By Ryan Catanese

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.

It’s 7 a.m. on a Saturday. It will be at least another four hours until the average college student opens his groggy eyes and tries to rub the Friday night buzz from his bloodshot eyes.

Ryan Bleam, however, has beaten his cell phone alarm and is standing in the bread aisle of a supermarket. He is one of four customers in the store.

He smiles. “I always do that,” he says, reaching into his pocket and silencing his rumbling phone.

Bleam is not a construction worker getting a beat on the day nor is he a hunter beating the sun to his post. He is a student, a brother and a son, but above all, he is an Ultimate Frisbee player.

“Classes are just my excuse for being at college to play Ultimate,” he says only half jokingly.

He is far away from home; he and his teammates have traveled over four hours to come compete in a faraway tournament in which they will play a total of seven grueling two-hour games over the course of two days.

Ultimate Frisbee is a club sport at Bleam’s alma mater, Elon University, one of 21 teams on campus. The club sports program is over 850 athletes strong and encompasses everything from the equestrian team to the roller hockey team to the water skiing team.

Elon’s club sports athletes will most likely never get paid for playing their sport, will never be in a commercial, and rarely ever play to a crowd more than a dozen strong. All of these players will get a job completely uninvolved with their sport after college, and yet they practice night after night to be great at what they do.

“I could care less about how many people watch me or know about me,” Bleam says. “I work hard so that when game day comes, I will be ready when my team needs me. I just love this game.”

For the Love of the Game

Elon’s varsity sports travel in style. They arrive in charter buses, and if they can’t be driven home that night, they get placed in a nice hotel room.

The Ultimate Frisbee team, however, travels in a style all their own. After their last class on Friday, they run to their rooms, throw their uniforms and other clothes in a bag, and meet at the club sports complex. They cram five people in each reluctant driver’s car, hit the road and tear through the night.

Having been cramped in a car for four hours, when Bleam’s teammates arrive at the hotel, they are antsy and ready to get out of the car, but they can’t. Bleam calmly exits the car and walks into the lobby and checks into their hotel, always one with an exterior entrance, and checks into their four rooms for their estimated 25 players in attendance.

Since there are only four places to sleep on beds (hence the rule at the hotel limiting four people maximum per room) they roll out sleeping pads and bags wherever they can find a spot on the hardwood floor of the hotel room and try to get the best sleep possible for their four games the next day.

It is hardly glorious, but the hard work pays off for these underappreciated athletes. Ironically, Elon’s club sports teams are much more successful on the national level in their respective divisions than the varsity teams.

Elon’s club lacrosse team is currently eighth in the nation in the Division II Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association, and the club roller hockey has won the Division II National Championship several times since 2000. The club Ultimate Frisbee team, of which Bleam is the captain, is currently in the top 80 in Division I and has already played perennial national contenders Georgia, Ohio State and UNC Chapel Hill this year.

It’s an Investment

“I want them to eat something that will be good for them today instead of some greasy fast food breakfast they pick up on the way to the fields,” Bleam says.

He looks back and forth between the two bags and can’t decide.

As he stands in the bread aisle, contemplating the nutritional differences between raisin bagels and cinnamon swirl bagels, he explains his average sports history. As a kid, he played almost every sport, but took football and baseball the most seriously. He explains this, but is obviously distracted.

“I’ll just take both.”

Chris Myers used to be in the same boat.

“I played varsity baseball in high school,” Myers says, “but if you know much about baseball, you know not many coaches are looking for 5-foot 9-inch first basemen. I wasn’t big on the Greek scene, and I wanted something to be involved in, something to connect to. That is when I joined club baseball.”

Myers, now graduated, is the Assistant Director of Campus Recreation at Elon University. He and Peter Tulchinsky, the Director of Campus Recreation, seem to barely fit in an office, their collared shirts seemed to be strangling them.

For Myers, it is always great to see the club sports teams do well on the field, but what he values the most is what happens on the field. To Myers, these groups are more than just a sports team.

Almost all of the club sports teams are completely student-run. They manage their own finances, set their own game and practice schedules, they apply for tournaments and coach their own teams. The captains of club sports teams aren’t just players, they have to be players, coaches, and businessmen all at the same time.

This isn’t just pocket change that the captains are spending. Club sports gives out $54,000 per year to the various teams on campus, and some teams are given over $4,000 per year. The rest of the money is collected through player dues and donations.

“To me, the best experience is for the leaders,” Myers says. “They have to do all these things themselves, and this is a huge chunk of time that they are putting into their teams.

“To me, though, it is worth it. The more that these guys and girls put into their sports, the more they get out of it. It’s an investment.”

The success off of the field is what Tulchinsky values as well.

“Ultimate Frisbee is a great example. Here is a group of about 50 people [including the all-girls team] that, like us, might not have been big into Greek Life, who might not have found a place to fit in on campus a couple years ago. Now they have a strong group of friends that share a similar interest and they feel more connected when, a couple of years ago, they might have transferred.”

