| Homeless If you build it, they will come. And that they did. Students who wanted to live in the Tom Brown/Pete Wright Residential Community lined up as early as 7 a.m. Friday for the on-campus apartments. However, chaos reigned as the day went on. Upperclassmen who lived off-campus lost rooms to sophomores who lived on-campus. On-campus residents have priority over off-campus residents who want to move back to campus, regardless of who has more hours. But when the apartments were built, Director of Residential Services Roger Fisher said in a Sept. 25, 1998, Skiff article that they were aimed at upperclassmen in order to bring in a wider variety of students to live on campus. "As we evaluated the situation, we realized we could meet the demands of new students and some sophomores," Fisher said in the 1998 article. "But we wanted a mixture of all four classes, and we needed a way to accommodate them." The sign-up process is one that affects every student who lives or wants to live on campus. For this process to be so unorganized is inexcusable. When people began lining up, lines should have been set up. Better yet, each student should have been assigned a specific time to sign up based on the number of credit hours he or she has earned. On-campus housing should represent all four classes. But the upperclassmen housing should give priority to upperclassmen. "Younger students are fulfilled," Fisher said in the 1998 article. "Everybody's trying to retain upperclass residents." If TCU truly intends to keep upperclassmen on campus, the sign-up process for these apartments should attract all upperclassmen, from those in Waits Hall to those in an apartment on Hulen Street.
It was noteworthy to see TCU graduate James A. Ryffel giving the university $6 million. This is a stewardship of influence for this young man, nurtured here on campus. David Minor, the director of the new James A. Ryffel Entrepreneurship Center, is going to find many others who are going to want to help TCU students. Ryffel put his money to work in Fort Worth at TCU, his alma mater. It is an investment for the future. Minor and Ryffel were both influenced by "Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance," a book written by Bob Buford, a wealthy Dallas cable television executive. Buford's books are written for pastors in parish ministry and have become one of the top 10 books read by executives at Dell Computer. So why have books aimed at ministers piqued the interest of entrepreneurs like Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Computer Corporation, Minor and Ryffel? Pastors from across the country have been buying the books by the hundreds to give to individuals in their churches. In a time when the economy is thriving and people are making money, Buford suggests rethinking life goals and values. He advises individuals to strive to make a difference in the world. Buford says that "there are hundreds of books about how to make a living, but only a few how to make a life." He suggests that people get a clear look at their values and set goals for a "more intentional and more significant life." Buford writes that "Halftime" is aimed especially at men. As the owner of a multimillion-dollar enterprise, he had the satisfaction of making lots of money in his life. Buford equates the game of life to football, where the first half is played with high energy and great abandon. Now, it is halftime, and reassessment can take place for the rest of the game. For those who do not have $6 million to give to a university, what can be done of significance for the world? First, we can all have an attitude of stewardship. In looking at our resources - time, money and influence - we can allocate some of it for others. If our salary is $2,000 per month, set aside $100 to give to charity. If we have 2,080 work hours per year, we can donate 120 hours to some kind of work project. That is four hours a month. I have a friend who sets aside eight percent of her income to give to charity. She claims that she has never been asked for more money than she has available to give. Everyone who asks gets a donation from her. It is an awesome attitude. Second, we can look for a need in the community. Whether TCU really needs for Ryffel's $6 million is a question that has yet to be answered. Only time will tell if it meets a need. There is an immediate need helping the homeless in Tarrant County. Any TCU student can sit in the lobby of John Peter Smith Hospital each day and see the need of hundreds of poor people who require free medical care. Most of these folks have no automobile, so they must walk or take public transportation. Any one of us could drive these people to get medical care in our fancy new cars. Last, we can have an awareness of stewardship. It takes very little energy to see that helping others just a little can make a big difference. Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is supported by dozens of people on the TCU campus. The foundation came out of an awareness that 44,000 women die each year from breast cancer. For Komen's sister, Nancy Brinker, one death caused her to act. Nancy is married to Norman Brinker, the man who opened Chili's Grill and Bar and Bennigan's restaurants. Nancy had great resources to use when Susan died of breast cancer. Out of that tragedy came nationwide benefits that help thousands of other women. Ryffel can take the advice from Dell after he read Buford's book. Dell said, "Giving isn't just about forking over money and saying, 'See you later.' It's about making sure that you're getting the desired results Find out what exactly is going to happen with the funds you give to an organization." Every TCU student can make a difference. If you do not have $6 million to give today, try to start giving six bucks to the American Red Cross or the Presbyterian Night Shelter.
