Brown and White Vol. 98 no. 40

              the brown and white vol 98 no 40 tuesday april 9 1991 lehigh university lehigh valley students clean community for interaction day by dana goldstein and vincent keane brown and white news writers more than 200 students from lehigh allentown college moravian college and northampton col lege helped clean up bethlehem saturday as part of community interaction day the day was held to recognize bethlehem's 250th anniversary and to inspire 125 more years of lehigh community service it featured park cleanups and interaction with community children in a keynote address on the rauch commons sunday lehigh president peter likins discussed the genesis and ramifications of community interac tion day i want to be good neighbors said likins the city of bethlehem needs help from the students and community he said that as the town grows and develops it benefits the whole community including what bethlehem mayor ken smith referred to as its adopted residents accompanying the mayor in his address were the words of perfect touch a musical duo who were commissioned to write a song for the city's upcoming 250th celebration this whole movement really has come from students it couldn't have happened 10 years ago no one would have shown up said likins robert kopecek president of northampton col lege said what i see now is deeply encouraging to me because i see a change in student behavior i frankly feel that our society won't prosper unless this movement of volunteerism continues kopecek said community interaction day was planned as a celebration of lehigh's 125th anniversary and a community relations project saturday's clean up was categorized as a test run for a similiar event next year as a part of bethlehem's 250th birthday the volunteers said they were very excited about the day partially due to the excellent weather but mainly because they felt it was important to beth lehem jim harper director of community relations for lehigh said that students coming together for positive action rather than rivalry was one of the students use the nice weather to exercise their volleyball skills b&w photo by ross bell stephanie oquendo a south side resident proudly displays an oversized t-shlrt she won in a raffle at the fun day portion of community interaction day gulf war complicated palestinian issue say lehigh professors by marc j goldstein brown and white news writer secretary of state james baker traveled to the middle east again last weekend for another round of talks with regional leaders one of the main areas of concern is the continuing con flict between israel and pales tinians in the occupied west bank and gaza strip accord ing to two lehigh professors though there is no quick solu tion in sight i don't think bush or baker are willing to go to the mat to bring the israelis and the arab countries together they may feel that they have more pressure to exert but i'm not sure if they do or don't said laurence silberstein the philip and murial berman professor of jewish studies silberstein is also an assoc iate professor of religion stud ies and the director of the lehigh valley center for jew ish studies henri barkey assistant pro fessor of international rela tions and silberstein said they doubt that the israeli government under yitzhak shamir would go very far tow ard finding a solution the problem i think is with shamir former prime minister menachem begin was a statesman begin was somebody with vision shamir is not shamir is a bureaucrat he knows how to manipulate strings very well said barkey the recent war in kuwait and iraq seems to have brought the palestinian issue to the forefront of internation al consideration and has changed the situation for both israelis and palestinians the scud attacks on israel on the one hand made the israelis more aware of how vulnerable they are and therefore they are more mot ivated to resolve the problem on the other hand it has made them aware of the readiness of the palestinians to identify south side parking to be metered by carolyn milhiser brown and white news writer the bethlehem parking authority announ ced its plan to install about 350 parking meters on south bethlehem streets in a public hearing last wednesday two four and 10-hour meters were recomm ended on packer avenue webster vine van buren morton third and fourth streets all bordering lehigh university bpa executive director michael spitzer said the state is trying to address the problem of an overflow of vehicles entering residential areas some residents say they feel that the problem is caused by lehigh students the plan will create turnover in parking said chris christian lehigh parking services manager it will stop parking spaces from becoming storage spaces for cars only 60 people attended the meeting to oppose the plan christian said the small see interaction page 6 see parking page 5 see war page 7 science snakes alive page 10