“Blahsney, Blahsney”
The Foreigner - a complete success by Troy Nielsen Newspeak Staff Well, if you don’t understand the title it is because you didn’t attend the Masque presentation of "The For eigner" which was a bad move, as the play was an incredible success in every aspect. If you did attend the play and still don’t understand the title, you obviously weren't paying much attention— shame on you! The play involves the experiences of Charlie Baker, a Englishman who is in Georgia with his military friend, Sgt. Froggy LeSeur. Charlie is para noid about attempting to carry on a conversation with anyone, especially when he is in a foreign country. Froggy thinks it clever to inform people that Charlie is from an exotic land and can’t utter a word of English, save for a stuttering “ thank you." This way Charlie won’t have to associate with anyone at the inn he is staying. Things take off from there when a corrupt reverend and his financee enter the picture. Seems that the Reverend has a plan to acquire the inn for a KKK headquarters. There are some other sub-plots, but they all
revolve around Charlie being a for eigner and the fact that he spontane ously creates his own language and customs. This makes for some very funny scenes that had the audience rolling in the aisles throughout the evening. The first act opened with Charlie (played superbly by Harold Mackiernan) moaning to Frog (portrayed by Bill Bullard) about his conversation problem, boring personality, and crumbling marriage. Basically. Char lie is a wreck on all accounts. It is around this time that Betty Meeks, the innkeeper (played by Jen nifer Knudsen), makes her entrance and talks with Frog while Charlie hides upstairs in his room. Jennifer does a great job of portraying Betty as your typical “ kindly old innkeeper.’’ It was amusing to watch Betty scuttle about, trying to make sure that Charlie is cared for while staying at the inn. She tells Frog that her dream would be to meet some foreign people that Frog encounters on a daily basis. Well Frog fulfills her dream by telling her that Charlie is a foreigner and can’t speak English. She is elated and pro ceeds to talk to Charlie in a very slow
and loud voice "HOW ARE YOU, C H A RLIE?” When Charlie replies “ thank you" she loves it. The play then proceeds to reveal the many sub-plots that will be af fected by Charlie's "new language.” We leam that the inn will soon be for sale. However, there is a chance that the value of the inn may be drastically reduced if it is condemmed by the town. Suspicions arise. All the while Charlie sits in the room, listening and understanding all of the conversa tions. Then we meet Catherine Simms, the future wife of the Reverend David Marshall Lee. Catherine is played by Cari Windt and the Reverend is por trayed by Jeff Yoder. The problem here is that she is already pregnant and does not want this fact revealed at the wedding. Catherine and David argue in front of Charlie, not knowing that he is there. Betty later explains much to Catherine's relief that he does not understand English. Then we meet Owen Musser (played by Jim White), your typical “ prejudiced against anyone who is not all-American by his standards" Southern character who taunts Char
NF.WSPEAK STAFF/GARY DEI.GRF.GO
Betty Meeks (Jennifer Knudsen) and Froggy LeSeur (Bill Bullard) toast their victory over the Klan. lie to no end when he learns that Charlie is a foreigner (”a dummy boy” ). It is evident that Owen has a deep hatred for Charlie and “ his kind.” Finally we meet young Ellard Simms, Catherine’s brother. Ellard is
played by Brian Weissnian, who does a fine job in presenting Ellard as a sort of dumb but inquisitive young South ern boy. Ellard, if he proves he is intelligent enough, can inherit half of see Blahsney, Blahsney, page 13 also see Foreigner, page 6
The Student Newspaper of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Tuesday, December 6, 1988 as shopping days left 'til Christmas)
Volume 16, Number 26
Projects honored with President’s IQP Award by Brian Weissman and J eff Yoder For the past term, we’ve high lighted various IQP opportunities in our column. This week’s column has a different purpose, however. The greatest achievement for any IQP is the President’s IQP awards. These awards are given to the two best IQ P’s completed each year. In order to de termine whose IQ P’s are “ best", the projects participants had to present thier projects before a panel of judges, who would decide the winners. This year, the two winning proj ects were “ Working From Home” by Janis Berka, Adrian Caceres, and Scott Dresser; and “ Implications of Reducing Wasteage in Primary Edu cation in Lesser Developed Coun
tries” by Cheryl Church, Lori DeBIois, and Tony Pechulis. The latter project was done at the Washington Project Center in con junction with the Agency for Interna tional Development (A.I.D.). The project was advised by Floyd Tuler, professor of Mechanical Engineering, and John van Alstyne. It focused on primary education (grades 1-6) in lesser developed countries. Countries were determined to be lesser devel oped by the world bank, and include Kenya, Botswana, Burundi, and the Yemenite Republic. In all, there are about 200 lesser developed countries in the world. Of these 200, the project researched 29, but only because there wasn’t more data available for the others. The problem was this: approxi
mately 1.8 million dollars is wasted each year on dropouts and repeating students in the average lesser devel oped country. That amount becomes even more impressive when consider ing the fact that the average GNP for these countries is about $250. The goal of the project was to come up with a working plan to reduce the amount of money wasted and present the study to all 200 countries. The students first task was to take the medians of several statistics from their data such as enrollment rates, completion rates, student to teacher ratio, population, average cost per student, and others. The results were called the average lesser developed country. This data was analyzed, and the group came up with some mathe matical models for dropout and repeat
