Western Front - 1997 October 17

              FRIDAY
October 17, 1997
iUStill!
NEWS/4
Vancouver's
CHINATOWN
ACCENT/6
WESTERN FRONT Western Washington University Volume 102 Issue 6 Bellingham, Washington
Sehome High School censorship:
Kids tackle constitutional question
By Kevin Rus
The Western Front
Four years ago, Whitney Kvasager and
Austin Davidson were beginning their
careers as reporters for Sehome High
School's newspaper, The Rising Tide.
Today they are co-editors in chief of the
newspaper, which is involved in a battle
with the school administration over the
first issue of the school year.
The center-spread for the paper,
"Sehome Survival Guide '97," sparked an
investigation by the school and the
Bellingham School District for possible
violations of Sehome and district policy.
The layout had two humor articles, an
advice column and an opinion piece about
the Internet.
The Internet piece caused most of the
commotion. Only one paragraph from it is
the cause of all the concern. It reads:
"Good news teenagers: you don't have
to shoplift porn from 7-11 any more.
Assuming you don't get caught, the
Internet provides a safe environment where
students and teachers alike can browse for
the porno of a lifetime. From the tame,
bikiniogle.com to the more sophisticated
seniorprompornparade69.com, smut is
everywhere you look. With the school's
high bandwidth connection, you're only
minutes away from Miss or
Mr. June strutting their
anorexic stuff across your
desktop."
The article was also accom­panied
by a picture of an
online pornographic web site
with a tiny picture of a car­toon
woman who appeared to
be pulling down her panties.
At the beginning of the
school year, students and
their parents must sign a per­mission
form regarding the
use of the Internet. One of the
guidelines in the form is that
"sending or displaying offen­sive
messages or pictures" is
strictly prohibited.
"The administration felt
that the article was to be taken
completely seriously," Kva­sager
said.
"It was a parody about 77^ / s ine centerspread in question; the principal is
Internet use. I guess a few par­ents
didn't understand," Ross Brackett, a
junior at Sehome and author of the article,
said. "We were completely justified in
what we wrote. It was for the student pop­ulation."
Vickie Barry, whose daughter attends
Sehome, disagreed.
"I felt it [was] inappropriate for a minor
audience," Barry said. "I don't believe in
censorship, but these are kids. If they were
adults it would be different."
Barry has been leading the complaints
against the paper and has called businesses
that advertise in the paper informing them
^'^rant/Kevin Rur-now
going to be editing the paper.
of the issue. None of the businesses have
plans to pull their ads.
"I thought it was good," Henning Gatz,
father of another Tide staffer, Chistoph
Gatz, said of the Internet piece. "I don't
See Sehome, page 4
Cage has become permanent part of Parberry
By John Bankston
The Western Front
Despite open criticism from the
Associated Students concerning
the methods by which the
Physical Education, Health and
Recreation department shut down
the Cage, the matter is now
closed. The facility has been
remodeled, and the Cage will not
be reopened.
The lower weight room at
Carver Gym, formerly a free
work-out facility, was closed and
remodeled as an extension of the
Lou Parberry Fitness Center.
Parberry requires a $32.34
membership fee per quarter for
students, $48 per quarter for non-students.
Neither the AS nor Campus
Recreation, who shared the Cage
space with PEHR and the. athletic
department, were included in the
talks to expand Parberry and
close the Cage. They were not
informed of PEHR's intentions
until renovations had already
begun.
"It was distressing to see the
facility closed and re-allocated as
an extension of Lou Parberry
Gym without any student input,"
said Vice President for Student
Life Meche Brownlow.
Former Vice President for
Student Life J.P. Elliot, said last
spring, "It was sort of a rash deci­sion,
I feel, to go that far without
getting any input."
Current AS president Shane
O'Day agrees with Elliot's senti­ment,
but he also agrees with how
the AS handled the situation.
"I feel we did what was profes­sional,
and what was right," he
said.
The AS countered the "rash"
closure of the Cage by drafting a
resolution stating the AS stood
opposed any renovations until
proper student input had been
sought through the university's
governance process.
PEHR Chairwoman Kathleen
Knutzen was instrumental in the
expansion of Parberry.
"That was all outside money
that I raised," she said.
The money was donated by the
Lou Parberry Foundation and the
St. Luke's Foundation.
"No student money and no uni­versity
money was used,"
Knutzen said. "We do our best to
accommodate. as many students
as we can, as fair as we can. We
have improved the facility. It is
available to students at-a reason­able
cost."
Knutzen explained that the
Cage was unsafe and that the
equipment, which has since been
labeled surplus and sold at a pub­lic
auction, had deteriorated.
Much of the new equipment is
designed for easy use by senior
citizens in mind.
With the closure of the Cage,
the AS has been asking what is
happening to free student recre­ational
space on campus.
"Where do we go, what do we
do from here?" asked Brownlow.
"We need to assess student needs
and wants."
Brownlow said the manner in
which the Cage was closed "was
merely a part of a much larger
issue: the insufficiency of free
recreational space here on
Western's campus."
According to a facility compar­ison
for state universities,
Western has less than 11.5 square
feet of free recreational facilities
per student. Eastern Washington
University has 41 square feet per
student, and Washington State
University has nearly 37. The
average for publicly-funded uni­versities
in Washington is 30 to
35 square" feet per student.
"This is the larger problem fac­ing
the students of Western,"
Brownlow said. "Not the unfortu­nate
closure of the Cage, which is
now over and finalized, but the
lack of recreational areas freely
open to the Western student."
O'Day expressed his concern
for Western's insufficient recre­ational
space by citing what he
termed The Big Three.
"Academically, we excel at
Western," he said. "We present
clubs and activities so that stu­dents
can grow personally. But,
not only do we grow mentally and
socially, we grow physically. That
should be accounted for, too."
O'Day added that the AS, with
11,000 students, represents the
largest constituency on campus.
Yet, both Brownlow and O'Day
admit, that on a professional
level, they've heard no student
voices.
"Professionally, none," said
O'Day. "No students have con­tacted
me as an AS representa­tive.
But, as a student, when I'm
with my friends, and from when I
used (the Cage) myself, yes, I can
say I miss it."
Knutzen has not been
approached by students either, but
she addressed the issue of student
recreational space.
"In that aspect, it is a small step
backwards," she said. "Students
need access to recreational facili­ties.
We don't have enough.
"(But) overall, I think it was an
improvement," she said.
Plans to expand Western's cam­pus
have student recreational
space in mind, but these plans are
for 10 to 15 years down the road.
Brownlow, along with Sports
Club President Beth Cullen and
former AS president Leslie
Keller, is making moves not only
to keep recreational space on
campus from shrinking, but also
to expand free student space in
the future. But they need students
to get involved.
"We need to increase the
awareness of the need for more
student on-campus space," said
Brownlow.
"Without student input, there's
nothing the AS can do."