Spinnaker [Distributed: Wednesday, October 4, 2006]

Oct. 1 marked the unveiling of an 8-foot, 1,500-pound bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the campus of the University of North Florida. The unveiling was one of a host of activities held during the Gandhi Day celebration, which was held at 2 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center and was free and open to the public.

The event kicked off with a peace walk from the Fine Arts Center to the monument site between Buildings 1 and 2. After the walk, a moment of silence was observed to honor the memory of the bronze statue's famed subject. A violin recital was also held before the unveiling of the new addition to campus.

The statue was donated to UNF by the Gandhi Memorial Society of Jacksonville. Ashok Bazaz, the president of the Gandhi Memorial Society, said he hopes the statue will positively influence the students and faculty of UNF.

"We are glad to have gifted the statue to the UNF campus," Bazaz said. "Its purpose is to inspire everyone to adopt the humane value system that Gandhi represented. We hope his beliefs will be reflected onto others and this will lead everyone to help each other."

According to UNF Vice President Chief of Staff, Thomas Serwatka, the total cost of the statue was $70,000 and was paid in full by the Gandhi Memorial Society of Jacksonville. The statue's base cost an additional fee of $33,000, which the society also paid for in conjunction with Elkins Construction.

Student body president, Justin Damiano, was in attendance for the unveiling ceremony. He said that bringing this statue to UNF will add to the ambience of the campus.

"There was a great turnout by the community for the event," Damiano said. "The statue will add a positive atmosphere to the campus and reflects the compassionate nature of Gandhi. This was a lot of hard work by President Delaney and Tom Serwatka and this will make an impact on all UNF students of the present and future."

The statue was designed by Jasu Shilpi, a pre-eminent sculptor who was dubbed "The Bronze Woman of India" for her mastery of her chosen medium. She won the award of "Woman of the Year" at the 27th International Millennium Congress on Arts and Communications in Washington, D.C in 2000. During the ceremony, Shilpi said that she felt lucky to have been chosen by the Gandhi Memorial Society to design such a statue, and that she was honored that she could do so for UNF.

Sruti Rayaprolu, a freshman biology major at UNF, participated in the celebration as a volunteer. She has volunteered for the past three years with an organization that gives back to the community in memory of Gandhi. The group has worked at zoos and helped clean up parks.

"I'm glad to be a part of this event," Rayaprolu said. "I hope this statue can help students understand the aspects of nonviolence, love and respect that Gandhi taught."

During his speech before the unveiling of the statue, Serwatka said the date and time of the Gandhi Day celebration was scheduled to coincide with Gandhi's birthday.

"Technically, Oct. 2 is his birthday, but we didn't want to interfere with Yom Kippur," Serwatka said. "We decided to hold this at 2 p.m. Oct. 1, as this would make it 12 a.m Oct 2 in India due to the time difference."

Serwatka revealed that the project was first mentioned by the Gandhi Memorial Society to President Delaney two years ago. Serwatka and Delaney worked in conjunction with the society to bring the statue to UNF.

"It feels great that we could help bring this statue to UNF," Serwatka said. "Gandhi is such an important figure in society and he helped influenced many progressive minds like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Our hope is that we will have other opportunities to build similar statues of other such individuals."

According to Serwatka, UNF is the only location in Florida to feature a statue of Gandhi.

Directly following the unveiling, the Gandhi Day multicultural event was held in the Lazzara Theater of the Fine Arts Center. The program consisted of dances and songs presented by representatives from many ethnic groups including the Indian, Hispanic, Japanese and Philippino cultures.

"The crowd was far bigger than we anticipated," Serwatka said. "It feels amazing that we had such an incredible turnout for the event."

An exhibit on the accomplishments of Gandhi was on display in the first-floor lobby of Building 50 through Oct. 1. Titled "Gandhi, King, Ikeda: A Legacy of Building Peace," the exhibit celebrated the lives of Gandhi and two other men, Martin Luther King Jr. and Daisaku Ikeda, who worked to peacefully help the disadvantaged in their respective countries. The display consisted of photographs, quotations and historical information about the human rights leaders.

