Students who chose the meal plan with 260 meals are paying $7.05, while those who picked the 100-meal plan are paying $13.85 per meal, a difference of almost seven dollars per meal.

“We were in services committee and one of the senators pointed out the huge discrepancy that currently exists within meal plan prices. We couldn’t believe that some students were paying $7 for their meal swipe while others were paying $13 for the same exact meal,” said Shulman.

Since then, Shulman and Sen. Justin Labonte have been working closely with Kathy Kittredge, Director of Dining Operations, and Glenn Taylor, Director of Culinary Services, over the last few weeks to come up with a solution to this large price gap.

The result was three new meal plans offering cheaper meals and more dining dollars. Next year, the largest meal plan will offer 240 meals and 150 dining dollars, averaging $7.10 per meal. The smallest meal plan has 130 meals and 625 dining dollars. The average cost of those meals will be $9.46.

In other business, a resolution to streamline Student Entertainment passed which eliminates the Frequency Program and Senior Council. The resolution also consolidates the coordination of the Guest Lecture Series into the duties of Student Entertainment, along with four other committees. This move is expected to save the senate over $2,500 next year.

The senate also extended Susan Ash’s contract for three more years. Ash has served as the Assistant to the Vice President of Financial Affairs for several years. According to Vice President of Student Entertainment Derek Mitchell, a full-time staff member is required for insurance and auditing purposes.

Other resolutions concerning the senate budget and constitution were presented at Tuesday’s meeting and sent to the Policy and Procedure Committee and the Executive Budgetary Committee. Vice President James Lyons promised they will be discussed at next week’s meeting, which will be focused primarily on budget issues.

Seven organizations made presentations to the senate, detailing their experiences in sports tournaments, academic conferences and community service programs. The clubs, which ranged from Rotaract to Roller Hockey, were all heavily funded by the senate over spring break and are required to share what they accomplished with the senate upon their return.

The Non-traditional Students Association and Classics Club received final approval.

Allocations included $330 to the American Marketing Association, $380 to the Society of Women Engineers, $165 to the Dressage Club, $200 to Lambda Pi Eta, $1,700 to Wilde Stein and $1,189.90 for travel expenses for the Concrete Canoe Team’s trip to a competition in Quebec. At the beginning of the night, there was $10,913.39 in the senate budget. After the allocations had been made, $7,271.29 remained unallocated.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, here’s what happened: In the period from December 7 to March 10, a breach occurred somewhere between when credit card information was taken from the point-of-sale terminals to the authorization server. During the three month period, 4.2 million credit card numbers and expiration dates were leaked, leading to 1,800 reported cases of fraud. The situation has been thoroughly covered, and I won’t elaborate on it except for the following point: It was completely preventable, yet they are going to get away with their lack of security.

The Payment Card Industry has a Data Security Standard – intuitively called “PCI DSS” – the fourth requirement of which is “Encrypt[ing] transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks.” Legalese, being the tricky language it is, is pretty vague when it comes to specifying what ‘accessible’ and ‘public’ are when it comes to networks. Even a cat5 cable extended solely between two points can be compromised without physical modifications to the cable itself, via a device called a passive tab, which operates on the principle of electromagnetic induction.

In legalese, you can easily convince the court that such a wire isn’t open or public. You can also say that this is Chewbacca, he lives on the planet Endor and that this makes no sense. Both are equally logical arguments, give or take.

Now what does that mean for your privacy, aside from the obvious “Oh my God they got my credit card” situation? If they’re that lazy about securing credit card info, what about other information perceived to be less critical? What about all those stores that keep track of your purchasing history when you opt for the store card?

The information isn’t discarded and doesn’t go away. It’s used to track your market habits and, aggregated over thousands and maybe even millions of users, generate useful data about buying trends. This is why stores offer you discounts: They make more money out of the information collected, either via first-party use or by selling it to third parties. It’s likely that this information is even easier to steal than credit card numbers.

On the surface this seems like a superficial argument – what harm is there when someone knows I usually buy a certain brand of milk or shampoo? Not much, but some of the information divulged could be more useful for a malicious person – they could call you, pretending to be from any service you recently subscribed to, such as a phone or cable provider, and pretend there’s an error in your credit card information and ask you to enter it again.

