The QC, Vol. 89, No. 21 • March 20, 2003

              The Voice Of Whittier College Since 1914
March 20,2003
QUAKER CAMPUS
http://web.whittier.edu/qc
As war begins, Steel
advocates U.S. mission
PATRICK HOLMES / ASSISTANT CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR
Shawn Steel addresses reasons the United States should go
to war in front of an audience in Hoover Hall on Wednesday,
March 19-
■ WAR
by Amy Stice and Meredith Wallis
QC Editor-in-Chief and Copy Editor
Shawn Steel's introduction
came in the form of President Bush' s
voice, broadcast through a tiny radio in the Lautrup-Ball Cinema,
announcing that war had begun.
Steel, the former leader of the California Republican Party, snapped
off the radio and announced that
"the liberation has commenced,"
then, as students stared ahead, absorbing what had just happened, he
launched not into his position on
war, but his analysis of what is happening to the Left in the United
States in general and the university
system in particular.
While Steel opened by directing his ire against college adminis-
Broken fire sprinkler
floods Turner rooms
■ CRIME
by Christina Gutierrez
QC News Editor
Turnerresidents were awakened
at 3:34 a.m. on Sunday, March 16
when someone used what Assistant
Chief of Campus Safety John Lewis
referred to as an "unknown object"
to break a fire sprinkler on the second floor male wing of the Turner
Residence hall. The broken sprinkler sent an electronic signal that
caused the fire alarms to sound as a
"heavy stream of water" gushed
from the broken head, soaking the
area between rooms 228 and 242,
according to Lewis. The water also
soaked through the floor, reaching
rooms 128-142 on the first floor.
The preliminary estimate for
damages to the building and electrical equipment alone is between
$30,000 and $40,000. This figure
does not take into account the significant property damage that the
water caused. Area Coordinator
Arman Davtyan assured Turner residents that they would not be charged
for the damages. "You guys were
the victims in this, and it's not fair
to make you pay for it on top of
things," he said at an all-Turner
War
What is it good for?
Gen-er-ating letters
Huh!
Say it again ya'll
Opinions, Page 2
Hall meeting on Tuesday, March
18. "It's not like when your guest
rips down an exit sign".
The Whittier Police Department
(W.P.D.) and Fire Department responded to the call along with Campus Safety officers. "Everyone got
to join the party," Lewis said. After
the Fire Department determined that
the sprinkler's activity was a result
"My room sucks right
now. "It's wet, cold,
mildewey and smelly. I
get up when the alarm
goes off and put my feet
down on a wet floor."
Tom Logan
Junior
of tampering with the equipment
instead of an actual fire, W.P.D.
took a report.
According to Lewis, the
individual(s) who committed the
crime are guilty of felony vandalism because the damage exceeded
$10,000, along with misdemeanor
tampering with fire safety equipment. Tampering with equipment
of this nature is only a felony if
injuries were sustained as a result.
No one was injured in Sunday's
course of events, Lewis said.
Lewis stressed the seriousness
ofthe incident: "It's one thing to set
off a fire alarm," he said, "but it's
quite another to cause tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage.
This is not a prank. There are probably a lot of unhappy folks in Turner right now." Junior Turner resident Lizzy Craze agreed, commenting that when the sprinklers and
alarms went off, "It was sprinkling,
it was cold and the people outside
were drunk."
The water from the sprinkler
also got into the electrical system of
the newly replaced fire alarms, causing them to sound continually
throughout the night and the next
morning. Craze, like other Turner
residents, was annoyed with the
constant noise. "I couldn't even take
a shower in Turner [on Sunday
morning] because of the noise. I
had to shower in the [Ruth B.] Shannon Center."
Eventually, Campus Safety shut
off the system and posted a "fire
monitor" in the residence hall to
See SPRINKLER, page 6
tration [see related story, page 7],
he used this momentum to transition to a criticism ofthe peace movement. Citing several instances in
which the United States has intervened in foreign countries in the
name of preventing atrocities—
namely, against Hitler and Mussolini—Steel said, "I want to thank
the peace movement for its massive
failure over the last 67 years."
Citing moral atrocity after moral atrocity, Steel detailed what he
believed to be the lack of moral and
emotional response in America's
Left: "Where is the left's heart?
Where is the peace movement's
heart? There is no heart or compassion in the peace movement or in
the leftist community. They have
become accomplices. It's laughable."
To make this point, Steel pointed to the death of the Left, and
feminism in particular, asking where
the feminists were when the Taliban was forcing women to live as
slaves and stoning them in the
streets. He also wanted to know
where feminists where when Clinton was "abusing women."
After detailing the failures of
the Left, Steel moved on to the
reasons for "liberating" Iraq. Although he detailed Hussein's human rights atrocities, he remarked
that human rights violations alone
are not enough to go to war and that
this war is primarily about disarmament.
Steel also listed previous terrorist acts and the threat of future
terrorism on U.S. soil as a reason
for war. "If s not that we might have
a problem or might get attacked, but
that we've already been attacked,"
See WAR, page 7
ALLISON CORONA / QC PHOTOGRAPHER
The root structure of the tree that fell in front of the Stauffer
Science Building on Monday, March 17 as a result ofthe combination of 50 mile-per-hour winds and soil that was wet from the
weekend's windstorms. The tree was one of the two larger trees
destroyed as a result of the weather. See page 7 for the full story.
ISSUE 21 • VOLUME 89
You talkin' to me?
We've got more speakers than in
your mom's car. Speaking of
your mom, maybe she wants
some salsa...we've got that too.
Campus Life, Page 7
Rat Season
Willard brings a hoard of rats
while The Hunted pursues just
one. But film reviews aren't
the only thing to be found....
A&E, Page 10
All-Weather Athletes
There was no baseball, no tennis
and no barbecue on Saturday,
March 15 due to rain, but those
crazy track kids competed anyway.
Sports, Page 16