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(04/25/07 12:00pm)
It's been a little over a week since the horrific shooting that took the lives of innocent students and faculty at Virginia Tech. Media outlets have been quick to attack the school's administration for the failure to both shut down the campus and to provide help for Seung-Hui Cho long before he decided to murder 32 people.
While this tragedy provides an important lesson to colleges across the nation, school administrators should not be pressured into rushing to make major policy changes.
Thus far, the College and the state have taken vital first steps to ensure that students and staff can feel safe on campus.
College officials are reviewing the critical incident plans and posted a Web page, tcnj.edu/~ccr/critical, outlining the actions that would be taken during an emergency. Meanwhile, the New Jersey legislature proposed a bill requiring colleges to submit security plans to state administrators for review.
At nearby Rowan University, for example, drills have been run with members of Campus Police, residence hall staff, counselors and even food service employees. They practice for everything from a student being quarantined to a shooter on campus.
We can only hope that as the media attention swarming around this tragic event dies down, the College will continue to make significant changes and preparations. Just as there is pressure now to make large-scale changes, there is also the danger that necessary changes will not be made if too much time goes by.
Though we all hope that there will never be a need to implement a critical incident plan, it's comforting to see the College acting and acting quickly. After all, it can never hurt to be overprepared.
(04/18/07 12:00pm)
As reports of the death toll from the shooting at Virginia Tech University steadily rose on Monday, the immensity of the situation became more and more clear: Not only was this the worst school shooting in U.S. history, it was the worst shooting rampage this country has ever seen.
In 1999, news of the Columbine High School shooting shattered the nation. The previously unfathomable concept that a student would bring a weapon to school and harm classmates and teachers suddenly became a harsh reality. Middle schools and high schools started conducting lockdown drills, and school administrators were told to look out for signs that someone may be planning an act of violence.
Now we are hearing similar warnings to those we heard after Columbine. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal dug up a late 1990s FBI report warning of "a copycat effect ... after these events."
The results of the Virginia Tech investigation could prove to shape the security measures of colleges around the nation, including our own.
While it is difficult to compare a school as vast and populous as Virginia Tech to our small college, the two institutions do share one important thing in common: they are public schools with open campuses.
The College recently switched to 24-hour swipe access, partially due to the College's own tragedy last spring. The policy has led to numerous complaints, and administrators have asserted that it is a trial run that will be re-evaluated at a later time.
Many people, including College President R. Barbara Gitenstein, appreciate the value of the campus remaining as free and accessible as possible. But Monday's tragedy brings up a question that unfortunately must be addressed: Have we reached a time when it is too unsafe to allow everyone access to the campus?
Some people will say this incident shows that the need for stricter security procedures is long overdue. On the other hand, some people will question whether bolstering security will even make a difference. After all, that same FBI report concedes that in the end, "There may not be a single thing that can be done to prevent a mission-oriented person from committing an act of violence."
The College administration must review its own security policies to ensure that a sufficient system is in place to protect members of the campus community in a threatening situation. Once we learn more about the Virginia Tech incident, further changes may be necessary.
For now, all we can do is feel for those who were affected by this horrific act. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families.
(03/07/07 12:00pm)
On Thursday, the Student Government Association (SGA) hosted a forum on the state budget and higher education. SGA members prepared a PowerPoint presentation and went step-by-step through the ways budget cuts from Trenton have hurt the College. The turnout was pretty impressive: There were about 75 people in attendance.
The student presentations were well done, but the most important segment of the night was the short talk by state assemblyman Reed Gusciora, who is also an adjunct professor at the College. He emphasized that "the legislature often listens to those who shout the loudest." For example, he said the elderly often get the programs they want because they spend lots of time writing and calling their representatives.
Last year's $169 million cut to higher education was obviously a huge blow to colleges throughout the state. College students statewide held protests. As for the College, there were letter-writing campaigns and a meeting with Gov. Jon S. Corzine by the SGA president, along with other protests.
This year, Corzine's budget proposal throws $49 million more into higher education, and $1.6 million more to the College. But we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent. The College is certainly not out of the woods yet, and it won't happen anytime soon either. We need to be just as aggressive, and even more so, toward the legislature and governor's office than last year.
