Our Perspective ...

We support H-P

Desire to serve student body shows duo understands the role of SGA

For the first time in recent history students at Appalachian State have three choices in the race for Student Government Association (SGA) president and vice president.

Each ticket has highlighted its strengths during the three-week campaign period, but we feel Xan Harrington and Amanda Privette are the best-suited candidates to lead the Appalachian student body during the 2001-2002 academic year.

An SGA president must be an articulate and persuasive liaison between the student body and the university administration.

Of the three candidates seeking SGA's highest office, we feel Harrington would be the most efficient in carrying out this vital and challenging task.

Just as important is the fact the university gives SGA's chief executive a seat on the Board of Trustees. We feel Harrington will be efficient and successful in lobbying the trustees on matters directly related to student needs.

While an SGA president's primary function is to interact with university officials, the vice president is charged with overseeing the administrative and operational functions of the SGA Senate.

We have confidence in Privette's ability to lead the Senate and ensure the representative body writes and passes legislation beneficial to all Appalachian State University students.

As a guiding force for the Senate, the vice president is one of Appalachian's most visible and accessible leaders.

On a campus comprised of almost 6,000 female undergraduate students, we feel it is vital to have a woman in a top student government leadership position.

Along with these crucial qualities, we feel the platform goals presented by Harrington and Privette are more attainable and will be more beneficial to students than those proposed by their opponents.

According to campaign material, Harrington's and Privette's stated mission is to "create a student government that is accessible to the students ... and individuals chosen as leaders of Student Government Association should be reminded they are selected to serve first and to lead second."

Candidates Jeff Tew and Richard Wheelahan feel Appalachian deserves the best.

We fervently concur with this sentiment, but feel the desire of Harrington and Privette to first serve the Appalachian student body and lead second will provide the best leadership for the student body.

COMMENTARY

Beginners: everyone has to start somewhere

James Nix

To excel at something in life, you must start somewhere.

This is something that our society seems to overlook these days.

I play guitar, like many people on campus. I just started playing guitar a couple of years ago, and I never got real serious about it, so I'm limited to simple Metallica riffs and a few other things.

There are people on my hall that are pretty good guitar players and I'm constantly having to find ways to drown out their funk solos that they feel the entire hall should hear. I have no problem with that, as it is part of dormitory life.

Here's what I have a problem with:

The other day, I found the tablature to a song I liked on the Internet, so I pulled out my electric guitar to try it out. About five minutes later, my expert-guitar-player friend from down the hall knocked on my door and told me to shut up on the basis that I was annoying him.

Being the nice guy I am, I turned off my amplifier and pulled out my acoustic guitar to continue playing.

This incident was not really a big deal, but it got me thinking about life in general and how our society views beginners and those who are working to improve themselves.

I thought about how I felt the first time I walked into the Quinn Recreation Center last fall and lifted weights for the first time.

I can see that same feeling on the faces of the beginners in there now. It is very intimidating to bench press 50 or 60 pounds while the guy next to you is lifting 200 pounds.

I think we should give beginners more credit. Instead, we turn our backs, laugh and tell them, "Don't quit your day job."

It takes a lot of courage for someone to excel at something when they are not given the natural talent. I was watching the Final Four this weekend and I started thinking about where Shane Battier started.

It is obvious that Battier has natural talent in the game of basketball, but he did not start off as the Chevrolet Player of the Year -- he started off just like anyone else.

The same thing goes for great musicians out there. I've been in band since middle school, and I cannot count the times I've heard people refer to beginners as "sucking."

Even in college marching band, where musical talent is not needed as much, people looked down on those who had just picked up an instrument and were trying something new.

This also applies to journalists. We have to begin somewhere, too, and for some of us, it is in the college newspaper.

I've heard several people talk negatively about the writing that goes into The Appalachian. If you think you can do better, all right -- show us.

The next time you criticize a beginner, think of where you started.

Senior's memories of ASU beauty overshadowed by construction chaos

Chris Baucom

I wake up one morning and look out the window. It looks like a wonderful day outside. I get dressed to go to class and walk out the door.

I take a deep breath as a large cloud of light brown dust flies all around me. I blink my eyes to overcome the cloud and walk out to the street.

Then as I cross the road I have to rush to avoid a dump truck carrying a load of dirt and leaving a swirl of gray smoke lingering in its wake.

I hear the beautiful chorus of heavy machinery as I approach my destination. I am thankful for such a wonderful walk to class.

Have you ever had a walk through campus like this one? If you have been at Appalachian for very long, it is likely that you have.

I am a senior, and when I came to school here the campus looked totally different.

The baseball field has moved and so has Rivers Street. We have added the George M. Holmes Convocation Center, the Chemistry Astronomy and Physics (CAP) Building, the John E. Thomas Building, a new steam plant and even a park.

Improvements to this university are an ongoing thing. Everyday you can walk to any given part of campus and you will run into some kind of construction.

It is necessary to make many of these improvements to campus, but will it ever end?

Right now there are projects everywhere on campus. The projects include but are not limited to: inside Plemmons Student Union, the parking deck on Rivers Street, the chancellor's house, a new residence hall, the street along the east side of campus and beside University Bookstore. Of course, there are other small projects going on, and many other large projects in the works.

I am happy with the changes in the university since I have arrived, but a day has not passed that I have not seen some kind of construction.

My only memories of my college campus will be of dump trucks and temporary chain link fences.

Some of these construction workers have probably been here long enough to get a degree.

With large projects such as the new library and the completion of the parking deck, current freshmen may be able to say the same thing when they are about to leave.

My advice to them? Try to ignore it because it is not going away.

An idea may be to have a day (or even a week!) of no construction. And not when it snows in the middle of winter, but when it is nice on campus. It would give students a chance to walk across campus with the sounds of other students and of nature -- not of the sounds of construction.

I understand the need for improvement, but I still long for the dump trucks to leave.

Since I will never see that in my college career, I will just hold hope for the freshmen. Maybe there will at least be a break in your future. I hope when that happens I will be able to come back to our beautiful campus, and see it as was intended ... without dump trucks.