Mahatma Gandhi was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Porbandar, India on Oct. 2, 1869. He was the leader of the Indian Nationalist movement and played a large part in India achieving its independence from Great Britain. He formulated a method of nonviolence and civil disobedience, which he called Satyagraha. It was instrumental in fighting the injustices of colonialism and racism that plagued the Indian populace. He participated in a number of marches and fasts to help to peacefully instigate social changes. Martin Luther King Jr. often cited Gandhi as a great influence on his own crusade for equality. The name "Mahatma" means great soul, according to the pamphlet made by the Intercultural Center for PEACE in honor of the Gandhi Day celebration.

Delaney envisions 'unique' future

President John Delaney's annual "State of the University" address at Fall Convocation Sept. 29 outlined the University of North Florida administration's view for the future, including specific goals for academics and student body size.

Delaney said that one of the focuses of the university in the coming years is to balance physical growth with a commitment to a high standard of quality in academics and research. He said he envisions UNF one day becoming a "destination university" that attracts bright students from across the country. With respect to the swelling student body and plans for construction on campus, Delaney said he doesn't see the progress slowing down any time soon. "We need to grow and we will grow," Delaney said, "We cannot and should not stop growth in our student body."

The ultimate goal is for UNF to be home to about 25,000 students, he said, which is almost a 40 percent increase over this semester's enrollment of about 15,500. At the current reported rate of 400 students more each year, the university could expect to attain its designated capacity by around 2030.

He cited opinions from many other faculty and staff members who either supported or opposed the growth, but said that the administration is dedicated to increasing enrollment while nurturing further research, improving the academic environment and aggressively adding faculty. In the next five years, Delaney said, administration plans to see the student body grow by about 2,000.

Delaney also announced an interest in beefing up graduate offerings, especially in applied fields. He made reference to more doctorate programs planned in the Brooks College of Health as an example of strides the university is taking to implement such improvements.

"To model UNF's growth after any other particular university's would be a mistake, Delaney said. "We would do ourselves a disservice to try and emulate any single institution."

Instead, he said the school should endeavor to establish its own identity built on what he called the four guiding principles established by the UNF Board of Trustees: excellence, focus, relevance and accountability.

"In the end, we must be uniquely and proudly the University of North Florida," Delaney said.

Several other issues were addressed by the president during his speech, including updates on current activities the administration is involved in-furthering the process of making a bid to buy the nearby AOL building and increasing the school's Transformational Learning Opportunities program were among those discussed.

Delaney also lauded the university for its selection as the fifth best value among public colleges in the United States according to the Princeton Review's America's Best Value Colleges for 2007.

Other speakers at the event included Dr. Theophilus Prousis, history professor and winner of UNF's 2006 Distinguished Professor award, and Mark Workman, provost and vice president for academic affairs.

The rest of the event was focused on welcoming new faculty and recognizing current faculty for their accomplishments in different fields. Sixteen members of UNF faculty received awards for teaching, scholarship, service, undergraduate advising and international service and leadership.

Delaney summed up the efforts of the faculty and staff in his speech as unique and praiseworthy.

"UNF is a remarkable place to call home," he said.

SG works to fulfill promises

Student Government leadership at the University of North Florida has delivered on one of its campaign promises from the spring 2006 elections and is making headway on another two while several more difficult promises await attention, according to SG President Justin Damiano.

Among the promises first advertised by Damiano and Vice President Dorrell Briscoe in the March 29 issue of the Spinnaker, one-24-hour access to the library during finals week-is said by Briscoe to be "in the bag," while three more-a test express lane in the bookstore, a Martin Luther King Jr. civil rights class, and an on-campus car wash for students - are nearing finalization.

Damiano said the test express lane is in the last stages of planning and should be implemented by the end of the semester. He said at this point SG is working with the bookstore to decide "the best way logistically to go about doing it."

The civil rights class is a more involved matter, according to Briscoe. While there is much interest in the course, he says, the project involves a lot of planning and refining before it's finally approvable. SG is currently seeking a faculty member and a department to sponsor the class, and hopes to be able to offer it as an alternative fulfillment to the university's required cultural diversity credit.

