Clarion 2005-09-15 Vol. 81 No. 03

              UNIVERSITY
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Volume 81 • Number 3
The truth about tuition
Real answers about where students' money goes
By Cory Streeter
Mentioning the word "tuition" to a student on campus
is beginning to ruin people's
previously good moods. Considering that this year's tuition
is $21,190, it's no wonder why
sludents roll their eyes and
scowl at the mere mention of it.
The question is, though,
are we actually well-informed
enough to have a legitimate reason to be angry about the cost
of tuition? Do we really know
where our money goes?
"I have no idea," stated
sophomore Laura McCullum,
when asked of her theory regarding how student tuition is
dispersed. "I think it's ridiculous [how much it costs]. I don't
know where it goes."
Sophomore Emily Anderson wagered a legitimate claim
toward the new sophomore
dorm. "1 think a bunch of it
went to pay for Lissner," she
said, "where...I don't live. And
we don't have air conditioning
[in AVEast]..."
Junior Jason Baalke placed
his bet on the new furniture in
the buildings. "Sure, 1 like it. It
kind of looks nice, but when
you actually sit on it..." Baalke
was on the right track, though,
when he mentioned that the
main portion goes to faculty
members, whom he believes
"don't get paid enough." He
acknowledged that professors
"take that in stride knowing
what we're trying to cover in tuition [with] everything else."
These students were only
partly correct in their assumptions of what exactly tuition fees
cover for Bethel University. The
usual suspects are, as Anderson
pointed out, the brand-new
Lissner Hall, and the yet-to-be-
constructed student center.
Yet most of us would be
baffled to know that none of
our tuition goes toward the construction of new buildings.
According to the Bethel
Focus Magazine spring 2004
issue, Lissner Hall was paid
for through private donations
only, "to secure a combination
of tax-exempt and conventional
financing for construction."
Randy Thomann, executive
vice president for business affairs, thoroughly supported that
fact. "The student center will
be built totally from [privately]
contributed funds. Once it is
up and operating,  the opera
tional costs—the utilities, the
maintenance—will be part of
the general operations."
Thomann explained that
endowment funds make up a
vast majority of the private donations used by the university
to pay for new facilities. "Endowments are specific amounts
of money given by a donor that
they explicitly say are endowment funds. When they say that,
the meaning of that generally
is that you cannot use the gift
amount, but you can use any of
its earnings." He said that in the
event that Bethel received $5
million in endowment, "the $5
million is locked up...we virtually can legally never use the
$5 million, but if we can earn
7% [interest] on it and it creates
$350,000 a year of income, we
can use lhat."
According to Thomann,
our endowment is about 520
million, which includes general
endowment and scholarship endowment. Much of our scholarship money originates off the
interest of those specific endowments.
To address the faculty costs,
it is true that a majority of our
tuition fees go toward our professors' salaries and benefits,
accounting for approximately
55% of Bethel (CAS, CAPS, and
Seminary) University's $90 million budget. The fact that health
care costs have risen in the past
few years has affected Bethel,
too. "When [health care] goes
up ten to twelve percent, that
hits us, too...we face those just
like everybody else does," said
Thomann.
Thomann emphasized that
in order to compete for faculty
with other Christian colleges
like Wheaton, Taylor, Messiah,
Westmont, etc., it's necessary to
provide the benefits and salaries
that Bethel does. He said that
Bethel is committed to providing high quality education, and
the draw for faculty to teach that
to students is absolutely necessary.    •
' With the facts Thomann
shed light upon, it gives us a
clearer picture of where our tuition money goes — not toward
construction - but toward competitive salaries and upkeep in
general. Now when the word
"tuition" is mentioned, maybe
there will be a few less scowls.
Gaza pullout raises new prospects
for peace
By David Miller
During the month of August, the public saw one of the
most ironic and emotionally
wrenching scenes in modem
Israeli history: Jewish soldiers
forcibly removing 8500 Jewish
settlers from their homes in the
Gaza Strip. However, this momentous occasion, which Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has been
planning since December of
2003, marks much more than
a tragic ending to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. It marks what
many in the international community think could be Israel's
first real prospects for peace
since the failed attempts of the
1990 Oslo Peace Accords with
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who failed to accept Israeli
concessions and open the peace
process. The event also holds
a great deal of significance for
Bethel University, since the
school is inexplicably tied to the
region through its Judeo-Chris-
tian roots.
However, despite the prospects for peace, the pull-out
didn't occur without significant
protest. Thousands of settlers
left in a timely and orderly fashion, but thousands of others organized to peacefully resist the
Israeli forces tasked with emptying the settlements. The settlers
who refused to leave were joined
by countless right-wing Israelis from outside the strip who
insist that the government has
no right to turn the settlements
over to the Palestinians. These
protesters, numbering 5000
strong, are young and have little
to lose from military repercussions. However, in Palestine, the
sentiment is quite different. The
Palestinians have been claiming
that the settlement was illegal
since Israel began occupation of
the strip during the Six Day War
in 1967.