We're just a stone's throw away from the capital. Write and call your legislator. Write to the governor. Tell them to restore the Outstanding Scholar Recruitment Program and to make sure funding increases for higher education becomes a trend for years to come. Most importantly, tell them not to forget about this state's future.
While there is no way to know for sure, there is a good chance that Corzine remembered the substantial opposition to last year's budget by college students and administrators when he was formulating this year's proposal. That led to a modest increase that may still not make up for the rise in mandatory costs.
When Corzine is setting up his next budget in February 2008, let's make sure he remembers an even greater response from the higher education community.
(02/28/07 12:00pm)
It was encouraging to learn that Gov. Jon S. Corzine's proposed budget for fiscal year 2008 included a $49.3 million boost for higher education, including a $1.6 million raise in the College's base appropriation.
While the College administration is still reviewing the financial details, it is clear that the proposed budget is a whole lot kinder to the College than was last year's. In addition, the significant increase in applications for next year's freshman class shows that the state's well-publicized financial woes aren't scaring people off.
This is good news, but the long-term future of higher education in New Jersey is far more grim, especially when combining the continued phase-out of the Outstanding Scholar Recruitment Program (OSRP) with an astronomical state debt.
First of all, don't look at the modest rise in higher education funding as the beginning of a favorable trend. Corzine repeatedly mentioned the $33 billion state debt in his speech last week, stressing that without a major restructuring of the state's finances, future budgets will not provide funding for the many services the state needs to offer.
Corzine's discouraging words make it clear that in coming years the higher education community will have to cope with further cuts and fight for every dollar it receives. This does not bode well for the College, which despite numerous accomplishments in the past decade has had to deal with insufficient state support.
The elimination of OSRP is baffling. When Corzine decided to increase funding for higher education, restoring OSRP should have been his first priority. But Corzine has made it obvious that OSRP is nowhere near the top of his wish list. He cut OSRP funding in his budget proposal last year, and after the State Legislature added it back in, Corzine just cut it again.
By ignoring this program, Corzine is allowing New Jersey's brightest high school students to go to college and join the workforce in other states. This is not a good sign for a state that already experiences the greatest net loss of high school students for higher education of any state in the nation. According to the College's Web site, 86 percent of OSRP students who were admitted to the College but did not attend enrolled in out-of-state colleges.
Furthermore, with state schools like the College struggling to make ends meet, it's inevitable that tuition will keep rising and high school students will look elsewhere. While tuition has not been set for the 2007-08 academic year, students are already reeling after the College raised in-state tuition by 8 percent and out-of-state tuition by 15 percent last July.
The gap is closing between tuition of the College and that of bigger-name private universities, and there is insufficient merit scholarship money to entice talented students.
Admissions counselors tell prospective students and their parents that the College offers a private school education at a public school price. But based on the state's financial crisis, it won't be long before this motto no longer applies.
(02/07/07 12:00pm)
Seal is plagued by administrative failures
It was disappointing and downright alarming to hear that due to a deficit of thousands of dollars, the 2007 edition of the Seal is in danger of being canceled. While a college yearbook doesn't nearly have the appeal of our beloved high school books, it still serves as an important memory of our college years.
There are a multitude of problems with the policies and strategies encompassing the yearbook.
First and foremost, the Seal is classified by the Student Finance Board (SFB) as a media organization, along with groups like The Signal. This is a major flaw: While The Signal can fund itself through the sale of advertising, the yearbook has no such luxury - it relies on the purchase of the books and small booster ads.
According to SFB, the Seal staff is responsible for its own financial problems, having exhausted its $30,000 stipend from three years ago. Furthermore, the yearbook staff should not be punished for entering into a contract three years ago, when none of the current members were involved in that decision.
But the members of the yearbook staff are not innocent bystanders in this whole situation. The Seal has done a poor job of advertising, and many seniors had the time for senior pictures come and go without even knowing they were supposed to sign up.
Part of the reason for this lack of publicity is that the Seal has been operating without its advisor, who stepped down at the end of last semester. The yearbook staff should have immediately contacted the office of Campus Activities to ensure that a new advisor could be assigned.
While blame can be passed around, the fact remains that the Class of 2007 will very likely be the first class in 97 years to leave the College without the opportunity to purchase a yearbook. Let's hope that something can be worked out so that seniors won't hold this dubious distinction.