“Yes, we are a team, first and foremost,” Bleam says, bagging his bagels at checkout. “But you have to understand that it is so much more than that. We live together, we eat together, sleep together.

In many ways, they have grown up together.

So, you might find them on the fields late at night honing their craft, or you might catch them all together on weekends. If nothing else, they at least deserve some respect. They are ancestors of the purest sports players; they didn’t play for money or for fame.

They play for the love of the game.

So whenever you get tired of seeing prima donna professional athletes bicker over whether they get $80 million or $81 million, just know that there are Ryan Bleams in this world, working hard for their sport, for themselves, but most importantly, for their team. They are the underdogs, the scoffed at, the disrespected. They are club sports athletes.

They are the weekend warriors.

By Ryan Catanese
December 11, 2008

It is January 20, 2009 and the stage is set for the most historic inauguration speech of all time.  The streets of Washington DC are lined with people, and not a single shred of confetti is going unlaunched into the air.

Is it before or after that when Obama whips out an electric guitar?

The internet has been flooded with rumors and suggestions for Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, including everything from a throwback to the Gettysburg address to “Barack Obama should close his speech with a guitar solo.”

Sarah Jenny shares what is important to her.

Obama’s inaugural speech had already caused controversy even before election night, when, back in October, the New York Times ran an incorrect story claiming that Obama had already written his speech-before the election was over.  Despite claiming that the story was “totally false,” Obama was harshly criticized by the McCain campaign, who said “When I pull this thing off, I have a request for my opponent: I want him to save that manuscript of his inaugural address and donate it to the Smithsonian, and they can put it right next to the Chicago paper that says, ‘Dewey defeats Truman.’”

Considering the general public can almost definitely rule out the possibility of a guitar solo, when January 20th comes around, what should Obama really talk about?

For some, it is the larger picture that they are concerned about.

“I think the main thing is to just be united, since it has been such a divisive election,” said Elon University senior International Studies major Kelly McCarty.  “Especially with all of the fear-mongering type of campaigning going on in the McCain camp, I think it will be really important to bring those people in.”

For others, it is the specifics that they want clarified.

“I want to know how he plans to accomplish all of the goals that he’s set for himself,” said Ron Morgan, a local vendor.  “I want an outline, specific things that he’s actually going to do.”

“For me, the most important thing is for him to address what he is actually going to do,” said Elon junior Sarah Jenny.  “I feel like up to this point, there has been a lot of just inspiring people to vote

Kelly Reimer explains what she wants to hear.

for him, and I would like for him to actually get down to actually bullet-pointing what he is going to enact as President.”

Dr. Rudy Zarzar, a political science professor at Elon University, gave his opinion.

“I think if you took a poll of our population, I think that what they would say is that the number one priority for a new President, no matter who it ended up being, would be the economy,” Zarzar said.

This thought was, in large part, true.

“[Obama should talk about] The economy, war second, but the economy first,” said local retiree David Bragg.  “The economy  is going down the tubes, and especially for a retiree, it is a major concern.”

“He should definitely talk about the economy,” said Kelly Reimer, coordinator of the elite Program at Elon University, “and specifically bailouts of companies, car industries, and banks.”

“One thing about the economy that I will insist upon, we need to give priority to the people who are foreclosing on the mortgages on their houses,” Zarzar said.  “That is a tragedy that we cannot allow.”

Kelly McCarty will be attending the speech in January.

For many, the war in Iraq and, in more general terms, foreign policy continues to be important.

“For me, I would really like to hear his plans for Iraq and getting the troops home and exactly what he wants to do with that,” Jenny said.

“I think foreign policy is big, as far as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, just to name a few,” Reimer said.

“There are huge issues that we cannot deal with alone,” Zarzar said.  “Global warming, the war on terrorism, these are things that require an international effort.  We need to bridge the gap, especially with our allies.”

Despite these problems, people are positive.

“I feel optimistic, because we are talking about a unique individual here.  Whatever you feel about the man or your political affiliations, the guy has it, up here,” Zarzar said, touching his temple.

While there are so many looking for stances on policy, for others, there will be more lighthearted things to watch out for come January 20.

“I am also looking forward to seeing what Michelle Obama and their children are going to wear,” Reimer said through laughs.  “I think that that will be interesting from a woman’s perspective.”

What is Obama going to talk about on the world’s biggest stage?  No one knows except for him.  For all the public knows, he could be practicing his guitar solos right now.

An Interview with Dr. Rudy Zarzar, Part 1

An interview with Dr. Rudy Zarzar, Part 2

By Ryan Catanese

December 1, 2008

Elaine Durr, Elon's first full-time sustainability coordinator

Have you noticed anything different on Elon’s campus lately?

Have you seen the signs around campus for locally-grown food?  Have you noticed that Elon security now has several Smart Cars in their fleet?  Or maybe you have seen the shiny new Priuses parked outside of Moseley that are dedicated for student use?

There is a spectrum of views on sustainability.  Some think that it is of the highest importance, and some think it is less of a priority.

