When Susan Brist was a freshman at the Allentown Campus, she spent her entire Spring Semester passing out buttons, fliers and pamphlets in support of presidential candidate Bill Clinton in an effort to elect a president who could get things done.

Now, in light of the Whitewater scandal, Brist (junior-political science) said Clinton has not been able to work on any of his goals -- such as health care, welfare or crime --because he has been dodging Whitewater allegations.

The Whitewater scandal stems from an unsuccessful real estate investment that Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton made in the early 1980s -- an investment that involved 42 lots along the White River near Flippin in northern Arkansas.

The U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives both voted to hold hearings to listen to testimony from subpoenaed Clinton administration officials and weed through the age-old question: Did the Clintons' do anything wrong?

Special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. has been working to attempt to sort out Whitewater details, such as the Clintons' dealings with James McDougal, chairman of the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan and Whitewater partner, and his wife, Susan McDougal.

In Brist's mind, it is all a matter of ethics -- not legality. The hearings will decide whether President Clinton actually did anything wrong, but meanwhile Congress should just let Fiske do his job, Brist said.

"Americans and Congress should just get off Clinton's back and let him do what he was elected to do --rebuild America," Brist said.

As an American citizen, Robert O'Connor, associate professor of political science, said he believes the news media should look at what President Clinton is doing with issues like health care, crime or welfare. Instead of wasting time, governmental officials need to talk about what is right in Washington, what can be done better and what matters to the American people, he said.

Whitewater was not actually an abuse of the presidency because it happened 16 years ago, before Clinton ever became president, O'Connor said. Regardless of whether Whitewater is unethical or illegal, Congress should just step back and let the special prosecutor do his job, he said.

"It's not like he is an ax murderer," O'Connor said. Americans want to know what he is accomplishing, not who he was allegedly financially involved with 16 years ago, he said.

O'Connor also stressed that the public must remember that it cannot jump to conclusions based on who Clinton associated with because Arkansas is a small state with a limited population. The number of people who went to law school or to graduate school is just in the thousands -- not like other states, such as California, he said.

Because there are so few residents with graduate degrees, most of them know each other, so others should not jump to conclusions just because they are seen together, he said.

Andrew Kreider, president of College Democrats, said because Republicans had been controlling the White House for 12 years before Clinton's election, the Republicans are bitter and are trying to distract Americans away from what Clinton has accomplished.

Clinton has made a lot of changes and has pushed through legislation on issues that former President Bush would not approve, such as the Motor Voter Bill, the Brady Bill and abortion, Kreider said. Republicans are trying to take attention away from these changes by pushing the Whitewater investigation, he said.

"I can't believe what a waste of time and money this is," Kreider said, adding that it would be erroneous to compare Whitewater to Watergate or the Iran Contra scandal.

Although Will Enscore, president of College Republicans, said he has not been interested in following the Whitewater scandal, he thinks Whitewater is something that needs to be dealt with. He added that he is not sure what the best way to handle it would be.

O'Connor agreed that Whitewater cannot be accurately compared with Watergate or Iran Contra because the circumstances surrounding those instances were very different. In Watergate, the Nixon administration illegally obtained information from the Democratic headquarters during Nixon's term in the White House --not 16 years prior to taking office.

In the Iran Contra affair, governmental officials were guilty of breaking the law --not merely being investigated for potentially illegal or unethical activity, O'Connor said.

Although hearings are a useful process to obtain information, their purpose is to enhance governmental programs by providing more facts to supplement these projects, O'Connor said. Hearings should be used to improve programs and Whitewater does not fall under that responsibility, he said.