"We want to implement this class to give you more options for taking your CD classes," Briscoe said. He added that the notion has the support of Academic Affairs and they hope to be in a position to offer the class to students as early as fall 2007.

An on-campus car wash is in the works as well, but it suffered a hang-up early in the semester when the $11,000 requested by Tom Foran, last year's SG president, still fell short of the lowest bid by about $4,000, Damiano said. He said that UNF President John Delaney wanted to see the car wash come to campus and has offered to pick up the additional costs to make it happen.

The service itself will be offered in the form of a hand wash system with machines to aid the process.

"It's kind of like a do-it-yourself car wash," Damiano said. The service will be offered free of charge to students with the exception of the vacuum, which he says will probably operate at the rate of 25 cents for a designated amount of time - a move he says will be implemented to prevent vandalism or inappropriate use of the machine.

SG hopes to see the car wash up and running by the spring. It will be located on campus by the Crossings. Construction has been contracted out to Rivers and Rivers, Inc., a company based out of Orange Park.

Other promises, such as a maid service in on - campus housing and free oil changes for students, have been put on the back-burner for the time being while other issues are being focused on, Damiano said.

The easiest promises are being addressed first, he said, so the latter part of the semester can be spent focusing on more work-intensive endeavors. Some of the projects are still waiting for statistical research to come in or for the interest level of students to be assessed, he said.

"They require the most information and the hardest work," Damiano said. He added that SG hopes to have both maid service and oil changes in place by spring 2007, but the projects depend on too many factors to guarantee they'll be in place by then.

While fulfilling campaign promises is a big focus of SG this year, Damiano said it's not the only one.

"My No. 1 priority right now is the student union [building]," he said. Plans for the building include new dining options, student services and offices for many organizations on campus, among other things. Damiano said the construction schedule right now includes breaking ground for the new building in May, but it won't be done and ready for use for a while.

"You're looking at about three years," he said. That ideally means it would be up and running by the beginning of the 2010 school year.

Estimated cost for the building is $45 million. Much of the funding will come from a fee instituted in November 2000 when the building was scheduled to begin construction two years from then, as the Spinnaker originally reported in October 2002. Students this semester are currently contributing $4.24 to the fund for every credit hour they take at UNF.

The university anticipates the student union will become the "signature building" on campus, according to comments made by Richard Crosby, associate vice president for administration and finance, in a board of trustees meeting March 14, 2005.

Damiano said that students should rely on the theme of his original campaign-"Assurance"-and trust that SG will fulfill the promises they made for this school year.

"We're not just telling students something to get their vote," he said.

New tool provides class notes online

Beginning this week a new information database will be made available to University of North Florida students via the internet.

The new Web site, known as SwapNotes, allows students to upload notes taken in any class and then makes them available to the entire SwapNotes community. Signing up for SwapNotes is free. Once a student is registered he or she can search for notes by course name, professor's name or department.

According to the Web site, every time a student uploads his or her notes, he or she is given a free magazine subscription and is entered into a drawing for a $3,000 scholarship that can be used for anything from tuition to books to student loans, or anything else deemed to be school related.

The idea for SwapNotes came to founder Daniel Segall four years ago while he was in college. Over time, the name of the site has changed but Segall pointed out that the principal has always remained the same.

"SwapNotes is a site designed by students for students" Segall said. "We are 100 percent free and never plan to change that. What Facebook is to social circles, we feel SwapNotes can be to academia."

Aside from posting and reading classmates notes, the Web site also provides students with the ability to post comments about the notes they have downloaded. "[This] way if you come across a set of bad notes you can post something that says hey, these notes suck!" Segall said.

In addition to being able to warn others about inferior notes, students are also provided with an outlet to rate professors. For professors, the areas of critique include overall quality, clarity, helpfulness, easiness, overall knowledge, and a section for comments.