Senior Week loses appeal
The Senior Week meeting held last Wednesday confirmed what the College has made crystal clear this year: It is taking a stand against alcohol in Travers and Wolfe and isn't going to budge.
The College's defense seems reasonable enough, including increased hospital transports and vandalism during previous years. But the fact remains that seniors are of legal drinking age, and the College is not a dry campus.
It is a shame that the vast majority of students who can enjoy themselves responsibly are denied the privilege to consume alcohol based on the potential careless actions of a few unruly individuals.
While the no-alcohol policy is hard enough to swallow, the cost is what really hurts. According to the senior class council, an optimistic estimate of a ticket for Senior Week is between $200 and $230.
These changes to Senior Week have caused seniors to question whether it's even worth attending. The four-day event, made up of the same activities as last year but without drinking in the dorms, will cost about $75 more than the $150 per ticket last year.
Looking back at the low cost and laissez-faire policies of past Senior Weeks can't be easy for the Class of 2007. All the seniors are asking for is a fitting way to put an exclamation point on the best four (or more) years of their lives.
It's the least they deserve after losing out on the apartments they were promised.
(01/24/07 12:00pm)
On Sunday, students returned to campus to notice that things had changed since they left.
Dining Services proudly proclaims in its brochure, "We've been busy while you were gone!" The Holman Cart was transplanted to Armstrong Hall and renamed the KinetiCart. Another victim of a name change was Edith's Place, which will now be known as Fair Grounds.
A few of the stations in the Eickhoff dining hall were switched around, and students craving pasta will no longer find it in the Brower Student Center food court, where Garden State salads have taken over.
The endless cycle of construction is in full swing. The ground behind Green Hall is unearthed, leading to detours for people navigating the campus. Meanwhile, the student apartments, which have been collecting mold on Metzger Drive since November 2004, are finally being knocked down. Hopefully, the Class of 2010 will get to enjoy the apartments that current seniors were promised when they were freshmen.
Food and construction are only the first of the changes we may witness this year.
While the College continues to rack up awards for being both competitive and affordable, the fact remains that the school is facing a major financial crunch. Last year's cuts resulted in some difficult decisions by the administration, and by March we will learn Gov. Jon S. Corzine's plans for higher education funding. While the College's funding will not be slashed to the extent it was last year, it is still probable that the administration will implement cost-cutting measures that eliminate programs and services.
However, there is reason to be optimistic. Despite the budget crunch and some negative press for the College in 2006, the number of applications for freshman admission is significantly higher compared to this time last year. It appears that the reputation the College has worked so hard to build is paying dividends.
Last year was a rollercoaster ride for the campus community. We experienced plenty of highs but were challenged by a number of difficult situations. The College has changed considerably since the start of 2006, and it will be interesting to see what kind of changes take place as 2007 progresses.
(12/06/06 12:00pm)
Many students were surprised to receive an e-mail on behalf of the New Jersey State Police about details related to the disappearance of John Fiocco Jr. Reports about a tip provided to state police by the Fiocco family's lawyer, Glenn Zeitz, circulated through local media outlets. Many were hopeful that a resolution to the case was finally within reach.
Therefore, it was disheartening to learn that the tip may not have been fully accurate. It was even more dismaying to learn that state police had never really taken the tip seriously, but had felt obligated to act on it.
We cannot help but feel that the people ignored in all of this are the members of the community here at the College. Regardless of whether Zeitz misunderstood his source or not, he delivered a tip to state police that he knew would have a major impact on our campus.
Since last spring, there has been little hope for any resolution in the case. We have not heard about leads or even any results from the autopsy. The only public exposure the case has gotten recently stemmed from Joyce Carol Oates' unfortunate short story and Zeitz's private investigation.
Having heard nothing substantive for months, most of us jumped to the conclusion that the hide-and-seek tip was a breakthrough. The media joined us in these sentiments, running stories about police actively pursuing the new lead in anticipation of validating it.
What we now know is that this was never the case.
While we understand Zeitz's desire to keep attention on the investigation in the hope of coming to some sort of resolution, we feel he should be more responsible with the information he gathers. We all need closure, but presenting information that is not based on concrete evidence hurts those closest to the case rather than helping the investigation.
