Brown and White Vol. 110 No. 40

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 110 no 40 tuesday april 1 2003 all the lehigh news first 1 web site offers ratings for professors by jennifer borck news writer the student senate tech nology committee has been working throughout the semester to create a web site or find an already existing one to aid the student body in choosing classes and profes sors during registration the committee chaired by michael fusco 06 has decid ed to support and back www.ratemyprofessors.com an easy to use web site to help students with registration an advantage of the site is that students do not have to register or become members in order to rate their profes sors students can rate profes sors based on their helpful ness level of difficulty and clarity while also submitting additional comments the web site appears to be extremely popular on many other college campuses around the nation as students at approximately 3,000 col leges and universities nation wide have used it to rank their professors amanda busby 05 said the web site will be useful as long as enough students on campus actively participate if you get to read 50 entries about a class taught by a specific professor then you will have an adequate amount of information to form your own opinion about the class and the professor busby said on the other hand if only a few students make comments about a class there really isn't enough information available to make a good decision the web site's success depends 100 percent on the input of the stu dents busby said if students are interested in reading what others have to say then they should also make comments regarding their classes and professors if a student doesn't know whether or not to take a class all he or she has to do is read the comments that other students have made on the web site the senate technology committee will act as the stu dent administrators for the web site and the team of stu dents will be able to edit any inappropriate comments made class registration begins next week by daphne goldfarb and theo thwing news writers pre-registration for the upcoming fall 2003 semester is about to begin although many are excited for the fall semester some stu dents have concerns about the registration process time periods designated for course registration start monday april 7 and end friday april 25 students will register according to their classi fication based on credits com pleted seniors are given priori ty in registering first and fresh men will register last liana schwartz 04 said she thinks it is fair that the majority of seniors will get all of their first choices in classes leaving many sections closed before under classmen are even allowed to register i think it happens at every school schwartz said seniority rules that's just the way it is some students find other aspects of course registration to be more frustrating lehigh's course catalog states that under graduates can customize their curriculum by selecting from among 2,000 courses regardless of the university's undergradu ate colleges they are enrolled in upon looking at the fall 2003 class schedule it is evident that at most half that number will be offered according to the registrar bruce correll the exact number of sections to register for is 2,685 the real constraint is not the number of courses or sections being offered it's more the number of conflicting classes b&wphoto by katie young economics professor richard aronson gives opening remarks at a ceremony honoring the 2003 martindale scholars see story page 5 symposium highlights cultural research by patrick fulton assistant news editor the seventh annual global symposium was held wednesday in the university center the symposium is an aca demic conference in which lehigh students present their research and share what they have learned about history var ious cultures and international issues the event was co-sponsored by the office of international students and scholars and the phi beta delta international honor society both undergrad uate and graduate students gave half-hour presentations on their topics of research topics included war health educa tion architecture and business a packet containing papers on international research written by several presenters at the sympo sium was also available information tables were set up outside the asa packer dining room tables included informa tion on the global union global village phi beta delta and lehigh's study abroad program the symposium was open to all students and was followed by a reception and awards ceremo ny in the asa packer dining room monica hamrick 05 studied the ways in which the british empire changed the indian way of life i think presenting was a good experience hamrick said it made me look more critically at what i've done while some speakers gave presentations based primarily on online research others actu ally spent time in the countries that they wrote about anne glowacki 04 visited spain to research spanish architecture i only wish i'd gone for a whole semester or a whole year even glowacki said i want to go back every day spending time overseas was an eye-opening experience glowacki said it was different being the odd one out and not being accepted in everything i did she said daniela kanyi a graduate student who spoke about the mau mau's fight for independ ence in kenya researched her topic in the pursuit of truth when studying the land freedom army's struggle against british conquest she found many sources to be biased and sought to overcome this see symposium page 5 see professors page 4 see registration page 4 the men's lacrosse team won 16-8 over holy cross see story on page 20 sports 15-20 softball 16 baseball 19 men's tennis 20 2003 martindale scholars recognized at ceremony see story on page 5 news 1-6 college briefs 2 flush 3 optical technology 6 student debt escaping the burden see story on page 9 business 9-11 ceo ethics 9 look who's investing 11 quick carnegie mellon university offers bag piping as a major source www.amusingfacts.com