By Joelle Hutcheon
Collegian Staff Writer

Who needs razors?

Male members of Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) have dubbed this month “Facial Hair February,” and for the entire month, will not shave their facial hair … for fun.

“Just because I have some Irish in me I can grow a full beard,” Greg Boros (sophomore-advertising) said. “Also, the allure of the Scottish dipstach is calling me.”

Boros added that, for those who do not know, the dipstach is when the side-burns and moustache connect and grow very bushy. This style of facial hair has been featured in the movie Braveheart as well as Jaws, Boros said. It has also been referred to as the “Scottish connection.”

The tradition of “Facial Hair February” began when Christian Eichhorn (senior-chemical engineering) heard about it from his friends who are involved with Cru at Kent State University in Ohio.

“[There is] not really a purpose to it. I just thought it was really funny,” he said.

Eichhorn said he mentioned the idea during a Cru men’s time meeting in January 2004, and the idea caught on soon after.

“I’ve always tried to grow a beard during the long winter months,” Benjamin Follett (freshman-architectural engineering) said. “I can’t usually grow [hair] in everywhere, but the longer I wait, the more time it has to grow in.”

The month of facial hair growth helps members of Cru stay in touch with their more masculine sides, Dave Oldham (senior-mechanical engineering) said.

However, Oldham said he will only be growing a mustache — not a full beard — during the month in order to maintain his aesthetic value.

“I’m celebrating all that is masculine, like the mustache,” he said. “And [I want] to bring back the era of facial hair.”

Bret Applequist (sophomore-education), Boros’ roommate, said he is also about to become involved in this month’s festivities, but just to follow his friends.

He added that “Facial Hair February” has spawned Cru to participate in other months of growth, such as “Manuary” (January).

“It’s just another excuse to grow hair everywhere you want to,” Applequist said.

Boros said that although he is prepared for a month of “manhood,” his girlfriend is not too happy about the idea of him not shaving for an entire month.

“My girlfriend does not have the same affinity for hair as me,” he said. “She threatened not to shave her legs.”

The World As I see it
by Albert Einstein

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…

“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.

“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…”