THE
NEWS
IN BRIEF
Local restaurant
shuts down after
jiore than a
decade of service
Rio Burrito closed its doors
yesterday after a 12-year run in
downtown Asheville. The hus-
band-and-wife team of Tom
Kearns and Andrea Twilling
opened the restaurant, bringing
gourmet burritos to Western
^rth Carolina.
■ Kearns said the passing of his
wife prompted the decision to
close the restaurant, but he plans
to keep the Skyland location
open.
Bill of Rights
visits university
on statewide
seven-city tour
North Carolina’s copy of the
Bill of Rights comes to the UNC
Asheville campus next
Thursday. The university is the
only college campus on the doc
ument’s brief, seven-city tour.
From Nov. 8 to 10, the docu
ment will be available for public
viewing in Ramsey Library for
limited hours each day. To see
the hours or view the various
events taking place during the
three days, visit UNC
Asheville’s Web site at
www.unca .edu/bill-of-rights.
Residents
return to homes
after wildfires
begin to die
^California residents began
returning to their homes after
wildfires destroyed more than
2,000 houses last week. Federal
Emergency Management
Agency reported 8,300 applica-
tyms for aid, and homeowners
are only eligible to receive
$28,200 in aid from the agency.
;The flames destroyed about
1,700 homes, causing damage
Rtimates to climb about the $1
Wlion mark. Governor Arnold
&hwarzenegger passed legisla
tion speeding up aid to fire vic
tims on Friday.
Drug policy hurts more than helps, students say
By Caroline Fry
Staff Writer
Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, a
recently formed on-campus group, is focus
ing on key issues pertaining to current drug
laws both locally and nationally.
“It’s important to stress that what we’re
trying to do isn’t simply to grant people the
legal right to get high,” said Laura
Eshelman, vice president of SSDP.
“Fighting the war on drugs is much more
significant than that, and it extends to
so many other areas of society.”
SSDP, a national grassroots activist organ
ization created in 1998, has chapters on col
lege campuses nationwide, including three
others in North Carolina. The main goals of
SSDP are pushing for a sensible federal
drug policy, as well as fighting back against
the drug war policies, which harm many stu
dents, according to Eshelman.
“Overall, we’re trying to cultivate aware
ness on campus about the long-term harm
that the war on drugs inflicts on the country
and how it affects us directly or indirectly as
students,” Eshelman said. “It would be ideal
to get more students involved because a lot
of them already disagree with current poli
cies, but 1 think they feel like they can’t do
anything about them.”
Zachary Rosenberg, president of the UNC
Asheville chapter of SSDP, said one ol the
group's main goals is to reverse a small part
of the Higher Education Act.
“The organization was founded specifical
ly to reverse a small part of the Higher
Education Act which was slipped in by
Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) during
reauthorization in 1999.” Rosenberg said.
“This part says that any student receiving
federal funds to go to college will have their
federal funding revoked if convicted of a
drug offense. SSDP has since expanded its
scope to include all aspects of illegal drug
and student interaction, and many outside
that relationship."
There are many students who leel the ne;’
ative effects of this law. according to
Eshelman.
"Over 20().()()() students in the United
States have been denied feileral aid lor
school because of drtig convictions,"
Eshelman said. "That can be for anything
from cocaine possession to a mere gram ol
pot. but doesn't apply to convictions for any
violent crimes.”
SSDP has criticized the war on drugs, a
series of measures enacteil by the United
I’oi iC'i’ l•v(;l ’ I
Urban renewal jeopardizes residents
Asheville considers renovating Pisgah View Apartments while residents continue building a community
By Jon Waiczak
Staff Writer
O n a sunny Saturday afternoon, a
dreadlocked Bob White sat on a
picnic table overlooking the com
munity garden he started at Pisgah
View Apartments, one of Asheville’s oldest
public housing projects, and told of a recent
encounter he had with two drug dealers.
“I was standing there one day, and these
two drug dealers pulled up in their Jeep,”
said White, who has lived at Pisgah View
for seven years. “I thought they were going
to shoot me, but they both stuck
their hands out the window,
shook my hand, and said,
‘You know what, man, that’s
I a really good thing you’re
doing down there.”
The Pisgah View
Community Peace
Garden, an idea which
White said came to him
one day while he was
in his living room lis
tening to Miles Davis,
is an example of good
news in a place where
■ ■
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after a murder. After White approached
Pisgah View management with the idea,
they gave him permission to transform a lit
tle-used baseball field into the garden.
“From the first day I started really work
ing on this soil, there were kids standing
outside the fence asking to get involved,”
White said. He added that more than 45 chil
dren have become actively involved with
the garden since the first seeds were planted
about three months ago.
Pisgah View, completed 55 years ago, is
one of eight housing projects under the
supervision of the Housing Authority of the
City of Asheville. Gene Bell, executive
director of HACA, said the future of public
housing in Asheville and around the country
is transforming projects like Pisgah View
into mixed-income neighborhoods.
