Discrimination is the past, equality is the future

Everyone is prejudice in some way or another. People are taught at a very young age to discriminate against others. Whether it is because of race, religion, sexuality, gender, age, personality or way of life, everyone pre-judges. Experiencing uprising discrimination lately are homosexuals.

Anti gay/lesbian discrimination tends to be particularly brutal and nasty. Homosexuals are victims of prejudice for multiple reasons. Homosexuality contradicts some religious beliefs, traditional family, and out of the norm behavior.

They run into problems with getting married, getting jobs, getting and giving education, adoption and much more. Gays getting married does not harm heterosexual marriage. Homosexuals are simply people who happen to love the same sex. It has not been proven whether homosexuality is biological or environmental, but what would it matter.

They are people just like the rest of us, no worse or better.

Taylor Mangan, a local transgender resident had said that his first encounter with discrimination was after he graduated from high school after he had announced his sexuality to the public.

“I ignored it because I don’t care what they say or think,” said Mangan.

Mangan believes that most people who discriminate against homosexuality, mostly for the reason that they are afraid  of what they don’t know or don’t understand.

Here on campus the college takes pride in having equality, and no discrimination in any form. The reality of it is, you can not always control people the way you want. Opinions are opinions and there is nothing that can change that.

It would be wonderful to have everyone follow the “comprehensive statement of non-discrimination” that every faculty and staff member on campus hands out to the students on campus, but some people just ignore it and do what they want.

Unfortunately there are still some people on campus who discriminate against people who are comfortable and open about their sexuality. In all honesty it is not hurting anyone or causing any problems.

“I don't see why someone's sexual orientation is anyone's business,” said Angie Erikson, an attending student at LBCC. “You can like whoever you want. It’s not their business.”

They are happy with what they do and who they are, everyone is on campus to go to college and get an education, this is not petty high school. There needs to be more respect for others.

Michael Redick, a Salem resident, said his first time of being discriminated against was in grade school.

Now if an 8^th grader is discriminated against, how else would they know how to handle it. Some might never go to school again. And who knows what their potential could have been.

“The only reason being gay is harmful to anyone is because of what some one who discriminates will do to them,” said Kim Willaman. “When my daughter came out as a freshman in high school, the only fear I had for her was what others might do to her for being [out].”

Discrimination is something that can impact someone in the worst ways. Some people encounter discrimination at a young age and the effect is to ignore it or even run away from it.

Being homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual is not everything that someone should judge about a person. It is one of many factors that make up a person, and no one should be judged based on that only fact.

LBCC prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, religion, ethnicity or use of native language, sex, sexual orientation or disablitity. If anyone believe that they or someone they has been been discriminated againsted please visit the following website for further informatin on appropriate help:

http://po.linnbenton.edu/?BP1015-NondiscriminationandNonharassmentPolicy.pdf

LBCC hosts its' 13th annual College Night

Entering college can always be a stressful event, figuring out what classes to take, the over hanging thought of what major should be settled upon and how to be involved with the campus. It can be overwhelming to attend a new school and trying to find how to get into the swing of it.

There’s always a multitude of questions that are asked when dealing with a new experience as big as getting a higher education.

What is my major? Who do I talk to about taking the right courses? How does financial aid work? What is the tutition cost?

At Linn-Benton Community College, they strive to make all newcomers feel at peace with figuring out schedules and classroom locations, not to mention making everyone feel more at home when joining college for the first time. 

Every year LBCC hosts an "open house" event called, College Night.

This year was their 13th annual College Night for approaching students and their families. It is organized in a way that people can meet some of the instructors on campus. There was also a handful of tables set up for some of the clubs that are offered to join on campus.

There was free pizza offered to everyone, campus tours were given to anyone interested in learning the physical aspect of the campus, along with information sessions.

Zoe Alley, a student at Linn-Benton, attended the event, was happy to give her input on it.

"I love the energy and excitement here," said Alley, "Everyone here is so excited about pictures, dancing, singing, learning even math.  The energy is infectious."

Students and their families poured into the event. There were groups of people eagerly waiting to obtain information from all the tables in order to insure an successful transition into college. Staff and faculty waited around their tables ready to answer any questions.

Over the years College Night has become more and more popular for incoming freshman. This year was one of the biggest turnouts the college has had. However, there were a few suggestions for improvement for the location. This year it was held upstairs in the commons area. 