It seems Zeitz is most interested in the Fiocco case and the possibility of a financial settlement from the College as its outcome. He seems, regretfully, to ignore the fate of John Fiocco the person, the classmate, the brother, the son, the friend.
The College is more than just another defendant. It is a community of people who have been and continue to be emotionally affected by the John Fiocco case. We have the right to accurate information, rather than speculation or hyperbole, about what happened to one of our own.
(11/29/06 12:00pm)
We were alarmed this week at news that an underground fraternity is operating on campus. According to reports gathered by the Signal staff, the group - calling itself Chi Beta Pi - has been holding rush events for freshmen with the promise that they would get some form of recognition at a later date.
Unsupervised, this presents a grave threat to the freshmen being misled into joining the organization.
Governing bodies such as the College's Inter Greek Council (IGC) operate to protect students from the ills of Greek life such as dirty rushes and hazing - in which pledges are often coerced into engaging in abusive behavior. Such behavior is all too often the stereotype associated with Greek organizations.
IGC has done good work in the past overseeing the operations of Greek organizations on campus, suspending the charter of Sigma Tau Gamma in Fall 2004 after it violated its own and IGC's respective alcohol policies.
So we were dismayed when we found IGC unwilling to provide us with information about the rogue fraternity. IGC members said they were actively searching for members of the underground fraternity and yet were reluctant to offer information about Chi Beta Pi to The Signal and, thus, to the student body as a whole.
This seems contradictory to IGC's purpose.
It is understandable that IGC would want to protect its reputation. Likewise, it is understandable that the College would not want to draw undue attention considering the recent public pressure put on it to curb underage drinking.
But when IGC withholds information that may be helpful to the entire campus, especially to freshmen pledges who may not understand what it is they've involved themselves in, not only does it damage its - and the College's - reputation, but it continues to endanger the students involved.
As Chi Beta Pi has allegedly engaged in activities that are not only against College and IGC policies but are also potentially harmful to the students involved, it is vital that IGC talk candidly so that students can avoid involvement with the group or come forward with any information they may have.
There is more than image and reputation at stake here.
(11/08/06 12:00pm)
The establishment of a Phi Beta Kappa honor society chapter at the College - one of 276 among the thousands of colleges in the United States - is an important step in our institution's slow transformation from a little-recognized state teaching school into a nationally renowned school.
Assistant Provost Nancy Freudenthal commented last week that the award was something of a reaffirmation of the type of intellectual community that exists at the College.
While this is a gross administrative overstatement, the award does signal one of the first important achievements in the College's serious intellectual development.
For years since the ascendancy of President R. Barbara Gitenstein, we have seen the College trying to posture itself as one of the premier academic institutions in the country. While certainly the buzz about the College has increased - peaking, perhaps, by the New York Times accolade that we are "the HOT college" - we often find ourselves questioning the integrity of these claims.
A Phi Beta Kappa chapter, however, is something we can really sink our teeth into.
More substantive than annual rankings or an upward trend in incoming freshmen SAT scores proving little more than our increasing aptitude in test-taking, being awarded a Phi Beta Kappa indicates that the type of intellectual community the College has hoped to foster through initiatives like its academic transformation has really taken root.
Proof of our palpable improvement comes in the fact that our last attempt at gaining Phi Beta Kappa membership in 2000 was denied.
All this aside, the award is a testament to the intellectual community gestating on this campus. We are consistently impressed by the engagement a lot of our students present in the process of learning. We are constantly learning, both in class but also (mostly) out of class.
But what makes us unique is not only our high academic standards but also our groundedness. We do not exist in an intellectual ether, but we are able to apply our learning to the world immediately around us.
For the most part, we are a student body that tends to come from humble upbringings and we are able to bring our learning to bear and relate to those communities.
(11/01/06 12:00pm)
We are in the autumn of our discontent here at the College. Each week The Signal has to deliver news about a new, depressing restriction. Between the threat of litigation for downloading music, the ubiquitous presence of parking tickets and the Ewing Township ordinance cracking down on underage drinking, the college experience is being smothered by regulation after regulation.
Granted, laws are laws. While it is folly to protest illegally obtaining music, parking in the wrong spot or underage drinking, there is one aspect of our atmosphere that is unacceptable: the relationship with the office of Campus Police Services.
