| Serve 'n' Learn
With registration for next semester getting under way, there's no better time to introduce a plan for a new take on learning. And there's no better time to put this plan into action than now. Ben Wilkinson, a senior premed/business major, went to Larry Adams, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs in Fall 1998 in the hopes of gaining university support for service-learning. Wilkinson said service-learning is different from other community service in that students go out to the community and come back and share their experiences with class members and faculty. Wilkinson will present a concept paper to the Commission for the Future of TCU at its first meeting Nov. 17 in hopes of gaining university support. Service-learning has already won the support of the House. Resolution 99-10, a resolution to support the concept of service-learning, recommended that the university actively investigate starting a service-learning program at TCU. It was approved by House members Oct. 26. A service-learning program would no doubt benefit the community. Whether TCU students built a house or simply raked the yard, some family somewhere would know it was the product of TCU students. What better way to put the university's name in a positive spotlight than by helping others? This program would also benefit the students involved with it, whether or not it is a required course or a co-curricular activity. Students who complain about boring lectures and too many books to read could become active participants in a new learning environment. While students are registering for classes for sometimes no other purpose than to satisfy their degree plan, why not provide a way for them to satisfy the needs of others in the community?
A model for our communities Sixteen children and a teacher gunned down in a school gymnasium. Thirty-five people coolly shot dead at a tourist site. Are these more random shootings in America? They could be, given the number of senseless mass homicides committed with firearms in the last year alone. But these tragedies refer to the 1996 massacres in Dunblane, Scotland, and Port Arthur, Tasmania. And people in the United Kingdom and Australia vowed never again. A year later they saw handguns all but completely banned in the United Kingdom, and all automatic and semi-automatic guns banned in Australia. Gun owners were compensated for turning in their firearms to the government before the new laws went into effect. In the United Kingdom, where homicides from firearms were negligible to begin with, (only 49 for England and Wales and 25 for Scotland in 1996) public grief and determination moved legislation swiftly. People were adamant that if the spawning of madmen could not be halted, at least the means by which they vented their wrath could be removed. Last week's slayings of Xerox workers in Hawaii and shipyard employees in Seattle unearth yet again the prickly issue of gun control in the United States. In 1996, 15,000 homicides were committed with firearms in this country. In the same year, over 34,000 gun deaths occurred. These numbers are by far the highest in any industrialized country in the world, and yet porous gun laws and watery proposed legislation will hinder progress in preventing more deaths. The United States has long considered the ownership of firearms as inextricable from individual liberty. The National Rifle Association and gun enthusiasts tout the Second Amendment right to bear arms as their logic behind keeping guns for use in hunting and shooting ranges. But the amendment underpinned the need to protect private property through civilian militias, and its relevance has dimmed. At any rate, the large-scale manufacture and ownership of guns did not burgeon until after the Civil War, so the amendment existed more in theory than in practice for more than 100 years. Pro-gun activists also maintain the stance that current laws should be enforced instead of enacting new ones. But right now there are no common manufacturing safety standards or reselling records. Minors also have access to guns. Merely trying to prevent guns from falling into the hands of convicted felons did not prevent unstable gun owners with no previous criminal record - Byran Uyesugi in Hawaii, for instance - from using them as weapons. The idea of keeping such a huge civilian arsenal for leisure activities pales in contrast to the horror of such unpredictable homicides. Even minor changes to firearms law - trigger-locks on guns, the banning of high-capacity ammunition clips and mandatory 24-hour background checks - were thwarted by a bickering Congress in June. But already anesthetization to the violence is setting in. The longer we wait, the more callous we'll become toward such terrifying yet preventable violence. The people of Australia and the United Kingdom took a definitive stand on gun control, and even gun owners opposed to the new laws acted selflessly in the interests of public safety. And their schools and churches are the sanctuaries they were meant to be.
