Pedersen

On Monday, I have a photojournalism class in the evening. The first Monday back is always a tiring one, so I decided to buy a Mountain Dew during our break to wake myself up. So I went to the vending machine, pulled out my $1.25 and prepared my mouth for some limey refreshment.

But alas, there was no Dew to be had. In fact, there were no Pepsi products at all, and the drinks cost $1.50. And it was then I remembered that Emporia State had signed a deal with Coca Cola to sell their products exclusively.

Now I am not a man who has to have a soda every day, nor do I really prefer Pepsi over Coke. I will enjoy a soft drink from time to time, but not very often. But when I do enjoy a bottle of the bubbly, I do not want to pay as much for 16 ounces as I would for an immense 44 ounces at the Kwik Shop across the street.

And, of course, it is not just soda that has risen in price, but also juice and bottled water. A few years ago, bottles of soda were only $1 and they haven’t risen by that much anywhere else.

When the school signed the deal with Coca Cola, it seems that they were cutting out competition in exchange for, perhaps, a larger cut of the profits. The prices of Coca Cola products have not risen anywhere else. It is only on campus that we are forced to pay extra, if we choose to drink things from a vending machine.

This bothers me.

It may not be a big deal. It is only a quarter. But it shows to me the trends that ESU has been following and it shows what they could do in the future. Perhaps they will require art supplies and books to be purchased exclusively from the campus bookstore and enforce it by threat of fines.

Hopefully that will never happen, but if they continue to reduce competition, we could eventually find ourselves in a situation like that. Our entire economic structure is based on choice and preference, and they are rocking the boat.

We are a capitalistic society and competition is the backbone of our economy. The cola wars have been going on for as long as I can remember, back to the days of Pepsi Blue and Coke’s failed new recipe.

Now the school has cut out that competition in exchange for a deal. I can understand that the school always has a need to be greedy, we are renovating the Memorial Union and, let’s face it, much of the rest of the campus could use a renovation as well.

But I still don’t see that as an excuse to charge us more for soda. Student fees have already been raised and they will probably continue to be, so why not add in some extra money for what we can maybe assume the school can make from soda and call it even?

Personally, I will not buy into this game. I have not purchased anything from a vending machine yet this year, and I don’t plan on doing it in the future. I will gladly bring a bottle of water from home which I can reuse before I will pay an exorbitant amount for a bottle of water from a vending machine, and I urge you to do the same.

¡Viva la Revolución!

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Freshmen Meghan and Caroline Murray hang decorations on their dorm room door with the help of their friend Brooke Schmidt (far left) during Move-In Day Saturday afternoon at the Towers Complex. Kellen Jenkins/ The Bulletin.

Part I: A Freshmentality

The dawn of a new year is upon us once again. For the returning students, seeing the old sights of places like Silent Joe, the Memorial Union and William Allen White Library can bring a rush of nostalgia, sometimes followed by high levels of stress.

But freshmen have a different kind of stress. Their stress does not stem from realizing that the toils of another school year are here, but from the fact that most of them are in a very unfamiliar place. They are separated from their parents, tossed into the sea of college and are forced to either sink or swim.

Four such freshmen are Lei Zhang, Will Smith, Meghan Murray and Caroline Murray.

Meghan and Caroline Murray are two twin sisters who hail from down the road in Olpe. They decided to come to Emporia State because it is close to home, and like Olpe, is small enough to have a down-home atmosphere.

“I liked that it was one of the smaller universities because that’s what we’re used to,” Meghan said. “It would be an easier adjustment.”

Between the two of them, they participated in just about every activity their high school had to offer: Student Council, forensics, theater, volleyball, track and cheerleading, just to name a few.

“I’m excited to meet a lot more people,” Caroline said. “In Olpe, we never really met anyone, we just got really close to them. I think it will be fun to meet people and have a large group of friends so that you don’t always have to be with the same people every single weekend.”

