In Our Words... 
Another day, another dollar to the university 

On Thursday, the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors raised fees another eight percent in addition to the 2.1 percent increase at the beginning of the semester. 
This increase will tack on an additional $100 to student fees for fall 2000. 

Another increase in fees is not what the university system needs. The main problems on campuses statewide require a hike in tuition, because that is where the money can be drawn from. 
The complaints most commonly heard around the Appalachian State campus are inadequate technology, low faculty salaries and campus construction. We are losing our current professors and those we hope to attract with our low salaries and inadequate technology. Our campus is also experiencing growing pains that cannot be attended to without proper funding.  

A portion of our student fees goes to technology, but that is not enough. The burden of funding our university should not be on the students’ shoulders, nor should it be a requirement for our chancellor and lobbyist. Our chancellor should be spending time here in Boone supervising the day-to-day activities of Appalachian, but instead he is spending time in the car traveling back and forth to Raleigh to meet with legislators to present our financial case. If we are frustrated with footing the bill, imagine how frustrated he must be with his comments falling on deaf ears. 

Why doesn’t the North Carolina legislature realize that they are neglecting the academic growth of the state? By putting unnecessary burdens on the university administration to scrape together enough money to run an institution of higher education, they are penalizing students’ growth as scholars.  

Our university cannot grow as the UNC system wants us to. We have already maxed out our environmental resources by building into mountains, and now they are moving on to our financial resources. 

It is a dog-eat-dog world out there, and we are witnessing the finger pointing first hand. The legislature refuses to provide the money for university advancement, so we are forced to pull it out of our own pockets to fund matters of the state. 
 

Idle observations and festering thoughts 
Ian Hutchinson 

This is just an idle observation.  I overhear a lot of conversations and this was the gist of many Spring Break plans I overheard: “Man, I’m going to party, get drunk and get laid.” 
Now, let’s contrast this with some Boone Thursday night plans I once overheard: “Man, I’m going to party, get drunk and get laid.” 

Perhaps I just overheard the same guy a few times, but if this sounds like you at all, I have one little question: Why did you waste so much money on traveling to an exotic location? And no, the ashtray known as the Pavilion at Myrtle Beach does not qualify as exotic. 

Why travel so far and waste all that precious gas that you complain about paying for? Aren’t you just having six or seven Boone Thursdays somewhere else? 

My question is actually a silly one. Let’s follow the logic here. If your typical Thursday plans do consist of the aforementioned quote above, your odds of achieving the final part of that quote lessen week by week. Small towns like Boone have small populations, so you will meet everyone eventually. As a result, lame pick-up lines like, “Is that a mirror in your pocket? Because I can see myself in your pants,” wear out faster than the “Greeks don’t buy their friends” argument (and that is another opinion piece in itself). 

Then Spring Break rears its intoxicated head and your odds get a lot better. 

You have margaritas, wet T-shirt contests, rhythmic orgies known as clubbing, parties and you have countless young men and women who don’t exercise good judgment while intoxicated. What a nice way to expand the gene pool and share some STDs! 

I hope some of you at least went sight-seeing in Cancun or wherever you went.  One of my friends got to go scuba diving which I thought was cool. 

What did I do over the break? What exotic location did I go to? I went to the cigarette-making city-of-death known as Winston-Salem and got to go back to my job at Wherehouse Music. 

My exotic journeys included organizing the Latin and International CDs and having lunch at Taco Bell. I, too, met people who couldn’t speak English and, not surprisingly, most of them were American. I was also persuaded by my friends to do things I now regret, like seeing the movie “Final Destination.” 

There’s two hours of my life and seven dollars I won’t ever get back. 

I won’t ruin it if you haven’t seen it, but I will say that the Grim Reaper is one sadistic SOB in this movie. Death wasn’t satisfied with a simple heart attack or natural death, people had to die in tragic mishaps that were previously reserved for Wile E. Coyote. People in this movie didn’t just die, they were slashed, pincushioned, burnt and then blown up. 

Oh well, at least a bad movie with your friends is more enjoyable than a good movie by yourself. 

Surprisingly, I learned that even some of the most glamorous Spring Break excursions were just as exciting as mine. I learned that a lot of people just slept a lot, others worked because like myself, they were broke. OK, and a lot of them partied, got drunk and got laid. However, they may be a tad fuzzy on who they slept with and what extra surprises they brought home with them. 
And now, we must return to our Boone Thursday nights, as difficult as that may seem. Your chances of successfully seducing that special some-one-night stand have once again been eliminated. At least you can always count on beer and the WWF to keep yourself occupied. 

Oh, the humanity ... 
 

Tuition hikes, it's the growing trend anyway 
Mike Boteilho 

Here we go, it is time to cry and moan about the raise in our already low tuition fee prices. 