Consider the more far-fetched situation where a malicious person knows you’ll be receiving your brand new shiny laptop via FedEx today. They might go as far as hanging around your house, waiting for the delivery truck to come by, then pretending to stand idly on your front lawn and sign for the pickup – and in some cases you don’t even need to sign, and no photo ID is checked. Unlikely, but God came up with Murphy’s Law so he could enforce it.

I’m not a tinfoil hat-wearing individual, and I actually like how they collect and use my data in certain ways, like Amazon.com’s recommendations. Unless the users – not the businesses – start showing interest in their privacy and steer away from businesses who don’t take the matter serioausly, customers’ information is out there, it’s unprotected, and it’s waiting for the scammer with the right plan to put it to use. If you watch Futurama, you’ll know just how bad scammers can be. If you don’t, it’s “Pret-ty bad.”

Sherief Farouk is a fourth-year computer science major.

As recently as three years ago, you could buy cigarettes at the bookstore. Granted, they were kept behind the counter – not displayed or advertised in any way – but they were still there, and you could count on being able to buy a pack of Marlboros before heading to your next class.

Now, I understand that tobacco use and secondhand smoke have serious health consequences. As individuals, we have a responsibility to ourselves to assess those consequences. As members of our community, we have a responsibility to respect the health of others. Unfortunately, with this issue, the rights of the individual can seem to be at odds with that of the community as a whole.

Banning smoking in campus buildings? I can get behind that: Many landlords stipulate that you cannot smoke in their rental properties, either. Banning tobacco sales on campus? I doubt that was a significant deterrent to smoking anyway. But a flat-out campus-wide ban on all forms of tobacco use – and we are talking everything here? That is just plain ridiculous. This ban will affect the students, faculty and even our visitors.

I know that representatives from the Tobacco-Free Campus Committee have said the committee is working on encouraging compliance rather than punitive measures. I call that malarkey.

Punitive or not, enforcing this ban will cost money. If the ultimate goal is to get smokers to stop, what is happening here is that they are asking non-smokers to pay up to stop them.

A vigilante group from the Alcohol and Substance Abuse office is not going to stop this community from smoking under this ban. Ultimately, people are capable of making decisions regarding their own health, and for that reason smoking tobacco is legal. There exist adequate regulations to distinguish smoking areas on this campus so that non-smokers are never subjected to secondhand smoke.

As I write this, I recognize that this ban has, for the most part, come to pass. I hope that is not the case, and that the Tobacco-Free Campus Committee considers how unrealistic this goal is. If they truly want to curb students’ tobacco use, a much fairer and better approach is through education and dialog, not bans.

Pattie Barry is a fifth-year new media and French double-major.

“The major change is we decided to use the same criteria for our apartments in the residence halls,” said Housing Assignment Coordinator Andrew Matthews. “Students have been asking us to look at seniority for quite some time so we finally decided to change it.”

With the new process, students receive a lottery number: their credit hours, multiplied by the number of semesters they have lived on-campus. Credit hours earned through Dec. 31 are included. The equation doesn’t include hours from spring semester.

“We then take our total number of students and divide them into half-hour slots to avoid stampedes,” Matthews said. “In past years housing was on a first-come first-serve basis and buildings like Hart and Oak are hot items.”

Students will be able to log on and select their room and hall during their half-hour slot and any time after that.

Matthews said they did a test on their server to see if students were having difficulty getting in and found some were successful – others weren’t.

Tara Loomis, Director of Residence Life, said last year they received a lot of negative feedback on the process and students who had lived on campus longer were not being rewarded.

Matthews said by changing the process they are rewarding the students who have been on campus the longest.

While the process of signing up for housing is different, the First-Year Residence Experience is staying the same, and all first-year students will remain housed together.

In addition to the changes to the sign-up process, there will also be some differences in buildings. Penobscot Hall will now only house Honors students, where last year it was only the third and fourth floors. The graduate center will be moving from Estabrooke to Stodder Hall.

“Stodder Commons has been occupied by the catering service, but with the renovations at Wells being completed the catering will be moved there,” Matthews said.

Estabrooke will now be a traditional undergraduate residence hall.

“Estabrooke has 111 singles, which are pretty popular,” Matthews said. “Stodder only had six, so we are taking away six singles but adding 111.”

Applications for the apartments in Patch Hall and DTAV were due on Tuesday and will be finalized by Friday.