At the forefront of the problem is the amount of parking tickets given out. Ticketing began in the parking lots and garages at midnight, Sept. 5. Students unaware that "Sept. 5" meant the second the clock struck midnight were unpleasantly surprised with one or more $50 tickets in the morning. These students were already paying between $77 and $230 to park on campus.
Other students were unaware that a parking decal fee was included in their tuition bill (which is getting high enough as it is) and paid for parking even though they don't have a car on campus. Some students parked in the Eickhoff Hall garage were even ticketed before the Sept. 5 deadline.
It's not only students who are complaining: faculty, graduate students and even visitors have encountered problems both with being ticketed and disrespected by Campus Police. The situation has even prompted an SGA resolution - still pending - intended to strengthen relations between the College community and Campus Police.
As of now, there seems to be no change in the attitude of a majority of Campus Police officers. Recently, a housemate of one of our staff members received a ticket in Lot 3 for an expired registration. When he told her she was not allowed to drive the car away, she asked if it was OK to leave her car there because she had been ticketed for doing so in the past. The officer then told her she could drive to Lot 6. When our staff member, also present, pointed out his contradiction, he said, "If you're going to get smart, I'll tow the car right now."
This was at 2:30 a.m. The officer did not ask how they were going to get home or if they needed an escort.
After speaking with the sergeant on duty, they found out that the College's policy is, contrary to the officer's threat, to wait 48 hours before towing a car.
This is just one example of myriad stories we have heard of Campus Police officers abusing their authority and treading on the rights of the members of this community.
According to the Campus Police Web site, "Safety is our primary concern." Although we sympathize with the added pressure placed on the office since the John Fiocco tragedy, the actions of Campus Police have not made us feel any safer.
Where was the concern for safety when two girls were sent off alone into the middle of the night? Where was it when they refused to respond immediately to a potential hate crime when Chabad's sukkah outside Brower Student Center was damaged several weeks ago?
We cannot be expected to trust these officers when we need their assistance if we consistently feel persecuted and threatened by them.
We recognize that Campus Police officers have as much authority as any police officer in New Jersey. We realize that some college students may be disparaging or disrespectful to officers, but does that mean they should be hostile and condescending to the faculty, students and visitors of this school?
It's a shame that while the College is getting so many national accolades - most competitive rankings, most beautiful campus, happiest students, a best buy, etc. - the community feels like it is living in a police state.
Despite a rigorous and celebrated academic program, prospective students are not going to want to come here if it means being robbed of a typical college experience and being sneered at by police officers and their egos.
(10/11/06 12:00pm)
We can certainly understand any ill feelings from Sodexho employees toward last week's "Eye on SGA" column that reported on vague remarks from executive vice president James Gant that the College's food service company participated in a program to hire ex-convicts.
Upon finding out that such a program does not, nor has ever, existed at the College, as we report this week in a story on page 3, we were just as upset.
We were also surprised that most of the ire over the remarks was directed at us, raising an interesting distinction over the difference between misquoting and misspeaking.
In last week's SGA column, we reported a claim by Gant that Sodexho's alleged program "intended to give job opportunities within Sodexho for newly released convicts." According to our article this week, Gant's information came from his previous employment with Sodexho at an assisted living facility in Ocean County. He has never been employed by Sodexho at the College and was unaware of its specific hiring practices that are, to the best of our understanding, sound.
It was a misunderstanding precipitated, in part, by our reporting, but also in part by Gant's own misleading remarks, remarks which left SGA officials themselves equally confused over his understanding of Sodexho's hiring practices. Gant himself notes in this week's story that he "didn't have the facts."
When student leaders speak at public meetings - and, indeed, when leaders in the real world speak on the record - we hope they have a full understanding of the facts at their disposal and express themselves thusly, because what they say will, for good or ill, be reported on and they will be held accountable for it.
This said, we respectfully apologize for any hurt feelings as a result of our article.
(10/11/06 12:00pm)
As members of the press, the preservation of our rights under the First Amendment is particularly important to us.
For this reason, we defend Joyce Carol Oates' right to publish her recent story "Landfill." After all, it is common practice for authors to use true events as inspiration. How many books fictionalize the Civil War? Moreover, how many recent movies have sought to recreate the events of 9/11?
But regardless of her constitutional rights, we still disagree with her decision to publish the story because of the moral and ethical boundaries she crossed.
