Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / March 5, 1998, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page 2 The Banner March 5,1998 Opinions Mai The Banner Editorial Hoop, hoop, hooray? The party's over The UNCA men’s basketball season is in all likelihood over. Despite posting a 19-9 record and winning the regular season Big South championship, the Bulldogs will probably not even be considered for an at-large bid to either the NCAA or NIT tournament. UNCA will be overlooked by the tournament selection committees because the Bulldogs compete in the Big South, which is regarded by most as a weak Division I basketball conference. In the 15-year history of the conference, only the Big South Tournament champion, who is given an.automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, has experienced the thrill of March madness. This is a travesty. Our men’s basketball team proved that they were the best team in the Big South by winning 11 out of 12 regular season conference games. During a regular season, every conference team plays each other twice. Season play is a much better indicator of ability than a three-day tournament, espe cially one held on the home floor of one opponent and only 50 miles away from the other. However, the NCAA only gives an automatic tournament bids to conference tournament winners, rather than to the regular season champion, because by doing so every Division I has a chance to make the “Big Dance” until the final weekend of the season. While such an arrangment gives struggling programs eternal hope, it unfairly punished teams like UNCA, who deserve to be in post-season play. By the logic displayed by past NCAA tournament selection committees, season play has no significance for teams in weak conferences. If we follow this logic to its end, why don’t conferences such as the Big South simply abort their seasons and play a tournament in late Febru ary/early March, since the tournament games, no matter how many Syracuses and Tennessees you take to the wire, are the only games that seem to count anyway. Since the NCAA refuses to give tournament bids to regular season champions, it should join with the NIT and work out a post-season selection policy to ensure that deserving champion ship teams like UNCA are given an opportunity to play in the post-season. When a conference such as the Big South crowns both a regular season and tournament champion, one team should be given a bid to the NCAA, the other a bid to the NIT. If this system were adopted, deserving teams like UNCA and Radford would both be rewarded with the opportunity to compete in a post-season tournament. Regardless of what the tournament selection committees decide this coming weekend, our basketball team has proven over the past two years that it can hang with anybody. Last year UNCA demolished SEC champion South Carolina, and also pulled off a last second upset of New Mexico State. This year they took it to the wire with Syracuse (and their Big East offici ating crew), and achieved the remarkable feat of going unde feated at home. These Bulldogs deserve to dance. The dogs that bit back Even though the Bulldogs’ loss to Radford remains hard to swallow, we at UNCA can take special pride in the courageous way in which the members of our women’s basketball team accorded themselves at the conference tourney. After an agoniz ing 5-21 season (4-8 in the Big South), the ladies in blue proved that all season long they had been saving a big can of whup-ass for third-seeded Coastal Carolina and second-seeded Radford. Although they fell short in the tournament finals to the Liberty Flames (their undefeated season is proof enough that God kinda likes fundamentalists), this group of Bulldogs showed that there is another team at UNCA that deserves the respect that has already been earned by the men’s basketball team and the women’s soccer team. In what was seen by many as a rebuilding year, Kathleen Weber deserves much credit for giving her team a “refuse to lose” attititude that should carry over to the rest of the athletic teams and the student body as a whole. The women’s team set a fine example for all of us by playing their best basketball after many people had already written off their season. It would have been easy to pack it in against Coastal in the first round, but these Bulldogs proved that they still had some bite left in them. A safer Doghouse.. .finally Well, well. After searching the world over for our true love in public safety, the administration has decided that home is where the heart is by naming interim Public Safety Director Dennis Gregory to fill that slot permanently. Seventeen months is a long time to search for someone to fill a permanent position on campus, especially a position as vital as the one that ensures the safety of the campus community at UNCA. That we finally have someone in charge of Public Safety and that we have someone with an outstanding record of service to UNCA are good reasons why the selection of Gregory is good for the community. As for Gregory’s modest reluctance to take the post during the first search, we at The Banner sacy, “Dennis, we can’t all be Indians, and we’re glad you decided to be the chief” A close look at the history book Eric Millin One of the most hotly debated subjects of our time is whether Christian religion and Christian society can be equated. Some make this equation and assert that Chris tianity is lesponsible for the count less atrocities committed by so-called Christian nations. In mak ing such an assertion, they imply that Christianity is at its heart ty rannical and violent, failing to give it credit for a great amount of good. 1 know that most people are far more reasonable than this extreme. But there are people who, perhaps unintentionally, support