Juan Pattieshaw, an incoming freshman in college, wants to be a criminal justice major and he really enjoyed his first visit to the college, although it was a little crowded for him.

The Linn-Benton Dance Club even stopped by and gave a quick flash mob performance for the event. They had been practicing secretly around campus. The mob included students and even a few faculty and staff members.

"I thought it was amazing to watch," said Megan Messin, a parent of two of the dancers in the mob, "everyone in the group had a lot of energy and smiles, and it was hilarious to watch the crowds faces in the beginning."  

During College Night students and their parents learned about a wide variety of opportunites offered at the college, some including: programs of study, financial aid,  scholarships and degree partnership programs with OSU (Oregon State University) and OIT (Oregon Institute of Technology).

There was also a brief discussion over their special admissions programs and disablitlies accomodations for those who need it.

Remington Brandenburg, a former student, has been away from school for 10 years and thought this was a great opportunity to see what LBCC had to offer.  He will definitely be here next year.

Come join us next year for College Night. It is one of the best ways to meet a lot of new people, and to become familiar with the campus, the school and what it has to offer. There are lists of helpful information, friendly faces and a uplifting atmosphere.

LBCC Dance club hosts dance auditions

Dance is something that anyone can do, whether or not they think can. It's a form of expression and art, you don't always have to be perfect and even coordinated. If there is a feeling of euphoria and excitement, then there is nothing wrong.

The LBCC Dance Club will be hosting dance auditions on campus for anyone interested in joining. The Dance Club offers a wide range of dance style and dance levels. The club is student more student run this year, with assistant by the club adviser, Elizabeth Pearce.

“I am really excited for this year’s dance club,” said Pearce, “ we have a lot of fun events coming up.”

The dance club is designed in a way, that whether the person is a dancer or not, they can still learn the routine and be part of the club. Anyone is allowed to join, no matter what their love of dance is.

It is free to join and participate, the dance audtions for the dance club will be held Feburary 2^nd and 3^rd from 10am-3pm on the LBCC campus in the Activities Center.

Every year the dance club puts on a showcase for the community that highlights all of the dances that were rehearsed over the year, which are performed by students of the club. The club also tries to incorporate different dance groups from around the community to perform. They have had groups such as Legacy Ballet, Downtown Dance Corvallis, and The Chinese Group.

“I love to dance, but I have never been part of an official group,” said Megan Messin, a resident of Philomath who had heard about the dance club and immediately was interested. “I have dance at home and out on the town, but learning an actual routine will be something new but exciting.”

Unfortunately this year, the Dance Club will not being doing a showcase like in the years before. Instead they are taking a different approach to performing for the public. They are going to be branching out and performing at different venues.

“We want to perform in different places around the area, just so we can get noticed have people become interested in our club,” said Pearce.

One of their ideas include performing a small show for retirement homes, intermissions at theaters and on campus.

Melinda Ehlers a music major at Linn-Benton Community College, says this is year first attempt at taking dance sessions.

“I did belly dancing for 3 months, but that is all,” said Ehlers.

Ehlers has said that she enjoyed her first dance session with the club, she said there was good feedback and she loved learning the steps.

If anyone would like to a part of the LBCC Dance Club, come to the auditions and see what they are all about. Everyone is welcome, is a place of experssion, experience and fun.

At A Glance:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What: LBCC Dance Club Auditions

When: February 2^nd & 3^rd (Saturday and Sunday)

What time: 10am-3pm

Where: LBCC Activities Center

The non-existing issue

So my final essay for the class, was a topic that I have been wanting to write about for quite sometime. I am all for gay marriage and almost cried when I heard that some states have passed it. It feels good to be in a somewhat progressive world, even if it has taken decades and longer. 

This issue is very personal to me on very many levels. I have numerous homosexual friends and couples, along with being a homosexual myself. I am a human, I am easily to get along with and I have a double helix like everyone else in the world. 

The fact that I am a homosexual is not a flaw or a defect it's just added information to who I am. 

That's like someone with tattoos all over, could be the executive of a large corporation for lawyers, and may have a family of two. The opinion of the person that you have known has not changed at all, you just now know more about them. 

And I think that with that being said, gay marriage should really be something that should be legal. 

To me marriage is the ultimate expression of love.

I have heard so many lame things against having gay marriage. “It'll disrupt the structure of marriage,” “it's not okay in God's eyes,” please, save the overused crap for my funeral. 

There are a heck of a lot more people in the world that have messed up what marriage is who are heterosexual. People who cheat on other people, people who have sex with prostitutes, people who marry multiple people. 