However, SwapNotes is not the only note-sharing source making its way to UNF. A second company, Exam Zone, is also available for use by UNF students. According to their Web site, Exam Zone rewards students who participate in its program differently than SwapNotes. Exam Zone offers to pay students for a full semester's notes, which they then bind, package and turn into a study guide for sale at the university's bookstore. This method takes away the easy feeling of writing notes to be used or unused, but the pay off could mean cold hard cash in the end.

When asked how he felt about the new programs, Dr. Glenn Coffee, associate professor of criminal justice, felt somewhat divided.

"Students should have every right to collaborate," Coffee said. However, he was concerned with the possibility that some students might become over reliant on others to do their work for them. "For me the act of writing the stuff down was very helpful and helped me to remember," he said.

Like Coffee, some UNF students support the note sharing programs while other do not. Senior engineering student William Fletcher, said "For the person who misses an occasional class I think this website would be great. But I'm not sure that I like the idea of anybody being able to read my notes. It gives those people who skip class the same notes of those who actually go to class."

Others, like Carla Ortiz, a junior education major, felt that SwapNotes would be great for everybody. "This way, you can see what others think was important about any lecture," Ortiz said. "And it will make me feel much less guilty about skipping class for the beach, because I have the notes waiting for me online."

To find out more about SwapNotes, or to begin posting your notes, visit www.swapnotes.com. To become a note taker for Exam Zone apply at www.examzonenotes.com.

Storms take summer off

Hurricane Florence - wide right. Hurricane Gordon - wide right. Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Isaac - wide right and wide right.

What is going on here? What is consistently making these storms hook through the distant Atlantic and remain far from land?

And speaking of hooks, are we off the hook for the rest of the hurricane season?

Answer No. 1: A ridge of high pressure over the Atlantic that served as our tormentor in recent years, nudging storms toward us, has become our savior, allowing them to bypass us and move north before they touch land.

Answer No. 2: The 2006 hurricane season runs until Nov. 30 and we're not in the clear quite yet.

We've been fortunate so far, but nature's Tropical Weather Production Co. usually shifts from the Atlantic to a different assembly line at this stage of the season, and we become more susceptible to storms that develop close to home, especially in the Caribbean.

"At this time of year, Florida is a big target for anything coming from that direction," said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County.

Exhibit A: Hurricane Wilma. Born in the Caribbean last Oct. 15, it grew into the strongest hurricane on record, then weakened somewhat and crashed through South Florida on Oct. 24.

It was one of eight hurricanes that hit the state in 2004 and 2005.

Though the number of storms this year stacks up as pretty average by historical standards, scientists say the season has been an oddity - a welcome aberration - and we remain in the middle of a decades-long period of heightened activity.

And this season clearly is different from the past two. By this time last year, for instance, we were dealing with Rita, the 17th named storm of that season, eight more than have been produced this year.

Scientists cannot fully explain these variations, saying that large-scale forces in the atmosphere and ocean are not yet well understood.

"These systems take advantage of whatever fertilizer they encounter," said hurricane forecaster Lixion Avila. "They've found it in the Pacific, but they haven't found much fertilizer in the Atlantic this year."

But that hardly ever happens. More often, tropical systems are pushed along by rivers of air called troughs and nudged here or there by other forces.

One storm after another - Florence, Gordon, Helene and Isaac - pushed through the Bermuda High or around it, heading more north than west. In other words, away from Florida.

This is lovely for several reasons: Not only did the storms completely avoid land (except for Florence, which clipped Bermuda), but they also turned north so quickly that they didn't have time to drastically intensify over warm southern waters.

So, why have the patterns changed, and how long will they persist?

No one knows and we still have to be alert, especially for something coming at us from the Caribbean.

"But I like seasons like this," Landsea said. "So far."

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American youth becoming more politically active

Turns out, seminal rock band The Who was correct: gloomy stereotypes to the contrary, the kids are alright.

While the majority of young people aren't engaged in their communities, a study released Tuesday found what researchers called a higher than expected level of political and community engagement among Americans ages 15 to 25.

In many civic activities, there were only small differences in the rates of participation between young people and older people, the report's authors said.