David Becker is a Brite Divinity graduate
student from Pueblo, Colo.
To be a student at a private Christian school there are certain intellectual inquiries which I believe we can and should make in more public forums. It's a privilege to be able to discuss our faith openly without fear of politically correct judgments falling upon us. I would like to take the next few paragraphs to approach an issue I have been considering lately. The question I pose is, "Was Jesus really the son of God?" The answer seems to be "no." I recently have found many things in my faith system, dogmas if you will, that proceed in blocking a healthy synthesis of spirituality and education. These dogmas are not the result of any kind of brainwashing, but simply tradition which is controlled throughout one's life by a group of sometimes less-than-qualified individuals. From these traditions many of us share in common, I feel that some kind of better answer is out there, and it starts with this first question I pose. The truth here is not that I'm atheist or even agnostic. I'm far from those beliefs. The real question is whether I'm authentically Christian. I believe there is enormous room in which our faiths and thinking can be changed by asking this simple question. The question I then must ask is whether believing that Jesus is the actual son of God qualifies one to be authentically Christian. The answer which must be given again is no. The difficulty in such a statement is that we are perpetually swimming upstream in the current of worship and faith proclamations. All our rituals point to the one fact that Jesus is the son of God, and that's it. Daily we are sure that if any other part of our system fails through accident or the unexplainable, we still have Jesus, great son of God, smiling down on us. This is where I believe we have the most fundamental flaw. You may be asking, "What does this have to do with Christianity and faith in general?" I can say that as we stand upon a world where so many religious views can be brought to our attention, especially in the circle of higher education, our views of our own Christian faith, for those of you who are Christian, must change or risk extinction. I don't mean the adoption of Eastern or African or any number of beliefs as a synthesis with traditional Christianity as a secondary means of self-help. I simply mean the adoption of a more realistic view of what some of our longest-held traditions actually mean. This is why it's hard to keep believing in a traditional Jesus because we no longer live in a traditional world. The difficulty seems to be the significance of God in that equation. As our world grows larger, in scope of thought and sharing information, our universe expands, and where do Jesus and Christianity make room for this expansion? Many Christians see nothing wrong with believing in one way and wishing to convert others. However, another way can exist. By saying that Jesus may not be the real son of God, we are not making him any less holy. We are just changing the definition of what holy is. We are bringing the religious example of one person down to us in the secular human world. We are making it more accessible and a little easier to understand and than perhaps follow. We don't destroy God. We just say that maybe our God is big enough for this changing and expansive crust of a planet that we live on which exists only as a speck in the greater universe. This is not heresy. This is simply changing our modes of thinking, and by changing our modes of thinking, we can change the world and ourselves. To bring this argument back to the secular, isn't that the point of higher education? To use knowledge to change the world or at least the way we view this world. By expanding our definitions, we can make room for fuller faiths and fuller lives. God is different now, and so his son must be different, too. This is only one example of how our thinking can literally alter the universe. I can think of a perfect example in history where such an event like this occurred, where such a person revolutionized our world and our thinking. His name was Jesus, and now we must revolutionize him in order to stay the course, in order to stay together as we move toward a one-people world. Jesus was one of those rare people in history who "got it." He simply understood in every moment of his life what kind of world could be made with the human mind and the human heart. Our quest should be to emulate this path, whether we are Christian or not and expand our definition of God, Jesus and self.
Matthew S. Colglazier is a freshman English
and news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth. |
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