Mirror - Vol. 17, No. 09 - November 19, 1992

              The
FairfieldMRRORV Volume 17, No. 9 Thursday, November 19, 1992 Happy Thanksgiving
Times Article Airs Fairfield's
Dirty Laundry
Lynn Marchetti
Staff Writer
Spreading across three
pages and boasting two photo-graphs,
the never-ending Students
vs. Town of Fairfield battle re-ceived
yet more publicity this week
in an article featured in The New
York Times.
The article depicted the
Good Neighbor/Bad Neighbor situ-ation
in the Time's Connecticut
Weekly section.
The Times piece was full
of honest opinion quotes that came
from virtually every party involved
in this perpetual squabble.
Students Nicole Minore
and Martin Pierce were quoted,
along with some of their nice and
not-so-nice year-round neighbors.
The article is rounded out with
quotes from the University admin-istration.
' Ofall weekends, thejour-nalists
chose Alumni Weekend to
do their on-the-scene reporting.
Understandably, the spirits were
high and the alcohol abounded that
weekend.
There were lines at the
Seagrape bar, the cops gave out
lots of tickets, and the cabs were
everywhere. So this is exactly what
they wrote about—as if every
Lantern Point, the center of controversy. photo: L.Marchetti
weekend were like that one.
Going right to the source,
family neighbors had a chance to
speak their mind.
Gretchen Hauser raises
a family in the middled of the stu-dent-
populated area, amongst "89
animal houses," in her own words.
But Edel Kollar and
Sandi Boback had only nice things
to say about the students. Kollar
uses some students for babysitting,
and Boback said the students don't
bother her. "I rarely hear any-thing,"
she said.
Steven Levine owns the
Seagrape, a popular bar amongst
students, mostly because ofits con-venient
location near the student
beach houses. He calls this battle a
"political football," because he
feels the students are an "easy tar-get
for the town's powerful lead-ers."
He summed up the situa-tion
very well by putting things
into perspective: "Of the 6,000
beach residents, 400 of them are
students."
Murray Farber, the
University's Public Relations di-rector,
reminds us that the univer-sity
has no legal right to tell the
students where to live.
Best of all, Vice Presi-dent
of Student Services William
Schimpf had some great things to
say about the situation, that will
make the students happy. He points
out the significant reduction in the
size of the off-campus pool, re-minding
us that 900 students lived
off campus in 1980.
"I will not accept the idea
that students must be excluded from
the beach. They have a right to live
anywhere they wish, just like any
other citizen," he said.
Finally, a little bit ofposi-tive
publicity for the student resi-dents
of Fairfield Beach Road.
Stag Her Debate Staggers On
University Council
Proposes Compromise
FUSA Senate
Refuses To Budge
Jennifer Luongo
Assistant News Editor
Hours before the FUSA
Senate meeting, on November 10,
the University Council struggled
to find a win/win solution to the
controversial and emotional Stag
Her Inn question. The Council
meeting was filled with tension,
and frustration over this issue was
made apparent. The Council is a
tripartite body, and students frus-tratingly
found themselves in dis-agreement
with the faculty and ad-ministration
who want to change
the name of the Stag Her Inn.
Jim Fitzpatrick, assistant
dean of university activities and a
member of the Council, proposed a
compromise (see article at right).
Fitzpatrick felt that this would en-able
students to have their freedom
of expression, without the
University's endorsement of the
name. This would allow the Coun-cil
to eliminate institutionalized
forms of harassment, since the
name Stag-Her Inn is seen by some
as a sexist slur. Fitzpatrick said,
"It's important for the student sec-tor
to understand that there is a
genuine attempt to make a com-promise,
so they don't feel like it's
rammed down their throat."
However, some ofthe stu-dents
on the Council do not agree
that the compromise is fair. Mike
McCormack, '94, said, "In view of
making a compromise, in the tri-partide
body, the students would
be outvoted."