More than 36 percent of young people volunteered in their communities, 30 percent had boycotted a product in protest and almost a quarter had raised money for charities, according to the report.

The survey, by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, a nonpartisan group funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, was of 1,700 youths nationwide and was done from April to June.

"This is a generation that's just screaming to be paid attention to," said Heather Smith, director of Young Voter Strategies, a nonprofit group that works with young voters. "They are engaged. They are paying attention. When issues are relevant, they are willing to flex their political muscle."

Among the report's findings:

-African-Americans age 15 to 25 were the most politically engaged racial or ethnic group: more likely to vote, donate money to campaigns or volunteer with campaigns.

-Asian-American youths were the most civically engaged, with the highest rates of volunteerism.

-White youths presented a "mixed picture" in their level of engagement. They were the most likely of their peers to run, walk or ride bikes for charity, but the least likely to protest, donate money to candidates or political parties, or try to persuade others about elections.

-While Latino youths were the least engaged, they were the most involved in protests, with 25 percent saying they had participated in a protest - more than twice the proportion of any other ethnic group. That was driven largely by the debate over immigration policy, researchers said.

- Men and women had similar levels of overall engagement, but men were more likely to be active in politics while women were more likely to be involved in civic activities.

Civic and political participation are important because "societal institutions work better when more people participate," said Peter Levine, the director of the center that issued the report.

There were some discordant notes.

Fifty-eight percent of young people were considered "disengaged" because they participated in two or fewer of the 19 activities classified as civic or political; 28 percent participated in none.

By contrast, 44 percent of adults are considered disengaged, said Mark Hugo Lopez, one of the report's authors.

Distressingly, those numbers mean that many Americans of all ages consider civic involvement to be an "optional leisure activity" rather than a responsibility, said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington think tank.

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Art project gets campus all strung out

A 3-D design course at the University of North Florida was given the assignment of finding and activating a space on campus. Therefore the students erected yarn sculptures around campus.

Students in groups of three or four were given the assignment of using line to activate different spaces around UNF. They scouted the campus and then had three hours to construct their sculpture on Sept. 21.

Stephen Heywood, associate professor of ceramics, gave his students the assignment to get them "to realize things don't have to fit in a small space, such as a classroom or a canvas," he said. Instead of working with a 2-foot space as usual, the students were working with a 40 to 50-foot space, he said.

The students created four sculptures, Heywood said. Students used different colored yarn to create sets of lines behind the Fine Arts Center, in front of the radio station in Building 1, near the dorms and on the east side of the Green in front of Building 15.

"[The project] forces students to look at the bigger picture and things they wouldn't normally look at," Heywood said. "It also gets other people thinking about spaces - they've never looked at those spaces but now there's something in them."

Rayna Mandoulova, a sophomore art history student in Heywood's class helped construct the sculpture located behind the Fine Arts Center.

"It was a really interesting project for me," Mandoulova said. "The sculptures made those areas of the school that much more interesting and made students notice that those spaces contained trees and other elements. It was nice to hear them say that it made them look at those spaces in a new way."

The constructions are only temporary and the remaining sculptures will most likely be taken down this week according to Heywood.

New research suggests body parts can regrow

Buoyed by recent genetic breakthroughs, researchers at Northwestern University and across the country say they have hopes of achieving a feat long thought to be impossible: enabling people to replace damaged body parts or even regrow missing limbs.

Like salamanders and other lower species, humans possess genes that direct the body to make new arms and legs after an injury. But in humans the genes lie dormant, inactivated after evolution favored the swift patching of wounds through scarring over the slow regeneration of body parts.

The discoverer of those genetic switches, Northwestern University developmental biologist Hans-Georg Simon, and other researchers now think they can find a way to turn on the dormant genes. A person who lost a leg might be able to generate a new one.

"All of a sudden this becomes not so much science fiction but really a challenging science problem," said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh, who is coordinating one of the research teams. "This particular project to regrow digits and limbs on humans is kind of like saying we're going to go to the moon."

The project, the first national scientific effort of its kind, is heavily financed by the U.S. military, which is seeking better therapies for the unprecedented number of military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan who are surviving previously mortal wounds, but often without arms or legs.

