The Towerlight, February 9, 1984

tl19840209-000 "The Towerlight Three may keep a secret. if two of them are dead. --Benjamin Franklin Vol. 77 No. 16 PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 February 9, 1984 Novelist brings 'the most radical revolution in the world' here By Glenn Small ""When you talk about Feminism,"" Dr. Carolyn Heilbrun, English professor, told faculty and students here last Wednesday, ""you're talking about the most radical rev-olution in the world."" It is ""exciting, because it is, more than any other revolution, I think, incredibly threatening,"" she explained, addressing the question of how feminist criticism can restore excitement to the classroom. ""So, the excitement comes from being a revolutionary, and finding a new way to look at the material,"" Helping Towson professors find that new way of looking at traditional curricu-lum was one of the reasons Dr. Heilbrun, a Columbia University English professor, was here. Heilbrun, a well-known writer of detec-tive novels and scholarly articles, and cur-rent president of the Modern Language As-sociation (MLA), came to Towson to advise English faculty how to develop ""new eyes"" with which to look at literature. She took part in a faculty workshop on ""Integrating: The Scholarship on Women,"" which was one of a series organized by Uni-versity English professors Elaine Hedges and Sara Coulter, with the support from a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecon-dary Education (FIPSE) grant. New eyes, Heilbrun said, are developed by applying feminist criticism to tradition-ally taught works, and from incorporating works into the curriculum by women that have been overlooked in the past. But before Heilbrun went to the work-shop, she spent some time with students and faculty in Cook Library, explaining Five who made a difference Carter G.Woodson February is Black History Month. The Towerlight asked several members of The Black community who they felt was one of the most significant, but least noteci people in Black history. Dr. Carter C. Woodson was the first choice of the first person asked, Dr. Bettye Parker, a noted author who was visiting campus last Monday to speak about Black Women in literature. Woodson was the man who ""decided one day that we needed a moment to celebrate Black History."" Woodson, a Harvard Ph.D, initiated Negro History Week in 1926. The week observance expanded to a month in 1976 to provide more time for programs, observances and celebrations. Parker also highlighted two other authors, Alice Walker and Zora Neal Hurston. Walker, who is perhaps best known for her recent best seller The Color Purple and Hurston, who received degrees from Howard and Barnard Universities and authored several books, were two women who have said ""we have to take control of our lives, dismantle the stereotypes and move about as normal people,"" Parker said. Dr. Lillian Anthony, dean of minority affairs chose Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931) as ""one of our greatest scholars."" Williams was also an excellent physican and was credited with performing the first suc-cessful surgical closure of a wound of the heart and pericardium in 1893. Prior to that he organized the Provident Hospital in Chicago, affording facilities for training black men as interns and black women as nurses. James Baldwin, the Harlem-born author and playwright the choice of Thomas Knox, dean of student affairs. Baldwin, who took up writing in high school and achieved his first literary success in 1953 with Go Tell it on the Mountain, wrote powerfully at a time when black personal issues were not being written about,"" Knox said. James Whitaker, director of the African-American Cultural Center chose Asa Philip Randolph, the ""unsung hero"" of desegregation. Brown, Whitaker said, had a ""significant effect on desegregation prior to the 1954 II Supreme Court Ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education."" In the early years of World War I, Randolph led the effort to unionize Blacks in the shipyards and other industries. He later pushed President ri Harry Truman to desegregate the armed forces in 1948 and, in 1963, direc-tred the 200,000 - strong ""March on Washington"" at which Martin Luther King, Jr., made his famous 'I have a Dream"" speech. �James Hunt Black History Month A schedule of events at Towson State commemorating Black History Month page 2 Summer's ""Throb"" Steve Salembene reviews ""Throb,"" a book of photographs by The Police's Andy Summers page 7 University Minutiae Stephen Hyde wanders across cam-pus taking in the little things that add up page 11 feminist criticism and its importance. ""If you believe, as I do, that ultimately the world is going to be saved, if it is saved, from excessive masculinity by men and wo-men working together�excessive mascu-linity is in the White house now, for in-stance� then we're going to have to work together,"" Heilbrun said. Excessive masculinity is ""everything from nuclear war, to gang rapes, to car bombings to football,"" she said,"" It is all of the reification of violence; it is the entire re-garding of the male sexual urge as totally natural, no matter what form it takes, and so forth,"" she said. Heilbrun said that there has developed a wide gap between the excesses of masculin-ity and feminity. � ""The excesses of feminity are precisely the passivity of women who are unable to affect this, who honor it, who above all in-ternalize what they're told about them-selves, and therefore go through life doing up the wounds, but who will not try to change any of tile structures that bring this problem about,"" she said. ""They (women) will try to rescue starv-ing children in India, but they will not look at the situation which suggests why there are so many starving children in India,"" she said. Fpminism, Heilbrun said, provides a way of looking at the basics�the unchallenged ideologies that underlie everything, in-cluding our literature. ""Feminism has, of all the disciplines, de-veloped the ability to look at the structures underlying what we do that we take for granted,"" she said. ""The hardest part, I think, is to see past obvious plots,"" Heilbrun explained, pro-viding the marriage ritual as evidence. Marriage, she said, was ""developed so that a man might pass his property on to his son, who he could be sure was his. That meant the woman he married had to be ab-solutely virgin, so that nobody else's son could inherit And, even most feminists, she said, don't see the idea incorporated into the marriage ritual. ""One of my favorite things is being in-vited to weddings by feminists,"" she said. ""And there they are in their white dress. And their father giving them away."" ""They have not figured out what it is they're doing. ""The actual ritual of