they been smoking? Hey Pope! Share with the rest of us! We passed critical mass years ago when we had only 2 billion people. This is the number that many scientists believe is sustain able forever. With this few people, renewable resources have a chance to be replenished before they are depleted. 40 billion? We wouldn’t last a year. The argument against over population being a problem is that there is much uninhabited land that could be converted to farming and living. If you took the people from all of the cities of the world with 10 million or more people and gave each one an acre, you would be passing out acres of mountain tops and ocean floors before too long. Most of the uninhabited land left is uninhabitable. It’s not empty be cause nobody thought of it; it's empty because it's not fit to live on. The other argument is that sci ence will find the solutions Ahv brid grain that will grow ten-un- as fast and produce five-times much vitamin-rich gram' A newt fertilizer that will improve currtj crop results dramatically I Yes the* products are being developed, but won’t be available for 20 And once they are available, it won’t take too long for these super prod, ucts to deplete the soil and drop production to today’s levels. Go science! ' Science won't save us. We have to save us. We have to con sume less and stabilize at a reason able level. In order to consume less we have to achieve negative-popu. lation-growth. Just make a decision not to add to the problem. Don't have chil dren and live a stress-free life! No dirty diapers and no added restric tions on your lifestyle! Raising a child today to age 18 and then send ing them through college will cost about $250,000. I don't think they're worth it! So what are my solutions?Tax couples with more than one child. Give low-income families free health care and make a financial incentive out of remaining child less or having only one child. Fam ily planning on the national oreven world level. And above all else, educate people about the fate of thisworldifwedon’t stop acting so irresponsibly. The first step is admitting there is a problem. HAVE A NICE DAY! Human life: Priceless, not problematic Shannon Prater & Rob Mancuso Guest Columnists Our colleague in the above column voiced his concern about over-population, concluding that the first step is admitting a problem exists. This editorial agrees that ad mitting problems is the first step to obtaining solutions, but that is the only point of agreement. Within the argument made above, the columnist assumes a pessimistic, worldly view to ad dress what he deems a serious prob lem, over-population. The first noticeable problem with the writer’s argument is a major conu-adiction. He is concerned with over-consumption, yet he plans to save $250,000 by avoiding having children. What plans does he have for this money besides more con sumption? Prove to us that a family of five consumes a proportionate amount more than a childless couple with tax incentives. Tell us where this money goes once these rich couples die? It certainly won't be handed down to their children (be cause they’re non-existent). Does life become a race to see how much material wealth they can consume before they die? Another flaw in the writer’s argument is his philosophy that not having children will result in a stress-free life. Obviously you don’t have children, so on what are you basing your knowledge? Per haps personal childhood experi ences convinced you that parenting is stressful. This can’t be an uni versal attitude because many par ents actually consider their chil dren as blessings. Also, from per sonal encounters with couples who cannot bear children, we think it’s safe to say that no amount of money or tax incentives can curb the de sire to have children. Isn’t placing dollar amounts on human life characteristic of society’s failing morals? To say that tax incentives and big savings accounts will substitute for the sat isfaction of parenting is a sad and hopeless view of life. We too are realistic and be lieve every problem won’t be fixed with happy thoughts alone. But, how can such a dominant problem as over-population be solved with simple answers such as “safe-sex?” Undoubtedly, over-population is a problem, and we don’t claim to begin to know the solutions. How ever, we fear that unreasonable so lutions as the ones offered above can be detrimental. At some point in time people with children will be the scapegoats for all the world’s problems. Now that we’ve recognized the problem, how can we start creating solutions? Maybe abstinence and rebuilding the family isn't such a bad place to begin. Before we put trust in human solutions, we must first learn to value human life.
Elon University Student Newspaper
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April 13, 1995, edition 1
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