Mirror - Vol. 10, No. 15 - November 06, 1986

              The
FairfieldMIRROR^ Volume 10, No. 15 Our Tenth Year Thursday, November 6, 1986 The Image of Fairfield
Final Stag-her Decision Delayed at Council Meeting
By John Courtmanche
In a unanimous decision, the University
Council voted last week to permit Coffee-house
programming on Thursday nights in
the Stag-Her, at least until the end of the
semester. This decision is temporary, pend-ing
results to a survey recommended by the
council.
The survey could decide the fate of the
longstanding tradition of Thursday night
Coffeehouses: live bands in a safe,
University-controlled social atmosphere.
Members of the Faculty and Academic Ad-ministration
will be polled to determine the
correlation between academic and social
life and to help the University solve the
problem of academic apathy due to overt
social activities.
Three main areas will be covered by the
survey: One, are the Thursday night
Coffeehouses a .contributing or symbolic
problem? Two, is the general collegiate
"three-day" weekend attitude a problem?
Three, is there a broader problem at play
here, for instance, a problem which can be
traced to ignorant ideals of alcohol con-sumption,
to lackadaisical Faculty atti-tudes,
to faulty registration procedures, or
even to lame administrative policies?
As Mr. William Schimpf, Vice President
of Student Services, pointed out, The Stag-
Her does the best job of controlling drink-ing
of any club in Fairfield County." Still,
he said, "The Stag-Her is symbolic. The in-stitution,"
the administration at Fairfield
University, "does not endorse Thursday
night partying."
James Fitzpatrick, Assistant Dean of the
Campus Center and University Activities,
added, "Students who decide to go out on
Thursdays will go out whether the Stag-Her
is open or not." And "to have a successful
event in the Stag-Her, you'd have to have.
Nicaraguan Discusses Citizenship
By Jedd Sherman
Last Tuesday night, Sophia Clark, first
secretary of the Nicaraguan Embassy in
Washington, discussed Nicaraguan-U.S.
relations with a full audience in the Nurs-ing
Auditorium. The Latin-American and
Caribbean Studies Program sponsored the
lecture, which lasted well over two hours.
It covered many aspects of Nicaragua in-cluding:
history, culture, and current rela-tions
with Cuba, Russia, and the United
States.
Nicaragua, roughly the size of Iowa, is
bordered by El Salvador and Honduras on
the north and by Costa Rica on the south.
Nicaragua has only 3.4 million inhabitants,
the majority consisting of Spanish-speaking
persons of Spanish-Indian ancestry on the
Pacific coast and a minority of English-speaking
Miskito indians, who are in-digenous
to Nicaragua's Atlantic coast.
Nicaragua, an agrarian society, ex-perienced
great changes when a political
movement known as the Frente Sandinista
de Liberacion Nacional successfully over-threw
the corrupt Somoza dictatorship. So-ciological
ideas of land reform and the
Nicaraguan people's right for self-determination
fueled the revolution. Clark
related that for the past forty-five years,
General Anastasio Somoza had been a pup-pet
of the U.S. government, ignoring what
was best for his people. He backed U.S.
policies in exchange for personal wealth
and maintained a small aristocracy consist-ing
of wealthy landowners who became
rich off the campesinos. Much of the
Nicaraguan population consisted of cam-pesinos;
landless farmers forced out of
desperation and poverty to work for meager
wages. The campesinos and other exploit-
OLIN LECTURE SERIES CONTINUES
Dr. George M. Woodwell, an interna-tionally
recognized expert in biology, ecol-ogy
and conservation, will speak at
Fairfield University on Wednesday,
November 12 at 8 p.m. in the School of
Nursing Auditorium on "The Environmen-tal
Problem: A Scientific Perspective." It is
the second in a series of three lectures fund-ed
by the Olin Corporation which is ex-amining
the business, scientific and
philosophical issues of maintaining a safe
environment.
The founder and director of the Woods
Hole Research Center of the Hudson River
Foundation for Science, Dr. Woodwell has
made a special study of the ecological ef-fects
of ionizing radiation, pesticides and
other toxins. He has edited books on the ef-fects
of nuclear war and the global carbon
cycle and published over 200 papers in
ecology.
Dr. Woodwell served as Chairman of the
Board of Directors of the World Wildlife
Fund from 1980-84 and is a founder and
honorary member of the National Acade-my
of Sciences Committee on Internation-al
Environmental Programs, a member of
the Climate Research Board Committee on
the C02 Problem and Chair of the 1983
Conference on the Long-Term Worldwide
Biological Consequences of Nuclear War.
He is founding trustee of the World
Resources Institute of Washington, D.C.
A native of Cambridge, Mass., Dr.
Woodwell holds a bachelor's degree from
Dartmouth College and a master's and doc-toral
degrees from Duke Unviersity.
Fairfield Receives Grant
The Occidental Chemical Corporation
has awarded Fairfield University a $10,000
unrestricted grant.
In making the announcement, Charles A.