The Honors College room draw will be on Monday in Colvin Hall. Those students will receive a card based on the number of Honors courses they have taken. The main selection process for undergraduates is from April 2 to 16. Students will be able to log on during their specified time slot and view available halls.

Loomis said the new process is fair across the board.

“The only complaints we have gotten are from students who want to keep the same room,” Loomis said.

Fourth-year anthropology major Jeremy Parker doesn’t agree with the new process. “I certainly feel that the DTAV-Patch process, especially, is needlessly complex and bureaucratic,” Parker said. “In the name of equal treatment for everyone they’ve thrown all of us that have put in our time to get into DTAV and Patch under the proverbial bus.”

Matthews said within two weeks all housing will be finalized and the new process will be complete.

“He is arguably the most important graduate to come out of the University of Maine,” Honors College Dean Charlie Slavin said. The Honors College hosted the event after nearly five years of failed attempts to bring Lown to the university.

“He’s a very hard man to pin down, as you can imagine with all the things he does,” Slavin said.

In the first discussion of the series Wednesday morning, Lown told the story of how he became involved in fights against nuclear weapons and addressed how educators could improve peace studies and advocacy among students.

“I’m pleased that a group like this is planting seeds in fertile ground,” Lown said.

Acting Director for Peace Studies Tina Passman introduced Lown to the group of about 20, mostly consisting of Peace Studies professors and students. “We consider you one of our wisdom elders in the peace movement,” Passman said to Lown.

Lown’s involvement in peace activism started while he was working on the defibrillator. A friend convinced him to attend a presentation on nuclear weapons and nuclear war by 1959 Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker.

“Suddenly there was a change,” Lown said. “I realized that what’s important and what needs to be addressed is not sudden cardiac death, but the threat of the sudden death of humanity.”

In May of 1962, Lown and a group of other physicians published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which was later turned into a book titled “The Fallen Sky.” The study outlined a nuclear war scenario in which a megaton bomb is dropped on Boston.

“We came to horrifying conclusions,” Lown said. In the report, the doctors suggested the condition of people in the city would be so dire that emergency personnel should be allowed to kill victims of a nuclear attack “out of humanity,” because the number of injured or sick people would make it impossible to help everyone.

At the time, the study was so advanced that the military asked the doctors to advise them on the effects of a nuclear attack – nuclear weapons testing ended soon after.

Lown discussed his distaste with the current presidential administration, the war in Iraq and war in general.

“When I ask myself, ‘Why war?’ I define it as essentially state-sanctioned terrorism,” Lown said. He said the administration was practicing a “Columbian strategy” – named after explorer Christopher Columbus – in which individuals and nations don’t need to work for power and success, but “just take it by force.”

Lown said most of the United States’ conflicts have origins in its own past mistakes. “Name me one dictator from the past 50 years that America didn’t support when they came to power,” he said.

Lown expressed concern that the low level of activism in American society caused a divide between citizens and their government. He cited one of Karl Marx’s early essays, saying “capitalism leads to alienation” because people’s own interests cause them to fracture relationships with others in order to protect their assets.

He argued that while things look just as dire now for America as it did during the Red Scare and Vietnam, America has a good chance to survive because of the “deeply ingrained tradition of democracy” that has saved the nation in the past, because it eventually spurred activism.

Lown grew up in Lewiston, Maine and graduated from UMaine in 1942 with a degree in Zoology. He went on to become a cardiologist and, in 1959, created the first direct-current defibrillator.

He started the Lown Cardiovascular Center in Cambridge, Mass. and is a professor of cardiology emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health. Lown co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1960.

“Oh, and in his spare time he won the Nobel Peace Prize,” Slavin said. He received the award in 1985 for his work in co-founding International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He is the only Nobel Laureate to come out of UMaine.

The UMaine Alumni Association presents an annual Bernard Lown ’42 Humanitarian Award to graduates who excel in humanitarian service.

Lown was part of another panel later on Wednesday titled “Physicians and Social Responsibility” and a lecture titled “Global Activism in an Ailing World.”

He will sit in on a panel discussion about nuclear threats following Sept. 11, 2001, at 10 a.m. Thursday in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union.

Once at the MaineStreet Web site, a student can log in by entering their PeopleSoft ID and password in the top left corner. If the student has forgotten their UMS ID number, there is a password reset utility at mail.maine.edu. If that doesn’t work, a student can contact the IT Help Center to reset his or her password at 581-2506.

