Starting around Nov. 5, the committee will post flyers to remind students where to get nomination paperwork, when nominations must be in and when the election will take place. Alana Brown is in charge of publicity.

Nelson Carson is the new inaugural director. He is responsible for running the inauguration ceremony which takes place a week after the election is finalized.

The committee’s busiest time is the three months or so before the elections. The commission recently took on two new members, Carson and Carrie-Anne Young, to help with the extra workload that comes at election time.

Spring is quieter. Though clubs can use the FEPC to oversee their elections, few do. Chair Jonathan Charette explained, “If they go through us, they have to follow our guidelines.” Most clubs handle their own elections so they can follow their own rules.

The General Student Senate does not have that option. Before campaigning begins, Charette meets with each of the candidates to go over the rules.

“That’s really important, actually meeting with the candidates and making sure they know that there are strict guidelines they have to follow,” Charette said. He also sets the timetable for how the election process will run.

Once candidates know the rules, the commission makes sure they follow them. When complaints arise about the conduct of the candidates or the general election process, the commission runs the hearings. The six-member commission reviews the complaint and decides what action to take to fix the problem.

Charette and vice chair Christopher Whitcomb view the committee as a check on the senate. “It’s actually a pretty important part of the democratic process on campus,” Charette said.

Whitcomb added, “It’s nice to know someone besides the people running [for office] are running things.”

The check works both ways. The senate can review complaints against the commission. Members who do not follow the guidelines or who do not fulfill their duties can be removed from the commission by either the senate or the chair. However, as far as Whitcomb knows, no one has ever been removed from the commission.

Last year, the commission had to take a hard look at its rules. The big debate was over campaign posters. Priyanth Chandrasekar’s campaign was accused of putting up campaign posters in polling places within 24 hours of an election. The official guidelines of the FEPC prohibited that kind of advertising. When the commission looked at the guidelines they found a lot of ambiguity. The term “polling places” was so loosely defined that nobody knew whether putting up posters outside a computer cluster violated that rule.

The commission ruled that it did not. The Wade Center, where students can vote using a paper ballot, is the only official polling place. The computer clusters did not count.

“It didn’t change anything we did, but it made us go back and look at the things that were causing problems,” Whitcomb said.

The commission reinterpreted most of their guidelines. “We got rid of a lot of the vagueness of it.” They hope this year’s election will run smoother as a result.

The process to add or change part of the FEPC official guidelines is simple. The commission calls a meeting to discuss the alteration. They then re-write it. The members are good at reaching a consensus. “We’ve never not had a unanimous vote.” Whitcomb said. After the commission agrees, the rule is sent to the senate to be ratified.

According to FEPC guidelines, no more than one member of the commission can be a senator. Right now Brandon Hart is filling that seat. The others are students nominated either by members of the senate or by acting commission members.

Aside from the student body presidential elections, the commission also oversees Student Government’s constitutional amendments and referendums. It approves all questions and descriptions to make sure they are worded fairly and can be easily understood. Once both have been approved, the commission passes them on to Colleen Ouellette, FirstClass administrator. She posts the icon to the desktops of all students eligible to vote.

However, the way in which Levine starts the article seems to contradict his ultimate point. He indicates that Asa H. Coon, the Cleveland shooter, was “dressed in all black” and “proudly displaying a Marilyn Manson concert T-shirt.” These details are unnecessary, especially since Levine wants people to be “accepted by others.” Isolating people because of their differences will not lead to acceptance; it will lead to intolerance, which will in turn lead to violence.

This also looks like an attempt, possibly an accidental one, to paint Goths as killers, which is another painfully inaccurate stereotype propagated since Columbine. I would first like to indicate that anyone can be a killer. Most violence in school is actually enacted by mainstream people. The second thing I would like to state is that anyone can dress in all black, but doing so does not make someone Gothic. Also, Marilyn Manson is a shock rocker and has little to do with the authentic Goth scene; 14-year-old children generally have little grasp on anything, let alone on a highly complex subculture.

I felt that these corrections were necessary because the key to building a better society is education.

Andrew Maxcy is a senior English major.

