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- atn~ -ie@, 8 @ @~ ~POLEMIC Vol2,Issue6,DecemberlJI992 Lewis -- new· face on campus BY MICHELLE ROULEAU STAFF WRITER Steve ·Lewis is one of the newest mem ers f the A teaching staff and is begining his career here. Lewis recently worked at Tecumseh in Lansing as an engineer before coming here. "I took this teaching job so I could move _back to the Alpena area. He teaches math and engi- neering drawing. A graduate of University of Michigan, Lewis has a Masters in Engineering. His hobbies include biking, golfing, basketball, back pack- ing, and skiing .. hewis has learned .here as weJI as teaching others. "I'm learning how students show their weaknesses and learn how to strengthen those weak- nesses." Lewis sees himself as a fair and hard working teacher. He likes ACC and when asked what his plans for his career involved he said he would like to still be an instructor here. Area groups work against substance abuse By KELLY COUNSELLOR STAFF WRITER The Community Partner- , ship for Prevention is a net- work of people, groups, and. organizations in the four county · area who are joining together in a coordinated effort to change community beliefs re- lated to alcohol and other sub- stance abuse. "Prevention doesn't work in a vacuum. If we want to change norms and values we must work together," stated Tim Shafto, partnership liason for Alpena County. The Partnership is award- ing a starter fund grant to or- . ganizations of individuals offer- ing creative, innovative, pro- grams dealing with alcohol abuse prevention at ACC. This program is open to anyone who would like to get involved and deal with alcohol on campus. Another representative group interested in alcohol abuse prevention is the North- east Michigan Prevention Council, consisting of sixteen area agency directors who meet monthly. They have determined that the number one community issue in the four county area is substance abuse. According to Joe Manary, prevention coordinator, North- east Mental Heath, "Within the last ten to fifteen years, there hasn't been much change in the use of alcohol'." This raised the question of how effective are . existing programs? "The mes- sage these programs convey are diminished by community val- ues and norms," states Manary. Shafto believes that alcohol prevention will not work with- out community involvement. Moviemakers challenged with a raised fist . BY JAY McDONALD STAFF \V RITER My 1 i year old son dragged ine to the video store the other day, something I don't mind do- ing for a few minutes. After browsing for what must have been a couple of days, through an endless collection of movies, it hit me. There's something seriously wrong in video-land. It got me to thinking. There should be movies here that my son and I could both enjoy. Something the whole family could enjoy on a Saturday night. This would not be too big of a problem if we could leave language, sex and outra- geous violence out of the equa- tion. I can't imagine what type of people made most of these _ so-called movies. Who were they trying to entertain? There's - a tril ion ovies here I've heard of only a handful. I counted 4000 ninja or martial arts movies alone, before faint- ing. I'm OK now. I'm just not allowed to eat Chinese for a while. Obviously, only a small per- centage of this huge cache of movies is worth watching. Movie producers know this and feel the only way to sell · this pile of celluloid is by getting an "R" rating attached. I know I'm an old poop, but. surely good, entertaining mov- ies can be made without all this stuff. My sons don't share my, agony over the state of moviedom, and I don't find that strange or even rebellious. Their peers pretty much · dictate what movies they feel they must watch. And yes, in · return they help their friends choose, too. That's the way it is. Terminator II is one movie . the boys feel they must watch or •be completely shunned by anybody who is anybody in the pre-teen set. A very high-pres- sure peer group, if memory serves correctly. · Movie commercials are shown on T. V. when it's almost certain that the_ young- sters are watching. The boys yelled at me a couple of weeks ago when the previews were being shown for "Terminator". Arnold Schwazenegger, who moonlights as President B\lsh's "Youth Fitness Czar," stars as the language and nudity. He doesn't understand why movies that an 11 year old can't watch have to be made. He says, and I believe him, that he'd rather watch the "Terminator" with all that stuff left out of a ton of muscle who fights it. anything that moves. It's a matter of record that Americans are constantly sur- veyed and consistently swear that they could live without the "R" rating stuff too. Anyway, if the preview was any inqication, I figured what the kids would be watching would be pretty harmless. I mean, sure, it's violence supreme. But parents do have some obligations in this thing. · If a child watches that stuff and goes out and tries to "blow someone away" be- cause of it, then somebody isn't doing his job.· Fortunately, what I think isn't the last word on what my son gets to watch. We have a movie censor in our house with the sort of power that Tipper Gore only dreams abQut. She only recently gave in to "Parental Guidance" movies, and that's only because other parents have given the movie some sort of "mothers" seal of approval". Meanwhile, back at the video store, my son has made a mad dash to the blood and gore aisle while I perused the comedies. When he joined me with that look that little puppies have when you leave home without them, I knew. Arnold Schwarzenegger was never going to pass our censor. Now, my son is "totally" aware that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the President's man on youth fitness, and he doesn't under- stand why this guy can't make the same movies without The cashiers at the theaters and video stores tell a much different story. If it's not rated "R", it won't make a profit. That's not the real story, however. The truth of it is simple. It's difficult to write a good script. They certainly can't crank them out to match the demand. There also aren't enough quality actors, directors and so on. · So you wind up with a tioat oad o poorly written, directed and acted movies. This meets demand, but people aren't going to pay to watch a bad movie. So what does the producer do? Simple. He gets Julie Roberts to strip naked a couple of times, and he gets Arnold Schwarzenegger . to make movies , where every other word rhymes with duck, and the people surely do pay to see the movie. The cashiers say so. Walt Disney is rolling over in his grave. My sons and I watched "Ernest Scared Stupid". I don't know about being scared , stupid but they had the title half right. I promised • my boys I wouldn't tell any ·· of their friends that they watched it. . - . - . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~