Regardless of what your stance is, Elon is spending a lot of money to be more sustainable, so if you are a student here, this pertains to you.

In 2006, Elon created an Environmental Council, and in 2008, hired a full-time employee, Elaine Durr, whose sole job it is to push Elon towards a more sustainable future.  So what have they done?

Why now?

This has certainly been an issue that has been a long time coming.  After all, the 2008 Presidential election was not the first time that energy was one of the major platforms in an election; it has been talked about since the Jimmy Carter campaign in the 1970′s.

So why now?

“I think a lot of it has to do with Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth,” Durr said.  “It’s unbelievable how many people that I talk to that relate their interest in the environment to Al Gore’s book.”

On October 22^nd, Durr hosted a viewing of a live webcast on college sustainability and climate change.  On the webcast, Anthony Cortese, the founder of Second Nature, an organization focused on the teaching of environmental sustainability in institutions of higher learning, said, “People didn’t think that they were contributing to the problem.  That was a hard pill to swallow.”

Another reason important reason is that traditional dirty energy is finally hitting people where it hurts.

“If you hit someone’s wallet, they start to notice,” said Durr.  “Gas prices are going up so people are thinking more about how they drive, how far they drive, and what they drive.”

While these topics are all very publicly visible, there are other concerns that don’t receive as much of the public’s attention.  One of these is landfill space.

“In some areas, there are shortages of landfill space, so recycling is really getting pushed,” Durr said.  “We’ve run out of place to put trash, so recycling has become a huge issue.”

Cortese mentioned the importance of colleges and universities in instigating this sustainability revolution.  “Universities are a $350 billion per year business,” Cortese said.  “With that much money and all of those young minds, they need to be a model.”

But for Durr, the most important thing is awareness.

“As employees of a university, it’s our job to teach, and if we aren’t teaching them about these issues, then we’re not doing our job,” Durr said.

Go Local

There was the removal of trays, the introduction of “greenware,” but if you have been to any of Elon’s dining halls lately, you have probably seen signs boasting about their use of local foods.  Organic food is important for three reasons.

First, it is important economically.

“From my perspective, local food is so important, because you are supporting your local economy, you giving your business to local farmers instead of to somewhere else,” Durr said.  “If you’re an owner of a small farm, it is kind of scary to buy more land and more crops and expand if you don’t know if anyone is going to be there to buy it.  You have to put in some investment, and knowing that the university is interested helps those farmers know that they have a place to sell their product.”

Second, it is energy-wise.  Consider the amount of resources spent transporting food from California as opposed to the amount of resources used to transport food from the farm 20 miles away.

Third, it’s good for the consumer.

“If you’re getting food from 20 miles away as opposed to 2,000 miles away, it is definitely going to be a lot fresher,” Durr said.  If you get it from so far away, they pick it really early and it ripens as it gets to you, but if you pick it and eat it a day later, it is just a lot fresher.”

While Aramark is just starting to track how much of the food on campus is locally grown, it is estimated the 25 to 30 percent of the produce served in the dining halls is grown at local farms.

“We, as a university, are a big buyer of goods and services, so if we ask for these types of things, it will also help the area to have more of these things available to them,” said Durr.

So, be glad that Elon supports local foods, no matter which of the reasons you prefer.

How does our university look green while thinking green?

Back in the Fall of 2006, the Koury Business center and the equally impressive Chandler Fountain made their grand debut to the student body.  There was one problem: North Carolina was in the middle of a drought.

Questions arose in the student body.  How can we use this much water for aesthetics when the rest of our area can’t even water their grass?

How do we claim to be green and continue to look so green?  In brief, storm water.

“Whenever you see an automatic sprinkler head on campus, it is being supplied by storm water,” Durr said.

Storm water, or rain for the laymen, is collected in three lakes on campus: a pond behind the intramural fields on South Campus, Lake Verona, and Lake Mary Nell.  This water is pumped from these lakes into the irrigation system on campus, supplying the automatic sprinkler heads.

“If you look at [Elon's] acreage, we are irrigating about 70 acres with stormwater, and the part that we water with potable water is less than an acre,” Durr said.

While the fountains are filled with potable water, steps are being taken to reduce their impact as well.

“If the fountains are ever drained for anything, they are drained to the ponds so that we can use them for irrigation,” Durr said.  “The vacuum cleaners that they have recently purchased make it so they don’t have to drain the fountains every time they have to clean them out, and from everything that I am hearing, we have the foundation problems fixed with the fountain, so we won’t have to keep refilling them.”

Taking the LEED

Lindner Hall, still under construction, will be Elon’s first LEED certified building.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, was started by The United States Green Business Council in 1998, as a way to evaluate the sustainable practices of buildings and organizations.  Lindner Hall, still under construction, will be the first building at Elon to undergo the certification process, and is expected to be certified as LEED silver.

