Opinions

Oh, no! Not College Days!

Nico Scavella

It was a long, boring day. I sauntered up the steps of Miller Hall, each step getting harder and harder to climb. I yanked out my room door key and inserted it into the slot. As I opened my door, an unappealing sight met my gaze. It was so grotesque that I immediately shut my door and ran outside. I caught my breath and walked back in…. It was still there! What could it be? Could it be a bludgeoned male squirrel decaying on my room floor? No. Instead, there were…suitcases! These weren’t my suitcases and weren’t my roommate’s suitcases either. That’s when it hit me. It was College Days, the time when students from different high schools come to visit SWAU. And as customary, residents of the dorms must opt to house at least one of the visitors. Now I had black suitcases growing like freshly planted cabbage seeds out of the corner of my dorm room.

Vespers and fines don't mix

Nico Scavella

I’m sitting downstairs in the lobby of Cyril Miller Hall men’s residence. It’s 10:25, and the call is made for all residents to head down to the basement for worship. Curious, I jump up and ask, "Hey, what’s going on?" Nicholas Johnson, the only resident assistant available, says it’s time for worship. I shrug and start up the stairs, but not before hearing, "You might want to go down there. For each one you miss, it’s a $5 fine." Wow. So let me get this straight. I come to this school fresh off the sweet Bahamian Island of Nassau to a dry, hot, future hamburger-infested place to go to college, and I hear within two weeks of arriving that I will be penalized if I don’t go to a 30-minute worship at 10:30 p.m.?

Pray for me. I'm an Oakland Raiders fan.

Dr. Glen Robinson

I was not even a teenager when my sister’s husband took me to my first professional football game. Growing up in northern California, you were either a 49ers fan or a Raiders fan, and I became a Raiders fan early. Since that first game in the 1960s (“Daryl Lamonica to Warren Wells…touchdown!”) I have followed the Raiders through good times (four Super Bowls) and bad (losing badly in the last Super Bowl, and from that point on). I have stuck with them through thick and thin. My wife watches me watching them lose another game, and she says (often): “I think you need to pick another team.”

Socks with sandals? Heresy!

Many people around campus, even some of my closest friends, commit what I consider a moral injustice. I must come forward and testify to those ignorant to these crimes committed, and to those who feign ignorance. These people offend by either trying to be unique or by acting apathetic. Nonetheless, it offends me that some wear their sandals with socks. I hear arguments like, "It is comfortable," or "it’s cold." Flip flops by themselves are rather comfortable by themselves. I don’t need to wear socks to be comfortable in sandals. I find it more comfortable to wear flip flops without socks. I cannot see how wearing socks with sandals could be more comfortable than wearing sandals alone.

The penny theory

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you get angry and explode over a seemingly insignificant thing? Or perhaps you don’t explode, but you find yourself getting depressed for no reason? This is something I’ve thought about for a long time. I wondered why most of the time when my young son would spill his milk, I would simply count it as an accident and clean up the mess. But sometimes the same child and the same spilled milk would have me screaming or crying. I’ve developed a theory to explain this phenomenon. I call it my penny theory. According to my theory, each of us has a tolerance bank containing a certain amount of pennies. Whenever problems arise, like the spilled milk, we simply take the needed pennies from our tolerance bank in order to emotionally pay for the situation.

Do they know enough to do their jobs?

Recently I sent an email to Alexandria Sutherland, secretary of the SA executive council, asking why the minutes for the SA executive council meetings are no longer distributed. In her reply she informed me that she would consult the SA president to figure how they could "get them circulating once again." I was perplexed, and here’s why: The Student Association is the entire student body, all the students that come to this University and pay their dues. We’re misinformed when we call the people we elect the SA. The people elected—president, vice president, yearbook editor, social vice president, etc.—are not the SA, but the executive council. They are elected by us to run our student government, and to represent our SA at other Adventist campuses.

Will you fight?

I fought in a war today, and the funny thing is that nobody knows. You’re sitting on a battlefield where I have fought, bled, triumphed, and been defeated. But the thought that’s even crazier than the fact that you can’t see my scars is the fact that you’re in the same war and may not even know it. We go about our daily lives and get so caught up in the trappings. We stress about homework, grades, paychecks, clothes and accessories. We walk around campus wondering what others may be thinking about us, or if the heroes in our favorite TV show have completed their missions. All the while we are blind to the carnage that surrounds us even as we walk to our classes on a sunny day.

What we don't know can hurt us

The other day I received an e-mail from “Announce-L” and I noticed that it was just one in about eight other e-mails there from the University. I perused the subjects of each electronic message and noticed that only three of them were of interest to me. I deleted the other five. This made me think about how little many students know about events planned on campus. Many students and faculty have trouble knowing what events are going on during the week and/or the weekend. In a conversation I had with Senior PR & Advertising Major Kelly Brown, she mentioned that she thinks the problem has to do with the advertising used—or not used—on campus. She recommended that signs be placed in really obvious places of high-student traffic.

Extra credit

Dr. Glen Robinson

I can’t help myself. I’m excited about the presidential election this year. Probably the biggest reason I am is because there’s a good chance we’re going to see history happen. Two of the candidates have the potential to break down barriers if either of them is elected: one, the racial barrier to the presidency; the other, the gender barrier. So I was a little disappointed in my Interpersonal Communication class last week when most of the students weren’t able to correctly answer the extra-credit question: "Who are the two winners of the New Hampshire primary?" Many thought Obama had won, and I wonder if that was simply because they were familiar with his name.

How far is too far?

Just last week I had a friend call me needing comfort and advice. It was late and she had just got back to her room after spending several hours with her boyfriend. I could hear the strain in her voice and asked her what had happened. At first she claimed that everything was fine, but we both knew she was lying. She said, "I don’t know what’s wrong with me…but my heart is aching. My stomach is queasy. I just feel empty. I don’t understand! It’s not like we had sex!" she said exasperatedly into the phone, almost in tears. "Why should I feel like this?"