Mirror - Vol. 20, No. 10 - December 07, 1995

              The
FairfieldMIRR©R Volume 20, Number^ :' Thursday, December 7, 1995 The Image of Fairfield
Martin Luther King celebration planned
Christine Hamel
News Editor
To celebrate the birth-day
of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., Fairfield University will
honor his memory with a four
day celebration of diversity be-ginning
Wednesday, January
17, 1996.
The celebration will
feature a talk by Dr. Michael
Eric Dyson, author of "From
God to Gangsta' Rap: Notes on
Black Culture," entertainment
by Paul Zim, known as "The
Jewish Man," and an art show
focusing on the plight of home-less.
The co-chairs for the
celebration are Jennifer Shape
'96 and Mason Chau'98. They
have organized a large com-mittee
of students, faculty, and
staff for the three day event.
The observance will
also include the presentation of
Fairfield University's John
LaFarge, S.J. Award for inter-racial
justice to Dyson. Some
other events include a "Cul-tural
Collage" of activities, an
arts and writing contest for
students form Bridgeport and
Fairfield, and an ecumenical
prayer service.
The observance will
begin on Wednesday, Janu-ary
17, with a
reception for international stu-dents
who attend Fairfield Uni-versity.
After this reception,
there will be another one held
in the Walsh Art Gallery at the
Quick Center for the opening
of an art exhibition "No Place
to Go: Paintings of the Home-less"
by Los Angeles artist Pat
Berger.
Dyson will open the
celebration on January 18. The
day will be known as Human-ity
Day, with a lunch meeting
and an informal discussion
with students, faculty, and
staff. There will be a Human-ity
Day Convocation in the
Quick Center at 3 p.m., where
Dyson will lecture and re-ceive
the La Farge Award.
In order for students
to attend, the University has
canceled all 7th and 8th period
classes for the day. Free tickets
for the University community
and the public will be available
at the Quick Center Box Of-fice.
Dyson, who was
brought up in the ghettos of
Detroit, is director of the Insti-tute
of African American Re-search
at the University ofNorth
Carolina. At 18, he was mar-ried
and became a teen father
and was on welfare. He did not
allow himself to be limited by
his situation and entered col-lege
at 21. He graduated from
Carson-Newman College in
Tennessee. He studied at
Princeton University and earned
a doctorate at Brown Univer-sity.
Dyson taught at Hart-ford
Seminary, Chicago Theo-logical
Seminary, and Brown
University. He is also the au-thor
of "Reflecting Black: Afri-can
American Cultural Criti-cism,"
"Making Malcolm: The
Myth and Meaning of Malcolm
X," and "From God to Gangsta'
Rap: Notes on Black Culture."
Following the convo-cation,
a multicultural buffet
will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the
Barone Campus Center. At
7:30 p.m., Paul Zim, the cantor
of the Hillcrest Jewish Center
in Queens, N.Y., will perform.
He has been a composer and
performer for 25 years and has
25 recordings to his credit.
As another highlight
of the evening, Bridgeport and
Fairfield elementary, middle,
and high school students will
receive awards for arts and writ-ing
in a contest relating to King
and co-sponsored with the
Southern Connecticut Gas
Company.
On Friday, January 19,
the "Cultural Collage" will
present music, photography,
writing, and performances by
faculty, students, the Univer-sity
Glee Club, World Assem-bly
music ensemble, and the
University Orchestra from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. in the lobby of
the Barone Campus Center.
There will be a re-ception
in the lobby of the
Quick Center on January
20,at 6 p.m. featuring a vari-ety
of events. Some of the
events will be an open micro-phone
for readings, a display
of the art contest entries, and
the television showing ofKing
and the civil rights struggle.
At 7 p.m., the Uni-versity
Jazz Band will present
a musical program called
"Harmony," a blend of jazz
and hip hop music. An ecu-menical
prayer service will
follow with representatives of
various faiths. The evening
will close with a performance
by "Rearview," a 13-piece
New Haven band that special-izes
in contemporary and clas-sical
soul music.