On the top right of the screen there is the MaineStreet Menu. Under it is a Student Self-Service link. This links the student to another page with two options: Student Center and User Guides and Demos. The Student Center is where students sign up for classes. The main page lists the student’s information such as current classes and address information. Along the right side of the page is a menu called “Enrollment Dates” which tells the student what days they can begin registering. At the bottom right of the menu is a “details” link. This links the student to a page that tells the time they can begin registering for classes. It also says when that time slot ends. The time window when students can sign up for class is about four days long per registry period. If a student misses their time slot, they must wait until everyone else has signed up before they can register.

MaineStreet has a “Wish List” function that allows students to pick out their classes before they register, but it does not ensure the student will get into the class. It can be accessed by clicking the “Wish List” link that is near the top left of the page. The student will be directed to a site where they pick the term they want to sign up for. To add a class students can either type in the course number or click “add to list” or they can use the search function. Using search, students can either select “Search for Classes” or “Browse Catalogue.” Catalog browsing is a function that allows students to see all the courses that are available for that term and from there can view the entire course catalog.

Under Enrollment Dates, there is also a “Wish List Appointment.” In help files this is known as the “Validation Period.” During that time, students can “validate” their schedule, which means the system checks over the desired schedule and checks for any time or pre-requisite conflicts. To validate a schedule a student must be on their Wish List page. There the student needs to check off the classes they want to validate under the selected column. The “validate” button is located at the bottom of the class listed, and only appears during the validation period.

Students can refine their search by clicking “Additional Search Criteria”. Other criteria can be defined such as: general education requirements, location, time of day and other details.

Once students press “search” it may take several moments for the page to load. If it is a broad search a screen will load saying there are more than 50 results and ask if the student wants to continue. Class results are listed by showing the first three sections of each class. Students may press “View all selections” to generate the entire list.

If a student wishes to add the class to their Wish List he or she can either press Select Class or add the class by typing in the course number on the Wish List page.

By clicking “select class,” the student is linked to a page, which gives information about the class such as pre-requisites or class requirements. There is also a check box in the upper-right- hand corner which allows the student to be placed on a waiting list in case the class becomes full. If the student needs permission to add the class there is a box under the check box for permission number. This number is obtained from the instructor of the course.

When students register for classes, they can either have their adviser approve their wish list or get their PIN number from their adviser. When students register they can either select the course from their Wish List or add the course by using the Add tab at the top of the screen. The only difference in signing up for classes for graduate students is that they do not have a PIN number.

After logging into MaineStreet there will be several links along the left hand side of the page. Under Student Message Center there are .pdf files for how to register for classes as well as a link on how to use and run the User Productivity Kit (UPK). This program is an online tutorial for how to use Mainestreet.

This year, the men’s tourney seems to be all about bubble teams proving themselves, while the women see one of the strongest fields in years as some lower seeds try to gain attention for themselves by disrupting what was originally expected to be a long road to yet another Connecticut vs. Tennessee showdown.

In both tournaments, the first two rounds of play have been completed, leaving 16 teams in the tournament for each sect. Interestingly, dominant athletic departments, not just individual teams, have marked the 2007-2008 season. Four schools – Stanford, Louisville, North Carolina, and Tennessee – have squads of both genders in the round of 16. A likely, if obvious, pick to win a dual-gender national title seems to be the Tar Heels of North Carolina, who have number-one seeds in both tournaments. The road won’t be easy for either squad, as they face the best additional 15 teams in the country.

George Mason men’s head coach Jim Larranaga said of the March tourney, “Anything is possible.” That motto has been taken to heart, and the results are exemplified by many of the underdog winners so far in both tournaments.

On the men’s side, the first round saw at least one victory from every seed: one through 13. Perhaps most notable was the record set on South Florida’s home court in the Tampa regions. All four games in that region saw lower seed advance, an NCAA men’s tournament record.

With its usual dose of Cinderella stories, the men’s contest has seen a pair of bubble teams: Villanova and Western Kentucky. These two have proved themselves by exceeding expectations and reaching the round of 16, both of them as 12-seeds.

The story of the tournament so far, with all due respect to the Hilltoppers and Villanova, has been the Wildcats of Davidson University. Drawing a 10-seed in a tough bracket, Davidson has powered their way to the Sweet 16 by beating two squads with tournament experience in Gonzaga and Georgetown. Although Davidson, the high-flying offense that averaged over nine three-pointers per game all season long, was expected to put up a fight, few people saw them getting past Gonzaga, much less regional giant Georgetown.

