The Towerlight, March 5, 1982

tl19820305-000 "Vol. 75 No. 19 Tower PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 Conscience is an inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. Mencken March 5, 1982 Renovation begins for computers by Jim Schoettler State higher education officials are reviewing bids for a new computer system at Towson State. Workmen will begin this spring to renovate the Cook Library basement Where the new computer will be housed. The State has budgeted $9.1 million over a two year period for the new system. The University will pay for the renovation of Cook Library basement. ""We've reached the future,"" said Francis Edwards, aca9llemic computer coordinator, ""no college major will be tible to escape the computer."" ""There are a lot of people in higher education who play ostrich,"" Edwards said. ""They see something happening and bury their heads. In today's society with computers, we can no longer play ostrich because the future will not go away � the future is computers."" The bid proposals are reviewed by a 43-member com-mission made up of members of the Board of Trustees of State Universities and Colleges, the Maryland State Col-lege Information Center (MSCIC) and representatives from the eight colleges involved in the project: Morgan State University, Salisbury State College, Bowie State College, St. Mary's College, Frostburg State College, the University of Baltimore, and Towson State. The evaluation process can be very tedious, Edwards said. ""One copy of the technical proposals without sup- Porting documents weighed 125 pounds, and each corn- Pany had to submit 10 copies,"" he said. The commission is considering three main types of computing systems: centralized, distributed, and semi-distributed. Centralized system would have one big control center, located at Towson State, that would feed the eight school computing network. Continued on page 10 Dormitory construction nears Heavy machinery began shaping a two-acre plateau above the Glen, bordering Cross Campus Drive, to begin laying the foundation for a Walter Cronkite Student protests election violation 14-story dormitory complex. Formal ground breaking ceremonies will be held March 19. TL photo by Edvins Lagzdins . . . that's the way it was by Gayle Griisser A would-be Senate candidate Tuesday before the Senate lodged a formal protest of an election policy violation. Tres Kerns, a sophomore mass communication major ad-dressed the Senate concerning the violation of Section 17 of the elec-tion policy. Kerns said, students should be given some recourse on SGA deci-sions. ""There is no system of checks and balances, and there is no way for students to challense the rieci� sion of the Election Commission . Beth Joesph, SGA senator, pro-posed the creation of an election review commission to investigate the election process. Kern is unhappy about the Elec-tion Commission's decision not to extend the deadline for senate peti-tions and has drafted and submitted his own petition with 400 signatures to the Student Government Association in protest. Kerns said he thinks the deadline should be extended a week since the Election Commission violated one of its policies by placing only one ad in the Towerlight instead of the two as required by Section 17 of the Rules policies. ""It's better to correct a mistake than to let it go on,"" Kerns said. The Senate should have a hearing at which time the election commis-sion should answer question on at which time the Election Commis-sion should answer question on their procedures and how they arriv-ed at their decision not to extend the deadline, Kerns said. ""I decided to get twice the amount of signatures to prove my point. My point was that students did care about the violation"" Kerns said. Kerns said he had been thinking about running for Senate ana thought petitions could be turned in until the end of February. But after learning about the Election Com-mission's decisions last Friday, he decided to get a petition. Kerns first approached Donna Serdehely, SGA secretary, who refused to give him a petition since the deadline had passed but did give him a copy of the Election Commis-sion Rules and told him what to in-clude on his petition. While getting the signatures, Kerns said, several students told him that they were glad that somebody was doing something regarding the violation. Kerns presented his petition to the Election Commission's man-datory meeting for candidates but the commission returned it him and told him to hold it until April 1 when the Senate started reviewing candidates for Senate vacanicies. Kerns said that the Election Com-mission missed the whole point of his tiling a protest petition since he is not only interested in attaining a Senate position but also giving other students the opportunity to run extending the deadline. Cronkite strolls down memory lane by Michael Bennett Walter Cronkite, former anchor-man of the ""CBS Evening News,"" spoke at the Towson Center Sunday night. Cronkite, who in the course of his forty years in journalism gained a reputation for fair and objective reporting, shared some of his per-sonal opinions with an audience of approximately 2,001. The program, ""An Evening with Walter Cronkite,"" was sponsored by the University. Cronkite's ap-pearance was one of only 18 lectures he will give this year and the only one on the east coast. ""We've received a great deal of positive feedback from the com-munity,"" said Melanie Panos, direc-tor of marketing. ""Mr. Cronkite call-ed and said he enjoyed himself and said he'd like to come back."" Katie Ryan, director of university relations, said ticket sales for the lecture fell short of expectations and that the University lost bet-ween $9,000 and $10,000. Ryan said the loss will not come out of the University's operating budget. The money will come from Auxil:ary Services, said Ryan. Ryan said Auxiliary Services has a surplus of about $700,000. The University hopes to build the Aux-iliary Services account up to $1.5 million so the money could be used to fund special projects like the Cronkite lecture, she said. Since Auxiliary Services is no longer funded by the state, all money for that department comes from money-making operations such as the recreation center, the candy counter and the book store in the University Union and from suc-cessful promotions in the Towson Center. Panos said the Cronkite lecture was an event with educational value, since many students here are mass communications majors. ""Plus,"" she said, ""The community relations value overrides the monetary loss."" The contract for Cronkite's ap-pearance was signed last January. Panos did not become director of mant for three to four years. In the past, pandas could migrate from a dead forest to a thriving one, but now the population of the Chinese countryside has become so dense that migration is no longer possilbe. Cronkite also drew upon his jour-nalistic experience