Students should
have received invitations to
the event in their mailboxes
earlier this week. The regis-tration
deadline for the events
is tomorrow.
Students pay for off-duty police at beach
Kristen Finello
Staff Writer
Each year, every
student is required to pay a
$340 general fee to the
University. Many students,
however, have no idea how
this money is spent. The
official breakdown of this fee
reports that $ 150 is allotted to
the Health Center, $50 to
athletics, $40 to club sports,
$55 to FUSA, $15 to the
University radio station
WVOF, and $30 to the student
residential communities.
Recently, some
students have voiced
questions about how the $30
allotted to student residential
communities is being spent.
According to Jim Fitzpatrick,
associate dean of students and
director of the Department of
University Activities, $26.25
of this $30 is distributed to the
residence community in which
the student lives. Forexample,
if a student lives in the
residence halls the money goes
toward Inter-Residence Hall.
Government (IRHG); if he or
she lives in the townhouses
the money goes to University
Townhouse Experience
(UNITE); if the student resides
at the beach the money goes to
the Student Beach Residents'
Associations (SBRA); and if
the student is a commuter his or
her money goes to the
commuter club.
Several students have
recently questioned the policy
ofallocating money from every
student, including those who
do not live at the beach, to
SBRA. Bill Schimpf, vice
president for student services,
maintains that the presence of
SBRA is beneficial to all
students at the University.
Schimpf explained
that several years ago IRHG
was founded and asked that the
University allocate $30 per
student to IRHG activities. The
University did this for one year.
Then, UNITE and SBRA
approached with similar
requests. The solution was to
create a common fee to be
charged to each student and
then distributed to the
governing group for the
residence in which the student
lived. The University would
collect the fee only if each of
the groups agreed to contribute
$3.75 to SBRA.
Prior to the
implementation of this plan,
FUSA and Student Services
worked together to address the
beach felt that they needed to act
in concert because they felt their
rights were being abridged,"
Schimpf said.
Breakdown of $340 General Fee:
$150 Health Center
$50 to Athletics
$40 to Club Sports
$55 to FUSA
$15 to WVOF
$30 to Student Residential
Communities
of that $30 - $3.75 goes to beach patrol
needs of the student residential
communities. According to
FUSA President Mark Reed,
"FUSA was the overall
umbrella and these groups
[IRHG, UNITE, SBRA, and
the Commuter Club] needed
and deserved autonomy and
funding."
Due to the tensions
between students living at the
beach and town of Fairfield
people living there, the
University felt that the beach
problem needed to be
addressed promptly.
"Students living at the
SBRA,which
currently has a budget of
approximately $ 10,500, is now
"a very strong, functional
operation that has been a
positive force within both the
University and the town,"
Fitzpatrick said. The $3.75
contributed to SBRA by each
University student is used to
fund the beach patrol which
consists of a combination of
students and off -duty police
officers from the town of
Fairfield. "The money for the
beach patrol is administered by
SBRA, who take the
responsibility for hiring the
police officers, under the
auspices of the Dean of
Students office," Schimpfsaid.
Generally, the beach
patrol works on Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday nights.
They work on additional nights
that are expected to be very
active nights at the beach,
Schimpf noted. He further
stated that the beach patrol has
been very successful in helping
to alleviate tensions at the
beach.
"The beach patrol
does two things. It is a visible
sign that makes people in the
town think we are concerned
with what goes on there. It also
gives students an early warning
about their behavior," Schimpf
said.
Students who do not
live at the beach, but like to
visit friends benefit from the
efforts of SBRA and the beach
patrol as well. Underclassmen
who hope to live at the beach in
the future also benefit.
"We would like to
continue the option of people
living at the beach. Therefore,
the funding of SBRA is to all
students' benefit," Schimpf
said.
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