No one expects amputees to be able to regrow their missing parts any time soon. But there is increasing optimism that therapies can be developed in the next five to 10 years to prevent the formation of scars and to restore damaged or lost tissue from wounds, heart attacks, spinal cord injuries or Alzheimer's disease.

Pediatric surgeons were the first to witness the magical power of regeneration genes about 20 years ago when they began performing daring fetal surgery in early pregnancy. They were astonished to discover the fetus would later be born perfectly healed. No scars.

These same genes allow amphibian species such as salamanders to heal wounds without scars and to perfectly replace lost limbs throughout life. But in humans and other mammals, the genes get turned off shortly before birth.

"There is a transition in us humans where we go from a perfect wound healing phase through regeneration early on, to a later phase where scars begin to form," Simon said. "That means we probably also possess the appropriate genes to perfectly heal wounds without scars. And that's the idea my colleagues and I have - to see if we can find the regeneration switch and reactivate it in humans."

Simon, who is also a cell and developmental biologist at Children's Memorial Research Institute, and his colleagues are genetically engineering mice to see if two genes can be turned on: Tbx5 for arms and Tbx4 for legs. They hope that within four years they will have a mouse that can grow back a "finger."

They already know that when the Tbx genes are inactivated in mice during fetal development they don't develop forelimbs or hindlimbs, and humans born with partially defective Tbx5 genes will have severely stunted arms.

Giving people the salamander's regenerative power has been one of science's oldest dreams, but it has remained just that - a dream thought to be so impossible that research in the area attracted scant funding.

That changed in a major way this spring as the U.S. military sought better ways to repair the disfiguring scars and amputated limbs that are occurring among soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq at the highest rate ever recorded during war.

The military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, looked at the scattered research going on in regeneration, concluded it could lead to something big and formed two teams of researchers with multi-million dollar grants.

"DARPA would like us to come up with some sort of topical treatment that you could give a wounded soldier on the battlefield or shortly after and get them healing along a regenerative pathway," said Badylak, who has identified proteins that are now commercially available to help people regrow tendons after suffering rotator cuff and Achilles heel injuries.

One team member may have already taken a step closer to a scarless healing salve. Lorraine Gudas of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University discovered that vitamin A plays an important role in causing one type of cell to differentiate into other cell types, a critical step in regeneration. After a newt limb has been amputated, the amount of vitamin A it is exposed to, for example, will determine if the stump starts regenerating as a whole arm or as an elbow or wrist.

A newt takes six to eight weeks to regenerate a functional limb and a few weeks more to complete a perfect replacement. If humans had the same regenerative capacity, it would probably take a year or more to grow a new arm or leg.

"There are more species on Earth that can regenerate lost appendages than those that can't," Simon said. "We humans are more the exception. The idea is to explore what nature came up with in the first place and then try to find out what genes are inactivated in humans and try to reactivate them."

Badylak said DARPA became interested in regenerative medicine because of the massive increase in the ratio of wounded military personnel. In all wars from the Revolutionary War up to the first Gulf War the ratio of wounded soldiers to those killed was 2.5 to 1. The early 90s saw a dramatic change with the advent of body armor, which protected the torso and head but left arms, legs and necks exposed. In the Afghanistan and Iraq wars the ratio of wounded to dead is 9 to 1.

The two-year goal for the Badylak team is to have a mouse replicate the kind of biological transformation that occurs in a salamander at the site of an amputation called a blastema. In a blastema cells in the stump are converted into progenitor cells, which go on to make bone, skin, nerves and other structures that form a new limb.

The four-year goal is to basically have a mouse regenerate a finger.

"If we can do that then I think we are well on the road to understanding how to regrow appendages," Badylak said.

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Religious advocates spur controversy on Green

The right to free speech caused controversy on the Green last week at the University of North Florida.

Jeremiah Baldwin, a retired police officer, and Frank Zaccaro, a construction worker, came to campus and preached at students from the Green Sept. 27 and 28. Both men wore signs that promoted Jesus Christ and turning to God, while preaching to passersbys and the gathered crowd.

