| Summary: | 8 -10 A & E - F-M Celebration of Women and Their Music - Black History Month - 8: Full-color powwow 7 FEATURES - Where’s the best service? Measuring up Concordia’s Dining Services against others - Spring break safety tips 2 3 - 5 11 NEWS OPINIONS SPORTS - Lobbying St. Paul - Residential Life staff selections complete - Senate reforms syllabi - The Dueling Columnists: Should we have a wet campus? - Responsible tourism - Erickson for a non-jock - Men’s basketball secures playoff spot - Track & field host MIAC championships THE CONCORDIAN THE AWARD-WINNING STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF CONCORDIA COLLEGE - MOORHEAD, MINNESOTA Volume XCVI, Issue 19 Friday, February 18, 2005 http://www.cord.edu/dept/concord/ ‘Where theWoodlands meet the Plains’ By Maren Taylor Though it did not increase voter turnout, Student Association elections were held online last Thursday, Feb. 10. Matt Dimich, technology commissioner for SA, said that the notion of online voting was originally drafted to build up the number of voters. “It’s been decreasing year by year,” said Dimich. “That’s why we made the effort to increase it.” This year, a total of 248 students voted for their student government officials, making up about 8.8 percent of students. Last year, voter turnout was at about 100 students more than this year, said Liz Connor, current president of SA. “There weren’t any races that were actually contested,” Connor said. Because of this, she said, candidates didn’t feel the need to publicize as much as in previous years. In his four years with SA, Dimich says that the number of students who vote for SA representatives has been dwindling. Online voting did not reverse the trend. “I think it was because it was a new thing,” said David O’Hara, SA political affairs commissioner. O’Hara offered many reasons for the low turnout. The program, created by Dimich, allowed students to vote through a link sent via e-mail. O’Hara suggested that many stu-dents did not realize that this e-mail would allow them to vote for representatives, and simply deleted it. He also suggested that poor advertising was a factor in low turnout. E-VOTING The Sixteenth Annual Woodlands and High Plains Powwow was held in Memorial Auditorium Saturday. For full-color coverage, see Arts & Entertainment, page 8. Photo by Donna Lenius. SA ELECTIONS, 12 Voter turnout decreases By Amy Nell This year’s Peace Prize Forum was organ-ized to honor the life and actions of Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who has been working in the human rights field for more than 20 years. It has been her mission to “help the world understand that being a Muslim and demanding laws that respect human rights are not contradictory.” Her work, “calls upon us to unite and act in the pursuit of justice and peace in the world.” The 17th annual Peace Prize Forum “Striving for Peace: Uniting for Justice” was held at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, MN February 11th through the 12th. Four plenary speakers spoke to crowds about a broad range of human rights issues including loss of dignity, deprivation of legal rights, starvation, famine, war, illness, and humiliation. Peace Prize Forum honors strong women Davar Ardalan, National Public Radio reporter and producer, represented Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi at the 17th annual Peace Prize Forum. Photo by Amy Nell. PEACE PRIZE FORUM, 12 Winter illnesses plague campus By Sarah Hoffman First-year student Andy Miller couldn’t seem to get rid of his pesky cold. He took DayQuil and Advil, but after two weeks of feeling under the weather, he decided to visit the Kjos Health Center. The diagnosis? He had what’s going around. “They said that it looked like what everybody else has had: sort of achy, fevers, wak-ing up with the whole night-sweat thing,” he said. Kathy Benson, director of the health center, said her staff has recently been inun-dated with students like Miller—sometimes close to 20 per day, who complain of head and body aches, stom-ach problems, or a persistent cough. “We are seeing such simi-lar symptoms that some type of bug is going around,” she said. Although the students Benson has seen in the past few weeks have felt very ill, she said the health center does not believe that an out-break of influenza caused the widespread bug. “We’re not screening kids that aggressively because people are responding and I think if you did have influen-za like some people in the community have had, you would see students more ill than we’ve seen,” she said. Rather, Benson thinks that the bug plaguing campus is the result of a virus, which causes symptoms similar to the common cold. The best treatment for this illness is a combination of rest, increased fluid intake, and medication to relieve symp-toms, Benson said. ANWR talk at MSU-M By Donna Lenius Out of the tundra and into the Red River Valley came two Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) specialists Feb. 10 to MSU-M. Andrew Kelly, a field biologist and naturalist, along with Robert Thompson, an Inupiat Eskimo and wilderness guide, gave a slideshow pres-entation of the biological and historical significance ANWR holds. Nearly two decades of controversy surround ANWR. The debate lies between opening up the pro-tected area to drill for oil, or continuing complete conser-vation. It is not a surprise they chose to speak in Moorhead. “Minnesota has always played a vital part in the pro-tection of ANWR from the very beginning,” said Kelly. A bill proposing arctic drilling for oil deposits in Alaska’s ANWR is expected to go to Congress early this spring. The disputed region is located in the northeastern corner of Alaska. It is 19.8 million acres—an area slight-ly smaller than the size of South Carolina—of pristine wilderness. If passed, the bill would open the region for oil exploration. In an area that is completely void of infrastructure of any kind, the bill’s passage would impact the wildlife and the people who depend on that wildlife. In 1945, the first presi-dent of the Wilderness Society was Olaus Murie, born in Moorhead, Minnesota. He and his wife Margaret worked together to extensively research Northern Alaskan habitats. The establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1960, shortly after Alaska became a part of the United States, was a result of their research. Using the words of the famous conservationist Aldo Leopold, in an area “untram-meled by humans,” arctic experts Kelly and Thompson described this unique region of our country. They offered the audience an inside look at the disputed region show-ing breathtaking photos, and talked about the radical new problems the area would face if drilling is allowed in this arctic region. Both men told of ANWR’s species that call the northern coastal area home. The porcupine caribou herd, the second largest herd in Alaska, holds their calving grounds on the northern coast. ILLNESS, 12 ANWR, 6
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