SGA Invalidates Election Balloting Newspeak would like to com mend the Student Government Association for upholding its commitment to the student body. Presented with a difficult situa tion, SGA did not choose the easy way out, but rather it chose the conscientious way out, the cor rect way out. SGA represents the student body in its interaction with the Faculty, Staff, and Administra tion. A responsibility of great importance, the magnitude of which seems, unfortunately, to be sometimes forgotten. It is this
In an effort to uphold the responsibility o f SGA to hold a fa ir election, the Executive Board o f the Student Government Association, on behalf o f the SGA Senate, supports the invalida tion o f the Senate Election Balloting held on October 1st through the 7th. This decision was made to confirm the SGA Election C om m ittee’s invalidation o f the election. The invalidation is due to confirmed reports o f errors in the electronic voting program. These errors caused an inconsistency in the number o f votes. The SGA Executive Board and Elections Committee believe that a significant number o f votes m ay have been lost by the electronic election program. SGA will hold election balloting again on November 1st through 3rd. The Elections will be held by paper balloting only and Elections Petitions will not be accepted as there has been fo u n d to be no fla w with that part o f the procedure. -SGA Elections Committee
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organization that has been en trusted to distribute funds to stu dent groups and design policy guidelines by which they must abide. Integrity is an absolute require ment for an organization of such authority. I feel that SGA has demonstrated such integrity and should be recognized. Congratulations go to SGA for a job well done.
Vijay Chandra Editor-In-Chief
The Student Newspaper of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
N e w spe,a k
Tuesday, October 11, 1994
Volume Twenty-two Number Twenty-two
M.W. Rep., Co. spends an evening out by Tom Sico A ssociate E ditor Riley Commons was transform ed into the Rainbow Bar and Grill last T h u rsd ay , Friday, and S aturday evening as M.W. Repertory Theatre, Co., Etc. unleashed it’s A-term p ro duction “Early One Evening at the Rainbow Bar and G rill” by Bruce Graham. The play opens with the music on the jukebox, “ I Love Lucy” on the last television broadcasting, m ass hysteria in the streets as people fran tically rush about, and Shep a b a r tender/w riter comes to accept the imminent death quickly working its way across the country. Matt Dowling portrays Shep as a confused man holding on by the bear threads to his sanity. Shep sees the madness around him, the death, and knows his time is growing short. And he wonders why life is being so unfair to him. As the play progresses, his thoughts are com pounded by conversations and interactions o f the p la y ’s six other characters, each struggling to deal with the situation in their own way. Roy, a mechanic in town begins by being set on going to D isney World because he’s never been there before and wants to go before he dies. Ken Danila characterizes Roy as a guy with big dreams and no way to achieve them from his small town environm ent. So Roy ends up w ait ing out his time playing poker, for a variety of stakes, spending his final hours with people he knows. Roy is avoiding W illy, a gun-tot ing country boy played by Jesse P ar ent. Willy is having a hard time d ea l ing with his oncom ing dem ise, and has gone a bit crazy, killing people that d o n ’t agree with him, and tu rn ing the post office into a fort w here he hopes to hold out until w hatever is com ing passes. W hile Willy is in for a visit, an aluminum siding salesperson nam ed Bulloc comes on in to use the phone. Bulloc is trying to find former cu s tom ers that he sold bomb shelters to who would be w illing to let him stay with them till things got better. Tom G uyette keeps the cocky, confident, self-serving, air of superiority por trayal of the stereotypical salesper son going throughout the perfor
mance. H o lly b e th N o rm a n d in p la y s Shirley, a flighty but literate former bartender at the Rainbow. Shirley has decided that she wants to get things done and made a list to do before she dies. And she has a lust for Shep that he does not return. His affections are, however, for Virginia (Ram ona Puchalski). The local Physical Education and Health instructor, Virginia, exhibits a con fused personality resulting from an intense desire to see her only niece before the death ends all, then after wards when she find out that is im possible. She just w ants to spend her last m inutes romantically with Shep. And finally, there is Joe, the m ys
te rio u s fig u re p la y ed by R hett Brown. Joe walks in from out of the blue, knows more about the patrons of the Rainbow Bar and Grill than he should rightly know, and offers Shep and Virginia the ability to survive the plague if they will w rite a book for him. Joe is both cocky and lively, and also underhanded and deceitful, carefully manipulating them to his purpose. And when the whole thing comes together, co-producers Melissa La Greca and Michelle M eister, and di rector Tom Carr, as well as the whole cast and crew managed to put to gether a wonderful production for the WPI community, and we look forward to their C-term show. Congratulations to all.
PATTI KESSLEK / NEWSPEAK STAFF PHOTO
Matt Dowling attmpts to break up a fight between Ramona Puchalski and Hollybeth Normandin during "Early One Evening at the Rainbow Bar and Grill," the M.W. Rep A-Term production held last week in Riley Commons.
