i can't find the words

Upon hearing that Anne Meltzer was named the new dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, your biggest qualm — if you even had one — was probably that she was the third consecutive CAS dean chosen from the department of earth and environmental sciences. How could a department that only boasts 24 majors possibly be so prolific? But now that a scandal has rocked the mountainside in the form of Provost Ron Yoshida’s alleged misconduct in selecting Meltzer, you will probably take a more active interest in the decision.

As a method of damage control, Yoshida apologized during a CAS meeting, which seems an easy way to appear repentant for his actions. The fact that Yoshida admitted to screwing up is a step in the right direction. Still, he has not yet addressed the issue in the eyes of the public — something we should expect, even demand, from someone of his stature — and, unfortunately, we cannot blindly assume that such a statement will be forthcoming.

Of course, the last thing we want to hear is, “This is a personnel matter; there’s no need to comment on it.” That raises suspicion; we hear, “No one should’ve found out.”

Choosing a new dean without the full support of the personnel committee was an incredibly dumb move. It demonstrated poor communication by the administration with the people it is supposed to be representing.

Then there’s the precedent set by this case. It says to students that, yes, you should follow the rules, but use loopholes to ensure that you get the results you want. Is this really the message we want to have entrenched in the minds of more than 1,100 soon-to-be-graduating seniors?

As for the faculty, it’s good to see they’re upset about something. There’s more than likely a stigma associated with criticizing Yoshida and President Gregory Farrington, and even tenure’s safety net can’t provide complete security from the fear of retaliatory actions.

Now it’s obvious that unity among Lehigh’s professors can bring about a reaction from the administration. Ergo, the faculty members should band together more often and stick up for themselves. In the past, all we’ve had are the occasional screamers, people vociferating when one little thing has gone wrong. The faculty should break free from apathy’s shackles by being more vocal, but organization is also key to affecting change.

The dean selection process should also be looked at with scrutiny. For example, the search committee recommended two candidates, one of whom was seen by the administration as an unsuitable choice (for reasons they have not revealed). Nothing has been said about the desirable qualities of a CAS dean, but there’s no justifiable reason why they can’t tell us what we’re looking for — we’d hope the traits they want aren’t so ignoble as to warrant shame for wanting them.

In short, this shouldn’t have happened. The administration committed a misdeed by not making clear to the candidates that this was a worthwhile job. Meltzer’s effectiveness as a dean has also been hurt. Even if she is truly the most qualified person for the job, it is possible that some of those who are upset with how the process was conducted will take their anger out on her. We hope that does not happen.

Yoshida will face the music for his actions but it’s evident that Lehigh needs to be more appealing to prospective employees if we want to avoid this in the future.

If you keep up with new album releases, you’ve probably noticed a dearth of good things coming out.

It’s a shame, really, now that the weather has finally taken a turn we can cruise around town with our windows down and sunroofs open, blasting our CDs at ear-splitting volumes. Sure, the deluxe edition of Weezer’s blue album hit stores Tuesday, but everyone has an old copy of that lying around somewhere, and buying it again for the b-sides and demos is hard to justify.

But I digress. While we were all enjoying our Spring Breaks and paying more attention to our tan lines than to the happenings of the music world, an album of seemingly epic proportions was released. On March 9, “Into the Now” appeared in music stores worldwide, marking the first time in 10 years we’ve seen a studio effort from Tesla.

Right. Tesla.

Maybe when you hear the name, you think of makeup, big hair and pyrotechnics, but Tesla (the most prolific rock outfit from Sacramento, Calif.) was actually more low-key than most of its contemporaries, and is sometimes categorized as a pop-metal band.

Their biggest hit came on 1990’s “Five Man Acoustical Jam” with a cover of “Signs,” an anti-Man tirade from the ’70s. Before “Acoustical Jam,” the idea of a rock band sitting down and playing sans distortion was an unheard-of idea, but its success inspired MTV to start its “Unplugged” series and paved the way for bands to show a stripped-down, introspective side to their music. Thus, without Tesla, Nirvana would never have had their career-defining performance at Sony Music Studios.

