Page 22 - ThePhoenix1986-87

4IWestem Maryland College/October 9, 1986 Editorial Hoover dilemma In an age where we are constantly bombarded with financial penalties. it's comforting to know that at least one place on the Western Maryland campus avoids such monetary wrist-slapping-. Hoover Library. Contrary to popular belief, Hoover does not charge fines for overdue books. Indeed. bow many times have you sneaked a late book into the outside bookdrop thinking that you avoided such a penalty? Of course. we realize that in announcing this long-held policy we may in fact increase the number of library materials that are returned late. Students may not worry so much about getting things back to Hoover if they do not think: there exists the looming threat of fmancial punishment We hope, however. that by revealing this "well-kept secret" the following senario may be avoided: Frequently graduating seniors and students who transfer away from WMC throw out their overdue borrowed materials in the belief that they are circumnavigating a large late bill. Resident assistants and members of the cleaning staff constantly find such books in trash cans and return them. Usually, though, these resources have been severely stained and bent due to their stay in reeking garbage bins around campus. Thus, thousands of dollars must be spent annually to replace or repair these materials. The moral of the story. then, is "better late than never." We are book several days after the due date than to check it out permanently. Apology to the future certain that the library staff would much prefer students to return a How often have you tried to locate something at Hoover and been told, "I'm sorry, it's been lost" or "We can't find it"? Without a doubt, it would be easier for students to do research if My Dear Unborn Grandchild: mass migrations, famines and so already enormous today, even if they all knew that the library was the sale depository of the necessary By. the time you read this. I on. But we scoff at alternatives we never use the massive materials. Searching ttash dumpsters simply takes too much time. may well be dead ... and probably to fossil fuels and nuclear energy; thermonuclear arsenals we've been not from old age. You have they are costy and unrealistic. we building up for the big Finale. grown to maturity now, and by A clean sweep rights expect very little from your say, and so we gouge ever more .which could come at any deeply into the flesh of the Earth Every city in the US moment and the USSR with a population to find and bum up more of the forebears. This is as it should be. Nevertheless. I feel lowe you at same. In a single century, we of 25.CJOC) or more is presently It's about time the members of the WMC cleaning staff were least two things, an apology and have turned our Mother the Earth targeted with at least one nuclear recognized as real people. Now that the college has ousted Columbus an explanation. into a sick old lady. Species are bomb, and the computer controls Services-the company that was responsible for the cleanliness of most The apology takes precedence. going extinct every day-some of are not only on hair-triggers, but areas on campus-end taken over the management of such duties itself. I can guess that you are living on that is natural selection, of notoriously unreliable into the these people with brooms and mops have shed their second class a devastated Earth, the ruin of a course. but the lion's share of the bargain. Every time lightning status. They now are considered "regular WMC employees" and have garden planet, an Earth rendered damage is Man's doing. The food strikes the municipal power grid all the privileges thereof. well nigh uninhabitable by forces chain is going to collapse out in Colorado Springs, the North This means, for instance, that they may use the swimming pool set in motion by my own from under us one day-bur that's American Air Defense Command and computer labs. Sound inconsequential? It's not Until this year, generation and those that preceded a problem for the future to solve, computers there register a Soviet the cleaning staff was unjustly barred from such areas. In addition, us. I apologize for all of us who or so we say. Oh yes, we can see missile strike and prepare to strike they may now take classes at no charge, and can obtain tuition may be responsible. I am all around us the grim beginnings back. But perhaps this is all old remission for their children. especially sorry because all the of your world. news to you. For you and your And it seems that this new working atmosphere has been reflected portents foretelling the kind of And it's not just what we're contemporaries, it may well be in the execution of their jobs. Dorms are cleaner. Garbage cans are world you will inhabit are already doing to the environment that too late. Perhaps you are already emptied sooner. Even the floors in Decker College Center have been present today. I wish I could say speaks of the world we are living in the radioactive rubble of waxed. we didn't know any better. But creating for you, but 'just as our nightmares; perhaps you Congratulations, then. to the college for taking over the cleaning we do. evidently what human beings are know firsthand about genetic service, and to the actual cleaning staff for doing a superior job. We know that the chemical doing to one another. At the mutations. radiation damage, wastes we have been dumping latest estimate. some 50.000 infant leukemia, shortened life- heedlessly for decades have peopjedieotstarvationeveryday- other expectancy, and all the other one that's horrors we've been saving up for every death The Phoenix Probably is caused irreversible real help And instead of offering you. I fear there may an second. damage to the human gene pool: undoubtedly these starving to more there congenital suffering in your time, millions, the superpowers sell inevitability here be too: mere weakness of limb and of them weapons.. meanwhile Humankind has never yet EdiIor-ln.Qlief.... ..JonathanSlaOe brain, more people bern then than spending about a billion dollars a developed a weapon it did not Copy Edira... ..SI&cieHemphili now who might prefer to be dead. day on their own suicidal arms eventually get around to using on .SportsEdllor....... • Cynthia Schalar We know further that there is no race. Most people are afraid of itself. When Alfred Nobel FealuresEdiIof.............. • CMsflowiey f'hotographyEditof.... .. Billt.IaM safe way to dispose of or isolate World War III, but don't realize invented dynamite in 1866. he -_Businen~ c.UoydHan the mountains of nuclear waste that the "Third World War" is supposed that with such a terrible ProductionTecIYoicians _.. .R!:o'J'alWes!wtIfIf.MdlewAaith GtaptoiceArllsl.... .CIwi&llneGeolge we are accumulating; by your day, already well underway: more weapon in the world's arsenals COpyAssistaol BeIhSpangIer the damage will be done. We people·.have died in the nobody could ever countenance Aepgrmg SI&II L.ndB Ashburn. Phi ~. Craig Cad. ~CoIeman.MarleneClllmenls.BillDesciak. know also that our societal approximately 160 WiUS since waging war again. In the nuclear Carol ~ Roshiri Geage. AoOO Myers. Aoben Paul, Ja$Of1 PIunmer, Lee SpedOf.Belh TasofI.KI'i$ Tye'Yar addictioo to fossil fuels is World War II than perished in that age. that kind of innocence is lost ~Slall $tac:lI'I'Pucei.NancyFr88lTl8n releasing far 100 much carbon great conflagration. Even as I forever. But even if you have by AdiYisOf PamRegIS write you , there are about 40 some incredible stroke of ThePhoerV:Is a bimonthtystudenlpublic3lionolWastemNary!and dioxide into the atmosphere. We College. The opinions expresaed 10 cdumns and 1liiian 10 the edi10f have even predicted the shooting WiUS being fought in and providence been spared an atomic donolneceuaril)lrelleclthoseollhestaftOfotlt!WllsUIIIionEdiloriais .. ethe",sp01'ISibiIIIyilflheedilof-lnchiel. and are 8j)pI'oYed by Ihe catastrophic results of this between so-called "Third world" Armageddon, you will see our ~board.ThePfloeni;,rreseM!SIheOghllOlleadli'll!r.anded~ "greenhouse effect": an inevitable ecuons-mosr of them like handiwork in all the other Iorlenglh,eIarlIy,andlibeiouscorrlert.AIIlenflfSlOlheeclilcJfll1JSlbe sigMd. Authorship MIl be V8fified. warming and shift in the Earth's quicksand pits: the more you gruesome legacies we have left Address all mail 10: The~ WeslemMatyiandCoilege. climatic regions, melting of the struggle, the deeper you sink. We$tminSlfIf. MO 21151 polar ice caps, and thus floods, The human death toll is continued on page 5