New Voices 12.5 gives Masque a successful start by Steven Kaldeck, Class o f ‘98 and Katherine Druinville, Class o f ‘97 On September 30, Masque, the WPI theatrical group, presented four of the plays that were a part of last year’s New Voices 12 festival. The exhibition was held in Alden Hall at 4:30 that after noon. The four plays featured were An Appointment by Nick Walker, Brickfall by Tom Carr, Johnny Is... by Helfene Andersson, and Happily Ever After by Tom Russell. An Appointment was presented as a one man show starring Ryan Smart, who portrayed the boss. He is speaking to an unseen worker who has just been fired from his job because he refused to accept promotions within the company. This boss did not seem to take the situ ation too seriously because his tone of voice was sarcastic and because he could notstop himself from chucklingthroughout his speech. An added touch to this play was a series of slides that were projected onto the back wall of the stage. They looked like they were taken di rectly from Gary Lawson’s “The Far Side” cartoons, and, put into the context of this production made it even funnier. Smart played the role very well and made me believe that I was actually watching an insider’s view of a not-sowell-off company going through a mi nor transformation.
Sports Update... See page 3 j
Brickfall was one of the more serious plays put on during this production. It tried to show one man’s realization of the senseless killing of innocent by standers. This man, Patrick, was an older member of the IRA. Though the characters do no state the IRA, the audi ence understands who the terrorist group is from the Irish accents of the characters and the comments made about the Brit ish. He and his partner, a younger man named Sean, had just finished a job and were hiding out in an abandoned build ing. Patrick is bothered by what he is now doing. He doesn’t know what he’s fighting for anymore. Yet he can’t es cape from being in the IRA because of threats made to his family if he leaves. He tries to convince Sean that it isn’t worth being in the IRA. In the end, Patrick decides to surrender to the po lice only to be shot on sight. This play was very well done, right down to the Irish accents of the char acters. On stage, the audience sees the inside of the abandoned building with one window in the middle and a few black boxes stacked up next to it. A sheet of cloth over the window serves well to show the police’s search lights. Except for the cloth which is lit up in white, the rest of the stage is in green light (to further give us the impression of Ireland). The characters are dressed in leather jackets, jeans, plaid shirts and combat boots. Both the charac ters smoke to give them a tough ap
pearance. Johnny Is... was a very weird perfor mance. N. Harrison Ripps, who por trayed Johnny, said only one word throughout the play: “boredom”. How ever, he repeated this word numerous time as he pranced across the stage and found many things to do in an attempt to act out his boredom. He spoke, sang, and prayed with different volumes, pitches, and tones of voice while he tapped his pencil, did gymnastics, jumped up and down, and did just about everything except sit still and do his work. Everyone in the audience was laughing hysterically at this superb dis play of physical comedy. The final skit, Happily Ever After, was a parody of the famous story, “Little Red Riding Hood.” As the narrator began reading the story, the viewer could figure out that some thing just w asn’t right. The main character of this play was the wolf, portrayed by Matt Dowling. He wore a leather jacket and sunglasses and had a really bad attitude. Many things in this play were much different than they were in the real tale. For in stance, instead of sw allow ing the grandmother when the wolf arrived at her house, he knocked her out with the butt of his gun! He got a real shock when he searched her cupboards for food and found nothing but oat bran, wheat germ, and granola because she was a health nut. The Little Red
Riding Hood of this production was much smarter and probably more for est-wise that the original. As the play went on, many more discrepancies between it and the initial story became apparent. Some of the forest creatures actually hated Red; they brandished knives and other weapons as if they wanted to kill her. However, the biggest shocker of all occurred when the wolf fell in love with Red! Now that the original plot has been totally wrecked, they tried to live together in his den, which was a complete disaster. Before things could get too out of hand, the brothers Grimm stepped in to remind the characters that they must stick to the original story. The wolf, on the other hand, insists that he and Red were meant for each other and that they must allow their plays to change with times; there fore, the wolf and Red can stay together. As soon as this is out of the way, the wolf receives an Oscar for his outstanding performance. In my opinion, the entire cast and crew of Happily Ever After should receive Oscars for their efforts in this outstanding production. Each of the performances lasted only about fifteen minutes, but they all were able to get their individual points across. Whether the subject was love or war, the Masque players enabled me to laugh at life or to see it in a different way. If you didn’t see New Voices 12.5, you missed a lot. If you did, I’m sure that you enjoyed the experience as much as I did.
Table of Contents In The N e w s ................................................................................2 N e w s .............................................................................................2 Sports............................................................................................3 A rts & E ntertainm ent............................................................... 3 Community U pdate................................................................... 5 Letters to the E d ito r.................................................................. 6 Student Government Association............................................7
Graduate Student O rganization.............................................. 7 Club C o rn er................................................................................8 Greek C o rn er..............................................................................9 C om m entary................................................................................7 C lassifieds................................................................................. 11 Police L o g ................................................................................. 12