College students from across the nation are interning in Washington, D.C. on the frontlines of terror.

The interns who work on Capitol Hill do so at an extremely high risk, because it is the responsibility of most interns to open the bulk of mail that enters a House or Senate office. Because of this daily responsibility, four of my friends had to be tested for anthrax exposure.

One friend interns on the same floor of the Hart building where Sen. Tom Daschle's office is located. After the first news last Monday of the anthrax letter in Daschle's office, my friend waited and wondered why his senator's office remained open while Daschle's office was quarantined.

Staff from the Senate offices are in contact throughout the day on a regular basis, talking and passing on letters and papers between the two offices.

So my friend waited, wondered and worried -- as did many of his fellow interns who work in that office or neighboring offices.

And after the House closed for business last Wednesday and all House interns and staff -- including three of my friends -- were sent home, my friend was left to wonder about his own fate. My friend questioned the motives of Daschle: Why was he keeping the Senate offices open, trying to continue business as usual, when things were far from normal, and productivity was close to nothing?

Wednesday afternoon, two days after the contaminated letter was found, my friend in the Senate was told that he could informally leave, not officially, since the Senate was still supposed to be conducting business as usual.

Then he was told that he needed to be tested for anthrax exposure. As of Friday, my friend continues to wait for the results. Meanwhile, as a precaution, he is taking Cipro, the antibiotic used to treat those with possible anthrax exposure.

My other three friends who intern at the House have also been tested for anthrax exposure. They too are waiting for the results.

However, this new terrorist threat of anthrax not only puts political interns on the Hill at extreme risk, but media interns as well.

I have a friend who interns at CNN with ""Larry King Live."" One of her first tasks of the day is to open, read and respond to all mail that is addressed to King. She could very well have opened an anthrax-contaminated letter if one was sent to King.

As a result, a task that was once routine is now something she not only tries putting off, but something she now fears. She has also been tested for anthrax exposure and is waiting for the results. In the interim, she is taking Cipro.

All of the college students who made the decision to intern in Washington never signed up for being terrorized with the threat of anthrax, but like the rest of the nation, we had no choice and no warning.

We have been exposed to danger and threat of death on the largest scale for the first time in our lives, but our legs did not buckle. We did not cave in to the panic and fear we all felt at some particular time.

Many of our parents' generation accuse our generation of being too apathetic, lazy and having no respect for authority.

Well, I have just one thing to say to our critics: Look at us now. Look at the thousands of interns who continue to go about their lives in a city where uncertainty and fear are our constant companions.

We are not backing down in the face of the gravest terror of our lives, and I believe that it is an act of bravery just by staying in D.C., on the frontlines of terror.

If our critics took the time to talk to us, they would find that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, many of our families pleaded with us to come home. And now with this newest terrorist threat of anthrax, every one of my intern friends has had to fend off our families' orders to come home to safety.

But not one of us that I know of is leaving. The terrorists' acts and the ensuing tragedy and panic have brought our college generation together into an awesome, cohesive and spirited unit. I know I am speaking for many interns here in D.C. when I say that no act of terror will scare us away.

Hell no, we won't go!

Last weekend, the heads of state of the 21 member nations of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation met in Shanghai, China to begin their annual summit.

Pat Leung
Guardian

The significance of the summit in current times cannot be overlooked by world leaders. Now more than ever, there is a need for the United States to demonstrate its solidarity with its Asian trading partners for the sake of the world economy, and for it to work on broad coalition-building with those nations, particularly its Asian Muslim allies.

Its economic substance aside, the summit was also an essential political forum for President George W. Bush, whose excellent statesmanship will have its day during the meetings.

Significantly, it was on Friday during APEC proceedings that Bush met Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The importance of a productive relationship between the two leaders cannot be overemphasized, and all signs seem to point to the cultivation of a fruitful working relationship between Jiang and Bush.

Bush has also had the opportunity to meet again with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The summit no doubt exposed him to an assortment of leaders with whom robust and industrious contact is vital.

It is difficult for anything occurring on the world stage after Sept. 11 not to be cast in the monolithic shadow of the events of that date.

However, APEC representatives are doing their best to enact a return to normalcy while still giving a nod to the need for solidarity among member nations.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan has made explicit his desire that the APEC summit not be just another airing ground for the United States' war on terrorism.

The subject has certainly received dialogue, however, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was pleased to report that there was broad support among APEC member nations for a ""fight between justice and evil,"" though without specific references to the U.S.-British bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

This support does not come without some trepidation. One opportunity that the U.S. delegation has been quick to take advantage of has been reassuring Muslim members of APEC that the retaliatory campaign in the Middle East is in no way a strike against Islam.

APEC members in Indonesia and Malaysia, in particular have expressed concerns about the backlash that the attacks on Afghanistan will produce in the Muslim world.

Member nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, however, can also provide support and understanding to the United States, having wrestled with domestic terrorism themselves.

The main importance of the summit comes, of course, in its opportunity to enact a return to normalcy for shaken national economies.

It is difficult to pretend at this point that the U.S. economy is not poised on the brink of a recession of some sort, particularly now that the United States is at war. The U.S. economic slowdown naturally carries with it the potential to send ripples throughout the world.