There are four levels of LEED certification: certified, silver, gold, and platinum.  While silver is certainly not the highest honor, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

“Silver is a level of certification that is very doable, and can also give us a chance to test the LEED system, to see if it is right for Elon, because sometimes it just doesn’t make sense for everybody,” Durr said.  “The Koury Business Center and Belk have sustainable features in them but never went through the certification process.”

Lindner will have the sustainable features of the older buildings, such as energy-efficient lighting fixtures Energy Star appliances, but will add new features as well.  These include photovoltaic solar panels on the roof, which will offset over seven percent of the building’s energy consumption, and will have a solar hot water heating system.

Overall, being sustainable is a good business move for Elon.

“Universities and colleges picked up on [sustainable buildings], because universities build buildings and they use them for 50 to 100 years, so it is really beneficial to them to make them very energy efficient and water efficient,” Durr said.  “For people who are building a building that are going to sell it and turn it over to somebody, there is not as much incentive to do that.”

These people are serious.  Even the plaque will be sustainable.

“There was concern initially when it started, because you got this huge plaque to hang on the wall and the question arose ‘Why are we putting resources into putting these plaques on the wall?’” Durr said.  “So there are actually options now of what you want your plaque to look like and stuff, and the plaques are made out of recyclable materials now.”

Who else is doing this?

This is not just an Elon initiative.  Many area schools are taking on the charge to be more sustainable.

The BioBuses were just the beginning for Elon’s sustainability plan.

Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have traditionally had strong programs, while smaller colleges like Guilford College and Davidson College have, like Elon, just recently hired Sustainability Coordinators.  Durr, Elon’s Sustainability Coordinator was just hired at the end of the 2007-2008 academic year.

Right now, the goal is for a more collaborative effort.

“What we are trying to do is to get a group together of Triad area Sustainability Coordinators and to meet more frequently to talk about sustainable practices, each other’s successes, and, in a way more importantly, each other’s failures,” Durr said.  “[Sustainability] is a relatively new thing, and there are a lot of things that we are trying to do for the first time and we are learning a lot from each other.”

This is not, however, just a local initiative.  The Sustainable Endowments Institute releases a list of 300 of the most eco-friendly universities across the United States and Canada and rates their sustainable practices in their annual “Green report card,” which can be accessed at http://www.greenreportcard.org.

Topping the list are some big names, like Brown University, Stanford, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, and some smaller schools as well, like Oberlin College in Ohio, Carleton College in Minnesota, and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

How do we stack up?

While we have made an impressive start with sustainable practices, there is still a lot to be done.

For example, as mentioned above, Elon University is now building the first LEED certified structure on campus, a true milestone for the school.  Duke University, on the other hand, currently has 20 buildings that are LEED certified or in the process of being LEED certified, including the first LEED Platinum residence hall in the world, the Smart Home.

The University of North Carolina only has one completed LEED building, but is in the process of building five more, three of which will be certified Platinum.

Elon has a great model right down the road at Warren Wilson College.  They were the first school in North Carolina to have a building certified LEED Gold, and they take local food seriously, growing their food on their campus farms.

Other schools, however, have much more established programs.  Locally, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has several people working on sustainable practices, while schools like Stanford University has a Department of Sustainability and Energy Management that is staffed by 13 full-time employees.

Durr, however, says that we are not that far behind.

“There was some recent ranking where Elon got a 94 and Duke got a 97, so we actually aren’t that far behind them,” Durr said.  “They have been doing this as a concerted effort for several more years than us, so I think that we should feel good about that.”

What can we do better?

The truth of the matter is that sustainability is still a very new campaign at Elon, an initiative that is starting to take hold.  The goal, however, is for a drastic change in how things operate on campus.

For example, according to Elon’s Sustainability Policy, one major goal is to reduce energy consumption by 6% every year so that by 2018, we have cut the university’s total energy consumption in half.  According to the Sustainability Master Plan, drawn up in 2006, Elon plans to be completely carbon neutral in the next 30 years.  This is no small task.

“That’s a big goal,” Durr said.  “It’s going to be challenging, and it will be more so as we get further along because we’ve done things like replacing light bulbs.  As we get through the things that are more obvious, it will be more and more difficult.”

According to a recent survey conducted of the Elon campus, 69 percent of students still drive their car, on

average, 6.75 miles per day, while 96 percent of faculty commutes by car an average of 31.78 miles, roundtrip, per day.

For faculty and staff, it seems the only solution is to make an effort to find more localized housing or to provide more carpooling options.  The students are actually doing a decent job of carpooling with about 35 percent of students carpool regularly, while only 14 percent of the faculty and 10 percent of staff are carpooling regularly.

The amount of student drivers, however, is something that can be fixed now.  One way the Town of Elon, in conjunction with the university, is trying to lower the number of students driving is by making it easier to walk and bike around.  This process, however, cannot be rushed.

“One of my concerns is to not make it just ‘here are more places to walk’ but rather ‘here are places to walk safely,’” Durr said.  “There is a lot of interest, not just from the University but the town to have more opportunities to walk and bike, but they unfortunately take a while.”