Meghan and Caroline are no strangers to ESU. Their mother is Jacquelyn Murray, an instructor for Newman Division of Nursing. They also plan to go into different fields. Meghan is studying biology, while Caroline is working toward a degree in secondary education.

“I wanted to do speech language pathology, it’s like speech therapy,” Caroline said. “I’ll have to transfer to K-State, but I can get a degree here in education. You have to have four years and then you go apply to the school.”

The twins are also already used to their roommates, because they are rooming together. Even their room at home is approximately the same size, so they are very comfortable with their new surroundings.

“I would rather be together,” Meghan said. “I think it will make school easier. We can still meet people, we can meet everyone on the floor, but it’s nice to go somewhere that you know is private to you and comfortable.”

The girls are jumping straight into school, with Meghan taking some of her biology and chemistry courses and Caroline trying to get some general education classes out of the way. One thing that they are nervous for, however, is the trouble they will have in finding their independence from each other.

“It’s kind of the same because we’re still the twins,” Meghan said. “We’re not really separate, which kind of stinks sometimes. You want to be your own person, have someone actually know your name… We’ve already had some people say, ‘alright, we’re just going to call you the twins.’”

Another new name to ESU is Will Smith. No, not the famous Hollywood actor, but the freshman from Wylie, Texas.

“It’s a big change, coming from Texas to here, with a lot of flat land,” Smith said. “To be honest with you, I thought it would have been boring, because it’s out in the middle of nowhere. That’s not the reason why I came here though – I just want to get an education.”

Smith is studying criminology and his ultimate goal is to be a U.S. Marshall. He is cousins with Kameron Gee, a football player here at ESU, and lives in the co-ed dorms of South Towers, which he finds to be a very friendly experience.

“It’s real tight, everyone comes up to our floor, even North Tower comes up to our floor,” Smith said. “I think we have the best floor out of all of the floors there, so I’m lucky out on that part… there was a room with probably 10 people, girls and guys, just chilling.”

Smith lives about six or seven hours away and, like many freshmen who live a long distance away, he said he feels homesick. Although he gets along excellently with his new roommate, he still misses his old room and his parents.

“They’re actually really happy for me,” Smith said. “It’s saddening, but they’re really happy that I’m out and going to school, so it doesn’t matter… They actually called me today and yesterday. My mom and my dad (were crying.) I was crying, too. I’m not going to lie. I’m from Texas, it’s so far away. Maybe if I lived in Topeka or something, it wouldn’t be bad.”

For all four years of high school, Smith ran track and currently trains with the ESU Cross Country Team. He is considering doing track here, but has much higher expectations for himself after his college experience.

“I expect for me to become a man, I guess,” Smith said. “I’m not going to be babied by my parents anymore, so after college I’ll be a man, really… I’m excited. I’m ready to grow up and become a young man, living on my own, you know?”

ESU is known for its large international student population, of which Lei Zhang is a new member. Zhang is a Chinese student who attended Polytechnic University, but now must complete the Intensive English Program before she can start taking classes for her business studies.

“I hope I can start my start my major classes and get my diploma,” Zhang said. “I also hope I can enrich my life and make some new friends.”

Zhang came here with her roommate, Ziwei Li, on Aug. 9. Since then, they have moved from their temporary dorm room in the Towers to their more permanent residence in Trusler. She plans to be in Emporia for three or four years and has already met new friends.

“I met a lot of new friends, and not just Americans,” Zhang said. “I’ve met Japanese, Korean, and some from Indonesia… I think it is real interesting and I think we can get some things that are new that I would never get otherwise,” Zhang said.

As is common with many freshmen, Zhang has found that it is not very easy to be so far from home.

“It is very hard without my friends and parents because if I had some problems, I could tell them,” Zhang said. “But instead, I must solve this problem myself and not with them. So I think it will be better for me than there, but I think I can adapt to this and do my best.”

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Alex Pedersen

Emporia State University is a great school.

I respect and love this place and I have been enjoying going to school here for years. I love the teachers, the classes, the architecture, the history and, of course, all of my peers. The campus is beautiful and I am genuinely happy I chose ESU.