The madness of March has once again shown through and caused many people, including some analysts, to rethink their brackets. In fact, mid-minor conference teams that can shoot the three-pointer, such as Davidson, Belmont, and Western Kentucky, have been more effective against powerhouse conferences than many had originally thought. In fact, a long overdue discussion is finally taking place: The future of one-seeds, two of whom have to play 12-seed Cinderellas in the next round. Facing high-powered offenses like Villanova and Western Kentucky, Kansas and UCLA may have a difficult path to the Elite Eight.

Teams with seasoned coaches, such as Louisville, Memphis and North Carolina, who generally get hot in the round of 16, are gearing up for deep runs. Look for experience to play a factor in the next two rounds on the way to the Final Four.

My upset picks for the Sweet 16: Tennessee, complete with Bruce Pearl’s Orange Jacket bow out to Louisville, and the Hilltoppers will shock offensively-struggling UCLA.

On the women’s side, all of the one and two-seeds remain intact. The rest of the tournament has seen some stunning upsets. Perhaps the most notable are Florida State, an 11-seed, taking down six-seed Ohio State, a perennial powerhouse. Old Dominion earned a trip to the Sweet 16, nipping four-seed Virginia. George Washington University stunned three-seed California; 10-seed Hartford took down Syracuse; and in perhaps the biggest upset of the tournament so far, Pittsburgh stunned 2005 national champions Baylor, another three-seed, 67-59, to nab their first-ever Sweet 16 berth.

Although all eight of the top women’s seeds remain in the contest, look for Duke, who just reached their 11th straight Sweet 16, to be a factor and potentially upset one-seed Tennessee. Stanford and Rutgers, with their tourney experience, could piece together deep runs and cause trouble for top seeds Maryland and Connecticut.

My Sweet 16 picks for women: Duke over Texas A&M, and Oklahoma State will beat two-seed LSU.

After seeing his team struggle in their annual spring trip last season as they played one of the toughest non-conference schedules in recent years, Trimper could have changed his philosophy and scheduled a cupcake slate for the Black Bears this season.

With a visit to Las Vegas to play UNLV, and games against Notre Dame, Florida International, Ohio State, Miami and Navy, the 2008 spring trip was far from a cupcake schedule for UMaine.

Despite enduring several close games, including four extra-inning losses, culminating in a 5-11 record up to this point, Trimper and his Black Bears remain optimistic and confident as the conference season approaches.

“We played a lot of good baseball down [in Florida] but were on the wrong end of those close ball games,” Trimper said of his team that lost nine games by three runs or less. “It was our fault, as we didn’t execute offensively, but those are things we can practice and work on.”

“Those were some tough losses, but also good games to play as you are put in pressure situations,” Senior Captain Curt Smith said.

One of the bright spots of the three-week trip for the Black Bears was the development of the young arms, which the team is reliant on having only returned five pitchers from a year ago.

“Our pitching is getting stronger and stronger with our young guys doing more than I thought they would,” Trimper said, adding, “When older guys get back on track, I think we will be a very good ball club, pitching wise.”

Leading the way for UMaine has been sophomore right-hander Joe Miller (2-1, 3.21 earned run average), who is the early candidate to become the ace of the staff. In addition, he is the elder statesman of the tentative starting rotation which includes three other freshmen.

Filling out the rotation for the Black Bears are left-handed Kevin Scanlan (0-1, 4.91), and Ontario right-handed players Matt Jebb (1-0, 4.19) and Kyle Benoit (0-0, 5.40).

“Getting the young guys experience against some of the best competition was big for us as we get ready for conference play,” Smith said.

While the pitching was expected to take its lumps during the spring trip, as it was a largely untested group, another surprise was the stellar infield defense.

Led by sophomore shortstop Tony Patane and junior second baseman Danny Menendez, the Black Bears have already turned 15 double plays this season. More impressive is the fact that the defense for UMaine has remained solid despite the third base “revolving door” with first-year players Kevin Mager and Jarrett Lukas and third-year player Brian Hackett all seeing action.

“Our defense has probably been our strongest area so far in the spring which has been a pleasant surprise,” Trimper said of a defense that was a weakness on last year’s squad.