Bush asked for another $46 billion from Congress on Monday to fund his little project. This is money that could go to a laundry list of other items that belong on Bush’s to-do list, which he has so conveniently ignored. These include the crumbling health care system, the exportation of industry and the problem of global warming. Who has time to worry about the entire Earth changing its weather patterns when there is a needless war being waged?

President Bush has seen the lowest approval ratings of any president ever, including Nixon and LBJ; it is evident the public is unhappy. Yet, no action is taken. I walk through my campus on a Saturday and see droves of people painted blue and white in support of the football team, yelling battle cries at their rivals. I cannot help but think about how much things would be different if such effort was put towards public policy once a week.

Where are the sit-ins? Where are the colleges and universities banding together, making their voices heard? Where are the protests? I walked around the Capitol building in Washington D.C. last January protesting the war with over 500,000 people chanting and dancing our profession of peace. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, everyone went home and Congress ignored us. Maybe too many people were busy enjoying the oddly warm weather to care about anything else.

Students and journalists have claimed that this generation doesn’t feel connected to the war because there is no draft. That is probably a valid reason, but it’s no excuse. There are still members of our society being whisked from their lives and thrown into a conflict where there seems to be no plausible victory.

Furthermore, the American people are wasting away the right that American policy makers are trying to force onto Iraqis. How dare we tell a country it should be democratic when we are a walking talking example of how a democracy doesn’t work? The people speak; the government doesn’t listen, and the people stop talking.

Change needs to happen, and Americans need to stop thinking that someone else will do it for them. Citizenship doesn’t end with voting every four years. There needs to be a resurgence and realization that we hold the power and write the checks, not the Senate, not the House and certainly not some word-stumbling fascist who sits in the Oval Office like King George in his castle.

So stand up, America. Stop feeling bad about your situation, and change it. Are you sick of having to pay for health insurance? Tired of seeing half your paycheck eaten up by gas money? Are you pissed off that while you are struggling to feed your children, the president is more focused on getting us to Mars than modernizing our economy? Looking for someone to blame? Try facing the mirror, because your apathy has shattered the foundation upon which a once-great nation was built.

Michael Dabrieo is a senior journalism major who loves the ’60s.

Whenever I start examining sexuality, I find myself asking, “what is it about sex that makes it so focused on appearances?” Rather than asking if a guy is worth the sex I find myself asking questions like: Is this sexy or slutty? Am I selling my body or something I’m not giving out? What is sexuality about anyway?

One day at a library, I read part of a book on “Understanding Sexuality.” It said that less brainy creatures like mice will continue to procreate and function after living in isolation. More brain-driven creatures like gorillas can become so mentally damaged by lack of interaction that they have trouble procreating. It said that even if they succeed, it is in abnormal and dysfunctional ways. Gorillas learn how to express love through experience and interaction.

Sex is a learned behavior, no matter if we want it to be or not. If humans didn’t have older siblings or sex education in school we wouldn’t know what to do. People are social beings, and we need to interact so that we can function normally.

The funny thing is that sex is still personal and makes us feel uncomfortable when we talk about it. I find myself asking, “How can people allow others to live the way they want when we have our own opinions on how it should be?”

Sexuality becomes more exploited in a culture that thrives off of controversy. Some want sex to be personal and private, and others want to talk about it. Others just want to advertise what they’ve got. Not talking would probably lead to dysfunctional people. I wonder what would too much talking bring?

Dwelling on sex as a commodity puts pressure and emphasis on sexuality. This emphasis may yield different types of dysfunction. Can there be such a thing as too much talking on the wrong subjects?

I’m tired of sex being exploited and presented as a naughty thing that deviants do before marriage. It makes it desirable as a tool for manipulation and less of a biological and sharing experience. Sex is a lot of things, but it isn’t everything. I think we should try to keep it that way.

Joanna Hynd is a second-year undeclared major.

If this “green” supermarket is successful, it will go to show that any and every new building proposed in the state of Maine can, and should, be built with minimizing environmental impact in mind.

