Editorials

Elections for the Fairfield University Student Association are once again just around the corner, and it appears the cast of candidates for all offices this year is a diverse mix of interesting people. As a campus media organization, The Mirror strives to be a watchdog for students to let them know how FUSA is performing.

Did you go to your classes Monday? If you didn't, we couldn't blame you. Walkways and roads around campus were still covered with inches of snow and ice days after the weekend blizzard that dumped about a foot of snow on Fairfield. Of course, not many could have predicted getting buried under 12 inches of snow just days into December, but winter weather in New England is not so far-fetched.

Imagine if every man, woman and child in Canada were dead. The worldwide death toll of AIDS is nearing such a proportion. It is an international crisis that must be taken seriously, and an active effort to prevent the spread of HIV is of paramount importance.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we are reminded of those mandatory "What are you thankful for?" assignments we encountered every November growing up. As much as we have bemoaned things like this over the years, we think it is still a worthwhile undertaking if done with originality and thought.

Every student on this campus should be thankful for Fairfield University's Security Department. No group or organization at Fairfield takes the safety of students more seriously, not even the students themselves. However, the department's initiative of putting officers "undercover" crosses the line between safety and privacy and should be stopped immediately.

Unfortunately, only a meager amount of Fairfield students bothered to show up to the socially conscious "E-race-ism" event in the campus center on Monday. The Multicultural Center sponsored a free event with speakers, food and movies to engage the student body on a constantly present issue-racism-and only a handful of students could be seen in attendance at the event at any given time.

Two years ago, the first signs of the Enron collapse were beginning to show. About 6,100 people lost their jobs in the wake of the company's bankruptcy, along with health insurance and retirement savings. As they pumped more and more Enron stock into their 401(k) plans, Kenneth Lay, the company's Chief Executive Officer, assured them that Enron was a strong company.

Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J. certainly kept himself busy during his 25 year tenure as Fairfield's president. The Fairfield of 2003 is a different institution from the Fairfield of 1979. Since then, Fairfield has seen a huge expansion and renovation of school buildings and facilities.

Three years ago, when members of the class of 2004 were freshmen, Fairfield said goodbye to the longstanding tradition of the Luau, a widespread fall beach party much like Clam Jam. But as Spam Jam went on, there was no comparable fall on-campus activity in lieu of Luau.

At the end of every semester, we students do work in class that is not on any syllabus. We spend a lot of time and thought filling out evaluations of courses we have taken. We consider the task to be a serious one, and we think the information we provide in these evaluations is important.