Yeah, exactly so all your lame accusations hold no ground now anymore. 

If anything gay marriage is more respectable in some ways. I know of one couple that have been together for almost 20 years, totally faithful, best friends and the cutest couple I have ever seen, and they aren't married, not because they can't (although the subject still stands) but they are a great example of what a relationship is. 

Whereas another couple I know, heterosexual mind you, that was together for almost 10 years and one had cheated on the other at least three times. 

Yeah, put that in your vacuum cleaner and suck it. 

I mean for goodness sake people, even our president wants it. Granted he was against until he need more votes from people and our population of fabulous fairies were his life line, but still. 

The main foundation of the United States is the concept that the majority should rule, however, the rights of minorities should also be protected. This is the reason why the Bill of Rights was established along with equal protection and anti-slavery amendments. 

As such, denying marriage to a gay couple is the same as denying marriage to a bi-racial couple. 

And considering I'm both, do not even tamper with such things. It could get ugly, just a warning. 

As earlier mentioned, marriage is the ‘ultimate expression of love.’ The only reason why gay couples get married is because they love one another. If love is not the foundation of marriage, then all marriages; gay or not, should be criticized and examined. 

Each couple planning to get married should undergo a test to prove that they really love each other. I mean gay couples have been called animals before, why not strap the other side down and treat them like the animals they think we are. 

I bet that would shut them up real quick, especially if there was infidelity on one side. 

Basically I just wanted to touch on the fact that there really is nothing wrong with it. It's a relationship, it has all the same elements of any other kind of relationship. We have fights, we have sex, we go on dates, we have a family. 

It's not like gay people just fall from the sky in a rainbow parachute, but if it did the only reason you should be hating on us, is the fact that you should be jealous of such an entrance into the world.

An Epidemic

I think for my first story about cyber bullying went very well. I will admit I did have a hard time coming up with a topic and this came to from a commercial I saw on television about how people are trying hard to eliminate bullying in general. I decided to write about this topic since

I have dealt with bullying of my own growing up. Elementary and middle were not the best years of my life, and rarely are for most kids who don't know where they fit in the crowd. I had my share of name calling, pushing, laughed at. However, I never became the bullier as I got older, I taught myself to not care about what other thought about me if it wasn't nice or positive critiquing. 

I had heard about cyber bullying when I was in high school but never really looked into it till now. There have been countless stories of teen suicides due to online bullying and I decided to take a look to see if anything was being done about it. I understand it is hard to control who talks to you or your kids online, but the reality of it is, parents should be supervising what they're kids are doing on something as powerful as the internet and people who talk to random people online should know that talking to a stranger can set you up for anything. 

One thing I have found to be very true when dealing with technology that lets you communicate is the fact that you will most likely say something through text that you might never say in person. 

With that being said if you are 200 miles away from someone online that you know you will never meet and you have an argument with a parent or boyfriend, or just had a bad day you can take your anger out on any one that falls prey to it. You can call them names, degrade them in the worst possible ways, and you might feel better after letting your anger out or just being rude, but you most likely wont care about what the other person will feel like after. 

After some research about technology in our modern society it seems that younger and younger generations are being introduced to electronics that allow you to inter the internet. 12 year olds have their own cell phone, 9 year olds have iPad or iPhones.

 Not only is this irresponsible of the parents for giving kids technology of adults that wont even have enough sense to monitor them while they use the device, they opened a huge door to the outside world of bullies and strangers. 

For example my 10 year old niece just received an iPad for her birthday. There is no app for internet thankfully, in my opinion she is not ready for that, but there are games that you can get and have to be on wifi to use them. 

The only flaw is on some games, random strangers can start playing with you. On some games you are even able to leave comments to each other. 

My niece is just a baby and is in 2nd grade, of course she's not going to understand a game as fully as some 16 year old that happens to call her inappropriate names while playing the game. This is a very mild level of bullying but it still can have some effects to some people. Thankfully my sister caught on to it fast because my niece was smart enough to tell her about it.

I think that's what people should really be teaching. The fact that there are some really rude and nasty people out there who do not care about other people's feelings and will say whatever they want, no matter who it is, what they did, or even how old they are. 

People need to teach kids to walk away from bullies both online and in person. Basically I wrote my paper to make more of an awareness about it and how people can help stop it. What parents can do however, is teach to their kids instead of preach to their kids. 