ESU may be fairly small, but it is moving forward, trying to become bigger as we can see with things like the Union renovation. Despite its size, ESU seems to be as open-minded and progressive as any larger school.

But we have a single designated “free speech zone” on our campus.

Ridiculous.

The entire campus should be a free speech zone, there should be absolutely no censorship on the campus.

Now, that is not to say that microphones are listening in on your conversations, waiting to hear you insult a teacher outside of the zone. It does mean that a recognized student organization, or any organization for that matter, can only proliferate propaganda on one small part of the school.

The rules are that an RSO can use chalk to advertise for something anywhere on the sidewalk on campus, but they can only write political and persuasive messages in the confines of the Union Square. Also, offensive messages are disallowed. These rules also apply for any public demonstration, like the protest against the Iraq war a few years ago.

I can understand that ESU would not want spray paint on their sidewalks or buildings, although a college that had an open graffiti policy would probably be the coolest looking school possible.

I can also see the argument against a campus-wide free speech zone. We are already bombarded with so many messages, it will only create clutter and the school could be held responsible for any offensive messages.

But we are all adults. If you ever watch more than 30 minutes of television, then you can see how you are already bombarded with persuasive messages. Every single advertisement and TV show you watch is filled with various messages on what to buy, who to believe, what to do.

I would say that it takes at least a certain amount of intelligence to come to school, so it’s safe to reason that every single student at ESU is smart enough to interpret and evaluate any message they see. If students saw the message, “do not go to class today,” it is likely that most would still go to class because we can think rationally. We are able to disagree and not follow a message’s command if we do not want to, we are all mentally competent.

So why is the school treating us like they are an overbearing parent, like we are stupid? Why do they want to censor anything that could be controversial? Why are they forcing anything with any passion into the choke hold of the Union Square?

The answer is fear. They give us the chalkboard of the Union Square because they don’t want us to write on the wall with our crayons.

It is odd that the school chose the Union Square to be its free speech zone, as it is at the heart of the school. But it is also tucked away and a very small area, it would be hard to get more than 100 people in the Square comfortably. I am reminded of a singer with a beautiful, powerful, strong voice that is forced to wear a muzzle.

A University is naturally a hub for ideas and knowledge, an exchange point for brilliance. Each day we go to class, we are trading intelligence and learning from each other. There is no need to censor us to any degree because we are all able to judge for ourselves what we believe or do not.

Fuck Censorship.

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Alex Pedersen

I met a new friend today.

I was sitting in the hallway of Roosevelt Hall before a class, bored and anxious for the class to begin. One of my classmates, a Korean guy, was sitting near me and was talking to a Korean friend of his in their native tongue.

And then a thought struck me. Not a profound one, not an unusual one. In fact, it’s so mundane that I don’t even usually realize that I think it: I wanted to meet someone. I wanted to talk to someone I’ve never talked to before, to build a connection with someone for the first time.

So I followed my whim and struck up a conversation with the two about the few Korean words I knew. Unfortunately, all of them were dirty words I could barely pronounce taught to me by a Korean-American friend of mine, but I connected anyhow. The new friend and I exchanged our names and she taught me how to say, “nice to meet you,” in Korean.

College is naturally a time of meeting new people, and we need to squeeze that social tangerine for all of its friendly juices. Emporia may not be a big school, but it is almost impossible to know everyone on campus. During this point in our lives, it is important to be bold and meet as many friends as you can.

This doesn’t mean that we have to try to become the most popular person on campus, but that we should not be scared of meeting new people.

After meeting a new friend today, I walked away feeling happy to make a new friendship and feeling accomplished, as if it’s something that doesn’t happen every day.

And that is because it doesn’t. Many people, including myself, live in a bubble of individualism. We don’t need to talk to people we don’t know and they don’t need to talk to us, so we don’t want to go out of our way.