to comment on the Soviet Union. In addition to his Cronkite now hosts the CBS science and technology program ""Universe."" His concern for the future of our environment was evi- The arms race is dangerous. We need to expand our dialogue with the Soviet Union. � Cronkite marketing until last September. Harry Walker Inc., a New York booking agent, was paid $18,000 to arrange the Cronkite lecture. In his openning remarks, Cronkite tried to dispel the American myth of semi-retirement. ""There is no such thing,"" he said. ""In the last eleven and a half months, I've travelled in 13 countries on fi ye continents and criss-crossed the United States several times in pursuit of stories for CBS."" Cronkite said pandas are becom-ing extinct, because they feed only on bamboo. Bamboo forests die off every 80 to 90 years a.id remain dor-dent in several of Cronkite's topics. He spoke about the rapid depletion of the world's rain forests and the plight of the panda. If our rain forests are eliminated, Cronkite said, the temperature of the atmosphere could increase enough to melt the polar ice-caps and possibly flood coastal cities. work as a TV news interviewer, Cronkite was chief of the United Press Moscow Bureau from 1946-48. ""The Russians are just as suspicious of us as we are of them, and they have examples of suspicious behavior on our part,"" he said. Cronkite cited the war in Viet Nam, the present arms race and the inflamatory rhetoric coming from the White House as examples of American actions that make the Russians nervous. ""The arms race is dangerous,"" Cronkite said. ""We need to expand our dialogue with the Soviet Union."" Cronkite also discussed the danger of the current talk of a sur-vivable nuclear war. He described it. as a bad theory with potentially disastrous consequences. After speaking for approximately 30 minutes, Cronkite answered questions from the audience for about 25 more minutes. When asked about violence on television, Cronkite said he could not comment on entertainment pro-gramming, because his background is in news. But he did say that he thought many local news programs are trivialized by coverage of murders and automobile accidents that would receive minimal coverage in a newspaper. Later, in response to a question concerning writer Bob Woodward's use of Alexander Haig's personal notes from a staff meeting, Cronkite drew applause from the audience when he said it was the government's job to protect anything they want to keep secret. ""If the Transylvanian am-bassador can find out about something then the people in Kan-sas City should know about it too,"" he said. Visiting scholar seeks origin of life, finds primordial soup by Marc Goodman ""How did life begin and how will it end?"" asked Patricia Plante, vice president for academic affairs, at last Tuesday's Visiting Scholar lecture in the Fine Arts Concert Hall. This is a question that Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma, an expert on the chemical origin of life, has been actively seeking to answer for years. Ponnamperuma, a professor of chemistry and director of the laboratory of chemical evolution at the University of Maryland, has made great strides in the knowledge of the chemical origin of life. And the native of Sri Lanka, who has also written and edited a number of books and publications on chemical evolution, is one of the three foremost authorities on the subject, said Erik Scully, in-structor of biology at Towson State. ""The story of life has been in the realm of geology and Philosophy for many generations,"" Ponnamperuma said at the lecture. He said he has found proof that life was formed some-where between 4.6 billion years ago � when our Planetary system was formed, and 3.8 billion years ago � when the oldest known evidence of life was discovered. In his laboratory, with the help of graduate students, he has recreated the atmospheric conditions similar to those of the 'primitive' earth and examined how the elements necessary for life combined to form living organisms which he describes as organic matter. The earth's primitive atmosphere contained carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and 90 percent hydrogen which com-bined to form methane, ammonia and water, he said. In a experiment conducted in 1953 by Dr. Harold C. Urey and Dr. Stanley Miller, it was found that when methane and ammonia were mixed with molecular hydrogen and water vapor and introduced to a con- Cyril Ponnamperuma tinuous electric spark (similar to lightning), the resulting reactions produced organic matter. It was recently discovered, however, that the early at-mosphere was not so hydrogen-rich and that it actually had an abundance of carbon dioxide. But Ponnamperuma was able to synthesize organic molecules in laboratory experiments similar to the Urey- Miller experiment anyway. The organic molecules existed in what Ponnamperuma calls, a 'primordial soup.' Dr. Ponnamperuma then sought to discover where and when this mixture of organic molecules in the primordial soup formed. He examined samples of the earth's crust which dated back to 3.8 billion years and he found evidence of life. Victor McGregor, a geologist from New Zealand, recently found one of these ancient rocks in the south-western part of Greenland. Organic compounds had been fossilized in the rocks, giving proof to Ponnamperuma and others that life existed 3.8 billion years ago. Ponnamperuma's study of the origin of life is not limited solely to the earth. ""If we understand what happened on the earth, we can extrapolate that the same kind of thing may have hap-pened elsewhere in the universe,"" he said. ""The search of life beyond the earth has become a necessary equel to the study of the origin of life."" ""There are 1023 stars in the sky. And each one of the stars can behave like our sun. If the sun is the mainstay of life on this earth, then the possibility of life in the universe is astronomical."" Ponnamperuma recently stumbled on proof of ex-traterrestrial life. An event, which he says ""changed our entire concept of chemical evolution,"" occured in 1969 � organic matter was found in the Murchison meteorite which fell on Australia. The meteorite had amino acids (a component of organic molecules) which were not con-taminated by terrestrial beings. ""This was the first unambiguous evidence of extrater-restial life,"" Dr. Ponnamperuma said. Two other meteorites � one found in Kentucky in 1952 and another discovered in Ordessa in 1866 � had similar patterns of amino acids, he said. Ponnamperuma said that space programs such as the Mariner, Voyager and Viking, have given us little evidence of chemical evolution in our planetary system. He has not given up hope, though. ""Some people have asked, 'If there's intelligent life out there , why havca't they discovered us'?' Skeptics answer, 'They have probably listened to our radio pro-grams and decided there is no intelligent life on the earth'!"" "