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| Nov. 11, 2004 | ||||||||
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Our Perspective... The Board of Governors (BOG) meets tomorrow to decide one of three ways students may be paying more money for the same education they’ve received for years. Tomorrow, the BOG votes on board-based tuition increases. UNC President Molly C. Broad is recommending the board not raise them at all. There’s no reason to celebrate just yet. Even if the board goes along with Broad’s proposal, which she received from a committee that looked into the subject, students could still find themselves facing higher education costs. The board could have each UNC campus look into establishing campus-based increases. This allows each school the liberty of deciding how much extra they might need from tuition and fees, should they decide to raise the prices at all. The North Carolina General Assembly can also step in and raise the cost of education. The Association of Student Governments lobbied last year against tuition increases. Even with the presence of approximately 200 students at the March BOG meeting, the board still raised costs even as its members thanked students for getting so involved in the process. Students, on the other hand, greeted the board with shouts, angry posters and a collection of personal stories appropriately titled, “The Personal Stories Project: Faces, Not Numbers.” The book contained hundreds of pages of stories from students trying to support themselves in college amid the increasing costs of attending a university. These stories should provide a sobering reminder that among all the facts and figures in this issue, the effects of rising tuition are a very real part of life for many students. The General Assembly also has a duty to keep tuition as low as possible. Years of rising tuition costs for the same education as before is hardly “free of expense.” Members of the Board of Governors and the General Assembly have spoken of their reluctance to raising tuition. Yet, year after year, they keep doing it. This trend in North Carolina education has to come to an end. To raise tuition one year is understandable. Two or three years, that is coming dangerously close to a line that should never be crossed. Four or five years, well, by that time no one is really sure if the line still exists.
Invasion of the neuromarketing brain scan
In the next five to 10 years, technology will advance the consumer process by leaps and bounds. In fact, we’ll hardly need to make decisions about anything. Our choices will be pre-made thanks to sheer commodification. No more spending hours in the supermarket. All food and drink items will look, smell and taste exactly the same. Why bother wasting your entire orning picking out the perfect car when the entire lot is filled with clones? The world’s population will even dress in black and white outfits not entirely dissimilar to cartoon prison uniforms. OK, prophetic exaggeration aside, I should introduce you to “neuromarketing” in case you haven’t heard of it already. It’s all the rage in the world of marketing and advertising. In some form or another, the process has been used since the late 1990s, but the most recent applications of the technology have raised plenty of eyebrows. Medical scientists have long turned to brain-scanning procedures to better understand the inner workings of and possible solutions to the likes of Alzheimer’s and autism. That was certainly one of the worthiest triumphs of late and I can only hope that further discoveries will be made in that regard. However, a few scientists also arrived at the bright idea that those same scanning techniques could be used to measure psychological reactions in consumers. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures blood flow to the brain, particularly blood flow to areas of the brain that govern emotional responses. Since the late 1990s, universities and institutions across the United States have been conducting small, focused experiments with fMRIs in an attempt to nail down exactly why we make those decisions that we do when buying products. Do we identify with brand names over quality? What about different makes of cars? Coke or Pepsi? We often make those decisions instantaneously but rarely realize or analyze why. As you can well imagine, some corporations are foaming at the mouth to figure out why. The company that effectively gauges the consumers’ specific thoughts about products could conceivably rule the world, or at least make billions of dollars. For my part, I think digging into a person’s brain for the marketing edge is below the belt even for the advertising world. It’s manipulation in the purest sense. Given time and the eventual refinement of the process, companies would tailor people to their products, rather than the other way around. If a car company learned, for example, that most people disliked small windshields at a psychological level, the market would force all cars to feature larger windshields over time. The process would advance until cars literally looked the same all over the world. Who wants that? To be realistic, the marketing world has used strategies like this for decades. Focus groups and opinion polls are the ancestors of fMRIs. However, this new process is so much more specific and personal. Is it really that big leap from merely cultivating the information to using that information to influence a willing mind? And now here’s the clincher, the worst part of all, the element I haven’t even mentioned yet. Doctors at UCLA have recently completed a study that used fMRIs to measure participants’ reactions to political candidates. Yes, you read that correctly. Politics is the new arena in brain scanning. According to a recent article at www.cnn.com (“Scientists scan brains for political clues”), Dr. Joshua Freedman and Dr. Marco Iacoboni tested 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans by showing them images of Bush, Kerry and Nader and recording the fMRI results. Small sample, I know, so their resulting theories are hardly airtight, but they are indicative of a possible future: perfect, universal political propaganda as far as the eye can see. Why not nominate robots and be done with it?
