Our Perspective......

Convocation Center offers intimate setting for upcoming events

Several of our staff members were among the few lucky enough to attend the men's basketball season opener at the George M. Holmes Convocation Center.

From the outside, the center is an impressive site on our campus. However, the stadium itself, the Seby B. Jones Arena, provided a more intimate setting.

Yes, the arena was in fact smaller than we had imagined it would be, but this allowed great seating for everyone. There really is not a bad seat in the place.

The court itself was all it needed to be: polished, professional-looking and dry.

The scoreboards showed the scores and they were usually correct. Fouls and points can easily be confused. However, from the upper level the scoreboards were difficult to see.

There was unfinished concrete inside the arena itself. In several areas, when the concrete was touched, gray powder was left on our hands.

The orange lines drawn on the partitions in the concrete walls of the upper level seating added a festive touch.

The concourse was what one would expect, complete with over-priced food and drinks. However, there was ample room for the 8,000 plus attendants to walk around.

Amazingly enough the restrooms were above average. We were impressed with the sensor-activated plumbing and yellow color-coordinated tiles.

All things considered, the center is a cozy, clean, state-of-the-art facility. Most of the issues addressed will be taken care of as the facility is completed. It is actually a good fit for our Appalachian family, providing an intimate place to attend games, Convocation and other events.

The George M. Holmes Convocation Center will no doubt serve us well into AppalachianÕs second century.

Holiday gift giving overshadowed by consumer festivities

James Nix

The 2000 holiday season has arrived. Thanksgiving is over and Christmas has appeared on the horizon.

However, the path to Dec. 25 is plagued by endless pits of mail-in-rebates, crowded shopping malls, and greed. These commercial festivities are slowly deteriorating the joy of giving during the holidays.

The best example of this is the day after Thanksgiving. Ruthless consumers rise in the wee hours of the morning to save big at most major stores.

My dad and I take part in the madness every year. We go out to pick up a few things at good prices and witness the frenzy that takes place in stores like Best Buy.

I wouldn't consider us ruthless, but some of the people we see fit the mold perfectly. They're almost like mindless zombies roaming up and down the aisles grabbing anything that is on sale.

It is actually very humorous to see people fight over useless pieces of junk they don't need. The holidays are not about this.

I pity the employees of these stores that have early-bird specials. Up to an hour before the store opens, there are people lining up in the cold waiting to get in. They become restless as the store gets ready to open, and rush in as soon as the door is unlocked.

My mom used to work at a K-mart in Georgia. She has horror stories of customers literally breaking down the doors to get to a small diamond ring which was on sale for a low price.

These employees have the hardest time, especially the day after Thanksgiving. Total strangers yell in their faces and pitch fits when they don't get what they want. It's not the employee's fault, itÕs the customer's.

Best Buy is always the most entertaining store to go to. This year, my dad and I arrived about 15 minutes before they opened. The line of people had already stretched far from the entrance. Five minutes after opening, the lines at the registers were full. Ten minutes later, the lines reached the back of the store.

What bothers me most about Best Buy's sale items is that most of them have mail-in-rebates. They advertise computers at extremely low prices.

But the computers in the store aren't cheap. You have to pay the full price when you check out, then send in a form that will hopefully give you the money back a few years later.

This is true only if you get to the store an hour before opening in order to have a chance of getting the computer. Around the holidays, everything seems to get a little more hectic. Every place you go is crowded and busy. You have to stand in huge lines in most stores.

Traffic jams around major commercial areas are more and more common. This all takes away from the gift giving aspect of the holiday season. I want to give my friends and family gifts, but I don't want to go to the ends of the earth to do it.

COMMENTARY

ASU opportunities offer rewarding experiences

Ian Hutchinson

People keep telling me that these are the best days of my life.

By some bizarre social standard, the best years of our lives are supposed to fall between our freshman year in high school and our senior year in college. I don't know who designed this setup; it was probably a bunch of romantics whose only great accomplishments were in those years, so I canÕt exactly agree with them.