Elon and Durr’s efforts have not gone unnoticed.  In their annual “Green College Report,” KIWI Magazine listed Elon in a group of 75 schools that will “help your kids help the planet,”

So, for a status update on the progress of Elon’s sustainability campaign, here it is: it takes a while.  As a university, the progress is continuous and the plan is ambitious, but completely changing how a campus operates does not happen overnight.

So be patient, Elon, and keep up the good work.  And the next time you leave your apartment, turn off the lights.

By Ryan Catanese

November 21, 2008

What are you doing?

It’s a simple question with a simple answer, presented simply at the top of the window. It’s Twitter, the new

Twitter's straightforward layout

social interactivity tool that has swept the nation’s top media outlets and is growing more and more popular as a more informal communications tool, especially with young people.

The concept is straightforward: you have 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation, to tell the world exactly what you’re doing right now, whether by text message or a computer.  This straightforward concept has made “microblogging” one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet, according to The New York Times.

“It’s called ‘microblogging’ because some people use it just to inform their friends about what they are doing minute-by-minute, for instance writing things like, ‘I just voted for Obama, and now I’m headed over to Starbucks to get my free cup of Election Day coffee,’” said Janna Anderson, director of a research project called Imagining the Internet.  “It has since been used by political campaigns, businesses and media organizations to quickly brief people on developing situations.”

The best example of the power of a tool like Twitter was when an earthquake that registered a 7.8 on the Richter scale hit China.  Who was first on the scene?  Twitter.

“A 7.8 magnitude struck China and the news unfolded before our eyes on Twitter,” said MG Siegler, an author for the techno-blog VentureBeat.  ”Before it was on CNN, before MSNBC, before the BBC, even before the United States Geological Survey (which handles earthquake data) had the information, Twitter was on it.  While the mainstream media scrambled to put up their “breaking news” headlines, on Twitter we had pictures, maps, videos all being sent in real-time.”

Here’s how it works: people “follow” each other on Twitter in a process similar to RSS Feeds on any other blog.  So, John Doe sees “earthquake!” on the status of someone that he is following and re-posts that information.  The people who follow John Doe see that and re-post it, and it blazes across the internet.

“Twitter users opt in to following the ‘tweets’ of the individuals or organizations from whom they want information – you follow the messages from the people you want to follow,” Anderson said.  ”This differs from texting on cell phones because it allows you to follow the information shared by interesting people you don’t even know and they are sometimes sharing extremely useful data.”

In the case of the earthquake, people in China were twittering about the earthquake while it was happening.  This leaves traditional news outlets in the dust.

Twitter, it seems, is the communications tool of the future, especially when considering the tools that people are using more and more to stay connected with one another.

“I just think that it is really handy,” said Chris Pickens, a senior at Elon University.  “It’s nice to know where all of your friends are or, if I want, to literally be getting the news before the news releases it.  I can just turn on my phone and read snippets about whatever I want to read about, and then, if I’m interested, can follow up on it.

“It’s like having a newspaper with a bunch of headlines, but it is personalized to me because it includes what my friends are up to and I can choose who I follow.”

“My research for the Pew Internet Project indicates that mobile devices such as Smartphones are going to become most people’s primary communications devices globally by 2020,” Anderson said.  “With its requirement for people to squeeze their thoughts into 140 characters or less, Twitter is a perfect tool for a fast-paced, mobile society.”

“What are you doing?”  With one simple question, Twitter is changing the way people communicate and the way that people receive news.

Are you Twittering yet?

The most important aspect of journalism is being able to find the facts, the complete and unabridged facts.  It is the journalist’s responsibility to be the eyes and ears of the people on all matters, whether it’s who won the Panthers game or who won the Presidential election.

In order to be able to fulfill this duty journalists have to know their boundaries: where they can step and where they cannot step.  Most people don’t realize how far they can probe, and not doing this to find the absolute core truth in any story is a journalist not doing his or her job.

This is why it is absolutely imperative for a journalist to know the laws of his or her state, especially those pertaining to Open Meeting law and Public Record law.

In the “Journalist’s Creed,” Walter Williams said, “I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.”  While the amateur journalist might not be intentionally committing this journalistic crime, not exploring the things that are public record or being turned down from it and, in turn, not reporting on it, is breaking the trust relationship between himself and his readership, and is a failure to complete his or her most important job.

If a journalist does not know the Public Record laws of his or her state to the word, the subjects of the piece are not always going out of their way to help him or her.  In other words, if a journalist is digging up an old police record on a major public figure, he or she cannot expect to get this document without some sort of a fight.

People are prone to hedge and mislead, people are prone to conceal, especially if they are the one being investigated.  They will cry foul if a journalist is digging up dirt on them.

The journalist must know, then, exactly what they can or cannot ask for or demand, because it will not often just be given to them on a silver platter; they might get turned down.