The mid-1990s saw a recession in Asia that threatened to pull at world economic stability. Now more than ever, it is important that the United States strengthen its economic links with its Asian trade partners, links which are undeniably vital to the well-being of the U.S. economy.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reassured the Joint Economic Committee of Congress last week that though the economy is currently jittery, the long-term potential for growth and stability still remains.

APEC members have shown their faith in such a statement in the course of their encounters with one another so far. Attitude in that realm has the potential to make or break economies.

By focusing on the long term, as APEC has striven to do, members of the cooperative set an example on the world stage that helps to allay economic tremors.

The economy may well be the best means of enacting a return to normalcy post-Sept. 11. While some industries still demonstrate indecision and a mentality mired in apprehension -- as illustrated by the trepidation of the Emmy organizers to settle on a date for their awards show -- the financial world has worked to conduct business as usual.

The governing committee of the International Monetary Fund will meet in less than a month after having originally postponed its meeting.

The G20, comprised of members of the G8 and key financial ministers from emerging markets and world banks, will likewise meet.

Our economic future is never certain, and is even less so in the tumult of the often capricious Asian economy. However, the APEC summit is another road sign whose indicators demonstrate that where there is cooperation, there is progress and security in store.

Editor:

I wish you would keep your puerile opinions to yourselves. Your ideas are so poorly thought out that it is an embarrassment to me to realize that you attend the same university that I do. As long as you keep your mouths shut, the rest of us can only guess at how stupid you are.

Some people at this school are passionate about chemistry. Others are passionate about studying foreign cultures. The thing I feel passionately about is ensuring that the rights guaranteed to every American citizen by the Bill of Rights are maintained and exercised. That's the reason that it is hard not to laugh when the UCSD Retardian editorializes on how The Koala is somehow misusing the freedom of the press. Ha. It reminds me of the time a 6-year-old girl approached me and called me a ""poopy-head."" Intriguing, but hardly anything that is going to make me lose sleep. In hopes of exposing the UCSD student body to a glimpse of some of the inner workings of The Koala, I'm going to take this opportunity to respond to the characterization of The Koala as a platform for racism.

First of all, we do not write the personals. I want to invite all students to come by our office and see if I cannot immediately produce dozens of student personals written in the past three weeks, either paper slips we collect through bags on campus located at Earl's Place, The Pub, Plaza Cafe and outside our office or through our e-mail account, [email protected]. The Personals page is our best attempt to allow the average UCSD student to speak his/her mind in print to the rest of the student body. The Senior Staff of The Koala decide to publish personals based not on whether we or the rest of the student body agree with what the personals say, but rather if we feel they represent a student voice.

Nobody has the right to tell me not to print the opinions of UCSD students in a paper that they fund. To the extent that any student disagrees with the message of a personal and is interested in publicly responding, allow me to suggest that such students will have a difficult time finding a platform that is as widely viewed and as open to the average student as The Koala's Personals page.

Secondly, there has been some controversy over the Chikes joke. I wrote that joke myself and I am a Kike. That's right. I'm Jewish. How I refer to my own people should not be an issue that offends the Guardian or anyone else. To any other Jews who are still dissatisfied with this response: Lighten up. It was a joke, see? A joke? I think it's really sad to see people so uptight that they can't even laugh at themselves. If you can't laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at others and you certainly have no business reading The Koala.

According to the last A.S. election, 67 percent of the voting student body reads The Koala. We got more votes than any other publication, measure or candidate (even unopposed candidates) on the entire ballot. Apparently, there is a substantial audience for the material we are printing. This indicates to me that rather than being some sort of extremist publication, we are the most centrist and widely appealing student publication at UCSD.

Thirdly, I want to address the various student organizations that have come out and condemned The Koala for racism. You obviously missed one of the main points of the ""Forum on the Greek System"" article. It is my opinion, and I don't know how many other people agree with me, that student organizations that recruit their membership exclusively from students of a certain ethnic background are contributing to racism much more than the printing of a few lines of a student's opinion. These organizations are designed to create a social structure built entirely for the isolation of a specific ethnic group from the rest of the student body of UCSD. They are singling themselves out from the rest of the UCSD community and forming a ""Jewish community"" and dozens of splintered Asian communities at UCSD.

Furthermore, when these organizations allow The Koala to print material that makes fun of white people, fat people, handicapped people, etc. and only take action when members of a particular ethnic group are made fun of in The Koala, I call that racism, straight out of Webster's Dictionary. These racist organizations offend me and the idea that they have balls to accuse me of racism is truly astonishing.

I want to wrap this up with a little thought for all of those people who think that hate speech should not be published with student funds. Are you suggesting that free speech can exist without hate speech? Mind if I ask how? What they really want is for The Koala to make its offensive material less offensive to the over-represented ""minority"" groups on campus, but still make fun of retards, Jesus, Revelle and other acceptable targets of ridicule.

Obviously, hate exists at UCSD. Does anyone actually think that trying to make The Koala censor these student opinions will do anything to make these people feel different? Your proposal to stymie free speech on campus will only slap a Band-Aid on continued ignorance, encourage hateful people to feel angry and disenfranchised and provide an easy way to avoid dealing with race issues on real terms. This is not the solution to curing hate at UCSD. The same people who claim to want to bring everyone together into the UCSD community with kisses and love also want to exclude people whose beliefs they deem ""hateful.""