Wrestling season opens up by Roger Burleson Sports Editor The wrestler’s opened up this week with the goal of winning the New England’s at the end of this year. They have an excellent chance to accomplish this feat, which was last accomplished in 1987 and previously in 1985. Last year's young squad placed fourth, but has many of the same faces as last year. Seven of last years place winners are returning and the team also spots thirteen returning letter winners. As far as the weight classes go this year. Coach Grebinar feels that they are deep and have capable back up in each spot. At 118, tri-captain Rick Maguire will lead the team off. Last year he placed second in New Eng land. Following him at 126 will be tri captain Todd Wyman who placed fifth in last year’s tournament. At 126 will be last year's sixth place winner Tom Sgammato. The 142 weight class will be filled by Chris Carey, who will be backed up by letter winners Dave Daniels and Ed Denave. Toby Wyman will start at 150. He placed fourth New Englands last year. At 158 will be tri-captain Dave Sun
derland who placed third last year. Matt Oney, also a letter winner, could see action in either of these weight classes. He finished last year in third place. The 167 class will be filled by Brian Glatz. Last year he finished first in his weight class and became an All-American by finishing eighth in the tournament. At 177 will be letter winner Jeff Graveline who saw much action last year and is very experi enced. Both the 190 and heavyweight classes will be filled by freshmen. At 190 will be Aaron Castellano and the heavyweight will be Mike Aheme. Both wrestlers are very talented and will be an assest to the team. Also going for the team is proba bly the best coaching staff in New England. Leading the team is head coach Phil Grebinar, who now has a career record of 207-66-3 (.75). As assistants, he has former wrestlers Paul Wyman, Stu MacEachern, and Steve Hall. All were former New England place winners, while Wyman and MacEachern were also AllAmericans. Also coaching will be Frank DeFalco and Steve Diguette. This year the wrestlers even had the opportunity to work with a former
Olympic Champion, Steve Fraser. He was the gold medalist in the 198 pound weight class in the GrecoRoman competition. He was in the area talking to high school students about drugs and physical fitness and decided to work out with the team. The other thing going for the team is tradition. W PI now has a winning tradition and teams are now intimi dated to face W PI, especially in Alumni Gymnasium. And the team showed that they were the team to beat again when they defeated Boston College by the score of 39-3. In that meet W PI took nine of the ten matches. At 118 Maguire opened up by taking his opponent 13-7. At 126 Freshman Mike Matukatis wrestled an extremely good match, but lost in the closing seconds by a score of 6-5. In the 134 match Sgammato won by a score of 6-5 and Carey won 10-9. Toby Wyman won 10-6 at 150 and Dave Sunderland won 9-6 at 158. BC failed to produce wrestlers at 167, 177, 190, and heavyweight so Glatz, Graveline, Castellano, and Aheme all won by forfeit. W PI will be away until January II, when they will face Dartmouth and Amherst.
rates. The models showed how much money could be saved if the students did not drop out. By staying in school, they acquire the basic skills needed to begin putting something back into the country. If they drop out in these early grades, most will barely be able to read or write. Thus the money already spent on them is wasted. The study offered several possible solutions, giving each country the chance to decide what was right for them. These solutions ranged from
food plans to reducing the number of schools built in the country, the result being that the money can be spent improving the education at the schools already there. A working model for improving the education system was given to 60 countries that A.I.D. helps. They were also given an extensive literature re view so that they could decide what changes would best suit their systems (if any at all).
Men’s basketball crawls over Babson, 95-86 by Melinda Nadeau Newspeak Staff Congratulations to the Men’s Basketball team for their win over Babson College Wednesday night, 95-86. The Engineers were quick to establish a 10-0 lead early in the game and increased the lead to 15 points ending with a half-time score of 4631. The Beavers recovered in the sec ond half by cutting W P I’s lead to 7976 with under three minutes left to play. But W PI did not weaken and “ iced the win” with sharp foul shoot
ing. The Engineers had five players score in the double digits. Skip Bonker scored a game high of thirty points which includes four threepointers; Mark Czerepuszko scored twenty-four points; Jeff Ayotte added sixteen points; Art Ouimet, thirteen points, and Tom Bartolomei ten points. This Saturday the Engineers will host the Lord Jeffs of Amherst Col lege at 7:30 in Harrington Audito rium.
Weininger elected president of Literary and Science Society by Chris Barcus Newspeak Staff Dr. Stephen Weininger, a Chem istry Professor at W PI, has been elected president of the Society for Literature and Science. The Society was founded in August of 1985 with the help of W PI, under the direction of Lance Schachterle, a Humanities Professor at WPI. Schachterle re mained president for two years, at which time Weininger was elected for his two year term of President. The goal of the Society of Litera ture and Science is to bring people of different disciplines together and
discuss how their knowledge is re lated. One of the common grounds connecting the aspects of science, literature, and the arts together is language, and the role it plays in all the various branches. The society currently has ap proximately 450 members. They are actively recruiting members, espe cially in the area of science and engineering. Members attend yearly meetings held in October. This year, the Society is going to be involved in the International Congress for the History of Science in Germany. Both Weininger and Schachterle are plan ning to make this trip.