“The national trend is to tear down public
housing, and to build mixed-income hous
ing,” Bell said.
A City of Asheville donation of more than
50 boxes of files and photographs to UNC
Asheville last month reignited the discus
sion over the future of public housing in
Asheville. The files document the redevel
opment of a low income Asheville neighbor
hood more than 40 years ago.
Reed Fornoff, junior stu
dent, processed the files last
spring during his semester-
long internship with
Mountain Housing
Pisgah View Apartments residents gather at a
community garden project started hy resident
Opportunities, a local nonprofit which pro
vides affordable housing to low-income res
idents. They document the East Riverside
Neighborhood Urban Renewal Project,
which began in the late ‘60s, and demol
ished or renovated more than 800 run-down
homes and businesses to make way for new
TKI Y HoUVIF.K - SIAM' l*H()U>(;iC\i’l!l.ft
cookout in Fisj»ah View Peace (Jarclen, a
Boh White, on Saturday afternoon.
development.
“We had the largest project in the south
east,” said Marjorie Scavella, who began
working for HACA in 1969.
The city also donated .$10,000 to the uni
versity to archive and preserve the files.
Redevelopment of low-income neighbor
hoods, especially public housing, is neces
sary once again, according to Bell.
“Anything that’s based on a large popula
tion of low-income people has been a failed
model,” he said.
st:r. I loiJSINd i-.Mn; 2 I
Students go green during a rainy week of environmental activities
By Courtney Metz
Staff Writer
J UNC Asheville welcomed need-
^ rain last week even though it
•ampered Greenfest activities
®''igned to bring environmental
awareness to campus.
I thought it was pretty good,
'Pecially considering the horrible
Gather that we had,” said Royce
Eteckon, sophomore mechatronics
Pgineering student. “I know that
|ome stuff had to get cancelled,
J'hich I was really sad about. But
“le few stuff that was there, I
•'ought was pretty good, consider-
the weather.”
t Student Government
ssociation sponsors Greenfest
^nually, promoting environmen-
® awareness on campus. This
par. SGA tried to create a mix of
l^th old and new activities.
^ I love Greenfest,” said Student
ody President Tristyn Card,
''e done it all four years and it’s
'^ays fun, and I really liked this
^ar, honestly, because we had a
■ * new events and we had a lot
01 new ideas.”
^ese new ideas were additions
to many traditional activities that
are the backbone of Greenfest,
according to Kim Quick, SGA
executive for sustainability and
organizer of Greenfest.
“We did a lot of the same events
that have been done in the past,
Quick said. “We’re doing exotic
invasive removal, planting and a
new one is actually trail clearing.
Those are the outdoor service-ori
ented activities. But some of the
new things that we’ve done this
year are the trash walk about,
where students came by the
Student Environmental Center and
picked up a clear plastic trash bag
and then anything that would be
thrown away throughout the week
would go into the clear plastic bag,
minus food remnants and things
like that.”
Approximately 15 students and
faculty participated in the trash
walk about, including Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs Bill
Haggard, according to Quick.
“It was just basically to give stu
dents an idea to be more aware of
their consumption levels,” Quick
said. “Some of them found it
shocking because they didn’t con
sume nearly as much as they
thought they would. Their bags
ended up being very small, and
then other people, their bags were
very full.”
There was also a special focus
this year on education, unlike in
years past, according to Card.
“It was really educational this
year and I think that’s what it s
supposed to be,” Card said.
“That’s what is really important
about the event and I think we
really accomplished that this year.
(Quick) is really working hard to
educate students about the issues,
and I thought that was important.”
Education is key to having stu
dents change their lifestyles,
according to Quick.
“I think that people will be will
ing to change their behavior to be
living more sustainably but only if
you actually educate people on
how their actions are going to con
tribute to promoting environmen
tal wellness,” Quick said.
One of the main new events this
year was a compact fluorescent
light bulb giveaway. SGA, in
cooperation with the Better
Asheville Recycling Coalition
gave away approximately 170
bulbs on Wednesday.
“They went really fast,” Quick
said. “We got rid of all of them in
about two hours or so. Students
seemed to be really excited about
that because that’s something that
if you go to a hardware store
you’re going to pay $4 for, and we
were just giving them out to stu
dents for free.”
Attached to each light bulb was a
fact sheet informing students of
how much money and energy they
were saving by using compact flu
orescent light bulbs, according to
Quick.
“The bulbs that we gave out
amounted to preventing around
35,(X)0 pounds of coal from being
burned and something like 78,000
pounds of greenhouse gas emis
sions from going into the atmos
phere,” Quick said. “So I felt like
that was pretty big, and I’m hoping
that students will actually switch
out those bulbs.”
SEE Greenfest page 21
JRS.SICA Bl.Y im-, - S ' M l I’HOTor.HAI'HI J'
Two students ride their bikes on campus during Greenfest to promote
more environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Despite the
rain, some students said they learned a lot from SGA’s event.
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