Who gets to decide? If I decide that every word ever printed by any student paper at UCSD deeply offends me and my religious and ethnic heritage does that mean that all campus publications are now printing hate speech and should be shut down? Or better yet, how about the cartoon the Guardian put right next to its editorial criticizing The Koala for being a platform for hatred that seems to advocate children shooting their classmates for being bullies? What's the excuse for that? It sure as hell wasn't funny.

Under the guise of being fighters for students who are hurt by The Koala, The UCSD Guardian and anyone else who is criticizing my editorial decisions is contributing to the weakening of every American's inalienable rights to a free press, to free expression and to free speech. That is how the Bill of Rights actually works. That is what our forefathers killed and died for, and I welcome anyone at this school, Guardian staffers included, to try to stop The Koala from continuing to be heard.

On behalf of The Koala: Blow me.

-- George Lee Liddle, III

Editor in Chief, The Koala

This quarter, the administration made photos of students available to faculty and staff via StudentLink. The Guardian reported on Oct. 11 that members of the A.S. Council met to discuss concerns that the placement of the pictures on the Web violates students' privacy rights.

The move to provide pictures of students on StudentLink was motivated by an understandable and honorable intent to improve the university's academic environment.

The photos are useful to professors in that they can help them put faces to names. However, their availability presents possibilities of abuse and could give rise to serious infractions of personal rights. These factors require a compromise on the issue of StudentLink photos that would make all students comfortable.

While we would all like to believe that professors are unbiased and impartial in their grading, it cannot be assumed that this is always the case. Giving a professor a roster that not only has students' names, class levels and majors, but also their images, makes racial bias much easier to carry out.

Also, professors would be able to identify students who participate in class discussions, regardless of whether the student wishes to be known by name. Professors may develop unfavorable impressions of students based on their behavior in class or the opinions they express in discussion and allow this to influence evaluations meant to reflect only the quality of the work the student produces.

While it is certainly possible now for a professor, with a little finagling, to find out a student's name against his or her wishes, the StudentLink photos make it much easier and create a widespread potential for abuse.

StudentLink representatives claim that they explored the legality of the new policy, perhaps anticipating challenges from privacy-minded students. It is generally understood that one's likeness is the property of whomever takes the photograph, and so the university has the right to use these photographs as it wishes.

However, when the potential for unintended negative repercussions runs high and carries such high costs, alternatives must be considered.

While some students dislike the feeling of being lost in the crowd and would be pleased to have their professors know their names, others came to UCSD precisely because they treasure anonymity and the freedom it affords. Their preference to remain anonymous should be respected.

The A.S. Council is considering providing students the option to remove their photos from StudentLink. This option is a sensible possibility in that it allows students who are uncomfortable with the idea of faculty and staff having access to their images via the Internet to avoid it, while it still provides a chance for other students to let professors personalize their academic experience.

The university must work hard to make sure that students have the option to tailor their educational experience to suit their goals and comfort levels and allow those who want the personal attention and familiarity characteristic of a small college to have their wish as readily as can those looking for anonymity.

In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy said, ""To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last, best hope in an age when the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support, to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.""

Pat Leung
Guardian

When Kennedy said these words, he was not merely invoking a far-off dream that had no chance of becoming reality. Rather, he was attempting to instill in the American people a notion that peace could be successfully pursued only on the world stage, in communication with all the nations of the world: the strong and the weak.

However, widespread distrust of global alliances has always been a natural tendency of Americans, and many Americans were fair in their criticism of the United Nations for being merely a forum for invective.

In this age of international terrorism and uncertain wars against uncertain enemies, it is time that the efforts Kennedy once undertook be redoubled by the current administration. Not only should America increase its use of the United Nations as means of communication and diplomacy, but it should encourage other nations to do the same to strengthen the U.N. General Assembly's power to intervene and to influence.

Of course, as mentioned above, the United Nations of the early 21st century is far from perfect. The General Assembly accomplishes little in the way of actual progress on the issues that plague society. In fact, about the only things the Assembly or the Office of the Secretary General accomplish are official condemnations of various situations and events.

The recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil serve as a perfect example of an event that the United Nations condemns, while doing little subsequently to make sure something similar will never happen again.

The Security Council and the other departments of the United Nations are highly bureaucratic and inefficient. They largely serve as smoke-filled rooms for the major players in world politics. Such organizations have the potential to become effective means of progress in international matters if they can streamline communication and increase their authority over international activity.

Reforms are needed if the United Nations is to accomplish and succeed in its true mission: to facilitate a world without war. However, before we can possibly dream such things for the future, we need to understand the history of this imperfect but grand organization.

The idea of an international organization of states came about during the course of World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson, in an effort to justify the slaughter of American troops in Europe, claimed that the war was being fought to make the world safe for democracy. He suggested that the outcome of the war should bring about a League of Nations, which would monitor international affairs and operate under a collective defense clause. However, the treaty of the League of Nations was not approved by the U.S. Senate, and American membership in this early organization was blocked.

Things remained as such until the end of World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that one of his primary goals was the establishment of an international general assembly. This became the United Nations during the Truman administration.