The goal of their visits was to have an effect on people, according to Baldwin, "to yell at them, judge them and preach at them," he said. "To get them to trust in Jesus."

During their time on the Green, Baldwin and Zaccaro preached to students, faculty and staff as a whole, while also addressing specific questions from individuals and conducting one-on-one conversations with some.

Reaction to Baldwin and Zaccaro's presence, method and message were mixed. Some individuals welcomed the pair and respected what they were doing, such as sophomore Ashley Manuel, an international relations major.

"I think it's a good thing because it starts discussion," Manuel said. "When they get people talking within their own groups, I think it's a good thing."

Others disagreed with Baldwin and Zaccaro and found their comments and statements offensive, such as Jonathan DeFau, a freshman majoring in athletic training.

"I think it's bullshit," DeFau said. "To say you're a man of God and then to bash women and other religions is not being a man of God."

Mixed reactions are common and they vary from campus to campus, according to Zaccaro, a former Roman Catholic who now considers himself non-denominational. The "Christian groups" control the tempo during the demonstrations more than he or Baldwin do, he said. The goal is to get on people's cases, and do so in a style of preaching that is present in the Bible and was followed up until 50 or 60 years ago, he said.

"It doesn't bother me that people get angry with me," Zaccaro said. "We like people to come and listen because we say good things about God."

While most of their time on the Green was peaceful, the University Police Department was present during some of their preaching. Baldwin was punched and pushed by a student on the first day and had his chair stolen on the second day. Both were involved in numerous arguments with students on several occasions during their visits. Insults were traded by both the crowd and the pair.

Despite that, Baldwin said he will continue to preach. "I've had some intelligent and intellectual conversations with people," he said. According to Baldwin, he has been preaching for 42 years and has preached in 15 countries around the world and 48 different states.

"Although I disagree with what they're saying, it's good that a lot of kids are being confronted with this," said Anna Lusk, a freshman nursing major. "It makes you realize what you feel [about these things]."

Some students used the situation as an opportunity for humor. An unidentified UNF student dressed as Jesus on Sept. 27 and milled about in the crowd. James Vickers, a sophomore chemistry major, joined the pair in preaching on Sept. 28. However, his message differed somewhat.

"You need to praise Jesus - or Tom Cruise!" Vickers said.

The pair visits UNF once or twice a year, Baldwin said, spending anywhere from three to eight hours preaching.

According to the university's Annotated Florida Administrative Code, last amended in 1988, "outdoor areas on the campus which are not committed to a specific use or assigned to a specific University entity, such as the area located adjacent to the Robinson Student Life Center, are free to be used for informal, unscheduled, and unamplified expressions of opinion or musical events by person participating as individuals without registration or approval. These impromptu speakers or musical performers will be held responsible fro orderly behavior and for no disruption of academic activities, scheduled public functions, or pedestrian or other traffic, and they must follow University rules governing those areas."

"People in the past have been asked to leave for violating the rules, but that is few and far between," said UPD police chief, Mark Foxworth. Usually, when groups or individuals use the Green, there aren't any issues, he said

Meet your Student Senate Candidates

This fall's student leaders are in your hands. Here are the names, pictures and platforms of the students running for seats. The names of the candidates are spelled as they have been submitted and the platforms are in the candidates' own words. They have not been edited for spelling, punctuation, style or grammar. The Spinnaker allowed each candidate 50 words and in no way endorses any candidate over another. All platforms that were e-mailed to the paper by the deadline of 5 p.m., Sept. 29 are printed here.

Print Edition

NEWS

Gandhi comes to campus

Delaney envisions 'unique' future

SG works to fulfill promises

New tool provides class notes online

Storms take summer off

American youth becoming more politically active

Art project gets campus all strung out

New research suggests body parts can regrow

Religious advocates spur controversy on Green

Meet your Student Senate Candidates

News in Brief

Family Fest

Spirit Night

Rock the vote

LGBT support network

Dedication of new social sciences vuilding

Chartwells' consumer surveys