Green construction is a large hurdle to overcome, but there are many more. If Hannaford wants to pitch itself as the greenest supermarket in town, its next step should focus on the shelves inside. Greener packaging materials such as recycled cardboard and paper, less plastic and on-site options to recycle bottles and cans would greatly increase the chain’s green image. Giving in-store credit to people who bring back their empty soup cans and milk bottles to recycle would provide an incentive for people to come back and will help the environment.

A focus on locally grown and produced food would cut down on the carbon emissions it took to get that fruit or vegetable on the shelf. Maine’s supermarkets and stores throughout the country, need to stop looking big and start producing locally.

A more localized, organic and friendlier vegetable aisle that hints at the aura of a European market would be a refreshing change from the bright, sterile and hostile atmosphere you find at most grocery stores. Shrink-wrapped peppers and grapes should, and will, become a thing of the past. Replacing plastic and Styrofoam packaging with simple, organic paper bags or wax paper will do wonders for the local environment. Completely eliminating plastic bags from the checkout counters is another eco-friendly idea. Perhaps Hannaford would find it useful to team up with LL Bean and provide customers with complimentary – or at least very cheap – canvass totes and help them out to their vehicles to make up for the inconvenience of nixing the plastic.

If a storewide switch to green packaging isn’t feasible just yet, perhaps Hannaford could devote one or two aisles to completely environmentally friendly foods packaged in recycled and recyclable containers. In addition, sponsoring a community garden on the store property that is fertilized with recycled paper and food that didn’t sell is an efficient and cheap way to turn loss into profit. What better way to cut transportation costs than growing vegetables right next door?

British supermarket chain Marks & Spencer has claimed that it will be “carbon neutral” by the year 2012 by offsetting its carbon emissions. It plans to cut energy consumption, stop using landfill sites and, yes, use and produce eco-friendly packaging. Labels on M&S packaged foods will declare which items have been flown in from outside the UK. Hannaford could take a similar approach, with green symbols for recycled materials and stickers boasting that the food was locally produced.

Hannaford should overhaul its approach to the environment and set the standard here in the United States by being the first chain to offset its carbon emissions well past neutral and into the red – or green.

Amanda Maccabe is a senior political science and journalism double major and a member of Pennies for Peace.

Sankare also feels there is an issue with the relationships between the on-campus and off-campus students, and is planning a party to bring them together. Typically, we call this “Friday night,” and it is something students seem to be handling rather well.

William Pomerleau, the incumbent, is focusing most of his campaign on resurrecting Bumstock, a former musical tradition for UMaine, with plans to lower the costs of the event.

These issues are minor ones, and a lack of stronger campaign issues can only breed apathy. To combat this malaise, we urge the candidates to seek out creative solutions to inspire student involvement.

Last year’s candidates acknowledged issues on campus that should not be ignored, including Derek Mitchell’s suggestion on making teacher evaluations available to students. The lack of dining choices in Memorial Union was successfully addressed by president Priyanth Chandrasekar – demonstrating his connection to the student body.

Certainly, there are bigger issues than parties and concerts that concern the student body. There is still time for our current candidates to show us their ideas and the energy they are willing to put into gathering student input. We hope they use that time wisely.

In “The Darjeeling Limited,” we are told the story of three wealthy brothers united by the grizzly death of their father, who use the event as a catalyst for a spiritual journey through India. Anderson quickly plays up the navel-gazing spiritual tourism stereotypes of the spiritual road movie before adjusting us to a realistic struggles of the brothers, back stories kept vague enough to give them each an “everyman” quality.

The three Whitman brothers form the engine of the film, which takes place primarily on the train for which the film is named. India and the train are perfect settings for Anderson’s strengths: every shot is both beautiful and absurd, and comedy fuses with tragedy on a regular basis. Those who are as enamored with Anderson’s visual style, with his children’s-book color schemes and stunningly detailed shots, will find this film to be the richest and most stunning in his collection.

“The Darjeeling Limited” – his fifth feature film – gives Anderson’s work a wide enough scope that we can evaluate his favorite themes. Similar to the work of JD Salinger, Anderson has made a habit of embodying his characters with a degree of wealth that allows them a certain degree of comfort for their eccentricities. Particularly Salingerian is the struggle for meaning which is out of reach of his heroes as a result of their insulated, wealthy lives. These are all Siddhartha stories of people leaving the comfort of the castle to confront the tragedies they’ve been protected from.

