Weekend Weather: Increasing cloudiness over fhe weekend Lows in ihe 40s, highs in the 50s.
»
The Blue
BANNER
display ■
I wins one out
of four 7
keview of Tori Amos. Paged.
Volume 24, Number 23 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE April 4 1996
' Hands-off ’ ’ SGA president responds to accusations of impeachable conduct
policy passed by
heads of UNC
system
Kenneth Corn
Staff Writer
The North CaroHna Board of Gov
ernors passed a new policy concern
ing improper relationships between
students and employees on March 18.
Recent events of misconduct at the
North Carolina School of the Arts
and at the University of North Caro
lina at Chapel Hill prompted the new
policy.
“It (the policy) is saying ‘hands-off
students,’” said Tom Cochran, vice
chancellor for academic affairs. “My
advice to our faculty is going to be
that they do not mess around with
students, period.”
The policy starts, “The University of
North Carolina does not condone
amorous relationships between stu
dents and employees. ” It says employ
ees “should avoid” these kinds of rela
tionships, which could “harm students
and damage the integrity of the aca
demic enterprise.” The policy warns
that sexual relationships between
people who are not married are illegal
in the state of North Carolina and
“can result in criminal liability.”
Under this policy, the University
can take disciplinary action in two
types of situations. It is misconduct
for a university employee “to evaluate
or supervise any enrolled student of
the institution with whom he or she
has an amorous relationship.” It is
also misconduct for an employee “to
engage in sexual activity with any en
rolled student... below the age of 18
years.”
The policy defines amorous relation
ships as “when, without the benefit of
marriage, two persons as consenting
partners have a sexual union or en
gage in a romantic partnering or court
ship” that may or may not be sexual.
“My position will be to tolerate noth
ing,” said Cochran. “Anybody who is
currently engaged in these actions, if
it is reported, will be disciplined.”
According to Cochran, under the
first line of the policy, he can take
action against any faculty member
engaged in an amorous relationship
regardless of whether the faculty mem
ber is in a supervisory position over
the student or not. He said this policy
allows us to discourage consenting
relationships between faculty and stu
dents.”
Cochran said the policy covers all
situations of faculty members dating
students. He said a faculty member
could meet someone outside campus
at a party or bar who might be a part-
tinie student. Under the policy, that
faculty member would be at risk of
getting disciplined if they chose to
press the relationship while the other
person is still a student.
The policy would only address the
faculty member’s relationships if the
student was a student under his or her
direction for that class,” said Kristie
Childress, director of human re
sources. “Now you would get into a
question more of ethical values and
ethical morals when a faculty member
engages in a relationship with a stu
dent that may not be under their
supervision.”
Childress said any situations where
POLICY cont. on pg. 10
Marissa DeBlasio
Staff Writer
On March 27, the student govern
ment senate was canceled due to the
candidate’s debate. The senate was
scheduled to discuss SGA President
Dhaval “Doc” Patel’s stipend and
charges of impeachable acts as brought
against him by Rebecca Barraclough
and Mark Dann, senior senators.
Barraclough accused Patel of not
fulfilling several duties outlined in his
job description. According to Dann,
these acts are impeachable under the
by-laws of the student government
constitution. Patel refuted several
accusations in a letter to the senators,
dated March 24.
“I am not happy with the fact that
the question of impeachment is
brought up when about four meet
ings are left in our administration. I
am also not happy with the fact that
the issues that were considered for
my stipends were not used for all the
people in SGA. I am not saying that
I disagree with what you are doing
with me. I am saying it should be
done with everyone and not just me,”
said Patel in the letter.
Among the accusations made by
Barraclough is that Patel appointed
himself representative to the Univer
sity Planning Committee (UPC), then
did not attend meetings. Patel coun
tered that he originally appointed
Dann and senior Beth Daniels as UPC
representatives. Daniels resigned at
the beginning of the term and Dann
had other obligations, said Patel. He
then decided to attend the meetings
himself, but missed the first meeting
due to confusion concerning the date
of the meeting.
“I take full responsibility of missing
that meeting. I should have cleared
which Wednesday the meeting was
on rather than assuming,” said Patel
in the letter.
The second accusation Patel ad
dressed was not paying the dues for
the Association for Student Govern
ments (ASG). According to Patel, the
PRESIDENT cont. on pg.3
Students beat last year’s voter turnout numbers
Christine Treadaway
Staff Writer
With nearly twice as many students voting in this past
week’s SGA elections as last year, all the positions for
next year’s student government were filled. About 563
students cast votes over the two-day election period.