Unfortunately, that is a silly way to think. If someone thought that way their entire life, they wouldn’t make any friends at all, so why think like that for even a second? There is so much we can learn from each other, but it is impossible to learn if you never meet the teacher.

It is also a great thing that our school has such a large number of international students. Meeting international students allows for sharing of cultures from both the international student and the American student, and that is never a bad thing. We have come to college to learn to be worldly and learning about other cultures is just that. We must have the courage to burst our ethnocentric bubble.

I’ve made hundreds of friends in college, and I think I will only make more. I also think that I will hold on to some of those friends I have met in college well into my adult life.

After college, meeting friends will be totally different. Depending on your job, you may end up working with the same people in the same department every day. It’s hard to find new friends when you’re stuck in an office doing work for several hours a day.

But we are in college, the most sociable learning institution possible. I, for example, have classes where I don’t know all of my peers. I don’t even know all of the people in my major. Although the school is small, there are always more people that we can get to know. All you need is a smile and a friendly demeanor.

So the next time that you are sitting in a hallway alone, bored and wanting to talk to someone, do it. The odds are that they will talk back to you, you’ll find out you have something in common, and you will make a new friend.

Like Benjamin Franklin never said, a friend found is a friend earned.

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We are a generation of electricity junkies.
Every time I go into the library, I see at least a few people surfing Facebook, writing messages to their friends and stalking for potential ones. I see people reading news and playing games online. Even today before writing this article, I took a test online.
The internet is all around us and can be incorporated in nearly everything we do. Our generation will “Google” something before they will use a book to research it. Hell, even the capitol of our state was named Google for a month.
And, as with any new dominant form of media, it has changed our view of the world. Our use of the Internet has shaped our generation into something quite different than any before. The Internet has made us lazier, more prone to distraction and more self-absorbed.
It should be remembered that the Internet has affected more than our generation, but ours is the one that has latched onto and revolutionized it. Younger generations will be the same, but they may even have their own technological advancement that trumps ours.
To analyze the importance of the Internet to society, we first have to look at the past. Marshall McLuhan was an English professor at the University of Toronto who came up with the theory of media ecology.
Media ecology is the idea that all of human history is divided into four ages, or epochs, that are determined by what is the dominant medium is the time. The dominant media then affects how we view the world. He coined the term, “the medium is the message” to sum this idea up.
The four ages are the tribal age, the literate age, the print age and the electronic age. The according dominant mediums of the ages were acoustic music, written word for the few, print word for the masses and finally radio and television.
McLuhan died before the debut of the Internet, so we can only guess what he would have thought of it. Some who have studied his work would say the internet would create a new age and others would lump it into the electronic age.

I personally think that while the internet isn’t the dawn of a new age, it is a stepping stone between two. We are, at the very least, exiting the electronic age and entering the digital age.
So what does that mean? To me, it shows a dangerous future. McLuhan himself said that the electronic age is a part of society’s push to go back to the tribal age, saying that we have become a global village. This is because of the instant communication available to us allows us to communicate across the globe before you could even hand write it.
What it really has done is allowed us total personalization to a completely unnecessary degree. It has increased our overall inflated idea of individuality to make us narcissistic. This is evident by looking at most of our peers’ Facebook pages and at every single old abandoned MySpace page.
The very nature of the internet tends to make us flighty and unfocused. It isn’t very easy to concentrate on writing or researching when your favorite tower defense game or any number of random YouTube clips is just a click away. And that ease also leads to procrastination, a disease that plagues us college students all of the time.
If we keep going on this road, we will only become more and more absorbed into the digital world. We already text things to people who are with us in the room, how long will it be before we text message someone instead of physically talking to them all of the time? Our drive for closeness to others only leads us to go through the easiest possible route, which is a path of depersonalization.
So perhaps the next time you’re checking your Facebook, maybe you’ll think to put your face in a book instead.

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Alex Pedersen

There has been a buzz, pardon the pun, around campus recently about a potential new recognized student organization which advocates pro-life legislation and action.