A journalist who does not know the law will go home, dejected, and will, first, not be fulfilling his or her obligation to the public, and second, be losing readers to the other newspaper, who had a journalist who knew the rules and got what he or she needed.

The same is true with meetings of local government.  According to North Carolina Open Meeting law, “whereas the public bodies that administer the legislative, policy-making, quasi-judicial, administrative, and advisory functions of North Carolina and its political subdivisions exist solely to conduct the people’s business, it is the public policy of North Carolina that the hearings, deliberations, and actions of these bodies be conducted openly.”

The United States government has a system of checks and balances, but in reality, journalists are the truest form of a check on government that our society has.  An organization that has to answer to no one will soon go corrupt, and it is the job of the journalist to hold them accountable.

Journalists, however, are not alone in this endeavor.  There are organizations dedicated to the preservation of these laws and the rights of the journalist.

The North Carolina Open Government Coalition is one such organization.  On their website, they claim that their goal is to “unite organizations interested in ensuring and enhancing the public’s access to government activity, records and meetings. The nonpartisan coalition will educate people about their rights and support their efforts to gain access; advocate the principles and benefits of open government; and initiate or assist in legal proceedings when necessary.”

There are organizations like these in each state, because these are people who realize the importance of the journalist and the importance of holding governments accountable for their actions.

So, a journalist simply cannot be a true journalist without understanding these laws.  It is the most important law to understand and is truly one of the great deciders over who is a good journalist and who is a great one.

Chris Cole: "I'm a chance to try something different."

By Ryan Catanese

Chris Cole works long hours.

Do you know who he is?

“Unlike my opponents, I have a day job, which makes it difficult for me to campaign like Elizabeth Dole and Kay Hagan do, because, well, they’re professional politicians,” Cole said.  “They don’t have to punch a clock.”

Welcome to the world of a Libertarian politician, a place where the status quo is under constant attack and 40 hour work weeks are considered vacation time.

So, Chris Cole works a lot, but what does he actually think?

In his press release, Cole said, “In 2007, 775 thousand Americans were arrested for marijuana possession, three-fourths of which were under thirty. The War on Drugs is really a war on young adults for harmless recreation.”

Pause.  Rewind.

Won’t these stances lose Cole some votes in a place like North Carolina, a state that has voted Conservative in every Presidential election since 1976?

“It will definitely lose me some votes,” Cole said.  “Conservatives are wise enough to make good decisions for themselves, but they think that other consenting adults aren’t able to do the same thing.

“As a Libertarian, I believe just the opposite.  I believe that consenting adults are the best qualified people to make those decisions for themselves.

“Whatever consenting adults do that does not violate the rights of another person are not legitimate concerns of government.”

This is one of the central focuses of the Libertarian party, and it stems from what they call, “The Non-Initiation of Force Pledge,” which states, “I do not support the initiation of force or fraud for any purpose.”

“The pledge isn’t necessarily about decisions that I would approve of,” Cole said, “but rather as far as forcing people to make decisions about their personal life.”

If Libertarians, or Independents for that matter, have such great ideas, why is that our country is dominated by two parties?  After all, the last time a third party won a single state in the Presidential election was 1968, an election that was before many college students’ parents were voting.

“Well, the reason that the two parties remain dominant is because they’ve fixed the system to keep out the competition.”

Every four years, Independent candidates are required to go through a ballot drive, in which Senatorial candidates have to petition for over 100,000 signatures to even be placed on the ballots when election time comes around.  And this pales in comparison to Independent Presidential candidates.

“The active people in the party are worn out from the ballot drive,” Cole said.  “We can’t develop any momentum, and that’s something that the Democrats and the Republicans don’t have to go through, so that gives them an advantage.”

The ballot drive, which is a huge money vacuum, combined with the fact that Democratic and Republican candidates are full-time politicians creates an uphill battle for any group trying to break into the political scene.

Not all is lost, however, for the Libertarian party.  They have seen consistently increasing voter turnout for their side.

“Every election, more and more people come our way,” said Sean Haugh, the Political Director of the North Carolina chapter of the Libertarian Party, “especially this year, where voters are so hungry for an alternative.  When people are ready to break their habits of voting for Democrats and Republicans and start looking for another choice, the come and find us.”

Cole is doing especially well in the younger demographics.

“In all of the demographic groups that have been polled, I’ve been doing the best with young voters, which is defined as 18-29,” said Cole.  “I’m at about 16% in that demographic.

“I think college-aged and just post-college-aged voters are recognizing that they suffer the most from the oppressions of government.  That’s why the Libertarian philosophy appeals most to them.”

Cole, however, has never been elected to political office, and his detractors are quick to point that out.

“My question is, ‘Alright well we have been electing the people that were supposedly qualified and what have they done?’” said Cole.  “They’ve doubled the debt, they’ve doubled the size of the federal government, they’ve told you what you can and cannot smoke or can and cannot drink, they’ve told you who you can sleep with or marry.  That hasn’t been working very well for us.

“There’s a definition of insanity that says doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.  I’m an opportunity to try something different and to see if we can get different results.”