this point of view. Even intelligent, well- edu cated college students and faculty fall prey to such characterizations. While Christianity has been used to justify plenty of violence, it’s foolish to imply that because of this we are somehow unique. Western ers used popular religion to justify death and destruction, while in other places folk use different ex cuses. Violence is a cross-cultural phenomenon. But such logic es capes some people. In such slanderous rants, people have gone as far as to claim that the Nazis were a Christian army, who, in the name of God, killed millions. This is a serious charge both at face value and what it implies. We all know that you should not distort information or create lies about other religions to make them seem evil or frightening, yet people con tinue to say such things. Because such misinformation persists, I thought it necessary to clarify the relationship of Nazism and Chris tianity. columnist Hitler, inMeinKamff.hadkmder things to say of Christianity than Judaism. His “Christianity,” how ever, was one adulterated to fit his Nazi ideology. Hitler was a reli gious utilitarian—that is, he be lieved that people needed religion until there was somethingsuperior to replace it—and that while Chris tianity was superior to Judaism, it would notservehis needs. He went as far as to call Christianity the “first spiritual terror to enter the far freer ancient world” (Mein Kampf). When, in 1941, Hitler believed that the Germans were to win the war he stated, “the last great task of our age will be to solve the church problem. It is only then that the nation will be wholly se cure. The church must rot away like a gangrened member.” Hitler saw National Socialism (Nazism) as that which could re place Christianity. This is not to say that when H itier came to power in 1933 that Christianity disap peared. There was a movement called the German Christians that sought to bring Nazi ideology and Christianity together. They, in line with Nazi ideology, purged the Bible of all the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament that were seen as too Jewish. The German Christian move ment was largely unsuccessful. A note circulated in the Nazi Propa ganda Ministry says of them: “the endeavours of this organization are well meant, but there is no interest either in assimilating Christian teaching in National Socialism or in proving that a reshaped Chris tianity is not fundamentally Jew ish.” Christianity was seen by most high-ranking Germans as a nega tive Semitic influence. Hermann Rauschning, a friend of Hitler, stated “the total abolition of Chris tianity is not a mere philosophical fad of the National Socialists, but an iron necessity of their system.” Martin Bormann, secretary of the Nazi Party said, “Christianity and National Socialism are phenomena which originated from entirely dif ferent causes. Both differ funda mentally.” Furthermore, “National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable.” At Hitler Youth rallies, which of ten intentionally and symbolically took place on Sunday mornings, children would recite “We are happy Hitler youth/we have no need of Christian virtue/for Adolf Hitler is our intercessor/and our redeemer.” In addition. Good Friday was turned into a day of public mourn ing for the Saxons that were killed by Charlemagne for refusing to convert. These are hardly the signs of a Christian nation seeking to conquer others in the name of the Lord. We shouldn’t forget other Chris tians during the Nazi regime. Most people tried to pretend things were business as usual. Some Christians, however, saw the necessity of com bating Nazi ideology and the Ger man Christian movement by re turning to the historic creeds and confessions of the church. They vehemently rejected the attempts to remove things too “Jewish” from the Bible and undermine historic orthodoxy; in doing so they were labeled as “narrow” and “funda mentalist.” Members of the group, the Con fessing Church, wrote a letter to Hitlerin 1936 stating “When blood, race, creed, nationality, and honor are thus raised to the rank of quali ties that guarantee eternity, the Evangelical Christian is bound, by the first commandment, to reject the assumption.” Moreover, many Christians died for their faith in the face of fascism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, enraged by the treatment of the Jews and a leader in the Confessing churches, was executed for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Others went to the concentration camps: 1034 clergymen died in Dachau alone. While this pales in compari son with the industrialized slaugh ter of the Jews, it does demonstrate that many Christians were far from complicit with the Nazi regime. Despite the fact that the Nazis did not see themselves as Christian, it is often pointed out that “Hitler” didn’t create his brand of bigotry in a vacuum.” There is a long history of anti-Semitism in European cultures and this should neither be justified: nor explained away. However, history is highly com plex. Since the establishment of tht church, it has visited violence and oppression on others” are one-dimensional and fail to poini out the incredible self-sacrifice and compassion that have also marked the history of the church. Just as we find in history self-proclaimedChristians who jus tifiedanti-Semitism,slavery, impe rialism, and oppression, so we also find those under the same name--often at the sa time—struggling for brotherhood, abolition, respect for other cultures, and liberty. All the violence done in the name of Christianity for the past 2,000 years would be a fraction of thal committed by 20th century post-Christian cultures such Germany, the Soviet Union and their prodigy like China and Cam bodia. Let us hope that all