Point News, 2000 March 7

              Inside
♦ S t . M a r y ’s C omposts
A cadre of committed carpenters completed
the campus’ composting container construc­tion.
Page Three
♦ C h o o se or L ose
Where do the different candidates stand on
the issues? Pages Eight and Nine
N EW S ............................. .................... ..................2-3
FEATURES .......................................................... 4-5
HUMOR ....................................................................6
A & E ............................................................... 7,10-11
FOCUS....................................................................8-9
O PINION.......................................................... 12-15
SPORTS.............. ....................................................16
St* Mary’s College of Maryland
St. Mary’s campus weekly • 51st year, No. 16 March 7, 2000 • St. Mary’s City, MD 20686
QA furniture to be replaced
after a decade of use
Grand Campus Center reopening after spring break
New campus center to feature faculty achievements, college hoops, and student life in its inaugural week
feature guided tours of the building. They
are available through the Office of Student
Development. The Info Center will also
be back in the new building, and it will be
giving away prizes on Tuesday.
Wednesday will be faculty and staff day
in the new student center and the book
store will feature complimentary coffee.
Our professors’ works will be prominently
displayed in the new school store’s display
cases.
TV63 will go big-screen on Thursday
when all of their daily line-up of movies
are broadcast in the new movie theater.
On Friday, the campus center will host
Monte Carlo night and the Christmas in
April Auction. After the Friday night
movie ends in the theater, the silent auc­tion
portion of the evening will begin. The
silent auction will then give way to the
regular auction to be followed by casino
games. The night will be jointly spon­sored
by the BSU, Christmas in April, the
ORL, the OSD, SOAP, and Rotoract. As
usual, the proceeds will go to benefit the
needy of St. Mary’s county.
Also on Friday, the Campus Center will
anounce the winner of the campus-wide
puzzle raffle. Every student (including
commuters) will receive a puzzle piece
when they get back to campus. There will
be a puzzle in the Campus Center that is
one piece shy of completion. The student
ALISA BRALOVE
senior editor
When junior Davida Ofori-
Sarpong lived in QA, the board
beneath her bed fell off while
she was sitting on it.
But next fall, when residents
return to QA, they will be mov­ing
into a building free of the
large, cumbersome furniture,
which often bordered on dan­gerous.
For the first time since
the mid-1980s, QA will have
new furniture.
“Queen Anne is going to be
taken off-line at some point [this
summer] to remove the old fur­niture,
and install the new furni­ture,”
said Joanne Goldwater,
assistant dean for Residential
Life. At that point, all the stu­dent
rooms will get the new fur­niture,
including the rooms that
had their furniture replaced with
sample furniture last year.
The new furniture, similar in
style and color to that already in
other residence halls, “has more
flex ib ility ,” said Goldwater.
“You can loft it, you can bunk
it, [and] you don’t need tools to
loft it.” It will also be much
lighter, and therefore easier to
move than the furniture in QA
now.
The problems with the furni­ture
in QA began early on. “My
understanding is the furniture
was made with green or wet
wood, which caused it to crack
very e a sily because o f the
changes in the humidity and the
heat,” said Goldwater. “When it
was purchased it looked fine,
but it very quickly developed
problems.”
Most agree that the new furni­ture
is a long time coming.
Bridgette Gallgher, the current
RHC of QA, said she is pleased
that QA will finally be “up to
par with the other buildings,”
adding that “it will add a whole
new feeling to Queen Anne.”
“I know all the residents are
excited,” she said.
Junior Megan Haji, who will
be the RHC of QA next year,
said she was told her first year
here that there would be new
furniture, and she is glad that it
will finally be a reality. “I am
very excited because it’s been
put off for so long,” she said.
“I ’ve been trying.to get new
furniture over there for a num­b
e r o f yea rs n ow ,” said
Goldwater, but “most of it [the
delay] has to do with budget
[concerns] because it’s not in­expensive
to purchase new fur­niture
for a building of 160 beds.
There has to be proper planning
and [a] budget allocated to it.”
“My guess is that other issues
took a higher priority because
they were [more g re a tly
needed],” she said.
A nother change th a t will
emerge next year is the housing
pattern of certain halls. Second
Left in Caroline, currently a male
wing, will be converted into a
female wing in the fall, in order
to meet the increasing demand
of new female students seeking
housing. Other halls in Caroline
may be reassigned as needed.
Despite the increasing demand
for female housing, Dorchester
will not become co-ed next year.
“This would be a great year to
make it co-ed but without the
financial resources needed to do
what we would need to do, we
can’t do that,” said Goldwater. “I
wouldn’t do it to the guys [and] I
wouldn’t do it to the women.”
fantasies as she takes a hammer to her current QA
furniture. The building’s furniture will be replaced this
summer when QA can be taken “off-line.”
photo by Kelly McGarvey
KEVIN FRANK
news editor
As we all know, Charles Hall is re­opening
on March 19, as hordes of stu­dents
return from spring break. A com­mittee
of administrators and students
has created a series of opening events to
celebrate the new campus center.
The building will open at 3:19 p.m. on
the Sunday after spring break, and Presi­dent
Maggie O’Brien and SGA Presi­dent
Andrew Mosley will officially open
the building to the College.
The first day will feature special gifts
for the first 319 people to enter. Those
same 319 people will also be entered in
a drawing to win a $319 gift certificate to
the school store. There will be official
tours of the building at 4:19, 5:19, and
6:19 on the first day. The cafe will feature
free coffee and cookies, and the NCAA
Division I basketball games will be broad­cast
in the theater that evening.
Monday will ring in the second day of
the Grand Opening week, but will only
whose piece fits the puzzle will win a
prize.
The week will end with the SGA spon­sored
movie Double Jeopardy, showing
Friday at 5 p.m., Saturday at 6 p.m., and
Sunday at 3 p.m.
Of course eating, the most popular stu­dent
activity, will continue in the Campus
Center long after the inaugural week of
events is over.
few weeks, we’ll be eating on that balcony. photo by Kelly McGarvey