“I appreciate [Cole's] honesty,” Haugh said.  “His word is his bond.  He’s a man of principle, and I have a lot of trust in him.  When he tells me something, I know that’s exactly what he’s thinking, and I think that is a quality of a good politician.

“He is true in the Marcus Aurelius sense of the word.”

Cole says he is a voice of change.  He says he is a voice for young people.

Young people, are you listening?

By Ryan Catanese

November 4, 2008

Should some people not vote?

In a recent column run in the Burlington Times-News, 20/20′s John Stossel made the bold claim that some voters, particularly the uninformed ones, shouldn’t vote.  This column obviously coming in the closing days of a historic election year and the most enthusiastic voter turnout in recent memory.

It is easy to scoff at these claims, saying that it is imperative for all people to vote.  But on a closer examination, does Stossel have a point?

This theory, as shocking as it may be, is not a new idea.

“There is an old Aristotelian argument that only the educated and well-informed, only the wise should make decisions for the rest of us who don’t know anything,” said Betty Morgan, political science professor at Elon University.

The theory behind the democratic process is that everyone does research on candidates and makes an informed decision.  The truth of the matter is that this is not often the case, especially on the local level.

Consider the Elon students voting in North Carolina.  They probably knows McCain, Obama and their running mates.   They probably even know some about the North Carolina Senatorial candidates.

But what many fail to consider is that they are also voting for positions like members of the Board of Education, Lieutenant Governor, and county judges that they probably don’t know as much about.  These guess votes will certainly have an effect on North Carolina, and this is the basis of Stossel’s argument.

Dee Atkinson, an election official at Elon’s fire station sees the logic.

“A lot of voters don’t know the qualifications or the job description for the local offices and many don’t even know the person that they’re voting for,” Atkinson said.  “If they don’t know either one of those, I don’t know how they can make an intelligent choice.

“There is a gap, but I don’t know if there is any better way to decide.”

Morgan, however, disagrees completely with Stossel’s argument.

“We don’t have any tests of any kind.  We don’t have a literacy test and we certainly don’t have content qualification questions.  [Voting] is public business however the public is constituted and we can’t start putting conditions and knowledge requirements around who can participate in the election of officials.

“The point is is that citizens, all of them, are entitled to vote and they should.”

Theresa Lilienthal, a Burlington voter, pointed out a flaw that she saw in Stossel’s theory.

“I don’t think that there is anyone that is completely uninformed,” Lilienthal said.  “I think that everyone knows something, so they should go out and vote for what they do know.

“To be honest, I am much more worried about the top offices,” Lilienthal added.  “The top offices are the scariest.”

Alan Cummings, another Burlington voter, put it very succinctly.

“Everyone lives in this country, so everybody’s voice should be heard.”

By Ryan Catanese

A ticker in Times Square is being replaced.

It’s not broken, and there hasn’t been a recent breakthrough in ticker technology that has rendered it obsolete. The ticker works perfectly, but it must be replaced because it’s simply not big enough.

The ticker counts the nation’s debt, and it has run out of space on which to display the current number.

It’s no secret that the economy is in trouble. To put it in perspective, picture this: Remember Wile E. Coyote?

The two could be more similar than you think

In the cartoon, the Roadrunner would often dupe his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote, into running off the side of a cliff. Coyote would float in midair for a few seconds, still running, until he realized he was no longer on the ground. Then, he would look down and plummet into the rocky gorge below.

After a couple years of running in midair, our economy finally looked down. It has been in a freefall ever since, leaving the anxious public with no choice but to wait until it hits rock bottom.

While the economy is currently the most-discussed issue facing the country, it isn’t the only one.

Remember the space plan?

Many citizens don’t, considering the other, more pressing matters that were happening at the same time, like the war in Iraq and a budding presidential race.

In January 2004, President Bush promised to revamp the NASA space exploration program and get an American back on the moon by 2020. It was supposed to be a monumental announcement, a throwback to Kennedy’s era. It was instead drowned out by the clutter.

Just days after Bush’s announcement, the news was dominated by Howard Dean’s infamous scream. Within two weeks, sports took the national spotlight as New England Patriot fans celebrated a Super Bowl win.

The plan, which was intended to catapult America back into the top position as a global leader in science and technology, will cost the country about $12 billion by 2009.

This is just one of Bush’s promised long-term plans, the completion of which will fall squarely on the shoulders of America’s next commander-in-chief.  Others include a complete reworking of the No Child Left Behind program and an overhaul of Social Security, the economy and possibly the healthcare system.

These projects, which have the potential to cost billions of dollars, will be difficult to complete with the  economy in its current state. The deficit is over $10 trillion, a 14-digit number.

The campaigning will end on November 4, but the work will only just begin. That date is not the finish line, but the starting point.

It could take four years, it will probably take closer to 40.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Are you fed up with the current political system?  Do you feel like you are not represented by your government?

Why not vote Independent?