The sentiment of the Israeli
settlers reflects the long struggle
the Jewish people have endured
to gain a homeland. Bethel's own
Professor Gary Long has spent
quite some time in the region,
and he explained in a recent
interview with the Clarion that
in the late 1800s, the Diaspora
of the Jews brought thousands
of refugees to the area which
was primarily inhabited by Palestinians. After World War 11,
the international community
reached out to the Jews and
worked to establish the region
as the official homeland of the
people who recently had lost
millions in the holocaust. This
pushed many Palestinians out
of the region into surrounding
Arab countries, and those who
stayed were in essence forced
into the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank of Jordan. In Professor
Long's interview, he described
the pain and agony the people
of the land have endured over
the century. Tragically, both Is
raeli and Palestinians have suffered tremendously at the hands
of each other. Professor Long
also remarked that he was very
hopeful for the future of the region after the pull-out.
Over the next 60 years, Israel lived in a tumultuous cycle
of war with its Arab neighbors
and was used as an indirect
Cold War staging ground several times. This tragic but rich
history has shaped the fragile
and embittered political climate
of today. Because of the precarious situation, Israel has been at
the center of American foreign
policy for decades, which in and
of itself has caused a number of
problems with other Middle
Eastern countries. The US, and
the international Community,
remained largely silent during
the disengagement last month to
avoid being seen as "meddlers"
in the sensitive operation. However, Israel recently requested a
$2.25 billion dollar aid package,
mainly to relocate Gaza military
bases and assist with the evacuation, which certainly implicates
U.S. involvement and support
for the operation.
However, the public
shouldn't expect "The Road Map
to Peace" to be a smooth one.
The chances for violence from
Israeli and Palestinian extremists remain tremendously high
and could quickly jeopardize
the recent good will between
the Palestinian Authority (the
official Palestinian government)
and Israel. If Palestinians terrorists resume their attacks on
Israel and the Palestinian governmental security forces cannot assert control in the Gaza
■ strip, then the process would
effectively be halted and Israel
will most likely respond Peace
in the region also dramatically
depends on the Israeli political situation. Although Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's plan has
been popular with Israelis, it has
been less so in the Israeli parliament, and there is a chance that
he could lose the leadership of
his party and effectively be replaced. If the political will for
the evacuations ceases, then the
road map will most likely go up
in smoke.
Overall, the situation should
leave Bethel and the public feeling cautiously optimistic. The
opportunity for both sides to
make concessions and co-exist
peacefully is very real. "Whatever we can do to help people coexist is a Christian core value,"
Prof Long adds. Students that
the Clarion spoke with seemed
very hopeful about the situation, and Professor Long drew
the analogy of what recently
happened with the disannament
of the I.R.A. in Ireland: "It can
happen over there and it needs
to happen over there."
Bethel sophomores
stand up for comedy
By Cory Streeter
"I had butterflies in my
pants," said a bandana-clad Dan
Luedtke of his first time on the
stage, where he had found himself equipped with only a microphone—and a silent prayer
for escape from booing humiliation.
"I was the first one out of
the three of us to go up there,
and I was perfectly fine," explained Dave Iverson, leaning on Luedtke's Razor Scooter. "[I was] like, 'I'm going to
tear this joint down.'" Iverson
threw back his bleach-blond
hair and cupped his hands over
his mouth, producing the tin
can echo he desired to follow.
"Then all of a sudden I heard,
'And next, Daaaaaaaavid Iverson'...then I peed my pants a
little." He grinned sarcastically,
an ear-to-ear smile.
Apparently, comedy isn't
the easiest, especially when one
is all-of-a-sudden told to be just
that: funny on command. Welcome to the world of standup.
Sophomores Iverson, Luedtke, and Caleb Griffin all took
their first stabs at standup comedy during spring semester of
their freshman year at Bethel.
The Acme Comedy Co. in Minneapolis offers the perfect venue
for arrtateurs to make their mark
on the comedic world, and this
trio couldn't pass il up.
One could say they spent
their entire lives preparing for
this, but how does the comedian prepare before going on
stage? To Griffin, it's simple. Insightfully, he said, "Preparation
H, mostly."
With that answer, all three
burst out laughing-
While laughter is easy
to create amongst friends, as
they demonstrated, the trio explained that the ultimate challenge of being a great comedian
is to replicate that atmosphere
while alone on a stage. Not
to mention, in front of a sea of
faces whose eyes are fastened
directly on you.
Iverson stated the key to
success: "It's about knowing the
crowd and knowing how your
crowd is going to react."
Walking out of the "black
abyss" of backstage, as Griffin
called it, and into the blinding lights can be a bit much for
amateurs. Failing to keep their
crowd in mind, they often find
themselves scrambling or frozen. And the three agreed that
the simple fallback of inside
jokes never works. "Yeah, we've
seen some serious crash and
burns," Griffin chuckled.
When the comedian-audience connection is made,
though, the feeling across the
lounge of the dark Acme club
is electric. "It feels super good,"
said Luedtke. "You get that little
buzz [the crowd is] feeling."
Continued on page five
Howdy, partner
Students galloped
down to BSA's The
Next Big Thing