Western Front - 2004 April 16

              FUN WITH SHARP STICKS
Western javelin thrower is
ranked nationally.
Sports, Page 8
ISSUE 5
VOLUME 129
ONE NATION UNDER...
'Under God' is not specifically religious and
should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Opinions, Page 10
SWEAT, TEARS & BLOOD
Students use their own blood
as part of a photo exhibit.
Accent, Page 7
Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
The Western Front FRIDAY
APRIL 16, 2004
Western team to debate with Irish champs
By Kenna Hodgson
The Western Front
Three members of Western's nationally
ranked debate team are set to compete
against the Irish National Champions tonight
at 8 p.m. in Viking Union 565. The topic of
deliberation is whether America's war on ter­rorism
has been a failure.
Western is one stop of eight on the Irish
National tour, which the Irish Times spon­sors,
Western debate coach Steve Woods said.
Representing Western are seniors Rachel
Elkington and James Rydberg, who have
seven years experience each, and senior
Andrew Hu, who has debated during all four
years at Western.
"Unlike the presidential debates, where
they just answer questions, our debates can
be pretty confrontational," Hu said. "That's
the way a debate is supposed to be."
Fifteen minutes before the debate begins, a
coin toss will decide which side each team
will defend.
The Irish team includes Paul Brady from
King's Inn Law School, David Whelan from
the University College Dublin and Michael
Moriarity from Dublin City University.
SEE Debate, PAGE 3
Vehicle research founder retiring
Seal stepping
down but still
will volunteer
By Chrystal Doucette
The Western Front
After 33 years of teaching at
Western, Michael Seal, 67, the
Vehicle Research Institute:
founder and director, is retiring
in June and returning in the fall
as a volunteer at the VRI.
"Very few people can spend
their entire career working at a
job they love so much they'd do
it for nothing," Seal said. "And
now that I am retiring, I will be a
volunteer."
The Alumni Association is
sponsoring a reunion and unof­ficial
retirement dinner for Seal
on May 8, where he will have
the opportunity to meet former
students who now live through­out
the country. His father, Ron
Seal, 90, of Half Moon, B.C., also
will attend.
"I'm a car freak from way, way
back," Michael Seal said.
He said his love for cars began
at age 2 when his father built
him a "kiddie car" made entirely
of wood. Seal built his first car
when he was 15 and raced it
soon after.
Eric Leonhardt, assistant pro­fessor
in the department of engi­neering
technology and the VRI,
said he and Seal will co-direct
the VRI next year. He said Seal
. . Chrystal Doucette/The Western Front
Western Vehicle Research institute founder and director Michael Seal sits behind the wheel of the
student-designed Viking 30 vehicle on Thursday in the VRI shop.
has a genius's understanding of
vehicle design concepts and
taught him while he earned his
degree at Western.
"He has a view of how to
involve students in projects and
get them to do things beyond
what they thought is possible,"
Leonhardt said.
Seal's wife, Eileen Seal, started
volunteering at the VRI in 1973
and worked as an employee at the
VRI from 1994 to 2000, when she
retired. She has been a volunteer
at the VRI since her retirement.
She said she is proud of her hus­band's
accomplishments.
"He's extremely innovative
and creative, and he has a design
sense," she said. "I think he's an
outstanding teacher."
Eileen and Michael Seal said
they are confident in Leonhardt's
ability to contribute to the VRI's
success. Leonhardt has a mas­ter's
degree in manufacturing
engineering technology from the
University of Michigan and a
background in the automotive
industry, including experience in
manufacturing and product
engineering.
"He's very competent and he
has some excellent ideas," Eileen
Seal said. "It will probably take a
different direction, and that will
probably be good."
The VRI will complete its 37th
vehicle in mid-September, Seal
said. This quarter, five vehicles
from the VRI will compete in
three contests. Seal said this quar­ter
has more vehicles competing
'Subliminal'
study shows
mixed results
By Annalisa Leonard
The Western Front
A video game combined with
subliminal exposure, to stereo­types
forms the foundation for
Western assistant psychology pro­fessor
Kristi Lemm's latest study.
She presented the mixed
results of the study at noon on
Thursday in the Science,
Mathematics and Technology
Education, room 130.
Lemm said she wanted to
explore the idea that people's
behavior is influenced directly
after subliminal or unconscious
exposure to stereotypes of differ­ent
groups, which also is known
as automatic priming.
The purpose of the study was
to determine if the participant's
reaction time was affected after
exposure tp words that reflect eld­erly
stereotypes, such as "wrin­kle"
and "bingo," Lemm said.
The participantswatched;"
these words flash across a com­puter
screen too quickly to read,
yet the words remained on the
screen long enough for the par­ticipant
to unconsciously process
the word, which is called sub­liminal
priming, Lemm said.
The words flashed on the
screen for 40 milliseconds. After
watching 120 words, the partic­ipants
played a video game in
which they drove and had to
avoid obstacles, such as a
falling tree or an oncoming car.
The game measured the time it
took the participant to avoid a
collision with the obstacles,
Lemm said.
She said the results from the
first study clearly showed that
people who received exposure to
elderly stereotypes had a signifi­cantly
slower reaction time to the
obstacles in the video game.
When Lemm tried to repeat
the results in a second study,
SEE VRI, PAGE 4 | SEE Experiment, PAGE 4
Foundation conducts bone-marrow registration drive
• Bone-morrow donation
^Wla^isnnnow? Found in the cavities of flic body's bonesj,
••% it resembles blood and contains st
which produce many blood i
Who needs a Patients with le
oAerHfe-thrcatening
Who may donate?
Source:
fart"**1
Infbgraphic by Matt DeVfeau.
By David Wray
The Western Front
The Seattle-based multicultural health organiza­tion
MAVIN Foundation has~ registered more than
1,200 new potential donors this spring through the
National Campus Marrow-thon, which came to
Western's Viking Union Multipurpose Room on
Tuesday and Wednesday.
The organization hopes to register at least 2,500
donors to the National Bone Marrow Donor
Registry in what it calls one of the largest efforts
ever to register minority donors.
MAVTN's recent focus during the past few years
has been registering as many minority donors as
possible, said Nicki Carrillo, manager of the
MatchMaker bone-marrow project.
"People of color are underrepresented in the
National Marrow Donor Program," she said.
Of particular concern to MAVIN is the population
of mixed ethnicities. According to the 2000 census
— the first year Americans could select more than
one "race" to describe their ethnicity — multiracial
children are the second-largest minority group in
Washington state. The foundation reported that
more multiracial children are born than any other
race except Caucasian in Washington.
According to a MAVIN pamphlet, marrow is the
SEE Marrow, PAGE 3
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