            In the Feb. 18 issue of The Bulletin, Lauren Walbridge wrote a story on Students for Life and their struggle for RSO status. They are hoping to get the three things they need to gain status, which are enough signatures to fill a petition, an advisor and approval from ASG.

            I respect their beliefs and fully support their vying for RSO status and would even agree with giving them allocation money, but I think they are outright wrong. If you believe that abortion is wrong, then don’t get an abortion. But it is arrogant to try to take away free choice based on a religious belief and, in this Midwest hotbed of heaven-hungry activity, we must keep that in mind at all times.

            I understand that being pro-life is typically a religious belief and those are hard to change, but I find it wrong in any situation to justify forcing others to do or not do things based on a belief that they may not share.

            Back to Students for Life, I will give a hearty thumbs-up to any group trying to become an RSO because it increases cohesion in our university. Like-minded people tend to gravitate towards each other anyway, and by allowing them to meet on campus and have a more official, professional setting, it allows students to find more interests that maybe they didn’t know they had, meet new friends and practice group communication skills they will undoubtedly have to use in the future.

            As for funding, that is for ASG to decide. I think that every group should receive equal funding, regardless of their goals. Every student organization, even RSO’s that are based around a hobby, is persuasive in nature: they try to get you to join whatever they are doing, attend their events etc.

            We shouldn’t tell ASG to cut funding from one organization because they have a religious message if we have another that is based on a political view, culture, or hobby. As long as it is for learning purposes, ASG should allocate money to it properly because that’s what the money is there for.

            I can understand the pro-life argument, that it should be a higher power’s choice when, where and how each person should die. That from the moment of conception or heart-beating or whatever you define it as, it is a living creature and should be treated as such.

            But there are many instances that this ideal does not quite work in. Should a woman be allowed to abort a child if she was raped? What if having the child could endanger the mother’s life? What if the child would die in a short amount of time anyway? These are finer points which are not addressed with a simple, “abortion is wrong,” outlook.

            If one argues any of these by saying, “God planned for this child to be in the woman, rape (or what have you) aside,” then it could easily be retorted by proposing that God then planned for the woman to have an abortion. This gets into the free will argument, and, again, I’m not trying to argue religious beliefs in this.

            There is also the outlook that abortion is torturous for the fetus but, given the choice, I would much rather be an aborted fetus and have a few minutes of pain than something that is a socially acceptable tortured creature, such as a veal calf.

            And say pro-life legislation was passed, what would happen? Women won’t stop getting abortions if they choose to have one. How many fatalities would back-alley abortions cause?           What would be the punishment of those caught receiving an illegal abortion?

            The issue raises a lot of questions, but I think that the viewpoint that abortion is downright immoral is far from a proper one for a civilized society to have.

            So, Students for Life, I dig your fight and I wish you the best of luck, but I think you need to separate yourself from your religious ideals for a moment and ponder what this could mean for women and society altogether.

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Alex Pedersen

On Thursday, Feb. 4, police officers in Lawrence raided an herb store named Sacred Journeys and took, among other herbs, their stock of a drug known primarily as K2.

For those of you who don’t know, K2 is a brand name for herbs sprayed with JW-018 and JW-073, two synthetic cannabinoids, which is sold as a potpourri or incense, according to an article from Lawrence Journal-World. However, it is usually inhaled into the lungs via zig-zigs, bong, or the tried and true glass pipe.

This is because, as you may have guessed from the word, “cannabinoids,” these chemicals give a feeling similar to that given by marijuana. The effects have a shorter duration, but people have found that they can smoke K2 and pass urine tests, hence the craze. Some other brand names are Spice, Genie and Zohai, according to one Associated Press article.

Yes, I just said Associated Press. Though, according to another Associated Press article, the legislation to ban K2 was passed by the Kansas Senate and House of Representatives and it is apparently a big enough story for even AP to cover.

To me, this whole banning of K2 reinforces the idea that the majority of Kansas, and Emporia as well, is considerably less open-minded than they should be.

