page 6 www.theloquitur.com Thursday, Sept.

16, 2010

Perspectives

Sex, drugs and Amsterdam between the small amount of laws and the
By Laura Hancq small amount of prisoners in the Nether-
Staff Writer lands. After all, an individual can only be
punished for a law they have broken. If that
law does not exist, they are not guilty.
“Peace, Love and As ESPN is “the worldwide leader
Amsterdam” reads of sports,” Amsterdam is the worldwide
a popular women’s leader of sex and drugs. In Philadelphia,
T-shirt. With about on a typical Sunday night in Oct., friends
eight prisons being shut down in the Neth- may pile into
erlands because of lack of inmates, many a local bar,
would agree that this motto holds true. get a round
never ends well.
Would we want our children growing
up in a society where they could walk into
a store and buy enough marijuana to stay
high for about a week? How about them
walking home from school on streets lined
with prostitutes? Most parents would not
want this for their child.
Obviously, American prisons are more
crowded but at
the same time
they are crowd-
have not been locked away for drugs and
drugs alone. In the Netherlands, cocaine
and heroin usage is at an all-time high.
Hard drugs lead to harder crime. Murder,
violence, abuse and stealing, along with
dropping out of school and losing a job, are
all common with the usage of harder drugs.
When a society does not outlaw the
gateway drugs, the harder drugs follow,and
hard drugs do not better a society. The
Dutch may be proud of their low prison
rate for now but they are not going to be

“ The Dutch may be

The United States has the largest of beers ed because proud of the amount of heroin and cocaine
amount of documented incarcerations in and watch we have laws users that develop in the young generation.
the world. Many researchers, critics and the Eagles. proud of thei low that protect Just about every country in the world
In Amster- us from deal- struggles when it comes to creating drug
citizens claim that the United States should
be ashamed of this statistic. Instead of dam, anyone
prison rate for now ing with those laws. It is a constant battle on how much
blaming the criminals, people from all over can go into but they are not go- situations. Sure, marijuana is legal and if it has positive or
the world blame the too-strict American what they some Ameri- negative effects. There is no perfect an-
law. What happened to the days of world call a “cof- ing to be proud of the can drug users swer. Drugs are part of this world and they
government officials looking to American fee shop,” might wish the are never going to go away, whether it is
government as the paramount? order up to
amount of heroin and United States legal to possess a certain amount or not.
Well, it all depends on the way you 5 grams of cocaine users that de- could emulate The Netherlands has already stated that
look at the issue. Yes, many prisons are marijuana the freedom to the 5 grams sold in coffee shops may be
closing in the Netherlands and yes, many and watch velop in the young gen- smoke what- too dangerous and that 3 grams should be

prisons in the United States are overflow-
ing. But does a lesser amount of inmates
mean a safer society? After all, the point of
a prison is to provide a place to keep crimi-
nals from hurting others while they repay
their debt to society and can hopefully be
released as better citizens.
So does the fact that the Netherlands
has to close prisons mean their society is
overall better and safer than ours? Is every-
one walking the streets of Amsterdam as a
lover, not a fighter? That would be unreal-
istic. There is obviously a direct correlation
”
their favorite ever, whenever the new standard. It sounds like the Dutch
prostitutes eration. and wherever officials may start to further examine all of
get ready they’d like. their relaxed policies. That’s not to say that
for a day’s However, re- their prisons may start to fill back up soon.
work. Of cent news about But do not be surprised if “Peace, Love,
course, both the drugs and prostitution are Amsterdam leads citizens of other coun- and Amsterdam” does not last forever.
legal. At least for now. tries to believe that they are definitely bet-
“Peace, Love, and Amsterdam” aside, it ter in a society that has drug laws in place. lch23@cabrini.edu
is much more dangerous to live in a soci- Dutch officials may actually take a second
ety where this behavior is typical and legal. glance at their society and shockingly re-
Even though the coffee shops are allowed vert back to the days of looking to Ameri-
to sell marijuana, they have become plac- can law for guidance.
es for underground drug trafficking. That Most prisoners in the United States

