Volume 8, Issue 10 - Oct. 30, 1985

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To Nuke or Not ToNuke/3

Volume 8

Issue 10

Creative ClaY/10

c Pressopolitan

Basketball Tryouts Up Close/15

October 30, 1985

Destructive I1nplications ,.

David King Reporter

..

路what you don't know could kill you, according to a panel of six MSC professors and an alumnus participating in the Nuclear Issues Forum at St. Cajetan's Center last Thursday. The panelists discussed issues including disarmament, a nuclear-weapons freeze, the historical impact of nuclear weapons, nuclear winter and nuclear myths. Despite divergent topics and opinions, the panelists agreed that the most pressing problem is ignorance. The forum, sponsored by MSC as part of Higher Education Week, was broadcast live on the Woody Paige Show on KNUS radio . While Paige kept the four-hour-long debate moving, prodding the audience to question the panel and occasionally taking phone calls from listeners, he also battled to keep it focused on nuclear issues. Japanese internment during World War II was a popular digression. The panel thrashed out the destructive implications of nuclear war and kept returning to the need for education. "If you think we live in a society with free thinking and free information, you need to think again because we don't," said Dr. Neils Schonbeck, associate professor of chemistry and coordinator of a inter-department series of classes dealing with nuclear dilemmas. Schonbeck said the educational system is delinquent in creating critical thinkers. Dr. Charles Angeletti, professor of history, agreed with Schonbeck's opinion. "We produce students; I don't know that we always produce intelligent students," Angeletti said. "The mind set of American educators and students needs to change." Paige said student apathy could be responsible for the lack of interest in courses dealing with nuclear issues, citing the nearly empty St. Cajetan's Center as an example. But Ann Miller, MSC English instructor, disagreed. "My students do a lot of writing around this issue," Miller said. "I do not find them apathetic. I do find them feeling helpless." She said that government rhetoric is largely responsible for that feeling of helplessness.

"We call it double-speak or even nuke-speak," Miller said. "Nuclear exchange sounds like something nice; like an exchange of gifts. Truth is hidden." Angeletti said that conceiving nuclear war as Armageddon and a result of

"God's will," is irrational, as is believing in the potential for a limited nuclear war. "We need to recognize these as myths and get on with living in reality," Angeletti said. Dr. Cedric Tarr, professor of politi-

cal science and the instructor of a course entitled "Nuclear Dilemmas: Arms Control," said education is needed to help clarify the misconceptions. "The world is full of contradictions,'' continued on page 4


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