Friday, Oct. 14, 2005
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Features
Restaurants you can afford page 9
Loquitur The
Cabrini College’s Student Newspaper
www.theLoquitur.com
Radnor, Pa.
A&E
Mr. Belding comes to Cabrini page 10 Vol XLVII, Issue 6
Racial slurs find home in Cabrini hallways yet again MARIA D’ALESSANDRO MANAGING EDITOR MAD724@CABRINI.EDU No students stepped forward to take the blame for committing a string of derogatory racial acts in Xavier Hall after senior college administrators called upon students to admit to their actions in a meeting with Xavier students. Some students denounced the acts and others took it upon themselves to clean up some of the graffiti. “It’s immature and disgusting,” Zach Booth, a freshman business major and resident in area of Xavier where the incidents took place, said. The incidents started on Sept. 20, when the letters ‘KKK’ were found in a foyer area to one of the quads in Xavier Hall. The custodial and residence life staff were both notified of the incident, and George Stroud, director of residence life, asked Aliza Greenberg, area coordinator for Xavier Hall, to meet with the residents who reside in the hallway where the letters were found. The residents met with Greenberg Sept. 22 and discussed how
JESS WEBB/PHOTO EDITOR
From left: Jessica Storm, Rich Chialastri, Colleen Pfeiffer and Whitney Ford Freshmen Xavier Hall residents discuss the racially inappropriate acts of vandalism they witnessed in their residence hall.
inappropriate and disrespectful the event was. No one claimed responsibility at that time. The following day, Sept. 23, more graffiti was found in two quad areas on the same hallway where the first incident occurred.
One area had a derogatory reference to African-Americans on a wall behind a bathroom door. The second area had an explicative remark towards Greenberg in a foyer area. Stroud and Charles Schaffner,
director of public safety, viewed the scene and took pictures of one area. A resident told them that he had seen the other graffiti and cleaned it off the wall. On Sept. 26, another incident of racism was found in the same
Evolution debate raging in local district court AMANDA POPOVITCH STAFF WRITER AVP722@CABRINI.EDU History seems to be repeating itself as the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg hears a case involving the mandatory exposure of students to the theory of intelligent design. Last year the Dover Township School Board voted for an addition to the science curriculum that mandated that biology teachers read their students a piece on the theory of intelligent design before teaching evolution theory in class. Eleven parents are suing the school board claiming that the reading of the theory promotes the Biblical story of creation and violates the First Amendment by teaching religious beliefs in a public school. Basically the theory of intelligent design states that Darwin’s theory of evolution does not adequately explain the emergence of life on earth and therefore, life on earth must be the result of intervention from an unknown intelligent force.
Many opponents of the theory regard this idea as simply a badly disguised version of the creationist theory. Defenders of the theory contest that the particular unknown intelligent force is never identified specifically as being of a religious nature and that this is simply a theory that has been created to account for gaps in Darwin’s theory. The controversy over these two theories and the theory of intelligent design are by no means new ideas. The battle over religious and scientific ideas on evolution began in 1925 with the now infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in which a Tennessee biology teacher was fined for violating a state law that forbade the teaching of evolution theory. After the trial, only two states adopted laws forbidding the teaching of evolution theory and these state laws were finally outlawed in 1968 by another landmark Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court also forbade the teaching of creationism or creation science, an obviously religious theory on the origins of life, in 1987. All of these cases have established firm laws on the teaching of evolution and partic-
ularly the separation of church and state in public schools. However it appears that this trial will again challenge those established
I
KRT
Sergio Pecanha color illustration of heads spinning in the gene pool between the theory of "intelligent design" and Darwinism.
precedents. Dr. Kimberly Boyd, an associate professor of biology here at Cabrini, emphasized that the focus in any science class is still on the scientific method and those theories that can be proven using the scientific method. Boyd pointed out that there are two major flaws in the intelligent design theory. The first is that the theory cannot be tested using the scientific method. The second is that science deals with the natural world and the concept of an unknown intelligent being is a supernatural idea. Boyd did also maintain that it was not necessarily wrong in any way to talk about the idea of intelligent design in class. “I like to pose everything out to my students and let them make their own choices,” Boyd said. Both the plaintiff and the defendants will be battling it out to try and prove their points. The plaintiffs are doing their best to establish the religious nature of intelligent design. The plaintiffs had John Haught, a Evolution, page 4
hallway. An image was created to appear like a black puppet, with the use of a black sock, a white sock and string tied around the neck area. The image was taped to a bathroom stall. The Diversity Support steering committee met to discuss the events. The committee includes Stroud, Schaffner, Dr. Christine Lysionek, vice president for student development, Dr. Charlie McCormick, dean of academic affairs, Margaret Fox-Tully, vice president for mission integration and human resources, and Shirley Dixon, coordinator of diversity initiatives. Public Safety and residence life staffs have documented and are now investigating the incidents. Schaffner, director of public safety, filed a report about the incidents with the Radnor Police. Dr. Antoinette Iadarola, president of Cabrini College, was also informed of the events and the actions of the committee. Class attendance on the morning that the third incident occurred has been recorded, and Xavier graffiti, page 3
Inside
Sports Swim team preview page 14
Perspectives
Styles of testing vary among teachers page 6