Dana, Jr., vice president for public affairs
at Occidental, noted that the company is "a
relative newcomer to Fairfield County,"
having relocated its corporate headquarters
to Darien less than three years ago. "As a
corporation we want to continue to make
Fairfield County a better area. We have
been impressed with Fairfield University
and wanted to become more involved."
Unrestricted gifts help the university
meet general operational costs as well as
provide academic support in areas such as
library materials, lab equipment and sup-plies,
and financial aid, explained Fredric
C. Wheeler, director of development at
Fairfield. "Generous gifts, such as the one
from Occidental Chemical, further enhance
Fairfield's educational programs. Private
sector support has contributed meaningful-ly
to Fairfield's academic well-being."
it on Thursday. On Fridays and Saturdays,
people go elsewhere."
Mr. Fitzpatrick then recommended that
FUSA do a survey of student attitudes con-cerning
Thursday night programming.
Mike Miller, FUSA President, came before
the council and stated, "FUSA has done a
poll —we have 830 responses." He said the
results were being processed, but upon in-itial
inspection it seems underclassmen
don't mind being excluded from the of-legal-
age-only Coffeehouses —students are
generally satisfied with FUSA's
programming.
Dr. James Farnham, professor of En-glish,
summarized the feelings of anguish
experienced by the University Council and
the University Community regarding a lack
of conclusion. "The Community Life Com-mittee
has met twice," he said, "and the're-lation
between social life and academics
was discussed." The three-day weekend is
a reality, they concluded. "Is it desirable or
undesirable? We tried to be open-minded."
Farnham said the committee was con-fused
further on the issue of the institution's
role—"should it be a behavioral model for
students? Is the institution obligated to set
an example?"
Farnham wholly supported the idea of a
faculty survey. "Many negative comments
(about social life) come from faculty. We
need hard data from the faculty and aca-demic
administration. There's bad stuff go-ing
on in terms of consumption of alcohol,"
Farnham added. "That's my own opinion."
Sofia Clark, an ex-Fairfield student, discusses her views on Nicaraguan government.
[Photo by Andrea Whitehouse]
ed groups joined the F.S.L.N. and over-threw
Somoza's corrupt government in July
of 1979.
The new Nicaraguan government (The
Sandinistans) has tried to improve the poor
conditions in Nicaragua but has come
across many unforeseen difficulties due to
U.S. intervention. Sophia Clark does not
approve of U.S. intervention in Nicaraguan
affairs and sees it as an unfair contest be-tween
an impoverished third world nation
and the strongest nation on Earth. Current-ly,
one billion dollars for various plans have
been appropriated by Congress to help the
new revolution (CONTRAS), led by mem-bers
of Somoza's National Guard.
The current war in Nicaragua has left
17,000 dead, 7,000 war orphans, and
33,000 victims of war(i.e. refugees, dis-placed,
injured, etc) out of a population of
3.4 million. In addition 61 health posts and
48 schools have been destroyed. Over 500
schools have been attacked by CONTRAS
and just last week, a school bus filled with
children hit a CONTRA landmine, killing
seven. These attacks hurt innocent people
and must be stopped, she said. The
Nicaraguans don't want to hurt the U.S. so
Continued on page 2
Merrill Lynch Donates $100,000
The Merrill Lynch & Co. Foundation,
Inc. has awarded Fairfield University
$100,000 to provide financial aid for
minority students, it was announced by the
Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., university
president. "The grant will establish a Mer-rill
Lynch endowed scholarship and Fair-field
University will designate the
recipients as Merrill Lynch scholars. The
gift will help the university pursue its com-mitment
to minority education,"he said.
Father Kelley addded that the universi-ty's
long range plan calls for special efforts
to raise the funds necessary to help minority
students attend Fairfield University. In
thanking the Merrill Lynch Foundation,
Father Kelley observed that the establish-ment
of the scholarship fund would have a
dramatic impact on the universty's desire to
increase its financial aid capabilities as well
as provide leadership for other potential
benefactors.
Daniel P. Tully, president and chief
operating officer of Merrill Lynch and a
Fairfield University trustee, said: "Fairfield
University is providing quality education to
all students. We are pleased that the Univer-sity
has decided to designate our gift to es-tablish
this scholarship fund for minority
students."
In 1985, educational organizations and
institutions received more than $1.7 mil-lion,
35 percent of the firm's total giving,
through direct corporate contributions, the
Merrill Lynch Foundation, and the match-ing
gifts to education program.
"Through both the voluntary efforts of
our charitable contributions, Merrill Lynch
is committed to enhancing the communities
we serve," said James E. Murphy, senior
vice president of communications and
president of the Merrill Lynch Founda-tion."
Support of educational institutions
known for their academic excellence, such
as Fairfield University, is an example of
how we strive to fulfill this commitment."
Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. previously donat-ed
to Fairfield University 37 IBM person-nal
computers, valued at more than
$100,000, for the use by faculty and stu-dents
in the College of Arts and Science; the
School of Business; the School of Nursing
audio visual center; and the School of
Graduate and Continuing Education.
Inside This Week
News 1 & 2
Editorials 4
Commentary 5
Features 6&7
Arts & Entertainment .... 10, 11, 12
Doonesbury 14
Sports.... 15 & 16