The Merciad, Jan. 31, 2002

PERIODICAL iJBRABY USE ONLY ARTS& THE STUDEN T NEWSPAPER OF MERCYHURST COLLEGE SINCE 192 MERCYHURST CO LL HAMMERMILL IJBRA ,PA. s 1 i ENTERTAINMENT N'Sync goes intergalactic I page 6 Men's hockey undefeated inMAACp page 8 Vol. 75 No. 12 Mercyhurst College 501 E. 38th St. Erie * Pa. 16546 January 31,2002 Townhousesunder construction By Kristin Purdy Managing news editor Over the past three months, there has been construction on Lewis Avenue. Prior to November, the site was an empty lot, owned by Baldwin Broth- ers Realty. A series of twelve townhouses, three buildings with four townhouses per building were started in early November of 2001. At the latest, the townhouses will be completed by the end of June. Surprisi ngly, the new townhouse s are not owned by Mercyhurst Col- lege, but by Baldwin Brothers Re- alty. However, M ercyhurst students will be residing in them starting next fall. Construction is ahead of sched- ule and moving along at a good pace. Mercyhurst will be easing the com- plex from Baldwin Brothers with the option to purchase them in the next few years. This cuts the construction costs for Mercyhurst, and therefore will not create any significant tu- ition increase. Tyrone Moore, asso- ciate vice president of adm inistrative services, said, "We both win because the college doesn't have to put down the huge purchase price of building." Mercyhurst is in need of more housing as the student body gets bigger and bigger. In addition, the de- mand for townhouses is escalating. Annie Sitter/Merciad photographer Students can look forward to new townhouses next, yeat Upperclassmen surge for the; townhouses at housing sign-ups every year. Moore said, "Housing op- tions will continually change as the students speak." After completion,^ the townhouses will accommodate" 72 students, with six residents in each of the twelve townhouses. The townhouses on Lewis Avenue S have a similar layout to the other townhouses at Mercyhurst with the addition of a vanity outside of the pstairs bathroom. The new townhouses will be avail- i . spring. Distribution and assignment will be based on housing points and class standing, as it has in the past. Moore said, "I don't believe there will be a substantial cost increase." For those students who want a chance to live in a brand new townhouse, they should be aware and conscious of keeping write-ups to a minimum and focus on full re- tention of housing points for a good chance. able during the housing sign-up this Some information contributed by Alison M. Spencer k Anthrax investigation still under way FBI officials follow-up on Oct 30 hoax with e-mail questionaire By Annie DeMeo Staff writer Students, facult y, and other members of the Mercyhurst community fi nd themselve s still wondering about the white substance the came out of an envelope post-marked Cairo, Egypt in the Admissions office Tuesday, Oct 30. * If The Federal Bureau of Investi gation present ed m embers of the faculty,: administration ;and staff of Mercyhurst with a series of questions related to the ongoing investigation. The questionaire, sent to members of he Mercyhurst community Jan. 4,20 02, requests responses to seven questions meant to determine any relationship of Mercyhurst to Egypt, Thomas Associates in Clevelan d, Ohio (the company that recieved a letter identical to the Mercyhurst anthrax hoax), or Capi- ta] University-Cleveland Center (the location FBI officals believe that the letter was intended for). According to Rodger Gregorich, dean of public safety, 320 of he pos- sible 412 individuals polled have responded to the request of the FBI. "The answers from the college community to date have generated additional leads that the FB I will be following up on," said special agent Greeg Curtis, who is in charge of he Mercyhurs t case. Curtis said that while most of the responses were returned immedi- ately, there are still almost 100 people that the FBI has not heard from. At the request of Curtis, Mary Daly, senior assistan t to the president, will be compiling a list of all employee s o f the college. The FBI Erie Office will conduct a cross-ref- erence with the e-mail responses to identify non-respondents, who will then be sent a second request from the FBI, via the president's office. Agent Curtis confi rmed that the FBI will interview every person who does not respond to the second request. In the meantime; if members of he faculty, administration, or staff who did not respond need .A duplicate copy of the questions, they should email <radaly@mercyhurstedu> or call Dalv at extension 2285. College stu d en t dating kcene istudied By Nick Perkins Contributi ng writer $* - 8L In an effo rt t o find out what really interests college students, namely Mercyhurst College students, a survey was tread ed upo n. The4 survey was posted recently on the Independent Women's Forum ffWF ) and cl aimed tradit ional dating has been replaced-by- "boo kfag HBp" on college cant* puses. Browsing th or ou gh this forum it was noted tot the study^j B^was conducted oil a handful of (vari ous colle ge women. The j Survey-eonsisied of 1,000 college women who were interviewed ***5 over an IS-monm period about a mixture of reMonship thoughts. Release d this past summer, it is one of the first surveys of its kind that deals directly with "hook- U p ^ If The study denned a "hook-up" as a girl and a guy getting together for a physical encounter and not necessarily expecting anything further. A ''physical encounter** was define d by the study as being anything from kissing to having sex. ^According to the IWF report, 40 percent of college women said they had experienced a hook-up and one in ten said they had done so more thai*six times^ Therewerel 61 percent of the women who said that hooking-up made^them feel desirable ** als o ma de them feel Pftecflrdmg^b the studyTthe word "dating" carries multiple mean- ings* very few of which involve going on actual dates. For the most) part, "dating" is synonymous with "hanging ou t" Dating can involve Continu ed on page 2 H fifi Open I visitation reviewed Sara Seidle Editor in chief Mercyhurst Student Government's efforts to provide freshmen with a more lenient visitation policy have been curbed, atleast for now.f Earlie r this year M SG announced a plan that would provide open visitation two weekends per term in freshmen housing. The plan was ap- proved by the administration last year and weekends for open visitation were announced in December. December 14-15, the weekend of the Winter Formal, marked the first open visitation weekend for Mercyhurst freshmen. A little over a month later, members of he board of trustees have expressed disap- proval for the new policy and have decided that, before open visitation can take place again, the proposal must be given a closer look. In order to do this, the board has formed an ad hoc Student Develop- ment and Academic Development Committee to examine the issue. The committee is comprised of20 mem- ers of the board of trustees ap- pointed by chairman of the board ting, a board member, is serving as chair of the committee. According to Rob Kosko, student govern ment president, the MSG executive board is in the process of formulating and presenting a case supporting open visitation to the committee. The executive board, assisted by Laura Zirkle, dean of residence life, and Catherine Ander- son, dean of student development, is compiling a s ummary of he visitation policies at 96 other Catholic colleges and universitie s as well as working on surveying parents of freshmen to determine their feelin gs on the issue s. According to Kosko, the executive board has come across at least 15 other schools with some type of open visitation policy. The committee will meet March 7 to evaluate the information pre- sented by the executive board. A fi- nal deci sion will be made on the issue at the board of trustees meeting proposed open*visitation policy, Kosko said freshmen can expect open visitat ion the w eekend of the Spring Formal;

The Merciad, Jan. 31, 2002

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