While parents are aware of the dangers that lurk online, children are often blissfully ignorant. There are ways to teach internet safety that are creative and interactive. As someone who was a teenager not so long ago, I can attest to difficulties that arise from listening to parental lectures and advice.

Although I now understand that my parents always had my best interest in mind, it was not so clear during my moody teenage years.

The reality of reality shows

I have always found reality shows to be entertaining, mostly because of the type of reality shows I was watching. When I watched Oprah, Jude Judy, Wheel of Fortune or Who's line is it anyway, I did not automatically think, “I'm watching a reality show,” I thought “wow, this is really entertaining.”

Today when I hear the phrase reality show, I think of people acting stupid, being drunk, causing unnecessary fights. Basically showing the more stupid side of our society. Shows like “Jersey Shore,” or “keeping up with the Kardashians,” are just just false images of what peoples lives are like, and to be honest, WHO CARES?

I wanted to write about a subject that I have found to be a growing problem.

It just seems like you give a producer and director a random topic, like coupons, and they'll make an outrageous reality show out of it. Add some actors, some ridiculous drama, throw some cash around to keep the actors happy and you got yourself a teenage television hit.

Oh, and television executives are cheap and think viewers are morons. Sorry to pull back the curtain and reveal this harsh truth to you, but I feel it is my journalistic duty to be honest and expose frauds whenever I see them. Pulitzer, please

Seriously, though, it’s not like any of this breaks startling new ground, but it’s still interesting for anyone who hates reality television as much as I do and wants an excuse to yell and scream about it a little. The worst one I worked on in terms of manipulation was probably a dating competition show.

That one basically just put some oversexed drunken kids in a house and let them go wild. Sometimes the producers would ask a contestant something like, “what do you think about Steve? You don’t like him?” And the contestant would say, “no, I’m not going to say that I don’t like Steve.” And the producers would ask us to cut everything except, “I don’t like Steve.”

Now, most of us know that's how shows work sometimes, but if we are so engulfed in it and find it entertaining, why would we care about it? It's funny, it doesn't deal with our own drama, and we get to see people talk about others behind their back.

One example I find humorous is the show called, “Bad Girls Club.” Basically the show is a bunch of hussy girls 21-30 years old running around in a fancy mansion, drinking, partying and fighting. Literally, that sums up the show. And like most reality shows they do the whole, “I hate her, she's dumb,” “this girl needs to grow up,” all that jazz. And then when they have a reunion with all the girls, they are some how all fine and friends and have kept in touch.

How is this possible and even remotely logical if the things they said on the show are RECORDED and put out in the public? Are they shut in some room for months while the show airs and they aren't allowed to watch?

But in all honesty, people who watch these shows are not going to think about things like this. This is why I wanted to shed some light on this topic. You can't watch something on television and find some truth to it, because without knowing it you could make it a part of your everyday life.

 I wont lie, I got addicted to watching “Bad Girls Club,” and after a while I started talking sassy and mean, more than a usually do, because I thought it was cool and I had been entertained by the same thing. That can be a bad combination for anyone.

Alcohol Abuse, a rising problem

Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of prescription drugs and marijuana has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, according to the study released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

According to a study done by USA Today, nearly half of America's 5.4 million full-time college students abuse drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a new study that portrays substance and alcohol abuse as an increasingly urgent problem on campuses across the nation.

Although heavy episodic drinking in college is a major public health problem, the majority of college students do not binge drink or drink heavily. In contrast, students who binge drink three or more times in a 2-week period consume very large quantities of alcohol.

White students are more likely to use drugs and alcohol than minority students, and students at historically black colleges have much lower rates of substance abuse than other students, the study found.

The percentage of students who reported smoking marijuana heavily — at least 20 days during the past month — more than doubled, from 1.9% in 1993 to 4% in 2005.

The percentage of students who reported using illegal drugs other than marijuana, such as cocaine and heroin, in the past month jumped from 5.4% in 1993 to 8.2% in 2005.

A study done by Sober Recovery, a rehab for people with alcohol problems, stated that, “with respect to alcohol abuse in higher education, many reactive AND proactive measures have been initiated at some colleges and universities that have reduced the availability, acceptability, and irresponsibility of alcohol use on and off campus. The result: a noticeable, if not a significant reduction in alcohol-related problems manifested by students.”

Since the holidays are here, the amount of gathering together and having fun will be higher than ever, especially on New Year's Eve. There is hope that everyone will be safe during the holidays and be aware of what is going on.