Without a doubt, the most explosive issue the United Nations had to deal with at its outset was the invention of the atomic bomb and the growing conflict between the Western allies, who separated to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union. The U.N. General Assembly served as a political arena in which the battles of the Cold War were fought.

Each side tried to convince the rest of the world's delegates that it was right, that the other side was composed of either capitalist pigs or communist tyrants. Despite the fact that the United Nations sent troops into Korea to fight the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, in general it remained neutral in the Cold War.

It was this neutrality, this inability of the United Nations to side with the United States, that led many Americans to distrust international organizations. We understandably have a natural instinct not to trust foreign countries with the lives of our troops, since any U.N. or NATO forces are made up of mostly Americans.

As the Cold War dragged on, Americans gradually began to lose faith in the United Nations and instead turned inward for solutions to international problems.

The Korean War, for example, was fought by a U.N. military force that included many Americans. The war in Vietnam was based completely on American unilateral foreign policy, conducted with absolute disregard for the court of world or national public opinion.

It was this sort of action that Kennedy sought to prevent when he called for renewed support of the United Nations and its efforts to keep the peace. Unfortunately, when Kennedy was killed, so was legitimate hope for the United Nations to carry on an active role in world affairs in his time.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, the United Nations has slowly sunk into obscurity. Today, the opinion of the General Assembly of the United Nations counts for little in any major foreign policy decision. Would President George W. Bush stop the sanctions on Cuba or make some other change in policy if the United Nations recommended it and if the recommendation was sound? Chances are, he or any other American official would hardly consider such a recommendation worth his time.

Such a unilateral mindset prevents the United Nations from achieving its full potential, and that is why today the United Nations' mission remains a dream and not a reality.

However, in the spirit of the founding of the United Nations, there is always hope. The great assembly of states now faces a crossroads: on one path, it can become an effective congress of the world, which works for the rights of the Third World and for peace among all nations; or it can continue on its present course and become a place where powerful nations seek to gain trade and military advantages over one another, and poor nations sink further into poverty as a result.

For the former to occur, major reforms must take place within and outside the halls of the General Assembly. The different divisions of the United Nations must come under one general authority, so that one department does not create a document to condemn the effects of corporate globalization while another seeks to secure trading rights for American and Chinese companies in Zaire.

Each section of the United Nations needs to be streamlined so that communication between nations, departments and other interest groups becomes quicker and more efficient.

Finally, the leadership of the United Nations must shed its timid role in international conflicts and forget about playing politics with the major powers. When something seems unjust, that situation should be addressed by the entire body of the United Nations and voiced to the rest of the world, no matter who is angered by such honest policy.

As with any great change in society, true change must come in the minds of the people, not the policies of leaders. Racism did not stop with the Civil Rights Act, and isolationism will not stop with the strengthening of the United Nations. Americans must come to perceive themselves as citizens of the world, just as they are citizens of this country.

People must come to view the United Nations as a place where the truth is spoken no matter whom it angers and where justice for all is sought all the time.

Furthermore, when the truth is spoken, it must be acted upon. Declarations of human rights don't do much to improve human rights. The United Nations needs to be given the power to take real action against injustice, be that action political or military.

In the end, the American goal, with regard to the United Nations, is the same one that Kennedy declared 41 years ago: to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to increase the area in which its writ may run.

This may surprise many of you, but I was not always the staggeringly amusing and intelligent columnist that I am today.

No, really, try to control your shock. Among other things, I am also a copy reader for this esteemed publication.

Now, being a copy reader for the Guardian is not something that most people will admit to offhand. We get paid laughingly little and get virtually no credit for the work we do. They don't call us copy hoes for nothing, people.

And it's not an easy job either; the requirements are somewhat intimidating. I have to be familiar with Associated Press style as well as grammar -- for example, I am expected to know that Frisbee should be capitalized because it is the trademarked version of ""flying disc.""

Now, I know what you're thinking: ""Duh! Everyone knows that Frisbee is a trade name that should always be capitalized! What kind of dumb fuck wouldn't?"" And you are right -- every dumb fuck should know that. Haha.

But I also have to know that nonessential phrases must be set off by commas, which requires that I be familiar with what a nonessential phrase is. (In case you were wondering, it's a phrase that is not essential to the rest of the sentence.) Not laughing anymore, are you?

Well, maybe you are. I would be. But as pathetic as this job may seem, it was surprisingly hard to get.

It was about this time last year that I applied at the Guardian for my more-pathetic-than-words-or-nonessential-phrases-can-describe job. I went in, filled out an application and went on my merry way, assured of the fact that I was way too much of a journalism geek to be turned down.

I was wrong.

I should note here that, as a freshman trying to get used to a new school and sense of independence, I did not really want a job. By this I mean that I was basically just really lazy. My mother made me apply. So I was hardly heartbroken when I was summarily told that the Guardian no longer needed any more copy readers.

Then, at the very end of winter quarter, I ran into one of the copy readers who was not rejected. She mentioned that this paper was looking to hire readers again, and, because I just love rejection, I decided to reapply.

The second time I applied, I was actually rewarded with an interview. Jennifer Sposito and Jeffrey White, who are now the opinion editor and editor in chief, respectively, were the copy editors then. And quite intimidating people they were!