This is where the attraction of many of Anderson’s films lies: the romantic notion that tragedy can move one from self-absorption to introspection. In “Rushmore,” the protagonists have all experienced the death of a loved one. In “The Royal Tannenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” Anderson kills or nearly kills Owen Wilson’s character, a tactic repeated here and notable for Wilson’s real-life suicide attempt shortly after the film.

The struggle to find meaning here comes from casting off their wealth and their literal baggage. Anderson stresses the value of the brother’s relationships, though the women are noticeably weak or absent – a criticism that could be made of many of Anderson’s films.

Anderson’s strength as a director is his ability to balance the melancholy with the whimsical without being too overbearing. “The Darjeeling Limited” executes on this tension beautifully. On just one viewing, “The Darjeeling Limited” comes off as an almost flawless movie, with many of its apparent weaknesses compensated for by its ending. If you’ve managed to read this much of this review, you’re probably the kind of person who should see this film.

Grade: A

The Samhain holiday – pronounced “saw-hen” – celebrates the end of the harvest season and marks a time in the year where the veil between the living and dead is thinnest. This makes communicating with the dead and divination easier.

The festival offered a number of divination methods including apple peel reading, palmistry, rune reading and tarot card reading. Attendees could also paint or carve pumpkins, drink hot apple cider served from a cauldron heated over a fire and take a button or two. While those functions were free, there was also a bake sale set up which accepted payment for cupcakes and cookies on donation.

Apple peeling seemed to be the event that intrigued people the most, as few people had seen it performed before. Jennifer King, vice president of PaCO, explained that apple peels could be used to divinate in several ways. Participants were told to peel an apple from top to bottom in the longest segment they could. The length of peel determined how long they would live. “I can not peel to save my life,” attendee Derek Brewer said. If someone had a yes-or-no question they wanted answered, he or she were instructed to throw the peel over their left shoulder. If the peel landed in what looked like an “O” or “U,” the answer was “no.” Anything else meant a “yes.”

Under a tent on the other side of the set-up area was a table for rune reading. Alora Felix sat behind the table, reading homemade runes. Before each telling, she rang a small bell to clear the air. She then placed her runes in the other person’s hands. The runes were shaken three times and then dropped. Felix’s reading described the present and near-future. Most people who had their runes read sat and nodded in agreeance.

Tarot Cards were read by PaCO president Michelle Shandorf, who wore a smart black witch’s hat. Attendees drew three initial cards from her deck at random for past, present and future. Shandorf would ask questions to try to discover an accurate meaning for each card. If any one card was too vague, attendees were instructed to draw another card. “Sometimes they need helper cards,” Shandorf explained.

Pumpkin carvers and painters huddled around a table, happily conversing with each other. Designs ranged from an elaborately painted dragon to colorful clown-like faces to a carved face painted with small blood-red streaks and pumpkin seeds hanging out of where a brain might have exploded.

Over all, the festival seemed a success. Attendees were happy to sit and listen to what their futures might hold while sipping cider and PaCO members were happy with the turn out.

A dark vacant floor sits atop Balentine Hall. On this eerie floor, lights seem to go on by themselves and mysterious people are heard walking about.

As was discovered last week, University of Maine students do not lack imagination. Rumors abound, UMaine students share their ghost stories with each other like herpes.

According to Balentine Residents, the fourth floor of Balentine is occupied by the ghost of Ma Balentine. Ma Balentine was once the matron of the residence hall when it was all-girls. The matron would ask her female residents to escort their male callers out of the hall after hours since males were not allowed to spend the night.

Allegedly, Ma Balentine said that if the hall ever became co-ed, she would haunt all the male residents.

Morgan Brunbauer, a third-floor resident, explained his experience in Balentine. “I see lights flickering on at odd hours, when there wouldn’t be any [custodial staff] working.” He went on to say that he also heard footsteps from the deserted fourth floor during the day, but conceded that it was probably just the facilities management.

Yin Chiu, another third-floor resident, recounted her experience after moving to Balentine. “My first day freshman year, I was in bed. I heard footsteps and just thought it was my roommate.” However, after the door closed, Chiu noted her roommate was soundly asleep in her own bed. Chiu also said she had occasionally heard unexplainable whispers.