The execution of the story was one of many problems with it. The reverse-chronological sequence of its events is a sloppy mask to cover the fact that she fictionalized the Fiocco tragedy almost exactly as it actually occurred; the superfluous details she changed (his name, his weight, his ethnicity) were a thin veil at best, despite her claims to not have followed the incident's circus-like media coverage.
Her timing was even worse than her stylistic choices. The story was published in The New Yorker less than seven months after the tragedy.
Students are justified in their anger, particularly in that both Oates and The New Yorker are reluctant to make any sort of comment.
Oates can write whatever she wants. No one should deny her that right. But for a person who lives and works so close to the College, a neighbor to a community to which the events surrounding Fiocco's disappearance remains a sore wound, a guest of our own Thorton Wilder Society, it is shocking that she could make such a controversial decision and then recede and decline to comment.
We encourage you to read the story online if you haven't yet done so and come to your own conclusions.
We also urge you to take action if you are truly disturbed by the story. Write a letter to the editor and send it to The Signal, The Times of Trenton, The New Yorker and other media outlets. Our campus has a reputation of apathy, but this is the type of issue that we cannot keep quiet about if it offends us.
(04/05/06 12:00pm)
The story of John Fiocco Jr. became something far more than a story for the Signal staff last week. As we foreswore classes and homework to follow the news as it broke and to keep our Web site, signal-online.net, up to date, we found ourselves in an increasingly precarious position: as Fiocco's fellow students, we were forced to balance the fear and uncertainty that took hold of the College community at large with our professional responsibilities as journalists to cover the story.
And as we covered it - elbowing around the camera crews, news vans and reporters camped out on campus like harping crows starting last Tuesday - we realized that, in terms of professional role models, we had few.
Our staff is comprised mostly of journalism students; we have been taught to believe in the nobler merits of the profession, the unflagging pursuit of truth. For the reporters who have haunted this campus since the investigation began last week, truth gave way to sensationalism and scandal.
In the end, we found our professional convictions shaken. The reporters we have always admired for their supposed determination in pursuit of the facts have proven themselves nothing more than vultures picking over carrion, with no consideration for the parties who have sincere emotional investment in their stories.
As we have continued to cover the story, we have yet to see the pressing public interest - how does this story affect anyone beyond Fiocco's family and the community bounded by Metzger Drive. Sure, we're all aware of that sick, old journalistic credo "If it bleeds, it leads," but this story quickly became a monster.
While the Fiocco family mourned the disappearance of their son, while students feared for their safety, reporters shoved mics in their faces, asking "What do you think happened to John Fiocco," or chastised him for having what a television broadcast referred to last week as a "dark side" that enjoyed drinking and partying.
Indeed, many of the pictures - swiped from his facebook.com profile - we have seen of Fiocco on the nightly news have been of the freshman smiling with a bottle in his hand. This when there are over 80 pictures on his profile to pick from. Instead of giving the boy a human face, they have painted a caricature: an out-of-control drunken freshman. They refuse to believe that Fiocco was like you, he was like us - and that what happened to him, whatever that may be, could just as easily have happened to any of us.
We at The Signal have gotten to taste the sweet delicacy known as misquoting. The Times of Trenton, in a story on Monday, implied that a member of our staff believed the College administration had been responsible for removing inserts we had placed in last week's print edition. Likewise, The Trentonian claimed that one of our staffers asked "if a killer is loose on campus," at last Friday's press conference.
Neither of these claims is true. While our own staff replaced the inserts because they were no longer up to date, and the question at the press conference was somewhat more elegantly phrased, rational explanations and legitimate questions don't sell newspapers.
The talking heads of the 24-hour news cycle have even picked up on the Fiocco case. Greta Van Susteren discussed the case with shamed ex-LAPD investigator Mark Fuhrman last week on her FOX News television program.
The Signal staff was even naive enough to accept an invitation to appear on Nancy Grace's show on CNN Headline News Monday night. We hoped it would give members of our staff the chance to do something good, something that almost no other news outlet had done thus far - present the facts, and give us, as students, an opportunity to elucidate the effect the rampant media speculation has had on our campus.
But we were duped. Instead, the show took this missing persons case and came up with conspiracy theories. A forensics "expert" said that he was almost sure that Fiocco was pushed headfirst down the trash chute. Other panelists surmised that Fiocco could have been hazed or drugged before getting pushed down the chute.
