Mirror - Vol. 10, No. 17 - November 20, 1986

              The
FairfieldMIRRORy Volume 10, No. 17 Our Tenth Year Thursday, November 20, 1986 The Image of Fairfield
Administration Adopts New Get Tough Townhouse Policy
by Connie McKenna
News Editor
In a letter dated November 13, Richard
Rossi, Director of Student Residences, in-formed
townhouse residents of new policy
guidelines governing townhouse social ac-tivities.
The primary restriction requires all so-cial
activities in the units with an attendance
greater than 16 people to be registered at the
Office of Student Residences or at the
Townhouse Office no later than 4:30 p.m.
on the Thursday preceding the event. The
registration of parties requires submission
of the names of townhouse residents who
will be in attendance during the event and
who will also be held responsible for any
inappropriate behavior that may occur.
A second development in the policy
limits the number of people who may be in
attendance at a townhouse event. Accord-ing
to Rossi's letter, University Fire Mar-shall
Gary Stevens has reviewed the space
available in the townhouses and recom-mends
that no more than 50 people be in-side
at one time if both the main floor and
basement are being used. This guideline is
based on fire code restrictions.
Rossi's correspondence warned that all
other policies of the University will still be
in effect, and he admonished that "if
problems continue to occur after institution
ofthese new policies, other restrictions may
have to be placed on townhouse residents,
such as a loss of keg priveleges or other res-trictions
not yet determined."
According to Rossi, the changes im-plemented
are not sudden and shouldn't be
unexpected, but rather are the result of
ever-increasing problems with townhouse
social activities which lead to violations of
WOODWELL DISCUSSES ENVIRONMENT
By Scott R. Davis
The second of the Olin Corporation
sponsored-lectures was given by Dr.
George Woodwell in the Nursing Audito-rium.
His talk, entitled "The environmen-tal
problem. A scientific perspective," gave
another approach to dealing with the en-
Jal dilemmas we face today.
Woodwell opened his talk by stating that
"the earth is a biotic system that is running
down and requires our attention." The eco-logical
issues have now become very im-portant
to our lives. As the population has
grown in the past century, this has created
a greater demand on resources. Man is bet-ter
able to use resources from technology..
Woodwell stated that "the biggest ecolog-ical
problem has been a change in the cli-mate
from a rise in the carbon dioxide
levels." This has received much attention
because many forests have been cut down
and fossil fuels have been burnt. This has
changed the atmosphere's ability to hold
heat. Woodwell stated that "the carbon di-oxide
concentration could double by the
early part of the 21st century." This will
result in the warming of the earth from 1.5
to 4 degrees Celsius^ Woodwell stated that
"these changes will not occur evenly and
uniformly and could greatly affect the
poles. This will result in a massive die-off
of forests without a replacement of the
forests and is an unacceptable biological
impoverishment."
Woodwell gave another example of how
the environment has been affected from
nuclear energy and war. He stated that
"there would probably be 1 billion deaths
if 10,000 to 15,000 megatons ofTNT were
to be used in a nuclear war. This could
result in a freezing of the earth for days or
even months." Nuclear power at first was
"intended to be a cheap source of power yet
it has been extremely expensive, complex,
and mismanaged."
A final example of the problems from
nuclear energy is the Chernobyl accident
that has created radioactive deaths and con-taminated
areas. Woodwell stressed that
"this hazard is too great because of bad
management and terrorism in the world."
From the carbon dioxide and nuclear
energy problems, Woodwell stated that
there are important lessons to be learned.
We must not experiment with the at-mosphere
since it can be costly to correct
errors. In order to deal with these
problems, we must "talk about, argue and
examine them and make this a part of our
lives so that change can occur."
Finally, Woodwell mentioned that we
need to invent a new way to enforce
government to obey the laws designed to
protect the environment." The whole em-phasis
of the talk can be summed up from
the opening statement that "the world is a
biotic system," and if it is allowed to oper-ate
well, we will be able to have clean water
and air."
[Photo by Marc Belanger George Woodwell]
... CVK/ 35* vSViopptr^ TDAMS Le£+-(
the University alcohol policy, extensive
noise, and overcrowding within the units.
Last spring, Michael Miller met with
William Schimpf, Vice President of Stu-dent
Services, to discuss these problems.
The alternatives offered included more ex-tensive
programming in the residence halls
in order to make townhouse parties less at-tractive.
"This", stated Rossi, "obviously
didn't work out, since by late fall we still
had too many townhouse situations requir-ing
staff intervention."