The need to step outside comfort zones
The scent of chicken nuggets and waffle fries make my stomach growl as I stand in the cafeteria trying to find a place to sit down. The place is full and I don’t see any of my friends to eat with. To my right is a table of black students who are all laughing and talking to each other. I think one of them is from my church. In the middle of the cafeteria, an Asian girl is sitting alone, reading a book. I’m pretty sure I’ve met her at a meeting a couple of weeks ago. To my left, a bunch of kids with tattoos and piercings are sitting together. One has three mohawks, each dyed a different color. One of the girls in the group looks really familiar; she looks up and catches me staring at her. I quickly look down at my fries and find a seat by myself, away from everyone else. Does this sound familiar? Am I the only one that would rather sit alone than have to sit with people that look or act differently than me? Even when I am familiar with somebody in the group, I still feel a little uncomfortable trying to sit with them. I’m not always like this, sometimes I branch out and will make friends with people who have different backgrounds, skin color or interests than mine, but normally I like the familiar. I have a million excuses for my behavior, like they might want to sit with their friends and not have someone interrupt them. Or, they might think I’m weird for sitting with them when I only know one person in the group. Normally though, I just tell myself that I’m shy and I shouldn’t have to push myself out of my comfort zones when all I want to do is eat my lunch and get to class on time. All of my excuses are lame though, and are a weak attempt to stay in my own little bubble. God only knows how stressful my life is, so I try to keep the things I can control as normal and soothing as possible. Even though it’s natural to want to hang out with people that look like us and share our interests, it wouldn’t kill you (or me) to branch out a little and be open to friendships with people that think differently or have different backgrounds than we do. It’s easy to smile at others on the bus or be able to work with them on a class project, but it’s hard to establish true friendships with people that are different from us. It’s the people that recognize that this is a problem in their lives and work very hard within their own life to branch out to other people that make the world a better place to be. Obviously we shouldn’t try to keep a tally in our head of what certain “types” of people we have as friends, but we should try to be open to new friendships and the experiences they would bring. Segregation goes far beyond this campus though. Most of the world still practices some form of segregation; it affects people of all races and ages and unfortunately many religions. Most religions preach tolerance and love to other races and people groups, but seldom do the people of that religion practice it. Tony Evans, a favorite preacher of mine, once said that the most segregated time of the week is Sunday morning I think he’s right. As a Christian, I think the church should be the first group to extend the hand of friendship to others, but sometimes we are the first to shun people because they are different from us. Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” In response to Stephanie Marshall's article concerning construction at ASU: No credible article in any publication should EVER begin with the phrase "I need to get this off my chest." Period. In addition to this, while I am constantly both saddened and insulted by the poor writing and general lack quality in this newspaper (see: Justin Boulmay's disgraceful coverage of the protest last week), I believe Mrs. Marshall's rant was an all-time low. This is the single most insulting, asinine article I have ever read, obviously penned by someone who has never done an real day's physical work in their life. What do think happens when you walk blindly around engrossed only in your own self-absorption? You almost get run over by people who have actual work to do. Perhaps Mrs. Marshall ought to realize that she is one of the lucky 1% of the ENTIRE WORLD's POPULATION who even gets the luxury of attending college and be content not to moan about the inconvenience of an actual person with an actual job infringing on her wonderful bubble of an all-too-familiar reality. This article actually made me sad that anyone who considers themselves a journalist could possibly come up with such drivel. Ryan Dulaney I agree with your assumption that the Mountaineers don't belong in the Southern Conference any more [Our Perspective, Nov. 9, 2004], but my agreement ends there. The Mountaineers are headed in reverse. If someone unfamiliar with the Southern Conference were to read your article, they would suspect that the Mountaineers are dominating the conference and that the challenge of competition no longer exists. You state that the Mountaineers play a tougher non-conference schedule than the other teams in the conference. I can't see how Appalachian's non-conference schedule is any tougher than anyone else's. They do play some different teams, but where are those teams ranked nationally-nowhere! GSU played Georgia. At the time, Georgia was ranked number 3 in 1-A. They also play Florida International. Now FIU doesn't have the most impressive record, but they are playing a 1-A schedule. It sounds as if you must be an App grad that's a little sour that the Mountaineers haven't made much headway in the play-offs---like ever! If App is so much ahead of the other schools, then why are they getting beat by the dregs of the Southern Conference (UTC)? Incidentally, GSU routed Appstate by almost 50 points. I guess you're right; APP is ready for better football! Maybe they should move to the NAIA. Respectfully, This is in response to the letter to the editor printed in the Nov. 9 issue of The Appalachian titled "Drug Mention Not Needed in Story." Many of us have lost someone whom we've loved before. If not, we probably know someone who has. Therefore, I can understand Ms. Gordon?s personal feelings relating to the tragic loss of her friend Joey