But they were also cruel, heartless people because they scheduled my interview for three days after I had my wisdom teeth pulled out. I realize they had no way of knowing this, but dammit, it's hard to interview without all your teeth.

So I showed up to my meeting with a swollen face, missing teeth and a head full of Vicodin. I was a happy camper, let me tell you.

The interview started out with tough, hard-hitting questions like, ""What college are you in?"" and ""What is your major?"" I, of course, took several moments to contemplate the fuzzy colors dancing before my Vicodin-clouded eyes before answering each question. I am great with first impressions.

Then we got to the really hard stuff -- copy reader stuff. Questions like, ""What is the difference between 'than' and 'then'?"" My response: ""Well one is time and the other is, like, a comparison, or, er ... just trust me, I know the difference."" And I still say that when under heavy medication, none of you would have been able to do any better. You probably can't anyway.

That portion of the interview over, I was then told that I would need to take the ""copy test."" You could almost taste the ominous undertone in that phrase -- and with Vicodin, you really can.

The only problem with this plan was that there were no available computers. I may have been high at the time, but I knew even then that this was not what I would call a ""highly efficient, well-oiled machine"" of a newspaper if they couldn't even give me a computer for an hour.

As scary as it sounded at the time, the copy test turned out to just be an article with a lot of inserted mistakes that I was supposed to catch in the span of one hour. No biggy. After all, I am a journalism nerd. This was cake.

About 20 minutes later I went to find whatever copy editor caught my eye. I told Jeff I was done, full of pride in myself for doing well and not falling asleep on the keyboard (again).

Jeff's response: ""You're done? Are you sure?""

Looking back on it now, that sounded a lot like Regis Philbin's patented, ""Is that your final answer?"" So of course I was not at all sure that I was really done with the copy test -- what the hell was I thinking?

I staggered back to the computer and sat in front of it for 15 more minutes, trying to look very busy, very important and very not high on Vicodin. After that, I really did feel sure that I was done -- or at least that I was tired -- so I left.

I have never seen that copy test since, but I am fairly sure I did well because I was hired.

Jenny has since claimed that she ""lost"" my first application, and that could be true, but I still like to make her feel guilty about it on principle. But with one quarter left in my freshman year, I was officially a member of the Guardian staff.

Needless to say, my cup runneth over.

Now it's a new year and I'm still here, reading stories and making sure that two-thought compounds (compounds that are smarter than one-thought compounds) have hyphens. And it only took two applications, one copy test and a whole lot of Vicodin.

So basically, if you ever apply to work at the Guardian, make sure you're on drugs -- apparently it helps.

Editor:

I was disgusted and appalled by Bertrand Fan's column in the Sept. 24 issue of the Guardian. It showed not only a lack of compassion for all of us who have been so profoundly affected by the recent tragedies, but it also showed a lack of understanding of basic human emotions.

While I agree that it was sad that there were so many flags displayed in the week following the terrorist attacks, it is not for the same reasons that Fan thought so. I think it is sad that it took the deaths of thousands of people for us to realize just how great our country is and to have the pride to express that. I think it is sad that we had to go out and buy flags because we should have had them already. Now I only hope that this pride in our country does not fade as the shock of these horrid events begins to wear off.

I also think that it is sad that Fan does not understand that there is so much more to the flags than pride in this great country. People are displaying their flags to feel a sense of community. Seeing people with flags lets us all know that there are others out there who feel our pain; it lets us know that we're not alone in this time of suffering, but that we are part of a group.

As to the comments about Americans spending so much money on flags when the money could have gone to the Red Cross, I have a question for Fan: How many times have you spent money on things like meals out, magazines or brand-name clothing when you could have donated that money to a good cause?

I could be wrong, but I bet you never have. Not that I am any less guilty of these offenses. I'm just trying to point out that people spend lots of money on things that are much less important than American flags, but Fan is not putting these people down. Purchasing and displaying flags is part of the healing process that most of us are going through and it's sad that Fan is condemning us for that.

Even more unfortunate than this hypocrisy is Fan's statement that he is not a ""poser"" because he did not give blood or donate money. Doing anything you can, great or small, to help in a time like this is not being a ""poser,"" it's being a compassionate person. I would like to commend the many people who have ignored what people like Fan think and followed their hearts. If we were all ""posers"" who gave our time, our money and ourselves on a daily basis to help those who need it, this world would be a much better place.

I feel that it's sad that Fan does not understand and feel patriotism during this time in our lives. I also feel that it's a shame that he cannot understand the sense of community and pride that displaying the American flag gives to so many of us.

-- Jessica M. Long

Roosevelt sophomore

Editor:

I am going to do something that will probably make me unpopular in the eyes of many students; I'll do it anyway because it is what I truly believe. I'm going to take The Koala's side regarding the allegedly racist comments printed in its September issue.

I justify this because I do not truly believe that The Koala hates Jewish people, Asians or any other group on campus. I'm quite sure, with a population of this size, that there are individuals among us who harbor irrational hatred toward various groups. We all have a low-key resentment of the regents and the local administration, but I cannot believe that any group or organization holds true hatred or enmity for any other group here.