Our staff, standing in the rain outside Loser Hall, was given five seconds of camera time to answer simple questions about where freshmen live on campus and the size of the trash chute. They were forced to listen to conjecture rather than speaking from their own knowledge of the case.
It was clear that no one on the show's staff had done their homework: during a commercial break, our staff members told the CNN reporter that was standing with them that there had been no official confirmation from police that Fiocco had ever been in the trash chute. He responded like he'd had no idea.
Grace herself was no better - asking loud questions about how a landfill worked and agreeing with every caller's personal theories about the case. She even insulted one of her guests who refused to speculate on the case, saying that we, as human beings, have "the biggest brains in the universe," and that we should use them to draw conjecture.
But conjecture has not helped to find John Fiocco's whereabouts, sensationalism has not aided investigators in figuring out what happened to him that night a week and a half ago when he was last seen, rumors have not helped his family and friends deal with the grief that is now their gravity.
These things have, however, left many of us at The Signal wondering if we're pursuing the right profession, because the more we've witnessed, the more it seems like this field we have believed so fervently in requires the sacrifice of something far too precious: our humanity, our souls.
(04/08/03 12:00pm)
Ahh, new logo. How much does the campus community hate thee? Let us count the ways ... or not.
See, here at The Signal, we receive letter upon letter upon letter about "just how awful that stupid shield really is." While this is a perfectly valid assertion, the evidence used to support many of these opinions is ... slightly off.
This is to say: It's good to have an opinion, simply because it's good to care about something. It's good to express your opinions. It's good to let those in charge know how you feel. It is not good, however, to justify your feelings with misinformation. To illustrate, here are some facts that people seem to forget when talking about the College's graphic identity:
(1) Budget cuts have nothing to do with the new graphic identity. The College did not waste millions of dollars creating its new image. Money, allocated before McGreevey came out and said 'no money for you," was used to hire a design company to reinvent the image of the College in general. North Charles Street Design, a national publication firm, was chosen by College. The logo is one part of this pre-paid package that also includes new admissions brochures and other various campus publications.
(2) Jesse Rosenblum did not design the new graphic identity. He is simply required to talk about as part of his job as Vice President for College Relations.
(3) SAF stands for Student Activity Fee, not Student Activity Fund. Programming at the College is not "funded" by the budget. It is "funded" by the $113 fee that all students must pay at the beginning of each school year as part of their tuition. Translate this to mean the new graphic identity will not hurt SAF-funded clubs and organizations because they come from a different line of the budget. If the College had saved money and not commissioned the logo, that money still wouldn't go to clubs.
Realize this: it is important to understand things thoroughly. It is important to know your facts before you start running at the mouth.
That way, your arguments are taken more seriously by those who need to them.
Editorial opinions are those of the editorial board, which is composed of the Editor-in-chief, the Managing Editor, the Senior Editor and the Opinions Editor unless otherwise noted.
(04/01/03 12:00pm)
What is funny?
Turns out, we here at The Signal aren't so sure. For a number of reasons.
First off, one must consider the nature of these strange, strange times. When war exists there is a sudden change in what is considered appropriate and what is not.
Second, one must learn from the past. Last year at this time, a certain batch of very special Signals disappeared from their kiosks. Apparently, certain members of the administration (various higher-ups) just don't find profanity funny.
The lesson learned: people like different things. So, how do you make sense of an abstract word? And how do you determine what the The Singal means to not just us, the Signal staff, but the campus in general?
The result is this year's Singal, a 12-page conglomeration of satire, parody and yuks-yuks (hopefully). Will some of you be offended? Probably. As the old saying goes, "you can't please all of the people, all of the time." Should you be offended? Well, we can't tell you not to be.
But remember this: No matter how you look at it, The Singal is about more than just laughs a' plenty. It has something to do with free speech, too. Last year's Singal debacle represented missteps on part of The Signal and the administration. Our mistake involved what many saw as a misuse of our voice. The administration's misstep we saw as a testimony to the existence of censorship.
We hope with that this Singal proves that we have learned a lesson. Our hope is that others have, too.
Editorials are those of the Editorial Board, which is composed of the Editor-in-chief, the Managing Editor, the Senior Editor and the Opinions Editor.