McClure. However, I was opposed to her comment that mentioning drugs in the story of her friend?s murder was unnecessary. The writer of the article was doing nothing more than their job- and that?s to report the news whether it involves good or bad details. The truth is that drugs were involved in McClure?s murder. That?s not a "rumor" as Ms. Gordon wrote in her letter to the editor. According to the Boone Police Department, that's a fact, and in contrast to what Ms. Gordon believes, that?s a pertinent detail to this story. What kind of person McClure was or what his habits were are not nearly as important as the fact that he is no longer with us. Therefore, I must contest the opinion of Ms. Gordon that there will be damage to his name "by mentioning the possibility of drug activity." As a human being, I am very sorry for Ms. Gordon's loss, and I am sorry for the other friends and family that now have to deal with his death. But as a student who has the right to be informed, I want the news- good, or in this unfortunate case, the bad. A.Y. Fails In response to the articles written about last Thursday's demonstration, we'd like to say, that we are quite disappointed. It's fairly obvious that the powers that be at The Appalachian are rather conservative. We've concluded this due to the fact that our actions were completely misrepresented. If anyone had bothered to ask us what we were doing, he or she would have learned not only are we not affiliated with the Democratic or any other political party, but our purpose was to get people talking. In that respect, we were successful. Our actions were a response to the election, but not necessarily anti-American. People getting worked up about the state of our government was exactly what we were hoping to see. In fact, some people, although they didn't agree with our motives or actions, spoke at great length to many of us about important issues such as abortion, the war in Iraq, economic policies, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties. This is EXACTLY why we were out there. Obviously our demonstrations will not directly affect the Bush Administration. However, we hope they continue to initiate open dialogues between people who may not agree with one another. Activism doesn't end on November 2nd. We will not cease. Passionate politics is the catalyst for change. Jaime Duggan Beth Peddle I am writing in response to your articial critizing Elon for being in the SoCon [Our Perspective, Nov. 9, 2004]. So what you beat them 48-7? If I remember correctly, we beat YOU 54-7. Does this mean that App State should drop out of the SoCon? Elon is a young program that deserves its fair shot at building a program. Not long ago, GSU restarted their football program. In fact, we played in the tiny stadium of Statesboro High school for years. No one expected us to grow into the program we are today. I will not even address your cheap shot about our schedule. It seems to me that App State needs to worry more about putting up Ws and less about Elon. Chris Butler I believe the students of ASU would enjoy and benefit from a Frisbee golf course being constructed on campus. Men and women, young and old, any fitness level or economic status can play disc golf because a disc costs only around $10. Not only is it great exercise but it is very low impact on its environment, unlike tennis or basketball courts. The course would only require 18 baskets set up along a cleared trail through a small plot of property, which the school owns plenty of to facilitate this. The professional grade baskets cost only about $75 a piece and the discs could be sold on campus for profit by the university. As of right now the closest disc golf course to Boone is in Hickory. If this interests you the ASU SGA is already aware of requests being made by students and the more voices they hear from the better. Also, you can obtain information on this sport on the Professional Disc Golf Association web site, which is www.pdga.com . Alisun Boldrini I personally found the articles published in the Nov. 9 issue in response to post election unrest to be a prime example of the biased and uninformative display of what has become the common trend within mainstream American media. In no way, shape, or form are all groups discussed throughout the articles accurately represented. First of all, in no place is there any mention of the positions taken by demonstrators on Nov. 4 nor are any of the participants quoted or acknowledged. Instead, all the public is given is a visual image with no explanation other than obvious anger aroused by passionate attempts to draw attention to the current state of our nation. Had the "journalists" actually attended the events, they might have been able to document actual content as opposed to opinion obtained through speculation and word of mouth. They would also know that throughout the demonstration in no manner did the protestors affiliate themselves with the Democratic Party or John Kerry. WE were not protesting the loss of our team or second place in a beauty pageant. Democracy is not a spectator sport nor does it end when the election is over. Voting does not constitute pro-active participation in our political system. Our protest was in response to the very nature of the ignorance demonstrated in the articles, as well as the apathetic comments made by students stating that protesting is stupid. And finally, at least accurately document the sequencing of events that took place as anyone who drove down Rivers Street that day or looked outside their windows lining King Street can attest that the march took place throughout the town of Boone not just to the confines of campus. Students were not the only ones voicing their discontent but members of the Boone community as well. The results may have been decided though there is speculation as to whether or not every vote counted, but the true task that lies ahead is finding a way to unify as American citizens. Active involvement on both national and local levels is necessary as well as the recognition and accurate representation of all sides of the political spectrum. Julia Finkelstein |
© 2004 ASU Student Publications