The early-to-mid-’90s all but killed off the mascara-laden bands whose logos appeared to be cast in iron and riveted to its albums. Tesla survived long enough to pump out a few more radio singles, but their days were numbered. In 1995, guitarist Tommy Skeoch was asked to leave the band following problems with a tranquilizer addiction. The band broke up a year later.

In the years that followed, the band members played in various side projects, but eventually caved in to the mounting number of pleas for a reunion tour and hit the road as soon as Skeoch’s health had improved. In 2001, they released a two-disc live album and were featured on one of those “20th Century Masters” best-ofs — you know, the CDs that are always in $9.99 bins at Best Buy and Borders, and oftentimes showcase bands that aren’t exactly masters of the past century.

(Side note: The ubiquity of these compilations has led me to wonder if anyone has a record collection consisting solely of them because they a) have most or all of a band’s hits and b) match, and therefore look good on a shelf together. My theory is that such a person couldn’t possibly enjoy music, as most greatest-hits records are for wusses, who, by definition, don’t like music.)

So, Tesla is back, and Tesla wants to rock the year 2004. Unfortunately, they don’t accomplish that.

At first glance, the track listing looks hackneyed — there’s a Sept. 11 tribute two and a half years late (“Heaven Nine Eleven”) and an attempt to appear up to the times (the at symbol in “Look @ Me”). The rest of the CD follows accordingly.

The album opens with the title track, a distorted, riff-heavy song. The lyrics reflect Tesla’s comeback, affirming that the band would, indeed, like to bring themselves back to the forefront. The pre-chorus begins with Jeff Keith singing, “Now here we go, on with the show/Making our way just to live for today.” Again, Tesla is back, and Tesla would like to rock. Keith then reaffirms that Tesla is bringing “it” into “the now,” a notion he probably doesn’t need to pound into our heads. But the song still isn’t over — packed into the next three minutes are a few more choruses, an uninspired guitar solo and a bridge that vaguely has something to do with love.

“What a Shame” starts out with a jangly acoustic intro, then turns into a full-fledged rocker, a trick used by every alternative radio darling in the past six years. The lyrics are equally trite: “Now that it’s all been said and done/Do you like what you’ve become?/Now that it’s all but over/You haven’t changed/And what a shame.”

The power ballad slot on the album is filled by “Words Can’t Explain,” in which Keith expresses his love for an unnamed woman. Amid the plaintive strumming, he proclaims, “This love is real/So much I feel it/So deep inside/As though our hearts were synchronized.” The sentiment may be there, but the songwriting is not. At other points in the song, Keith lets us know that he just can’t help himself, that he couldn’t ask for a better friend and that words can’t explain how he feels.

In “Mighty Mouse,” Tesla pleads for Mighty Mouse to come and save the day. And then they ask Superman and Underdog to do the same. Now, I understand that they’re trying to hedge their bets, but wouldn’t Batman have been a safer choice? I mean, didn’t he always come up with the Bat Spray Shark Repellent just in the nick of time? And doesn’t the Batmobile represent the image Tesla should be trying to project?

Sadly, this is not the album I expected from a band like Tesla. Given the success of The Darkness’ arena rock sound, a hair metal revival almost seems feasible. Instead, Tesla has made an album of bland music suitable for any Clear Channel alternative station. I would’ve been better off picking up a copy of Hootie & the Blowfish’s greatest hits; at least then I would’ve known what I was getting myself into.

With regard to our meager coverage of the NCAA wrestling championship, we have but one thing to say:

Oops.

We admit it, we screwed up. Instead of sending talented writers and photographers to cover the event, we got caught up in the thrills of our first March Madness appearance in 16 years.