Other incidents have occurred in the hall as well, explained Brian Franklin. He claimed he was walking past a soda machine and it “spat a frozen soda at me . After nine, she comes out and haunts the men of the dorm.”

Since the fourth floor seemed to be the hot zone for paranormal activity, a visit to the locked floor was arranged. Since access to the floor was prohibited, an escort was required from Property Management.

Once in the abandoned floor, the signs of disuse were everywhere; every horizontal was coated in a visible layer of dust.

As Joe Caron and Gordon Nelson led the group through the dark corridors, the scene was slightly disappointing. There were no looming figures, no bloodstained carpets, no footsteps heard. In fact, it looked like any other resident living space on campus.

Rooms were filled with old junk, from old mattresses and bedsprings to a half-dozen toilets no longer connected to the pipes that once gave them life.

Perhaps the largest oddity of the fourth floor excursion was a fallen mirror. In the thick dust layer was scrawled, “Boo, boo to you!” For some reason, this grubby, ghostly reminder did not inspire fear. Instead, it added a hint of humor to the experience.

As creepy as the fourth floor of Balentine Hall may be, the only conclusion to make of the allegedly haunted residence hall is that it is not haunted.

Perhaps Ma Balentine doesn’t inspire fear of non-residents, perhaps the spirit doesn’t mind an investigatory intrusion – but probably more accurate is that the fourth floor of Balentine, closed off from residents for several years, is merely an unoccupied floor in an old hall. Clangs of pipes and flickering lights are just a sign of age, not of a poltergeist infestation. Balentine Hall may be haunted, but from a personal perspective, it seems the hall is old, creaky and full of character.

Baobao Jiang, an alumnus from China, said, “[Culturefest is] an opportunity for international students to get together and to represent their countries.” The event lasted from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and attracted more then 600 people from more than 50 countries and 20 organizations.

Three coordinated areas including the food court, the talent show and the style show helped bring cultures together in different ways.

“I had Sri Lankan beef balls and rice and Chinese dumplings,” Erik Harriman said. The third-year student from the U.S. said there were some interesting tastes in the food court. International students brought spicy chicken from India, cheese and ham croissants from France, fried beef from Saudi Arabia and other different tastes. They had been cooking for a few days and got up early to prepare the food court.

Students with different accents were standing behind the exhibition tables in their traditional clothes. A student from India, Anan Ya, was showing her talent on the visitors’ hands by painting Mehendi with a brushed pen. “It’s relaxing and it feels very cool on the skin,” a visitor from Orono, Faith Cole, said. Mehendi is a temporary form of skin decoration made by henna extract and tea.

The Saudi Arabia table had traditional dresses, Thob, hanging on top of the booth. Homoud Alhajri, ISA vice-president and a student from Saudi Arabia, said, “I am glad we have a chance to serve our Arabian beverages, our clothes, our history. Some people have no idea where Saudi Arabia is and thought it was a desert.”

“The tables are different from the style show and the talent show because people can speak to us and ask us questions about our cultures directly,” Alhajri said.

Yana Kim, the coordinator of the talent show, said the event is not just showing pictures and decorations, “It displays expressions from different countries. People can learn the cultures through feeling, hearing and experiencing the show.”

A Bearim Bau performer from Japan, Shotaro Takahashi, said that it is an African musical instrument adopted in Brazil. Bearim Bau is a long bamboo stick with a wooden box attached at the bottom. “It is interesting how the players interact with each other,” he said.

More than 200 people watched the talent show, which contained 10 performances including Middle-East belly dancing, African dancing, Chinese singing and flamenco dancing.

According to Sarah Joughin, international students and scholar advisor, ISA had been setting meetings with students and recruiting volunteers since September. An increasing amount of the international students made the talent show more exciting. “We had to turn people away,” Joughin said.

Culturefest ended on a runway. The international students walked to the music in their traditional dresses. A bright red dress from China, a long white thob from Saudi Arabia and a purple silk dress from India made the show quite colorful. UMaine students turned the end of Culturefest into a catwalk show.