Even though the offense for UMaine has been prone to lapses, especially late in games, they are still producing and remaining one of the best in the America East Conference.

With a team batting average just below .300, the Black Bears have belted 15 home runs on the season and are averaging 6.5 runs a game.

The offense is led by Smith (.439 batting average, 5 home runs, 12 runs batted in, 5 stolen bases) and reigning AE Rookie of the Year Myckie Lugbauer (.406, 2 HR, 15 RBIs).

Also contributing are junior outfielders Kevin McAvoy (.340, 1 HR, 10 RBI) and Billy Cather (.313, 1 HR, 7 RBIs), as well as Patane (.300).

While the Black Bears are happy to be back in Maine, they have not played a game since March 16 as their three-game series at New York Technical Institute was cancelled last weekend due to bad field conditions.

“Coach keeps us positive and looks at the bright side. Even though we didn’t play this past weekend, we had a great week of practice,” Smith said.

UMaine is slated to play a four-game series beginning Friday at Wagner; the following weekend they will play their home opener against NYIT.

“I’m a realist,” Trimper said. “We are playing baseball in the state of Maine and can’t do anything about the weather. If we can’t play here then we will find a parking lot, a high school field or somewhere else where we can play.”

Edward S. Casey is the author of “The World on Edge,” an exploration of what we mean when we talk about edges. If it seems like his focus is teetering on the edge of irrelevance, Casey asserts that our understanding of edges influences our embrace of borders – and in turn, global politics.

“We’re never not on edge,” said Casey, a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, who spoke as part of the University of Maine’s Philosophy Colloquium.

Considering the subject of borders, Casey begins with the idea that these are imaginary lines drawn over a natural landscape. While Casey is careful not to dismiss the political and historical relevance of these lines, he notes that they are imagined by human kind and in turn can be re-imagined to suit humanity’s own purposes.

Casey is critical of one such re-imagining: Walls. From the Berlin Wall to the U.S.-Mexican border, these physical barriers lock an imaginary line into place. A wall makes an abstract idea like a border into a solid, physical barrier – and one that is even less likely to change to accommodate human realities and lives.

“Consider a cougar encountering the wall at night,” Casey suggested in a thought experiment. He proposed the animal would have no ability to comprehend the wall, and would become, as Casey put it, “Confused, and rightfully so.” Cougars and ocelots all become unwitting nationalists to U.S. immigration policy with real impacts on endangered species. As a species thrives, it seeks to expand, but can’t traverse the wall.

A wall is also evidence of a “besieged mentality,” according to Casey.

There is no reason to solve political problems with unnatural physical barriers, Casey said. Instead of imagining these walls on our edges, Casey suggested a fuzzier concept for borders: A concept he differentiated as a “boundary.”

A boundary is a border area, but defined in terms of its own space. As an example, Casey spoke of the Cordillera del Condor, on the Ecuador-Peru border. The area’s ownership and governance have been contested since the 16th century, but battles over which border line was more accurate.

In 1998, the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Chile served as brokers over a deal which set the disputed territory aside as a “Peace Park.” The solution seems to be working, with armed guards of both nations settling into park maintenance rather than fighting over a border. In the meantime, wildlife is thriving in the space providing mutual benefits to both nations.

This approach changes the idea of border disputes. Instead of being an argument over where a fixed edge ends and begins, it shifts the conversation into maintaining openness and permeability while maintaining national integrity.

While this question may not be popular, we are left pondering the cost of such attractions. The MythBusters lecture cost more than the budget would normally allow for an entire year. Previously, the Guest Lecture Series, funded by the student activity fee, was required to bring three lecturers per semester.

While these lectures had smaller turnout, they offered curious students valuable opportunities to learn from specialized experts and enhance their education. The rock-star nature of this expensive lecture proves its mass appeal but does not guarantee any sort of specialized knowledge to benefit the intellect of the students.

The two Student Government positions of Vice President of Student Entertainment and Director of the Guest Lecture Series are being consolidated into one position. This could lead to more of these types of events.

A certain amount of our student activity fee is already allocated toward entertainment events and is dedicated to a variety of entertaining programs and opportunities. Students rely on the Guest Lecture Series to seek out higher thought, presumably a pursuit shared by all of us here at this educational institution. Perhaps we should hesitate before we attempt to dazzle students with entertaining events on funds meant to educate.