LehighWeek Volume 13, Issue 27

              No Easy Alternative
Meeting   the   homeless
on New York's avenues
See Page 3
Volume 13, Issue 27
LehighWee/c
The campus digest for innovation, news and events
South Mountaineer
Women's softball team,
first in Patriot League,
to face Lafayette
See page 4
April 12, 2000
Zeta Psi
disbanded
Zeta Psi fraternity has been dissolved for eight semesters, effective immediately. The University
Discipline Appeals Committee
voted unanimously April 4 to
uphold the decision from the
March 9 hearing by the University Committee on Discipline.
The Appeals Committee was
composed of four faculty members and two students.
The discipline committee
found the fraternity guilty of
three violations of the code of
conduct in January: possessing
a keg of beer, conducting drinking games, and violating a previous sanction that required the
chapter house to be alcohol free.
Kegs have been banned at
Lehigh for a decade.
"Zeta Psi was not dissolved for
one isolated violation of the social policy for having a keg of beer
in their house," said Dean of Students Sharon Basso. "In any
university judicial process, sanctions are determined utilizing a
number of variables including
the past judicial record of the
group and the specific details of
an incident. Zeta Psi was already
on disciplinary probation and not
permitted to have alcohol in the
chapter house at the time of this
most recent incident.
"In addition, the chapter had
been found guilty of five other
violations of the Code of Conduct
in the past two years. Twice
those sanctions included a recommendation for the chapter to
be dissolved in the event that
any future violations occurred."
The 30 fraternity brothers and
two boarders currently living in
the house will be allowed to remain until their final exams are
completed if they uphold proper
standards of safety and security
in the house. Just as in residence
halls, each resident must vacate
his room 24 hours after their last
final exam.
"I have been impressed with
how the members of Zeta Psi
have conducted themselves during the past month since the
original decision of the University Committee on Discipline on
March 9," said Basso. "We asked
for their cooperation during the
month that the appeal was pending and they rose to that challenge. Zeta Psi's president,
David Chadwick, has worked
hard during this very stressful
time to keep the chapter focused
on finishing this year with pride
in their organization, and the
least amount of disruption possible. He has done a commendable job as a sophomore leader
in a difficult role. He has earned
my respect, and the respect of his
entire chapter. Many of the Zeta
Psi men are on Lehigh's Division
1 athletic teams, members of
Please See DISBANDED, Page 2
■   -it*^     JSt
Gala-2000!
The Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings
by Dmitri Shostakovich seems at first blush a curious piece to include in a gala fund-raiser. Few concert-goers are as familiar with the 20th-century composer as they are with his predecessors, and those
who are probably know the Russian better for his
symphonies and string quartets.
Nonetheless, judging by the passion and precision of the performers and the enthusiastic response
of the audience, "Gala-2000" on Sunday, April 9, was
as great a success as the first two gala concerts at
the Zoellner Arts Center.
The black-tie concert featured the Bamberg Symphony Chamber Orchestra from Germany, conducted
by Pieter Daniel, along with trumpeter Sergei
Nakariakov and pianist Vera Nakariakova, a dynamic brother-sister duo from Russia who now live
in Paris.
The unspoken theme of the concert was youth.
The music - by Mozart, Shostakovich and Beethoven
- was composed, for the most part, early in the composers' careers. Nakariakov is 22 and Nakariakova
a few years older. Many of the Bamberg musicians
looked to be not long out of conservatory - indeed,
some said the orchestra is using many second players for its current tour of the East Coast.
But the orchestra's superb renditions of
Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 and Mozart's Overture
to The Marriage of Figaro revealed no hint of inexperience; the musicians played with maturity and technical competence, and with obvious relish. The
Beethoven was robust without being weighty, the
tempos very effective, and the phrasing and counterpoint very sensitively drawn, especially by the woodwinds.
The Shostakovich, a piece whose emotions run
the gamut from youthful exuberance to jazzy satire
to melancholy - the 25-year-old composer perhaps
anticipating the censors' heavy boot - was performed
with incredible concentration and tightly synchronized ensemble playing. Nakariakov, at times using
Photos by John Kish IV
Stepping out — The Lehigh family gathered
Sunday to see a musical family, trumpeter
Sergei Nakariakov and his sister, pianist
Vera Nakariakova (top), perform with the
Bamberg State Symphony Orchestra at
Gala-2000 at the Zoellner Arts Center.
a mute, coaxed an impressive variety of tones,
some mournful and un-brasslike, from his trumpet, while Nakariakova played with power and
insight and a virtuosity that was breathtaking.
Switching to a flugelhorn, a bugle-like instrument slightly larger than the trumpet,
Nakariakov showed, in Mozart's Horn Concerto
No. 4, why he has been recording for eight years.
The Zoellner staff, led by Susan Vengrove,
director of development for the arts, with able
assistance from Caroline Clifford, university
events coordinator, deserves its usual kudos. The
gala was organized with attention to every last
detail, and flawlessly executed despite a late-
winter windstorm that obliged the staff to abandon an outdoor tent and move the dinner and
reception inside.
-KurtPfitzer
Photo by Elizabeth Keegin Colley
John Vickrey
Boom times for
'Beowulf
John Vickrey, retired professor
of English, taught English for
more than 30 years, but neither
he nor other scholars of language
and literature seem able to explain the sudden appearance of
a certain title on best-seller lists.
Beowulf.
"The last time I taught
Beowulf at Lehigh in the early
'90s," Vickrey says, "one student
showed up." And the greatest
number of students who enrolled
in one of his Beowulfcourses was
seven or eight.
"English literature is a broad
and varied field," says Vickrey,
who served on the faculty from
1961 to 1995. "Some students
were interested in Old English, but
not very many. A lot of the interest
in literary study is in contemporary culture and civilization."
So why has a new translation
of Beowulf- an Old English poem
first written sometime between
the seventh and 10th centuries -
been featured on the cover of the
New York Times Book Review?
And why in recent weeks has the
new translation, by Irish Nobel
Prize-winning poet Seamus
Heaney, been on Amazon.corn's
fiction best-sellers list and on its
"100 Hot Books" list - the latter
being the 100 titles that
Amazon.com customers "couldn't
live without in the last 24 hours."
"We talked about this in
Philadelphia," says Vickrey, "and
we couldn't come to any certain
conclusions."
Vickrey and a few other
Beowulf experts who were recently invited to Immaculata
College for an interview by The
Philadelphia Inquirer presented
theories on the new Beowulf
popularity. Though many
Beowulf translations have appeared over the ages, the latest
might resonate more deeply because of Heaney's fame and his
ability to make the original
work's grammar, vocabulary and
syntax easier for 21st century
readers to comprehend.
And then there's the story it-
Please See BEOWULF, Page 3
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