over The EDGE page 4

Wednesday, Sept 20, 1995

EDITORIAL

How does the old saying go? “Never look a gift

horse in the mouth”? Or maybe what I’m thinking of

is “Beggars can’t be choosers”. Well, this hapless

scribe fell prey to disregarding these two wise state-

ments in her last editorial. In what was considered an

innocent comment, feelings were hurt and the re-
sponse was a bit overwhelming.

For those of you too busy to vémensher what I
said, I’ll repeat it: “The computer in our office does
not work again and this issue came out of my base-
| ment yet again”. The editorial was loosely based on
the theme that no matter how much things change,
some things stay the same. Returning Edge staff
thought the comment humourous, but others did not.

It seems that in my “rash” statement, I over-
looked the staff at Computer Services who have put
in countless hours to maintain our computer (which
is not really “ our” computer in that Over the Edge
cannot afford to buy a computer). The staff was al-
ways on hand to help us with the many problems we
had as we were learning to use the computer. Along
with this, they were even able to bring up a techni-
cian from downtown Prince George to fix our com-
puter.
_ As for the last issue. It is a well-known fact
that computers and I do not mix very well and I am at
my best using a Word Processor. I came in ona Fri-
day night to finish a paper that was due out two days

earlier and when I had finished mv work. I tried to|
exit Windows, to which one of the staff members

ranted and said “You’re not supposed to do that!”

Oops.

I immediately left a message with the Com-
puter Services office (our third one in a month)
and took all of the newspaper supplies home with

me to see what I could accomplish on my home
computer. The result was, according to who you
ask “excellent”, “really nice” or “shitty”.

The next time I was in our office I was told
the problem was a really minor one and it could
have been solved by simply rebooting the system.

Oops, again.

It was unfortunate that feelings were hurt

and that recognition was not given. For those of —

you who asked that this faux pas be made public;
here it is.

I hope you all enjoy this issue of Over the
Edge which came off “our” computer in our office
for all of you out there.

UNBC Student Newspaper

Over The Edge
3333 University Way, Prince George, B.C., V2N 4Z9
Fax: 960-6330, E-mail over-the-edge @ugrad.unbc.edu

Tel: 960-5633

The New Campus Radicals

by Jason Morris —

One thing to look forward to at
the beginning of each school year
is seeing all the campus activists:
students who volunteer their
time to speak up for causes they
sincerely believe in. Indeed, one
of the benefits of going to a uni-
versity is interacting with these
people and hearing their often
media-ignored perspective on
current social issues. Otherwise
quiet students may soon find
themselves marching for the en-
vironment, rallying to end vio-
lence against women, pretesting
the treatment of First Nations
people, signing petitions for na-
tionalized daycare, and working
at information tables on cam-
pus-an important component of
the university experience. How-
ever, the traditional campus
radicals are not as progressive
as they like to think they are.
Conservatism, once more
about maintaining the status
quo, is the most radical ideology
around today; more radical than
the “leftist” or socialist beliefs of
today’s campus activists. When
grand social experiments put
forward by the old campus radi-
cals, such as getting paid for not

working, being hired based on
your sex, or putting murderers
and rapists in state hotels or day
parole all fail, the conservative
way of doing things becomes
radical. Suddenly conservatives,
that are supposed to only like in-
cremental change find them-
selves wanting to overthrow the
system.

One day when he wasn’t too
busy playing the stock market,
the patriarch of campus radi-
cals. Karl Marx, wrote that pro-
letariats wold revolt against the
evil capitalists. Now, the evil
capitalists—the conservatives—
are the new radicals, for revolt-
ing against Marxists and every
other outdated radical. This is
why the federal Reform Party is
the near-opposition in Parlia-
ment, why Ontario elected a
Reform clone named Mike Har-
ris, why Alberta has Ralph
Klein, why Roy Romanow talks
about balancing the budget, why
the B. C. New Democrats will not
get re-elected, why Audrey
Mclaughlin doesn’t have enough
friends to fill a cruise ship, why
women are afraid to call them-
selves feminists, why people

don’t trust environmentalists,
why communities rally in sup-
port of the death penalty, and
why social security programs
are being cut. -

Of course, the old campus
radicals may still shout and
stamp and march, but by ignor-
ing recent events, they are just
showing how old their radical-
ism is, and how opposed they are:.
to democracy. They don’t seem
to want ordinary people to make -
up their own minds how their
country should be. Totalitarian-
ism is so stale, which is another
reason why today’s conserva-
tives are the new campus radi-
cals.

If the old avant-garde campus
activists are actually far behind
the times, then where are these
new campus radicals, these con-
servatives? The real campus
radicals of today are too busy
studying to find solutions to the
problems that the old activists
helped create, and don’t have
time to don berets and march for
the cause du jour. But they do
think it’s their turn to try to
make.the world a better place.

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