such attempts to paint the Nazis as Christian re suit from misunderstanding. Oth erwise, making Christianity the scapegoat of such an evil as the Holocaust is similar to the very logic that made a scapegoat of the Jews. Letters to the Editor A sensitive issue Dear Editor, 1 knew a girl who got pregnant. She wanted her baby. Her hus band, who had two daughters from a previous marriage, was also ex cited. Unfortunately, two years be fore, a car crash left her with half a liverand permanent internal dam age. She was told by several doctors that it would be impossible for her to carry a child without dying. Faced with the toughest decision of her life, this girl thought about her husband and his two little girls, to whom she was already a mother. And she made a choice. The girl went to a clinic to termi nate her pregnancy. Outside, pro testers waving gruesome signs and screaming slogans tried to block herway, to talkheroutof“murder- ing her baby. ” These people did not stop her from doing what she felt was right, but they did make an already painful situation worse. Admittedly, not all pro-lifers be have this way. But the ones who do are intrusive and completely out of line. Jim Kirk was correct about one thing in his column on abortion (Opinions, Jan. 22): it isn’t some faceless issue to be argued about over coffee. It’s a deeply personal decision, something that is the busi ness only of the person involved. It’s foolish to say that once all pro- choicers come over to the anti choice point of view there will be no abortion controversy. That will never happen. The only way to end the conflict is for those who feel they can dictate what a woman does with her own body to wake up and realize abortion is not an issue of religious beliefor political agenda. Only when judgmental groups, so- called Feminist or not, stop trying to decide the rights of individuals in different circumstances will we all be able to get along. Kristi Howard Junior, undeclared Garren misses the mark, again Dear Editor, How dismaying it was to read still more trite platitudes from the mind of Heather Garren (Opinions, Jan. 29). Only weeks after her less than brilliant analysis of Halloween as the “Devil’s Hohday” (Letters to the Editor, Nov. 20, 1997) we are treated to her all too predictable opinions on the White House scan dal. Since I vote Libertarian, I will never be hailed as the great champion of Bill Clinton, but thus far, Heather, the supposedly damning evidence seems less than all there. Indepen dent prosecutor Kenneth Starr has thus far wasted $30 million of tax payers’ money in an obviously par tisan attempt to besmirch this presi dent. After $30 million, what proof do we have that Clinton is a crimi nal? None. Now Kenneth Starr has decided to overstep all boundaries and investigate Clinton’s personal life instead. How much more money will be wasted? It has already been established that Heather looks at the world from her (rather ahistorical) “Christian” perspective. I cannot help but ask her to examine whether Bill Clinton is really any more amoral than the good King David of the Israelites? Any more lusty than the wise King Solomon? Please Heather, do us all a favor and learn to think for your self Pat Robertson made all of the same statements as early as two weeks ago. And more eloquently. Thomas Tracy Post Baccalaureate, education' Parking 101: the next gym class Dear Editor, Parking problems at UNCA are mentioned with grumbling fre quency in the classroom and on the grounds by students and teachers alike. As a student who has been going to UNCA sporadically for the past decade, I can say that cir cling the campus looking for a park ing place takes more time now than it used to. It has now become nec essary to add an extra half hour to the daily commute, especially on the days the humanities sections meet. Gone are the days when a student running late could speed up the main entrance and come to a screeching halt behind the very building in which her class was meeting. Finding an empty space within jog ging distance of the classroom to day at UNCA has become an extra curricular activity for which every student should be judged physi cally fit thus exempting them from the current Phys. Ed requirement I know this would make me happy because at my age I feel silly when 1 hear myself say “Can’t, gotta go gym class”. I think that once we all pass high school we should no longer be forced to suffer through gym class. Of course, having passed higt school we should not expect a pro fessor to care when we say “Sorr) I’m late, couldn’t find a parkinj place”. That excuse will not worl in the professional environment all. It only works as a line in a cue movie when delivered by a cuti actor. According to Diane Williamson, Parking Services Man ager at UNCA, there are 5,113 parking permits issued on campus. There are a total of 1,899 spaces available plus the space available in the overflow lots. Like the game oi musical chairs, this means that wf all must be quick and have big butts. Susan Crockett Junior, mass communication (lrl com )ear I In r illin’ lather umen leal of iiginf aaske he cc issumj lawles hat I SI aw in my h irover [litial al act perse greem inal wi lelieve fferei ctualii (ho h£ I'ith n ford it Wee; iften t: : ti ifferei ut im 3ne : ext,” lelieve lut in t tgue ( ble iss istanc elativi )unda illaps' :gumt id col latth( ophoi Icti nak iear E his ii )lumi crenc' 5).” Ise yc lent, 'allow rine.' (uch I ther itnes le sta ioppe. Iters ; ill wi: luha' ildrei gthai inktl gyou fhy? 1 iough id dei ichin read nee o dem imph a ne Li 0 N Vi S| rr 6( /fii
University of North Carolina at Asheville Student Newspaper
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March 5, 1998, edition 1
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