On September 25, all townhouse resi-dents
received a letter from Rossi remind-ing
them of their responsibilities and
cautioning them to take greater control over
their social activities. Commented Rossi, "I
really don't think the new policy guidelines
should come as a shock to anyone. To me
they're the next logical step, since neither
alternative programming nor warnings
have curbed behavioral problems. We
needed a better control factor."
Rossi stated that he sees no reason to be-lieve
that the modified policy will be tem-porary,
noting that although the subject will
be open for discussion, it will be in place
on a long-term basis.
Members of the FUSA Cabinet called an
emergency meeting last Friday to discuss
the new policy guidelines. According to the
Cabinet minutes of the meeting, there was
general dissent as to the acceptability of the
policy, the speed with which it was devised
and implemented, and the lack of student
input. According to Rossi, neither speed
nor student input is an issue, since "the new
guidelines deal with problems reaching
back as far as last spring, and have evolved
only because students have not adhered to
the rules already in place."
Chris McNulty, Director of Academics
in the FUSA Cabinet, notes that many
FUSA members feel that the new policy is
a violation of the existing townhouse con-tract.
States McNulty ,"The policy changes
represent new terms, rules and regulations
being added to an existing contract. We're
presently consulting an outside attorney to
find whether or not this is a breach of con-tract."
A strong opposition to the policy
proposals, according to McNulty, lies in the
fact that Rossi did not clear his new rules
through the University Council."Rossi
views his changes as mere guidelines, while
they are actually separate rules and regu-lations,
which must be approved by the
University Council."McNulty plans to have
the policy changes discussed at the next
University Council meeting, which will oc-cur
the first week in December. "We under-stand
that for safety reasons a maximum
number of people allowed at a townhouse
event must be instituted,"comments
McNulty, "but what we really want to
change is the time limit on the registration
process, which Rossi said could be
negotiated, and a ruling on whether or not
it's a breach of contract."
Student reaction to the new policy has
generally been negative. Tom Hulse-man,'
87, comments, "it's just another step
by the administration to dictate student be-havior
rather than to try to control it." Rich
Berger, '88, notes, "it's another way of res-tricting
the freedom that we deserve and
supposedly are supposed to have."
Forum Begins Oxfam Awareness
By Connie McKenna
News Editor
The Faith and Justice coalition sponsored
a forum on hunger last Tuesday, kicking off
a week of activities related to Hunger
Awareness Week. Included is today's Ox-fam
fast.
Four speakers shared their personal ex-periences
on or about hunger including Dr.
Paul Lakeland, Alice McCormack, Fr. Si-mon
Harak, and Fr. Bill Cullen.
Dr. Lakeland spoke of his experiences
working with Blackfeet Indians in Mon-tana,
and his amazement at their ability to
share and give, even when there was little
left for themselves, including food.
Lakeland also asserted that the poor view
the bible as an "unmixed blessing", since it
clearly says that we should be charitable
towards, and show respect for the poor and
hungry.
Alice McCormack next discussed her ex-periences
in working at the Merton House,
a soup kitchen in Bridgeport where, she
stated, 180 to 250 underpriveleged people
are served lunch each day. McCormack
also cited that the number of people seek-ing
food at the soup kitchen has more than
tripled since 1981, a fact which she attribut-ed
to President Reagan's 57 billion dollar
cut in federal programs designed to help the
poor. The main types of people utilizing the
Merton House, according to McCormack,
are those with drug and alcohol problems
who may have grown up in a poor class and
been unable to escape it, people with psy-chiatric
problems who, due to spending
cuts, were released after 20 or 30 years in
an institution, and young people with mini-mum
wage jobs who only have enough
money to pay their rent. McCormack em-phasized
that spending time with the poor
was not a "bummer", and that the real
challenge is allowing oneself to actually see
the poor and the dispicable conditions in
which they live.
Fr. Simon Harak next shared his difficul-ties
with fasting, relating that it took him six
years before he was finally able to fast for
an entire day. He suggested that thinking
about the person on people being fasted for
eases the difficulties. He advocated that the
the more one was able to give up for some-one,
the more strong and compassionate
he/she would become.
Questioning whether or not today's soci-ety
values food, Fr. Bill concluded the fo- ,
rum by relating his experiences growing up v
in the midst of the depression. He contrast-ed
his views of food then with or seeming
lack of regard for the luxury of being able
to eat as much as we want, citing food fights
as an example of this blatant disregard. He
concluded, "many of us simply don't value
our abundance of food for the precious gift
that it really is."
Happy Thanksgiving}
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