I have a few words for you... Deal with it. 

Tuition fee hikes are necessary for schools to compete in the tough world of inflation, building and other necessities that a school needs to provide quality education to their students. 

 However here at ASU all our students seem to care about is that their beloved tuition is going to be raised by a couple of hundred dollars. 

The students that seem to always complain the most, are the same ones that blow a couple hundred dollars a month at a bar, club or coffeehouse. They have money for that, but not to spend on their education. 

Lets look at the facts. 

Every summer, or at any job one holds at school, minimum wage seems to be going up. The end result is that more money is ending up in our pockets, for many to spend foolishly on things that they do not need or have to have to survive. 

We are one of the lowest costing schools in the state. We do not have to pay for books, our parking is not that expensive, and the school provides the students with a lot of free things in sports, arts and music that a lot of other schools have to pay for. 

But I guess that is not good enough for a lot of people. 

They do not want to spend the extra dollars to help the school out in the dog-eat-dog world today. 

Go to Carolina, State, College of Charleston, UNCC and one will see that their students are not living in poverty with high tuition. 

They learn to live with it, because many of them know that tuition increases are a necessary evil for schools to survive. 

And many, if not all of those schools do not even come close to the free entertainment that this school offers. 

So now it is finally time to pay the piper, because to put on shows and other great free speakers the money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the students. 

Even students receiving financial aid need not worry about the hike, because the lending companies that they get money from will pick up the bill anyway. 

So what’s the big deal about? 

I still haven’t figured it out yet. 

If someone has the answers on why not to raise tuition, I would like to hear it. 

Because as long as people are spending 70-80 dollars on a Structure shirt, they have an extra hundred dollars to spend on their education. 
 

Letters to the Editor 
You should not be so quick to judge 
NOW's petition unwarranted 
 

You should not be so quick to judge 

Prejudice is hating, judging and discriminating against an individual for the color of their skin, their religion or their ideas or actions.  To all individuals who have written to this paper and attacked attorney Scott Casey, I would have to call you prejudiced. Prejudice is judging someone without even knowing him or her, right? Many individuals who have written negative statements about Casey in this paper have been quick to judge and have written false statements about him. Some have said that Casey is an advocate for rape and others have implied the same thing, only phrased it differently. To those who have said these things (which are not true), you have violated him, just like a rapist does. I am not one to compare, nor would I say that rape is equal to untrue statements about an individual. But I am sure the emotions are similar when one individual has turned another’s life upside down by violating him or her. Casey is not what some individuals have made him out to be. He is an intelligent and caring human being. He is devoted to his career, wife and child. He would do anything to protect his wife and child. But someone even had a problem with Casey wanting to protect the people he cares about. Casey’s job as a criminal defense attorney is to ensure that the accused receive a fair trial, which includes the theory that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. 
Well, many of you have put Casey on trial, but have made him guilty until proven innocent. And the sad thing about this whole situation is that Casey did nothing wrong. When he spoke at “Sex in a Six Pack,” he was speaking on rape and how the law deals with it. Individuals who have a problem with those laws need to go point fingers at the legislators and not at Casey. 
I take all of these negative and untrue comments about Casey to offense because he is a close friend of mine. He is not the monster that some have claimed him to be. For those who boast these ridiculous statements, why don’t you get to know him first? Because the man I know is not the one some have described. 

Leslie Steelman 
Junior 
ASU Box 15628 
 

NOW's petition unwarranted 

The campus chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) claims that the Kappa Alpha fraternity violated university rules by not having a guest list for their party and that their parties are unsafe for women, and that they should therefore be removed from campus. 
Though it is true that KA and Sigma Nu were both found in violation of university policy, both will be sanctioned by the Interfraternity Council (IFC) in accordance with the procedures and policies laid out in IFC bylaws. Thus, KA will be punished for their offense and it will be sufficient punishment for their offense. The revocation of their charter should not even be in consideration because at no time, either now or in the past, has any investigation found that anyone was raped at KA, nor has there been any arrests or convictions. Because of this the Kappa Alpha Order is innocent, save for their violation of the guest list policy, and pursuant to U.S. legal tradition and the ASU Code of Student Conduct must be treated as such until proven otherwise. 
Furthermore, the assertion that KA is a danger to women is unfounded. In the past 10 years there have only been two alleged rapes at any fraternity parties, those two being the unproven claims leveled at KA. In contrast, from 1991 to 1999 there have been eight rapes and 17 forcible sexual assaults reported to have happened on campus, as recorded by the University Police Department. It therefore seems that women are just as safe at KA parties as they are on campus. NOW should consider these facts before they try to make an example of an innocent organization. 

Brad Scheick 
Senior 
BS25165 
 
 
 
 

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