I do think there were great moments in these years, but I don't know if I deem all of them as "the best" moments of my life because I've only been alive for twenty-three years and there may be another sixty to seventy years ahead of me.

Let's start by looking at my two and a half years at Appalachian State University.

Within the first few weeks of my attendance, I was making headlines. That sounds good, right? Well, that's because I was hit by a sport utility vehicle while crossing in a crosswalk on Rivers Street, which wasn't fun at all.The headline in The Appalachian read: "Student injured crossing Rivers Street."

However, that incident did get me back into writing, which was a good thing. Unfortunately, based off of that incident, the university police started issuing tickets for jaywalking.

Yeah, blame me.

Later, while the idea of installing speed bumps on Rivers Street was floating around (and it is still a great idea, HINT), a student wrote into The Appalachian saying that while it was "unfortunate" that "a student" was struck by a car while crossing in a crosswalk, Rivers Street should still remain without speed bumps.

Needless to say, that pissed me off, but rather than write a nasty letter back to that person, I thought I'd do something more constructive. I inquired about writing for The Appalachian instead because I did need something else to do outside of class.

What I wrote in the following months may have not been that great, but it was a start. The problem was, at the time, that I was writing for the sake of meeting a deadline and not because I wanted to.

Fortunately, that phase eventually passed and I started writing because I enjoyed it and I think the quality of my writing has improved since then.

Now, I think there were some good developments in those years, but I have yet to decide if those were the best days of my life.

I'm glad to have gotten back into writing, so I'm glad someone wrote something that pissed me off. I'm also glad to have found a style that suits me. It may not be a conventional one, but at least you aren't going to get the typical, sentimental crap that you usually get when someone is writing his or her last college opinion article.

Yeah, this is it. I'm about to graduate (knock on wood). As we speak, the resumes are wandering around in the hands of sane postal workers (knock on wood) and will hopefully be placed in the hands of a reputable employer at an entertainment publication that will hire me (knock on wood).

This semester alone has been a great opportunity for me. In the past, the entertainment coverage was minimal to non-existent in The Appalachian, but Kara Hodge and I were given the chance to change that.

While we're on the subject, I think I'll take this moment to brag.

If there was any evidence contrary to the idea of there being nothing to do in Boone, I think Kara and I made a very effective case. We had several stories each week that proved the nothing-to-do whiners wrong. The whiners are free to continue complaining about it (because I know they will), but I'm telling you Ñ they are all wrong.

I think that fact will be attributed to "the best" moments of my life because I think we accomplished something great with the entertainment section of The Appalachian. I hope that what we started will continue long after we've both graduated.

We gave an element of student life the overdue attention it deserved and hopefully raised a bit of awareness regarding the department of theatre and dance, the school of music, the Appalachian Popular Programming Society (A.P.P.S.), WASU and other local entertainment that was being ignored.

I don't know if all my experiences at Appalachian will fall under "the best" days of my life, but I will be taking away experiences that I will appreciate for quite some time. I do know these experiences will help me in my career, wherever that career takes me.

I do value every opportunity Appalachian has allowed me to participate in, both in and out of class. I'll remember the late nights I spent being a DJ at WASU under the alias "Crash" and fielding drunken requests for songs.

I'll remember all the great moments in A.P.P.S. from the early stages of helping organize an event to enjoying the shows we brought. I'll remember all the great opportunities I took advantage of at The Appalachian and all the friends I've made.

I don't know if the best is behind me, but a lot of great things are behind me. I think some of the best moments are still ahead. I still haven't written my first book or screenplay. I still hope to find that lofty woman of my dreams.

Well, I'm going to stop now. There's a lot to plan for, especially since I procrastinated on securing a cap and gown for graduation.

We'll wrap this up in eight words:

Live Long, Prosper and Rock On,

Ian Hutchinson