People need to grow thicker skin and let small slights and comments of this sort slide. I'm tired of people jumping up and crying ""racist"" and ""hate crime"" over small things like this. Anyone reading this has my explicit permission to call me a bigoted honkie or a racist cracker. Why? Because of an old adage that ends, ""but words will never hurt me.""

Kristallnacht was hatred. The Japanese internment camps of World War II were hatred. A three-line comment about a fictitious fraternity is not hatred.

I believe that we already have a hate-free campus. Day after day, month after month, we get along with each other. We hate finals, lengthy writing assignments and an overload of work, but not each other. We've had tense situations on campus before, but at no time since I arrived here in 1996 did violence break out or did anything get damaged.

People will argue about times when things have appeared in the middle of the night or items have gone missing. To that I can only answer that it doesn't happen often, and not to a single group over and over. Those incidents are probably not the workings of a single group. Furthermore, if the only hatred we have on campus rests in the minds of individuals, then the only solution is a form of thought policing. I don't think anyone is comfortable with that.

Are The Koala's comments in bad taste? Of course! The Koala is nothing but bad taste from cover to cover -- that's why we read and enjoy it every month.

The Koala should not be praised for its latest issue (aside from the general ""good job, you printed another one and made us laugh""), but neither should it be punished.

--Steve West

Revelle Fifth Year

When Peter Jennings speaks does your home fall silent like the aisles in a church service? In the wake of the tragedy that has befallen America, I commend anyone who is paying more attention to the news now.

But how much of the news disseminated by the media accurately portrays real-life events? It is our civic duty to observe the news we are presented and to be critical of the information that is pumped into our living rooms.

The television has demonstrated an unprecedented reach into our homes, businesses and even our bedrooms with millions tuning in daily.

This saturation can lead news media to present ideas as if they are ""common sense"" and should be unquestionably accepted. I suggest that Americans filter the headlines closely and scrutinize each news story with a careful eye, rejecting this notion of ""common sense"" because even when tragedy is on our doorstop, the media is still in the business to make a buck.

The talking heads tell us with furrowed brows that America has reason to fear a new threat: biological warfare. The death of a photo editor at American Media, a division of The Sun newspaper, after inhaling anthrax, has spawned a new panic among American citizens and the media have done nothing to assuage unwarranted hysteria.

And why should they? Due to the continuous coverage of the terrorist attacks by all three of the major networks, a lot of advertising revenue was lost. If the networks can pull us back in after the immediate threat has passed, by constantly introducing new ones, then that is exactly what we can expect them to do. They need to recover their losses from the Sept. 11 attacks.

This isn't to say that the threat of biological assault is a figment of news executives' imagination. It is only an assertion that their coverage of the anthrax threat, which usually includes pictures of men donning airtight space suit protection and gas masks with huge circular eye shields, is sensational at worst and incomplete at best.

What they aren't telling us is the optimistic outlook of germ and chemical weapons. For an actual gauge of the threat, Americans must do a little homework.

Anthrax, which is now in the spotlight, is caused by a readily available pathogen that can be found in infected livestock and soil. It does not have to be obtained from a secret laboratory by scientists with special hazardous material licenses. Therefore, if Osama bin Laden or any other terrorist organization wanted it they probably already have it and have for years.

It is a deadly infection, but treatable when found early. It is difficult to spread and even more difficult to contract, even after exposure. Simply touching the anthrax spores or even breathing them in does not precipitate sudden death.

The media have conveniently underplayed the fact that even though the three anthrax victims, besides the one who died, had spores in their nasal passages they are currently doing well. I had to flip all the way to page 20 of the Los Angeles Times Oct. 12 issue to find a mere two-inch article stating, ""Third Anthrax Victim Is Back at Work.""

Within that article, the Times reported that the victim said, ""I just want everyone to know that I'm fine,"" as she smiled and headed back to work. Of course, we didn't find this article on the front page because calming the masses doesn't make for good headlines (or good business).

Similarly, it isn't popularly addressed that no connection has been made between the terrorist attacks and the outbreak of anthrax on the East Coast. The FBI is investigating the incidents as criminal acts, but no solid conclusions can be drawn tying the tragedy in New York and Washington D.C. to the discovery of anthrax exposures or the isolated anthrax death.

Obviously, the likelihood that the two events are connected is worthy of investigation, but when the newspapers publish stories about anthrax under their ""U.S. Strikes Back"" headline, they are conducting blatantly interpretive news reporting and most readers are unaware of that. The papers do not allow readers to form their own conclusions, but instead present the occurrences inextricably as one.

So do we need to run, not walk, to our nearest Army surplus store? Well, if you do, news cameras will surely follow you in. They will snap pictures as you pull your chemical suits off the shelf, your gas mask from the rack and throw bottled water into your cart. Congratulations! You have just created more news.

As Americans are already on edge, we are susceptible to being frightened into doing irrational things based on the emphasis news coverage places on certain topics. This trepidation can be seen as the cause of the closure of a subway line in Washington, an IRS center in Kentucky and countless other establishments, sending workers home when any unidentified liquid, powder or smell has been detected.

