Brown and White Vol. 110 No. 46

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 110 no 46 tuesday april 22 2003 all the lehigh news first presentations discuss war media by christopher morgan news writer two professors held a presen tation on the mass media's affect on how opinions are formed in times of war on thursday the event consisted of a pres entation by social psychologist and professor michael gill a lecture by political science professor ted morgan and the viewing of a documentary about the first gulf war presented as an example of an alternative information source the event was followed by a group discus sion about the film the purpose of the afternoon was to explain how attitudes are formed and how media culture affects those ideas by presenting only slices of information as well as political biases organized by head gryphon chris cunningham 03 the event was co-sponsored by amnesty international and the progressive student alliance part of my responsibility as a gryphon is to facilitate good decision making and a world view in university students cunningham said the war in iraq seemed like an important topic to discuss gill explained that there are two factors which determine atti tudes psychological processes which are how people sub-con sciously process information and political/sociological processes that determine what information is available to be processed psychological processes are meth ods that humans use to form beliefs and as gill explains should be understood in order to realize how attitudes are being formed many people form ideas from peripheral clues which are sights and objects presented alongside a message that do not affect the actual idea the exam ple given was an image of president bush pounding his fist on a podium in front of the american flag gill said that since that visual projected a sense of importance and patriot ism many people would auto matically assume the content of the president's speech was of as much importance many people assume that if the message comes from a source perceived as legitimate it must be true gill said it's often who says what not what those people say that leaves an impression the formation of attitudes is also dependant on what infor mation is made available or the available heuristic sociologists find that people typically base their attitudes on information that is easily brought to mind and often ignore information that would take more of an effort to find morgan believes that this is dangerous to democracy ignorance is not a defense if your government is doing things in your name morgan said when it comes to war govern ments have to use propaganda to get people to support the war the idea of war is something that we have to be coached for during this presentation gill also explained how people will often associate themselves with a particular group and demonstrat ed that certain visual images will appeal to different groups he showed images of military tech nology such as fighter jets and air craft carriers and said that some people will associate themselves with america's strength when shown those images he also showed images of anti-war demonstrations and said that peo ple who may have been in such a protest will identify with the photo and feel a sense of pride projects seek to aid environment by dani brody news writer new action groups lectures and presentations have been conducted on campus over the past month political science professor al wurth gave students in his politics of the environment course an assignment that goes far beyond the classroom as a final project students are required to do a project that related to the environment and is active in some form or another last month students were required to select their project teams choose their selected topic and oudine of the division of labor among the team mem bers a month later results are b&wphoto by tom steele students discuss printing in the linderman library reading room on sunday one project in professor al wurth's class examines the waste of paper at public sites on local campuses research continues to rank high by ally pereg news writer in the most recent rankings by u.s news and world report lehigh continues to gain recognition for being one of the nation's top research univer sities on april 4 the magazine released their rankings for 2004's best graduate schools lehigh appeared twice on the compiled list of graduate universities for both the college of education and the p.c rossin college of engineering and applied science each graduate program was ranked 41st in its respective cate gories in a recent campus-wide press release dean of the college of education sally white expressed her satisfaction with the ranking and reminded students how pro ductive and selective the college of education is funded research per faculty member reaches 507,600 according to u.s news and world report rankings for best graduate program and education were arrived upon by a methodol ogy including a survey of 188 graduate schools granting doctoral degrees of the 188 155 schools responded and were measured in regards to the following factors quality assessment school selectiv ity faculty resources research activities overall rank and nomi nations by deans at peer schools in order to rank the nation's best graduate program in engineering u.s news and world report's methodology included weighing the same fac tors as that of the education ranking however programs at 185 graduate schools providing doctoral degrees were surveyed and 168 schools responded with the necessary information to be evaluated lehigh's graduate program in engineering ranked 41st as well tying yale university dean mohammed el-aasser see war page 4 see environment page 3 see research page 4 $*&. * -â–º^ i __^^ i_i men's lacrosse beats lafayette 12-8 saturday see story on page 16 sports 13-16 sarah march 14 baseball 15 women's lacrosse 16 students react to first semester with out an easter break see story on page 5 news 1-6 college news briefs 2 assault awareness 6 scientists virtually finish mapping of human genome see story on page 7 science 7-9 movie piracy 7 sars 9 al capone's brother was a county sher iff source www.amusingfacts.com