“Generally, the election went really well,” said Tiffany
Drummond, elections commissioner. “We had one of
the biggest turnouts in the last several years,” she said.
Sergio Mariaca was elected president, and Ellie
Dimondstein was elected vice president. Residential
senators are Bill Christopher, Eric Fehlman, and Shan
non Mullen. Elected as commuter senators were
Dawn Blair, Anna Gaddy, and Aletha Roper. Senior
senators for next year are Jeff Greer, Quentin Cavanagh,
and Colin Barry. Junior Senators are Ken Hartley,
Sara Worth, and Meg Purchase. Sophomore senators
areAlphonso Donaldson, Josh Littlejohn, andMischa
Irsch.
Gaddy, Roper, Cavanaugh, Barry, Hartley, Worth,
and Purchase are not official winners until a GPA
check is done, said Drummond. “Write-in winners
must have a 2.0 GPA or higher in order to be eligible
for any SGA seat,” said Drummond.
“In the commuter spot, there was only one person on
the ballot. Dawn Blair. She won with 109 votes, but
there are three spots available. The third person with
the most votes was Aletha Roper, who won with only
three votes,” Drummond said.
Although most people seem to be pleased with the way
the elections were run, some students said they were
not informed well enough concerning who the cam
paigning candidates were. “The biggest complaint that
I heard at the polls wjs the fact that they (voters) didn’t
know the candidates. There were two public events
held, but they still said they didn’t know the candi
dates, the issues, or how the candidates stood on the
issues,” said Drummond.
Sara Jones, a member of the elections committee
agreed. “It’s kind of disappointing to see that nobody
knows what’s going on. You know, every time you say,
‘Hey, have you voted?’ they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t even
know elections were today,’” Jones said. When asked
how enthusiastic students were about voting, Jones
said, “You generally have to drag people by the ear to
get over here to vote.”
Drummond said the second biggest problem with
this year s election was not enough people on the
ballot. There were 18 positions for SGA seats available,
yet only 12 candidates on the ballot. “I felt sorry for the
upcoming juniors voting, because you’d hand them a
ballot and there’s just three empty spots. There’s not
much they could do with that,” Drummond said.
Drummond also voiced some concern about how
ELECTIONS cont. on pg. 10
f
Photo by Del J. DeLorm
Rafrica Adams votes for SGA representatives last Thursday and Friday. According to SGA Elections Chair Tiffany
Drummond, nearly twice as many students voted this year compared to last year.
And the winners are...
President- Sergio Mariaca
Vice PresidenN Ellie Dimondstein
Residential Senator- Bill Christopher, Eric Fehlman,
Shannon Mullen
Commuter Senator- Dawn Blair, Anna Gaddy*,
Aletha Roper*
Senior Senator- Jeff Greer, Quentin Cavanagh*,
Colin Bar^*
Junior Senator- Ken Hartley*, Sara Worth*, Meg
Purchase*
^phomore Senator- Alphonso Donaldson, Josh
Littlejohn, Mischa Irsch
* indico’tes write-in candidates wlio ore not official winners
until 0 GPA check is completed.
Modem service started to combat campus traffic jam on the internet
Susan Sertain
Staff Writer
MCI will offer a special campus
modem service at UNCA, according
to the director of university comput-
ing-
“The proposed implementation date
announced by MCI is by mid-June
but we are trying to improve that,”
said Kern Parker.
There is much excitement about
this, said Parker, “because it is an
unmanageable problem.” At present.
there is not enough resources to keep
up with the student demands, he said.
Students who use the modems in the
computer lab often deal with frustra
tion because the lines are busy, said
Parker. There are 12 modems avail
able for students to use free of charge.
“For approximately 1,000 to 1,500
modem users, that’s a bit of a bottle
neck,” said Michael Welch, a senior
majoring in political science.
People like to dial in to their com
puter accounts particularly from 8
p.m. until midnight, said Parker. With
only 12 modems available, “users get
frustrated because all they get are
busy signals.”
Amy Hargreaves, lab assistant, had
no problems accessing the Internet
several years ago, “but these past two
semesters connection has become
impossible,” she said. This is mainly
because of the many electronic-mail
users. She related a story of someone
who put their phone on auto-dial to
the campus modem connection and it
rang over 500 times. “It will be a big
relief to have the new serv'ice,” she
said.
Students who have computers in
their homes or dorm rooms use their
modems to connect to the modems
on campus. “They have a modem on
their computer that they hook up to a
phone line and they dial in and con
nect to a modem that we supply,” said
MODEM cont. on pg. 10