If K2 even appeared at a store in Emporia, I have no doubt it would be run out of town within hours of the public hearing that it is somewhat like weed.

You should realize that K2 is not something that matters to me. I may have indulged in it once or twice when it was legal, but I hold no loyalty to it. I am more concerned with that fact that Kansas legislators will criminalize a drug simply because it’s a drug.

For example, Kansas Sen. Jim Barnett, a republican from here in Emporia, said of K2: “It’s an imitation drug, but it’s still a drug,” as quoted in another LJ-World article.

In truth, they have made it illegal because its high is like ganja’s. Their prejudice against herb apparently includes anything that looks, smells, tastes and especially gets you high like herb.

My belief is that the best solution for K2, as with each and every drug, is to legalize and regulate it. By making any illegal, legislators are doing several things. They are gaining some money for probation and court costs, but they are losing far more by paying for incarceration and by missing out on the taxation they could place on it, were it regulated.

And, perhaps most notably, they are strengthening the black market which they are trying to take down. I met a girl a few weeks ago in Lawrence who told me that she had driven to Missouri that day to buy K2 because she was in some sort of trouble with the law and was required to take urinary analysis.

I can only think that if this same thing were to happen to a chemical that was similar to alcohol and not cannabis, the story would play out much differently.

Let’s hope that eventually Kansas and Emporia will grow beyond their small-town paranoia and take things as they are, not as they are scared they may be.

Why can’t we have hugs and drugs?

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Alex Pedersen

The holiday brings up many iconic images – red paper hearts, the colorful Valentine’s Day cards we shared as children, the disgusting, chalk-flavored candy hearts, flowers, Cupid, etc. It has been touted as the most romantic holiday and has been shunned as a practice of materialism. Whatever it is, one can see its presence all over, even on our own campus.
            It seems that most of the people who do not like Valentine’s Day feel the way they do because they don’t want to spend money on a meaningless day just because it’s a social norm or because they don’t have anyone to share the day with.
            But Valentine’s Day should not be a day in which we begrudgingly buys gifts and dinner for someone else or a day when we stay at home and watch sad movies all night. It should be a day for enjoying love and life and being happy that we have what we have.
            If you have a significant other, or “lover,” you know that Valentine’s Day can be an expensive endeavor. We Americans have a tendency to show our love towards each other with material goods, it’s only normal in our culture. But where is the love in buying a box of candies made on an assembly line? Where is the romance in taking out a loan for flowers that will die in a week or a mass-produced card?
            When you feel the materialist blues, simply don’t buy into them. Talk to your partner about having a buy-free Valentine’s Day. Any rational lover would appreciate a hand-made gift that required time and effort over a store-bought one. Cooking a meal together is much more romantic than going out to an expensive restaurant. But I stress talking to your lover first, or you may end up embarrassed.
            Then of course, there is the gloom of facing a Valentine’s Day single. Staying at home in a puddle of self-pity and various movies can be trying on a soul. Although I can understand that this is a very frightening prospect, I see it as a boon instead.
            A single person can enjoy a completely buy-free Valentine’s Day, if they want. Even if they don’t want to be alone, they do not have to spend a single cent on anyone else if they do not want to. Union Activities Council is having a free two-minute speed dating session that night from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom. They also have the opportunity to hook up with others who are single in a bar, since there are less couples diluting the concentration of singles on Valentine’s Day.
            All in all, Valentine’s Day is a wonderful day. It is the official day of our culture to celebrate romance and no one should cry or whine about the day, as it is in their power to make it better. If you do not want to spend money, then work out a cheap date. If you become depressed because you are single, think of all of the reasons why it is good to be single. Do not let this celebration of love pass by you because you are scared.
            Because, as some wise sages once said, “Love is all you need.”

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While meandering through our campus the other day, a thought struck me: there are a lot of Asians on campus.

This is nothing new to me, I have been attending school here for years and I am proud of our student exchange program and all the work that they do. I also love meeting the Asian students and I am friends with several. I am also taking my second semester of Chinese here at Emporia State, so I particularly enjoy talking to Chinese people.