The nation's pharmacists have reported almost double the usual request for Cipro, the antibiotic used for anthrax treatment. Despite the medicine's $5 per pill price tag, Americans have been flocking to their physicians to obtain prescriptions for their loved ones. The Los Angeles Times reported that one Southern California family purchased Cipro for its entire six-child family, totaling a whopping $3,500 -- the Times did not say how responsible it felt for contributing to this purchase.

The American news media, for the most part, adheres to rather rigid guidelines, regulating their conduct through federally implemented stipulations. The rules see to it that broadcast and radio stations and newspapers maintain a level of professionalism and integrity in the production of our news.

However, these regulatory bodies can only control the industry to a certain extent. While they can ensure that the news stations will not tell outright lies for their own capitalist gain, they cannot oversee how sensationalized a story is to increase the network's bottom line, if the details are correct. The American people must make this analysis.

Anthrax, like nuclear war and terrorism, is an imperative topic that deserves careful consideration by the media and the American people.

But as the TV stations and newspapers relentlessly deliver images that may or may not represent the whole truth, we should be extremely careful not to unquestioningly accept every story. The news industry has a business to run, and we help them to capitalize at our expense if we watch with our eyes wide shut.

Editor:

I would like to commend Catherine Navarro for her courageous and insightful article, ""Done in the Name of the Fatherland."" I, too, have been taken aback by the realization that these days, any nonconformist speech is heatedly denounced as unpatriotic rather than respected as critical thinking. I consider myself a very patriotic American because I want people to support this country individually through their personal experiences and vocalize their opinions to help this country grow to its greatest potential.

As Navarro points out, blind conformity is more a sign of complacency rather than true patriotism, and it saddens me that national unity seems to come with the price tag of exclusive identity. As a woman of color in America, I don't know which thought scares me more right now: the idea that I am not a ""true"" American or the idea that I am, and must therefore recognize other Americans of color as my enemies. Thank you for publishing such a thought-provoking editorial. At a time when the call for free thought is consistently overwhelmed by demands for single-minded vengeance, every voice against hate counts.

-- Jeane Kim

About a year and a half ago, I was sitting in a movie theater waiting for a movie to start. The previews began and a trailer for the upcoming movie ""Cast Away"" began showing.

The trailer showed Tom Hanks marooned on a desert island after a crash and a few clips of him on the island as he became more grizzly and savage with each scene. And then they did it -- they ruined the movie. How so? By showing another scene, in which you see him reunited with his wife.

How this ruined the movie is simple: You know that he gets off the island! By viewing the trailer for the movie, all the suspense was gone since you literally knew how the movie would end.

Unfortunately, the trailers like the one for ""Cast Away"" have become the rule, rather than the exception. Previews are getting longer and longer, revealing more dramatic content of movies.

Sometimes ,it gets to the point where the previews will show you every humorous scene a comedy has. Sometimes with thrillers, they will detail every nuance of the plot.

Who really wants to know so much about a movie before one goes to see it?

A thriller is not very exciting if you know what will happen before it happens. A comedy is not very funny when you already know all the jokes.

It's hard to laugh at Ben Stiller's ignorance at the meaning of the word ""bulimic"" in ""Zoolander"" when you've already seen the scene 10 times in the previews.

At times, I get funny looks when I start humming to myself so that I can't hear the actors' dialogue on the screen.

Am I the only one who deliberately talks to my friends during the previews so that I will not absorb any information? Or shows up to movies 15 minutes late on purpose so that I will miss the trailers?

I should not have to resort to these actions, and neither should anyone else who wants to go to a movie and actually see new material.

The solution to this problem is simple: The movie industry should go back to the previews and trailers of old.

Get the director on the screen for a minute and let him talk about the movie. Have him give a brief sketch of the movie's premise.

Have him talk about what audience he thinks the movie will appeal to. When you do show clips from the movie, make them brief and vague.

In return, get rid of the five minute previews, and the narrator whose theatric voice informs you of each twist the plot unfolds.

The American consumer is not as dumb as the movie industry thinks. We don't need to be shown every good scene in a movie to realize that we would like to see it. For once, we'd like to be surprised.

Many say that in the new millennium, the next frontier in civil rights issues will be acceptance and full inclusion of homosexuals in our society. Seeing as how there are gay and lesbian student organizations at many college campuses in America, and that there are homosexual Chief Executive Officers scattered throughout the corporate sector, I would have to disagree.

Don't get me wrong, I hope and pray that our society can move toward a fully inclusive view of homosexuals, but the way I see it, the next great frontier in civil rights lies hidden where very few people bother to look. I am talking about a sector of our population that hardly ever receives attention on the national, state or even local stage. This is a group that has no powerful voice because it cannot speak in the normal channels of mass communication in our society. Indeed, the mentally disabled remain the most common victims of prejudice and misunderstanding because the advancement of their cause depends primarily upon the willingness of others to help them.

The journey to the present for the mentally disabled community has been horrible compared to that of any other ethnic or religious group that has suffered extreme persecution. In the middle ages, people with obvious disabilities were burned at the stake because they were seen as inherently evil. In many countries today, children born with disorders such as Down's Syndrome are killed because they are not viewed as productive members of society. During the Reagan administration, a ranking official in the Department of Education publicly put forth the idea that people with disabilities are the way they are because God is punishing them for their evil acts in a past life.