“You know, there is a definition of insanity that is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

These are the words of Chris Cole, the Libertarian candidate for United States senate.  “I’m an opportunity to try something different and to see if we get different results.”

Independents stand for change, a buzzword that has been thrown around a lot this election year.  Independents, however, want more than just policy change; they strive for a revolution of the entire political system.

“It seems to me that if we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, which is what a lot of people characterize voting for, we will never achieve any change,” said Wayne Turner, the Piedmont Triad area representative for the North Carolina Green Party.

Many people think that voting for an Independent candidate would be a throwaway vote.  Bill Eckler, the Vice President of the North Carolina Constitutional Party, disagrees.

“I think John Quincy Adams said, and I’m paraphrasing, that you should vote principle, even if you’re the only one that votes, and not be afraid that you’ve lost your vote,” Eckler said.  “Principle is what you really need to be standing for.  If the two main parties don’t express what you believe in principle, then you need to vote Independent.”

Beyond that, it’s not all about actually winning the election.  Just voting Independent can instigate change.

“We need to demonstrate to the Democratic and Republican parties that there is a sufficiently strong independent political movement out there to either cause some change in their policies or to let us participate fairly in the political process,” Turner said.

It is no secret that our country is dominated by two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.  This is no coincidence.

There are policies in place, in North Carolina and several other states, that make it very difficult for Independent candidates to even make it onto the ballot.

“It’s just a power struggle over control of having the two parties in there,” Eckler said.  “I know in North Carolina, it’s gotten that way because the two parties have made it very difficult for third parties to operate, and there are several other states that are the same way.  The ballot access is extremely difficult, because you have to have thousands of thousands of signatures to even appear on the ballot.”

In order to for a candidate’s name to even appear on the voting machine come election time, a Senatorial candidate has to get almost 70,000 validated signatures.  In order to ensure that they had enough “validated” signatures, Cole and the Libertarians had to get nearly 110,000 signatures just to appear on the ballot.

“One thing that that results in is that we don’t have any money left over for candidates,” Cole said.  “The active people in the party are worn out from the ballot drive.  We can’t develop any momentum, and that’s something that the Democrats and the Republicans don’t have to go through, so that gives them an advantage.”

All Independent politicians want is a fair playing field.  At this point, they do not feel like they are getting that.

“They’ve won’t even let third party candidates debate,” Eckler said.  “They had a third party debate on C-SPAN last night, the two major party candidates were invited and didn’t show up.  They don’t want us to participate.”

So, if you are sure you agree with Republican ideologies, great.  If you are a tried and true Democrat, that’s your prerogative.

But if you feel unrepresented by your government or are just plain unsure, you should research Independent parties.

You never know, you could agree with them.

By Ryan Catanese

David McCullough advises students and faculty alike. (Photo courtesy of Elon University)

ELON, NC- “He encourages us through his characters to be better human beings,” said Charles Irons, assistant professor of history at Elon University, in his introduction of the true legend that visited the campus on Thursday.

David McCullough, arguably the most prolific biographer and historian of the 21^st century, spoke at Elon University’s Fall Convocation in the University’s eighth Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture.  The lecture series, which premiered with McCullough just days after the September 11^th terrorist attacks in 2001, is an annual event that has brought such names as Frank McCourt, David Halberstam, and George Will.

The speech was only part of the event, however.  After an invocation by University Chaplain Reverend Richard McBride and a welcome from University President Leo Lambert, Dean Mary Gowan announced that Professor of Accounting Arthur Cassill was the recipient of the first Wesley R. Elinburg Professorship in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.

Seemingly on cue, McCullough started his talk about “teachers of consequence.” He told the story of Louis Agassi, a man who would have his students “observe” a fish for hours.  This “fish ordeal,” as it was often called, trained students to be observant and inquisitive, leaving one student to say, “I see how much I didn’t see before.”

McCullough reflected on his life, during which he has worked with big names like Thorton Wilder and Edward R. Murrow, and the importance of education in the information age.

“The essentials for education are very simple.  The book, the teacher, and the midnight oil.  Hard work, great teachers and reading.

“Read, read, read.  For you students who are here today, you cannot read enough.  My advice to you is however little television you watch, watch less.”

McCullough also emphasized the distinct difference between being informed and being educated.

“Information can be vitally important.  But if information were learning, if you memorized the world almanac, you would be educated.  If you read the world almanac, you wouldn’t be educated. You’d be weird!

“Information has nothing to do with poetry; it has nothing to do with how great music can stir the soul.  It has nothing to do with art or humor or history.”

Finally, McCullough focused on the importance of history.

“History is not about dates. History is about ideas, human nature, and why we act the way we do in the best and in the worst of times.

“It’s a very important source of strength in times of trouble, like we are in at the moment.”

“That’s my talk.”

And just like that, David McCullough smiled and walked to his chair to the roar of applause, content in adding another accomplishment to his ever-growing list.

It was clear that if anyone ever writes about McCullough, as he has done with so many others, his biographer will have a lot of work to do.