What I wish I did as a freshman
By Kelly Hannan
Staff Writer
As a current se-
nior at Cabrini Col-
lege, looking back
on the last three
years I have spent here, time has only
made me realize what I have missed out
on. I think about the clubs I did not join,
what activities I did not get involved in,
what classes I should have taken and why
I waited for my mom outside Xavier Hall
almost every Friday with my hamper of
dirty laundry.
With more than 50 student clubs and
organizations offered on campus, the one
that has always caught my eye has been
the Campus Activities and Programming
Board.
CAP Board’s main purpose on campus
is to unite the student body by offering a
tremendous amount of opportunities for
students to become involved.
The board hosts a variety of events to
get students involved. One of their greatest
purposes is to get students to stay on cam-
pus during the weekends. They offer af-
fordable college-priced tickets to Wayne’s
movie theater as well as Fast Track into
Philly tickets.
The activities are not just held on the
weekends but also during the week. Bingo,
Cabrini dances and there are Phillies tick-
ets for Cabrini night at the Phillies game
are a few of the options you can choose.
When you purchase tickets for any of
these events, you do so in the Center for
Student Engagement and Leadership,
One of the first on campus events of the season, Hypnotic Intoxication, mixed fun
and education.
(SEaL). The SEaL office is located on the
first floor of the Widener Center right be-
hind Jazzman’s Café. I of course was not
aware of this until at least my sophomore
year. It’s an office I wish I had visited in
the past.
I would have enjoyed my freshman year
as a college student a heck of a lot more if I
participated in at least two of the activities.
I should have taken advantage of a Fast
Track to Philly pass which is sold at the
very low price of $2.
Habitat for Humanity is another ex-
ample of an extraordinary organization
on this campus. It is an incredible way to
get involved in the community and help
out those less fortunate than you. I know
I would not only of gained experience for
my resume but had a more open outlook
on life itself.
Marketing was the major I declared my
freshman year. Had I only known my inter-
Follow your instincts, get involved and
do not let your roommates, friends or sig-
nificant others play a part in your future.
Make the most of your four years at col-
lege.
kh733@cabrini.edu
How You
can Get
Involved
Aamber lajeunesse / submitted photo 1. CAP Board - Cabrini’s pro-
gramming board. All the events
and trips go through the board.
You could plan one too.
est was going to be in the field of commu-
nication, I would have enrolled in classes 2. Student Government
such as radio, video production, journalism Association- Have your voice be
and a few others. heard in the hub of all campus
Instead, I was taking classes to try and activity.
make a dent in my required core curricu-
lum. 3. Student Diversity - The Office
As a freshman, not showing my interests of Student Diversity balances fun
towards the communication department, I events with education.
had no knowledge of how magnificent the
communication program really was. 4. Sports - When the Cavaliers
I wish when I was a freshman I was are on a roll, the whole school
more mature and took the initiative to edu- comes out to see. Rowdy fans
cate myself on what my college had to of- make games more fun.
fer and did not focus my attention on my
aunt. She is a pharmacutical sales rep with 5. Your department - It might
a bachelor of science degree in marketing, sound lame but diving into your
who makes a lot of money. classes and seeing what groups
I knew she had a great job with a ben- are active in your major can help
eficial salary, so I decided I would try and you get ahead academically and
follow in her footsteps by majoring in the socially.
same field as she did.
Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010 www.theloquitur.com page 7

Perspectives
No more pencils, no more books, is all you need the Nook?
printed books
By Eleni Antipas generates
Staff Writer roughly 1,074
kilograms of
CO2, while the
These days, Kindle only
video rental stores produces ap-
have suffered a proximately
slow decline due to 168 kilograms
the rising popularity of things such as the of CO2 over
commitment-free Redbox kiosks and the the course of
convenience of Netflix. The friendly smile two years.
of the cashier has been replaced with self- In 2008,
checkout machines. Soon, your campus the Book In-
bookstore may swap their textbooks for dustries Study
iPads, Nooks and Kindles. Group report-
Currently, textbook publishing com- ed that Apple
panies like McGraw Hill are converting had sold one
college textbooks into a digital format. I million iPads
believe this trend will continue to expand. in the first four
No one enjoys lugging heavy books weeks of sales.
around campus. Not to mention the te- In 2009, the
diousness of waiting in line at the college total revenue
bookstore. However, nothing makes me of the digital
cringe more than when I hear how much book industry
textbooks cost. was $40 mil-
Downloading an E-textbook to your lion. Despite
laptop rarely takes more than a few min- already own- E-readers have become the new hot gadget and electronics companies have a full slate of products.
utes. The average laptop weighs between 5 ing a laptop, I
to 7 pounds compared to 3.5 pounds for a definitely find Online retailers like Zinio and Cours- more difficult for them to pace with their
single textbook. However, for those of you the convenience of a digital reader to be eSmart save students an average of 50 younger classmates. However, using the
looking to lighten your load even further, worth the cost and their popularity seems percent on digital textbooks. Individual latest technology in the classroom will bet-
the iPad, the Kindle 2, the Kindle DX and to be on the rise. chapters are also available for $1.99 from ter prepare all students for the competitive
the Nook each weigh less than a pound. According to Dr. Roger Von Holzen, di- iChapters. job market.
Digital readers typically cost less than a rector of the Center for Information Tech- Digital readers will enhance the learn- Charles Jones, an influential speaker,
semester’s worth of printed textbooks. The nology in Education at Northwest Missouri ing process with 3-D imagery, which is once said, “You are the same today that you
iPad sells for $499, the Kindle 2 is $259 State University, within three to five years especially useful for science courses. Us- are going to be in five years from now ex-
and the latest version the Kindle DX holds printed textbooks will be virtually obsolete ing these devices, professors will be able to cept for two things: the people with whom
3,500 books and sells for $489. The Nook, on most college campuses. In a few years, update information instantly by correcting you associate and the books you read.” In
manufactured by Barnes & Noble, is rea- I believe professors at Cabrini College will inaccuracies and providing supplemental this case, I don’t think it’s the books that
sonably priced at $220. be instructing their students on which e- information. There are also features that people read that will change, but the way
In addition to being economically priced, textbooks to download rather than which allow students to highlight and take notes in which we read them.
lovers of the printed word will also be able textbooks to purchase at the campus book- that can be shared in real time.
to appreciate the positive impact digital store. This will significantly lower the cost Many learning institutions are con- epa722@cabrini.edu

readers will have on the environment. Ac- of required reading materials for college cerned that this type of technology may
cording to Cleantech, the production of 140 students. be unfamiliar to adult students, making it