Talking to Chinese exchange students and my Chinese teacher, I have heard stories of the Chinese government that have shocked, confused and intrigued me. Of course, China is not the country it was under Mao Zedong. It has changed into a more capitalist country in many ways, at the very least economically.

But, despite economic reform, China still clutches on to the remnants of social totalitarianism that occurs in modern communism and, for the sake of China’s future, they need to drop it.

Deng Xiaoping developed the Social Market economic system that China now uses, which relies on the private sector to survive. This makes the nature of their economy very capitalistic, and it has served China well. They have the fourth highest Gross Domestic Product, according to the CIA World Handbook.

And, according to BBC News, China overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter last month. It is undeniable that China’s economy is growing strong. So for such a modern country, it is odd to see all of the things that the Chinese government has been doing to control its people.

Since China was ruled by emperors, the government was always seen as an overbearing and stern, although wise, father figure. This is one explanation of why the Chinese go along with the government, but I don’t think it’s an excuse for what the government does.

Of course, there is the Google incident. Google refused to censor information and they were hacked, supposedly by the Chinese government, Google refused to release two android phones in China and the fight goes on, like a quarrel between two bratty children.

I am against all forms of government-mandated censorship and I feel that China has gone too far.  I believe it is the government’s responsibility to, in fact, make information as available as possible.

And it is not just through information censorship that China is showing its despotic side. Just last Friday, according to a Global Post article by Dinah Gardner, China’s first gay beauty pageant was broken up by police. The police told the organizer that there problem wasn’t with the homosexuality, but that a show with singing and dancing required certain procedures which they had not followed.

The organizers did not believe them, but they were no match for eight armed police officers. While homosexuality is becoming more accepted, high-profile events such as this are still antagonized by the government.

China is well on its way to becoming the next world super power, but it is restrained by its government. While they have made steps in the right direction, the government still uses its authority to control the masses.

Hopefully, with the patience and wisdom that the Chinese are known for, such closed-mindedness will recede and the government will realize that the Chinese people and culture are not to be policed, but nourished, encouraged and proudly displayed.

Deng Xiaoping once said, “When our thousands of Chinese students abroad return home, you will see how China will transform itself,” and I certainly hope that he was correct.

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Alex Pedersen

Recently in my Introduction to Chemistry class, we learned the finer points of how global warming happens – how carbon dioxide breaks the natural cycle of free radicals in the atmosphere and how carbon dioxide itself is trapping heat. In fact, the third chapter of our book is titled, “The Chemistry of Global Warming.”

But it blew my mind when my father laughed at me for believing in global warming, as if I were talking about Santa Claus. My mind continued to be blown to find that some of my own peers at this school feel the same way.

The truth is that global warming is a phenomenon that is killing the Earth as we know it and it is the fault of humans. If you disagree, look at some scientific evidence and you will see what scientists have been seeing for years: it is no fairy tale.

Before a couple of years ago, not very many people had much of a grasp as to what global warming is. It wasn’t until “An Inconvenient Truth” that the issue was thrust into the public eye. Unfortunately, because it was a movie by Al Gore, the ecological issue instantly became a political one.

Dissenters of all things liberal (which includes all things Gore) immediately saw it as paranoia and saw Gore himself as simply searching for limelight. Whether or not Gore was looking for fame, the issue that he brought up is still very poignant.

It’s a fairly simple concept: humans have put things into the air that are not supposed to be there – mostly carbon dioxide from engines and methane from livestock –  and those additives are trapping the sun’s heat.

From 1860 to 2000, Earth has experienced its greatest raise in temperature and carbon dioxide concentration in 130,000 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

However, it was a multitude of volcanoes that produced carbon dioxide 130,000 years ago and they stopped, allowing the carbon dioxide to deplete its lifetime. Now, we have gotten to the same level of heat and carbon dioxide and we show no sign of slowing down.