marriage meant that one man used the daughter as an ob-ject of circulation to make a contract with another man. See WOMEN, page 2 A view of the Glen dorms at dusk from beneath the bridge. By Jerry Trout Toned down, conservative press is thriving All that happened to the conservative Davis Dossier during its first year of newspaper life was that a homosexual student politician threatened to sue, administrators barred it from University of California-Davis dorms, and one of its advertisers publically apologized for buy-ing space in it. Then some of the paper's other advertisers dropped out. And then it got into a name-calling contest with the California Aggie, the school's major newspaper. The Dossier survived anyway. Editor Mike Hart even thinks the future for his paper looks good. The next issue is about to appear. His experiences are not atypical of the 34 avowedly-conservative student papers that have sprung up on the nation's campuses over the last three years. They are surviving, though to do so some are toning down their stridency and even accepting the help of unconservative groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But survival itself is no mean trick when the fatality rate for publications is so high, when the student press in particular is in a depres-sion, when many administrators have been openly hostile toward the papers, and when many of the papers themselves try to attract at-tention by affecting a cultured disdain for non-conservative and certain not-very-powerful American groups. Some papers even are thriving, largely be-cause of off-campus subscriptions and the sup-port of foundations and wealthy friends like Charlton Heston and President Reagan's brother. The Dartmouth Review, a pioneer of the new wave, is growing ""at an exponential rate,"" for-mer Editor Mike Collette said. Off-campus paid circulation rose by 40 percent�or 3000 people�in the last year. ""most of the papers support themselves now,"" said John Carson, founder of Student Magazine in Colorado and of Students for a Bet-ter America, a conservative student group. Only one of the 34 papers has failed, said Bill Jensen, grants director of the Institute for Edu-cational Affairs (IEA) in New York. The IEA, a conservative think tank founded by former Treasury Secretary William Simon and writer Irving Kristol, has given money to most of the papers to help launch them. This year alone, the IEA has contributed some $350,000 to 24 papers ""that are without exception intellectually conservative,"" Jensen said. ""The money is a seed grant,"" he explained. ""We're not funding ongoing operations. In fact, most of our concern with our applicants is with determining whether they can complete the pro-jects they're undertaking, if they've made the editorial and production fundraising plans they'll be needing."" Sometimes they've needed other kinds of help. The ACLU two weeks ago began repre-senting the Hawkeye Review in its crusade to distribute in the University of Iowa's dorms. The ACLU has also represented the Dart-mouth paper in legal scrapes. ""The question,"" said Dwayne Rohovit of the Iowa ACLU, ""is freedom of the press."" Conser-vative papers at Northwestern and Columbia have also had trouble distributing on their cam-puses. Administrators usually fight them because they're angry over the paper's deliberately pro-vocative styles, though one teacher is suing the Dartmouth paper for libel. Darmouth officials have reprimanded the Re-view twice for supposed racism and sexism. One editorial about affirmative action, titled ""Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive, Bro,"" was written in a jive dialect. Womens' Studies courses almost al-ways are called ""Lesbo Studies"" in the paper. The Review is now ""striving to tone down the controversy to bring it more le-gitimacy,"" current Editor Dorn Bishop said. ""There're no more jive talk articles or anything."" The Review's stories have ""toned down,"" ad-ded Jim Newton, publisher of the rival The Dartmouth, but it has a hard time ""finding the middle ground between excessive and boring."" ""You have to be spicy, but you shouldn't be smartass,"" said John Carlson of the conserva-tive Washington Spectator at the University of Washington. College Press Service TM coming to TSU Relieving stress without drugs By Mike Germroth The Western world was introduc-ed to the concept of Transcendental Meditation 25 years ago through the guidance of the Maharishi Ma-hesh Yogi. Next Wednesday, TM will make its way to Towson State. It will be introduced by Dr. Robert Ginsberg, who will hold a seminar in Room 309 of the University Union at 7:30 p.m. Ginsberg, a physician in private practice in Cheverly, Md., will discuss the results of a study published in the International Journ-al of Neuroscience in 1982. In essence, the study showed a re-duction in the biological age of long-term mediators. The research indi-cates that those who meditated for over five years were found to be an average of 12 biological years younger than their true chronolog-ical age. Ginsberg said that a recent study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine showed that TM helps to reduce the incidence of hypertension and high blood pressure. He added that TM helps to lower the levels of adrenaline, cortisone, and blood cholesterol in the body. ""TM certainly reduces stress. It makes complete sense to be a part of any valid health program,"" he added. ""TM will give your mind an in-ward direction,"" said Professor Sil-vine Marbury, who teaches literature at the Maharishi International Uni-versity in Fairfield, Iowa. Marbury, a i..ttive of Ruxton, said that TM will help your ""conscious mind experience subtler levels of thought and feeling."" Marbury will host a presentation entitled ""Beyond Stress Manage-ment"" in the University Union on March 7. Marbury explained that when practicing TM, the mind enters a state of ""restful alertness"" during which it can ""heal itself of stress."" ""Any relaxation technique is bene-ficial"" since people ""need to relax to stop aging,"" said Dr. Neil Gallagher, Chairperson and Director of Allied health Science at Towson State. ""This (TM) is one of many meth-ods for relaxation and stress man-agement,"" he said. Other methods in-clude such activities as exercise, yoga, autohypnotism, and tai chi. ""Many students to tai chi on cam-pus,"" he added. Using meditation to cope with stress is ""Much better than dealing with stress through chemical drugs,"" said Dr. James Hill, Chairperson of the Philosophy Department at Towson State. Hill, who teaches a course in Euro-pean, Asian, and African medita-tional systems, said that drugs are a ""magical"" and ""artificial"" means ol dealing with stress. Meditation, he said, involves ""authentic participa-tion"" in one's own health. "