Though we had an ex-editor in chief in Dayton, Ohio, the thought of having a correspondent in St. Louis never crossed our minds. Heck, we even have relatives in the St. Louis area who could’ve been coaxed into providing some pictures and up-to-the-minute results.

Again, oops.

You see, the basketball team isn’t usually this good. Coach Billy Taylor has turned the men’s basketball team into the darlings of the Patriot League, and that’s why we were excited.

You have to remember, this is a team that had a horrific 1-26 record in the 1995-1996 season and never showed signs of decency until last year. Even though they’re obviously a talented bunch now, they still hold that special spot in our hearts reserved for the underdogs of the world.

The wrestling team, however, is always good. They’ve won the last three Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association championships. They’ve finished in the top 10 at the NCAA tournament in four of the past five years, and produced several national champions. They’re really, really good year in and year out.

This year’s third-place finish was just the icing on the cake for Lehigh’s wrestlers.

We’re sorry. Seriously.

We at The Brown and White strive to be the best journalists in town, but in this case we made a rookie mistake. Had you been at any of our editorial board meetings, you would’ve noticed that we had a strong pro-basketball bias.

One of the basic tenets of calling this publication a newspaper is that we present fair and unprejudiced coverage. And though the amount of print space devoted to individual sports may seem to be a paltry matter, we’re still upset about the fact that we appeared to be cheering for a basketball team whose season was not any more outstanding than that of the wrestling team.

Just to make sure you get our drift, oops.

We’re humans, we erred, it happens.

But in a perfect world, we would’ve written a wrestling preview just as detailed as that of the basketball team and we would’ve made a four-page pullout covering individual and team highlights from the season. And, most importantly, we would’ve made the NCAA wrestling championship more prominent in our March 23 issue — we would’ve written more than just a recap (think reactions, features on team members and more) and the pictures we printed would have been bigger and would not have come from our archive.

But, alas, it’s not a perfect world and we screwed up. By focusing on one ball, we dropped another (note that the second ball is proverbial).

Thus, our apologies go out to all of the wrestlers, coaches, boosters, fans and everyone else who’s proud of the guys in the brown and white singlets. Without them, our sports pages would have far fewer readers and far less credibility. And without that, we wouldn’t be much of a newspaper, now would we?

Spring is here, apparently. All I know is that I don’t need to wear a jacket anymore and there’s no down side to driving with my windows down. I really wanted to sit on the U.C. lawn and read, but I didn’t get a chance — I put off writing my column for too long and had to finish it this afternoon. And then it was somewhat rainy all evening, so I didn’t even get to go outside and sit.

Kristen pointed out that I am not excited about writing editorials, at least not compared to a few weeks ago. She’s right, to an extent. The writing itself is not so bad — I definitely don’t mind doing it, and I could go as far as to say I like it — but press nights just aren’t my cup of tea. For some reason, the first hour is devoted to socializing, which really delays my work a lot more than anyone else’s. To compensate, I’ve been keeping the edit board meetings as short as possible by not waiting for the other editors to give me anything to write. Once we pick a topic (“yay basketball,” “boo fraternities,” etc.), I’m out the door. Also, my assistant is not very competent and has a nasty habit of coining new words in her headlines.

Other than when I’m at press night or at work or in class, I’ve been a bum. Everyone is busy, so I have the options of a) going places alone and b) sitting in my room. The latter is the better choice, because I sometimes do homework. (I mostly play FreeCell though, my record is 72-0.)

I did hang out with Danielle tonight; we really only get together once every three or four weeks, but we always have such a good time. I used my incredible skills to get us free teas at Jazzman’s and then we headed over to her place so she could show me all the clothes she bought in the last two weeks (you’d be amazed at how much the girl can spend). She also told me a bunch of fun stories, so I was content.

But yeah, I’m bored.

The past week can be summarized thusly:

This afternoon, while walking to the post office to mail a paycheck home, I stepped in wet cement and did not notice until later, when it had already dried on my shoes.