Priya Abraham is a sophomore international communication major from Zambia. She can be reached at (pmabraham@delta.is.tcu.edu). Embrace new developments by giving change a chance We are the children of technology, or so we have been told. We know more about computers than American history; we have cell phones, DVDs and fax machines. The speed of our modem is more important than the speed of our cars, and we know that in order to lead productive lives we must be willing to adapt to the ever-changing face of technology. But for some reason, when it comes to registering for classes, we freeze. We complain, we curse, we scream, we cry and we probably have come up with some pretty creative names for FrogNet that would be inappropriate to print here. TCU is making every attempt to "get with the times" when it comes to technology, so why are students and faculty resisting? Well, it comes down to the old saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." The adage repeats itself in history and even here at good old TCU. Several years ago, the university decided to change the annual homecoming parade from Saturday morning to Friday evening. The student body was outraged. "It's tradition," they protested, when in all actuality, it was the change they couldn't handle. A few years later an entirely new batch of students protested when the homecoming parade was changed back to Saturday. They had only known the tradition as a Friday night event. The changes go on and on and people continue to resist. In 1998, the university implemented PeopleSoft, a Y2K safe (we hope) computer mainframe system. Faculty and staff battled the new system, people quit and jobs were terminated. Did all of this happen because of a complicated new computer system? No, this happened because of change. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not denying that PeopleSoft has had some glitches, but my point is that not everyone gave it a chance. As simple as the saying, "I liked how things were before," may seem, it is preventing the university from technological advancement. No offense to the those working for the university, but it didn't surprise me that the faculty and staff had difficulties with the new technology. After all, wasn't that saying about old dogs written about them? Well, at least that's what I thought until I saw students in action trying to register for Spring 2000 classes. We're no better than the rest of the dogs. The ones with the most difficulties: the seniors. Those preparing to enter the always developing technological marketplace. Why? Because they don't want change. Registration has never been a breeze on any campus, at any university, for any semester, but still students cling to the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. The first step to accepting change is to pay attention. The university, in attempts to reach as many students as possible, decided that all correspondence between students and the university would be done through e-mail as opposed to traditional mail. University officials, aware that many students check their e-mail more frequently than their mailboxes, thought this would fit well with the changing times. Good try, but if other students are like myself, they probably delete any message from the university without paying any attention to it. Of course, maybe if we didn't receive multiple messages from our student organizations (i.e. more than a dozen e-mails reminding us to vote) we would take letters about our registration more seriously. It's nobody's responsibility to check our e-mail but our own. It's nobody's responsibility to register for classes but our own. It's time that we let go of our advisers' hand and take change into our own hands. Change is good; don't be afraid of it.
James Zwilling is a freshman news-editorial journalism major from Phoenix, Ariz. He can be reached at (jgzwilling@delta.is.tcu.edu). Pizza giants' dough-slinging court case is just bitter rivalry Holy pepperoni! The great pizza war is underway in Dallas as Pizza Hut is suing Papa John's for deceptive advertising, and the main argument is over who has the freshest pizza. Close examination reveals that it's really all about a rivalry that's been in the oven for years. In 1995, Frank Carney, co-founder of Pizza Hut, left the company to become a Papa John's franchisee. Here's where the marinara began to sour. Papa John's then ran an ad with Carney in 1997 saying he had "found a better pizza." Ouch! Next, Papa John's took Pizza Hut up on a challenge printed in the latter's delivery boxes that defied anyone to find a better pizza. Papa John's hired a marketing research group to do a blind taste test, and the company reportedly won. Using these results in the next series of ads, Papa John's hand-tossed another blow to Pizza Hut. They claimed the reason they won the test was because Papa John's uses "sauce made with fresh packed, vine-ripened tomatoes" and that Pizza Hut uses "remanufactured paste." Furious over these ads, Pizza Hut filed a complaint against Papa John's with the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Twice. The NAD ruled that the ads were not misleading and upheld Papa John's right to claim, "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza." Still unhappy, Pizza Hut filed the suit that is now being heard in a Dallas federal court. Pizza Hut also charges, "Their ads show a farmer picking tomatoes and grandpa stirring the sauce as if it's cooked on premises. In fact, Papa John's uses cooked and concentrated tomato sauce." So what?! That's advertising. Does anyone really believe that Grandpa Mozzarella simmers that sauce forever, picks the peppers, kneads the dough, adds the cheese, etc., and then gets it to us in 45 minutes? Sure we do, and Holsteins also climb billboards. Sad as it may be, most of us really don't care who picked the tomatoes, or heaven forbid, that our mushrooms might have once been canned. The fact is we eat what our taste buds tell us to, regardless of silly little ads. True, we might try a pizza because of an ad, but only the taste will bring us back. Pizza Hut knows this, so why waste money in court? A Wall Street analyst calls the suit "a big waste of corporate resources." I couldn't agree more. In an official statement regarding the suit, Pizza Hut's president said, "As the industry leader, we think it's Pizza Hut's responsibility to our customers, employees and franchises to ask a federal court to stop this practice." It seems to me that maybe Pizza Hut is worried Papa John's does have the freshest pizza. What Pizza Hut should be doing is hiring better advertising companies who can dish it back to Papa John's rather than wasting time and money in litigation. Regardless, the court is now left to decide who really picks the freshest peck of pizza peppers. Pizza Hut is asking for $12.5 million in damages. That's a whole lotta dough. I'm betting Pizza Hut won't even get a slice of that pie.
Lisa Perdue is a senior political science major from Aledo. She can be reached at (LisaTCU@aol.com). |
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