In addition, a FUSA
Senator, who was present at the
meeting, presented a petition of
502 students who want to keep the
name as it is. Others at the meeting
felt that these 502 names cannot
possibly reflect the opinions of the
rest of the University community.
After tabling the motion
of the compromise, the University
Council sent the idea back to the
FUSA Senate.
Dan Martin
Staff Writer
On Tuesday, November
10, the FUSA Senate continued to
discuss the issue that has seem-ingly
taken over campus. Once
again, the Senate argued about the
changing of the name of the Stag-
Her Inn. A compromise was of-fered
by the Univeristy Council:
the students would be alllowed to
publicise it as the "Stag-Her Inn",
but the University would refer to it
in all official documents as the
"Snack Bar."
In order to get sufficient
support to pass the compromise,
the Senate reiterated that the Stag-
Her is for the students, not for the
faculty, who are the major
complaintants about the name.
Therefore, it is the students' right
to choose the name.
They maintain that the vast
majority of the students who have
been asked, especially women,
consider the issue ridiculous, and
the name unoffensive. The Senate
maintained that there should be no
change.
Some Senators also feel
that the controversy is about more
than the name. They claim that it
is an infringement on student rights.
However,' when that point was
mentioned during the meeting, the
administration present urged that
this was not the case. They stated
that the alteration is neccessary
because some people found the
name offensive. Another reason
that the administration brought up
was that the name was never taken
seriously because no one ever saw
the sign and that the change really
wouldn't matter.
The Senate will continue
to get petitions signed and obtain
ever greater support. They have
concluded that it is too important
an issue to accept the compromise,
and that they will continue to fight
for the students' views and rights.
Sexual
Harassment
Addressed
Megan Harvist
Staff Writer
Tthe National Associa-tion
of Student Personnel Admin-istrators
(NASPA) presented a tele-conference
entitled Confronting
Sexual Harassment on Campus last
week. The conference, which was
shown in Gonzaga Auditorium,
was presented live, via satellite,
from BizNet studios in Washing-ton,
D.C.
The teleconference con-sisted
of five panel members who
answered questions and gave ad-vice
on how to deal with sexual
harassment.
Two forms of sexual ha-rassment,
student to student and
faculty to student, were dealt with
at the teleconference. The panel
members commented that this is
not a feminist issue but rather an
issue ofrespect for everyone. Some
people aren't willing to fight for
the respect they deserve. The prob-lem
is that women blow it offwhile
men play it off.
The panel members dis-cussed
a few cases of faculty-stu-dent
harassment in which profes-sors
would call students at home,
invite them to plays and dinner,
and have them over to their houses
for "private study sessions."If the
student did not comply to their
requests, the professors would re-taliate
with a bad grade. There are
also cases of student-faculty ha-rassments
in which students write
suggestive sexual remarks on their
papers.
Panel member Frederick
Preston remarked, "colleges must
deal with these problems on an
individual and an institutional
level."It is important to have people
on campus that students, faculty,
and staff can go to for help. Coun-seling
is needed because harassed
people tend to feel inferior and
guilty and they need to be reas-sured
that what happened was not
their fault.
An option for the victims
is to write a letter to their harasser.
This letter should contain a factual
account of what happened, a de-scription
oftheirfeelings, and what
they want to happen.
All of these options are
essential in order to deal with the
problem of sexual harassment on
college campuses. Keith Eldredge,
the Residence Hall Coordinator in
Regis, felt that the conference was
"very good and very informative."
He said, "The most important thing
is raising awareness about sexual
harassment. People need to under-stand
what it is and why it is wrong."
the Silent Crime
ofDate Rape
V page 3
^ %
Discovering the
Injustices of the
Justice System
page 5 4
Students React to
NY Times
Attacks
pages 8, 9
V-rr
JJ
"Airplane" and
"KFM" Top List
ofFunniest Films
page 11
^(faeet the 1992-93^
Stags Basketball
■^ ->' \z
Team
pages 14-15 J