Many people who think that global warming does not exist believe that the increased global temperature is simply part of a natural cycle, and that may be a factor, but it is undeniable that the level of carbon dioxide has risen dramatically since the industrial revolution and, according to my chemistry book, carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas. It’s not hard to combine these two factors.

Many of these nay-sayers are also the people who refer to global warming as “climate change,” a term coined by Frank Luntz, public relations puppeteer of conservatives, to make the issue seem less frightening.

“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Luntz wrote in a memo to President Bush, obtained by the Environmental Working Group. “Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

Unfortunately, he was listened to and some people believed it. Fortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of scientists from around the world, also put out their findings. They stated that they are 90 to 99 percent certain that, “human-caused emissions are the main factor in causing warming since 1950,” and they are one to 10 percent certain that, “the observed warming over the past 100 years is due to climate variability alone,” according to the IPCC.

Of course, if you don’t believe me, I urge you to do research in scientific fields and decide for yourself. The fact is that global warming is real and is a man-made problem. We must do all in our power, as individuals and human beings as a whole, to stem the problem before it gets any worse.

Mother Nature gave us life and she can take it away just as easily.

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Alex Pedersen

In a mere two days, it will be Halloween.

It is a time that has always left excitement in the core of my being. There is just something about the sight of flame colored leaves falling and plastic Frankenstein’s monsters that get me pumped for dressing up like Mr. White from “Reservoir Dogs” and getting hammered off of trash can punch.
Even in a small college town like Emporia, this weirdly wonderful freak-fest of a holiday is always an interesting one. There are bands playing, constant trick-or-treating, parties and, of course, the Haunted Homecoming.
But it saddens me when I ask someone what they are going to be for Halloween, and they reply with apathy. “Meh, I don’t care. I don’t like dressing up. Halloween isn’t a big deal to me.”

I simply do not understand how people can dislike Halloween because, to me, it is a holiday that is not only a socially healthy night of catharsis, but is a wild jumble of historic traditions from every culture associated with it, even Christianity.
Halloween was originally a Celtic holiday celebrated on Nov. 1 called Samhain (which, for some Celtic reason, was pronounced sow-in) which marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter and the new year, according to a Washington Post article.
The Celts believed that spirits could enter the living world during this time to both plague and bless the living. They would offer food and drink outside of their house to appease the spirits and wear costumes, usually made of animal skins, to hide their identity from spirits who would hurt them, according to an article by Bettina Arnold, co-director for the Center for Celtic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Roman Catholic Church, partially in an effort to stop pagan rituals, created All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows Day, on Nov. 1, which was celebrated by dressing up as saints, angels and demons. Oct. 31 then became known as “All Hallow’s Eve,” according to The History Channel.
Native American culture also influenced modern-day Halloween. The pumpkin was unknown to Europeans before they came to America, so original Jack-o-Lanterns were carved out of turnips, according to The Washington Post article.
In America, many initial settlers did not celebrate Halloween very much, but immigrants from Ireland popularized it and, by the 1930s, it had become secular and community based, but was synonymous with vandalism, according to the History Channel. In the 1950s, it became aimed towards young children and now, it is a celebration for both young and old.
Apart from trick-or-treating, getting drunk and wearing slutty costumes, Halloween is sociologically healthy for us. It allows people to partially break social norms, as long as those straying are within other social norms. For instance, only during Halloween is it acceptable to dress as Michael Myers, but it is still not acceptable to actually stab people.
This is obviously an extreme example, but it shows how we can let ourselves go a little bit into a fantasy, but still go back to life as usual the next day. The Washington Post article calls this “ritual reversal” and basically says that it is a designated time to bring up dark issues in a fairly controlled and public manner. All human beings do this and Halloween is just our culture’s version.
So you still have two days. You can be lazy and show up to a party in your everyday clothes, or you can participate in the bonanza of the bizarre and revel in life a bit, before we end up like the ghosts and skeletons we dress up as.
Happy Halloween, bitches.

Alex Pedersen/The Bulletin

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