Even today, in theological circles of the religious fundamentalist movement, the mentally disabled, along with those who have AIDS or who died in the terrorist attacks in New York, are considered examples of God's wrath visited upon the sinful.

More hurtful than the history of fear and hatred toward these people is the present situation in which many of them live. My sister has Down's Syndrome, and this has led me to volunteer for Special Olympics and work for Access Leisure, a program that provides recreation for disabled people. She participates in both of these activities, she attends a special program at her high school, and she will probably graduate from a special education program at the local city college. She will live at home, or with a roommate like her, for the rest of her life, and she will hold a job at a grocery store or restaurant.

In the world of the mentally disabled, she is extremely lucky. She is fairly high-functioning according to the school district, which rates people who have relatively high independence skills.

Low functioning students, oftenfrom low income families, have a much drearier future ahead of them. Most will live a life of short stays at schools that provide minimal facilities and staff. At these schools, they will make little progress toward being able to take part in society to the best of their ability, not because they are not capable of this accomplishment, but because the people who are supposed to help them accomplish this do not think that they can.

Once these students are projected out of the school system, their parents will probably put them in group homes, having given up on trying to take care of their child themselves. Some group homes are run by caring individuals who understand their jobs and provide a quality environment for their clients, an environment full of outdoor activities with the goal of working toward inclusion in the outside community.

Unfortunately, such group homes are practically one in a million. A vast majority of group homes are run by people who seek to make a maximum profit off of providing minimal service to their clients. These homes are crowded and often plagued with poor hygiene practices, which the caretakers do little to prevent. Such a situation minimizes the growth potential and productivity of our disabled population and thus dehumanizes our own society.

Efforts to bring about change in the realm of rights for the disabled have very rarely had enough momentum to be extremely successful. The most successful programs for disabled people are recreational, not educational.

This divide between activity and learning increases the barrier between the disabled population and mainstream society. However, we should not underestimate the importance of recreational programs like Special Olympics, which provide an opportunity for people like my sister to shine. What we need to truly reform the special education system is a strong effort on the national level to fully fund and support education and recreation for mentally disabled persons.

The first wave of this effort has already passed under the efforts of the Kennedy family and other people who have sought social justice for a disabled sibling or relative. Very few people know that the oldest child of Joseph Kennedy was autistic, or severely mentally disabled.

Under the legislative movements of Robert and Edward Kennedy, light was shed on the horrific plight of mentally disabled persons who, up until the `60s and `70s, had nowhere to go except privately run institutions, which were completely unregulated by the government. In the worst of these cases, patients slept in dimly lit cells, which were often full of their own waste. The federalization of education and health care issues contributed greatly to positive change in the general welfare of mentally disabled citizens in this country.

However, now more than ever, we cannot be content with mediocrity. We need to establish new training methods for special education teachers, we need to hire more teachers through this method, and we need communication in our society on the national level about how to further include people with disabilities.

The real battle for reformers of the special education and recreation system lies not in the halls of Congress, but in the minds of the American people.

Members of the public must understand that people with mental disabilities are fundamentally the same as the rest of us; they have favorite bands and favorite foods, they like to wear fashionable clothes like the rest of us, and they enjoy the same qualities of life thatconnect us as human beings. They laugh, they cry and, as is true with all people, the most important thing in their lives is friendship.

It is a great national tragedy that our society often denies the basic necessity of friendship to its disabled citizens through lack of attention and outright shunning. Each and every one of us must take an active role in reaching out to the marginalized in order to bring them in from the cold.

A Jesuit priest once told me that the state of a society can be judged by the condition of that society's poor, oppressed and otherwise marginalized citizens. If this is true, and I believe it is, then we as a society have miles to go before we sleep on the issue of rights for the disabled.

President George W. Bush's approval rating -- as measured by a public opinion poll jointly administered by USA Today, Gallup and CNN -- soared to 90 percent as of Oct. 7.

This unprecedented level of public support, however, points to more than just another Bush victory in 2004. It indicates that the American public (or at least those represented in Sunday's poll) has become devoid of the ability to react intelligently to the workings of the mass media.

American citizens, although justifiably dismayed by the tragic nature of the Sept. 11 events, have been religiously glued to their TVs, radios and Web sites, all of which have been almost fully dedicated to coverage of either Bush's moves or America's unfolding war.

However, besides a few more press conferences and the requisite flights to New York City, Bush's presidential behavior and demeanor have actually changed very little since Sept. 11.

But even the poll's authors may have been reluctant to admit that fact. One of the questions asked, ""Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism?"" This question's wording left no room for respondents to consider whether Bush has had to do much ""handling"" in the first place.

In light of such considerations, Bush's soaring approval ratings are most likely attributable to the fact that the public is simply seeing and hearing more of him, since he is now being automatically granted headline status like never before.

But perhaps what is most disappointing regarding Bush's record-breaking 90 percent approval rating is that the record may have been broken only due to the fact that Americans today have greater access to the mass media than in the past.

Importantly, though he may not have done enough to raise his approval rating to such a high level in so little time, Bush is not to be held responsible for the ease with which the public has declared its overwhelming loyalty to him. Instead, the blame rests with those who have forgotten to remain critical thinkers at such a crucial time, as well as with those who are responsible for turning anything Bush says and does into the headlining story of the day.