Newspapers / The pendulum. / Oct. 23, 2003, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page 2 • Thursday, October 23, 2003 Opinions The Pendulum The Pendulum Established I;)7+ State DOT real culprit in O’Kelly accident Last week, student Steven Davis was struck by a car on North O’Kelly Avenue as he attempted to cross the street from Moseley to McMichael. Because he didn’t cross in a designated area, Davis was in fact at fault and charged with jaywalking. Certainly, this isn’t meant as an indictment of the driver in the incident, rather a failure on the part of the North Carolina State Department of Transportation to provide students with a crosswalk. At one point, a crosswalk did exist between the McMichael parking lot and the then-health center building. But since a crosswalk already exists at the light at O’Kelly and Haggard avenues, the Department of Transportation decided to remove the one at the parking lot. It’s proven a regrettable move recently. With the amount of traffic coming in and out of the McMichael parking, as well as the number of com muters who nil the lot, a new crosswalk must be rein stated. Droves of students cross O’Kelly each day, most unaware that drivers have the right of way. While not completely unreasonable, it is still asinine to force students to park at the far end of the McMichael park ing lot, walk up O’Kelly, cross at the stoplight and walk back down O’Kelly just to get to Moseley. lb promote safely on camps, we urge the Department of Transportation to rethink its decision and recognize its specious reasoning. The Pendulum Colin Donohue, Eclitor-in-Chief Lindsay Porter, Managing Editor Steve Earley, News Editor Matt Belanger, Asst. News Editor Brittiny Dunlap, Opinions EJitor Kaitiyn North, A & E Editor Mary-Hayden Britton, Features Editor Nick Paiatiello, Sports Editor Andrew High, Asst. Sports Editor Jeff Heyer, Photography Editor Tim Rosner, Asst. Photo. Editor Ellis Harman and Jessica Kemp, Copy Editors Annette Randall, Bus. Manager Matt Ford, Online Editor Janna Anderson, Adviser The Pendulum Is published each Thursday of the academic year. The advertising and editorial copy deadline Is 5 p.m. the Monday before publi cation. Letters to the editor and guest columns are welcome and should be typed, double-spaced, signed and Include a telephone number for verifica tion. Submissions are also accepted as Word documents on disk or by e- mail. The Pendulum reserves the right to edit obscene or potentially libelous material. Lengthy letters or columns may have to be trimmed to fit. All sub missions become the property of The Pendulum and will not be returned. To reach The Pendulum at 233 Moseley Center, call 278-7247 or fax 278- 7246. Contact The Pendulum by e-mail at pendulum@elon.edu. Visit our Web site at www.elon.edu/pendulum. Each Individual Is entitled to one free copy. Evacuation, but no information Ashley Feibish Columnist Thursday, Oct. 2, a little after midnight, was no different for me than usual. I was working on my computer with my headphones on to block out the continuous noise of life at Staley. Imagine my sur prise when I hear the next day that the whole dorm was evacuated, yet, no one ever came to my room. Worse than that, the fire department and campus safety and police were called to the scene, which ultimately turned out to be loose wiring that caused some appliances to smoke, right down the hall from my room on the third floor. Sure, I heard sirens, but I had no idea they were coming here, nor was I attentive enough to notice that the whole dorm had been cleared. Call me dumb, but I only realized something was going on when my power briefly went out, at which point I went into the hall to find some men messing with the fuse box. Even then, no one told me anything. While I may be at some fault for not paying more attention, I am concerned that the fire alarm was never pulled, nor did anyone ever come and knock on my door. People down the hall were even awakened from their beds and told to evacuate. It is unsettling I never received an e-mail about the incident nor did our hallway ever discuss it.. I feel as though the responsibility lies on the campus in terms of our safety, yet in a near emergency I was sitting at my computer, obliv ious to the world around me. It is troubling to me that if a male walks unaccompanied down the hall, the whole world comes mailbox Student hit by student driver To the Editor, There is a growing problem on campus that I feel can no longer be ignored. Student driving around campus is horrible, and being from New Jersey, I have seen many bad drivers. People speed, drive aggressively and do not pay attention to the road. While this bothered me, I never gave much thought to anything worse than a traffic ticket happen ing until I responded to an accident call with the Elon Fire Department on Wednesday afternoon. When I arrived on the .scene, a young man (an Elon student) was lying in the middle of the road in front of Moseley Center. He had been hit by a car while trying to cross the street. While his injuries ended up non - life threatening, he was hospital ized with broken bones. Tliis needs to be a wake-up call to the students that drive around Elon. Driving is a responsibility as much as it is a privilege. People need to start taking it seriously before someone is badly hurt or worse, killed. Unfortunately, it takes an event like this to bring people back to the reality that these things can happen, even in Elon. People must start driving safer not just for the well being of those in their car, but also those that they share the roads with. -Alyson Boyer ‘06 Friedman’s speech lacldng support To the Editor, Despite his multiple Pulitzer Prizes and excellent communica tion skills, Thomas Friedman’s convocation speech was as disturb ing for what it said as for the reali ties it skirted. When justifying the U.S. inva sion and occupation of Iraq as a way to establish democracy, Friedman never mentioned oil, profits, capitalism, Iraqi deaths or American deaths. It is dangerous to suppose that out of violence comes democracy. William Blum, author of “Killing crashing down, but in a situation this serious, no one seemed to care that I could have t)een burn ing to death in my room. The safety procedures in this incident, if there were any, certainly need to be reevaluated. If it was not for the article in the Oct. 9 (a week after the fact) issue of, I never even would have known what really went on that night. If any more situations like this occur, I think it is not only the responsibility, but the duty of the campus to immediately alert those affected not only through e-mail, but also on E-net. I may speak for myself, but my safety and aware ness are a lot more important to me than being careful not to “slam the door after quiet hours.” Contact Ashley Feibish at pendu- lum@elon.edu or 278-7247. Hope,” has compiled a list of 70 nations where U.S. troops or CIA forces have intervened since 1945. It would be hard to aigue that any of these actions have created greater democracy. A bad leader is out in Iraq because of our invasion, but Iraq seems likely to follow Afghanistan as an example for Blum’s list. Would Friedman really argue that we should continue to bomb, invade and occupy countries to spread democracy? The United Nations may have received a passing mention in Friedman’s talk, but it was no part of his plan for democracy in Iraq. Since we do need to help rebuild Iraq from U.S. war destruc tion, why not give the leadership and proposed funding over to the United Nations? That seems like a step toward democracy the United States should take — one that is more apt to curb terrorism than holding on to control of Iraq and its oil fields. -Anne Cassebaum, associate professor of &iglish
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