Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Feb. 27, 2001, edition 1 / Page 1
Part of University of North Carolina Wilmington Student Newspaper / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
VOLUME HI, Number 31 Inside This Issue., Have a nice Spring Break!! Check out our next issue on March 15 Check out the senior CLASS GIFT AT WWW.SENIORCHALLENGE.ORG Studying abroad great opportunity for all Traveling and studying abroad is accessible for all students / 5 Softball back in action UNCW Softball team played host of the Seahawk Classic this past weekend /15 INDEX Campus News............. OP/ED Classifieds.................. Features 5 Sports............. Serving UNC Wilmington Since l 948 WWW.THESEAHAWK.ORG February 27, 2001 Split graduation ceremony planned for spring Todd Volkstorf Staff Writer Spring commencement for undergradu ates will take place twice in the same day for the first time in school history. The decision to split the ceremony came near the end of last semester. One ceremony will take place for the College of Arts and Sciences and another will take place for the nursing school, the education school and the business school combined. The main reason behind the decision to split the ceremony was class size, as the spring 2000 commencement proved too crowded. A single ceremony that size re sulted in each graduate only getting three tick ets to attend, which caused minor problems with ticket scalping. Terry Curran, dean of students, told the Seahawk in November of last year that the number of people in Trask Coliseum for the May 2000 ceremony probably exceeded fire codes. Having the two ceremonies will fiee up space inside Trask Coliseum and each stu dent wiU receive six tickets. Extra tickets will be available to those who need them that day. Another debated commencement issue was whether or not students would walk to the stage and receive their diplomas. Mary Crookes, UNCW events coordinator, said that part of the ceremony would remain the same. Graduate students will walk at their main ceremony as they always have, under graduates will not. According to Crookes, something new this year is a professional photographer who will take pictures of each student as they walk in the prtxxssional. The- pictures will be avail able for purchase over the Internet. Crookes said the different departments within the university are having their ceremo nies on the Friday before commencement. In the past the departmental events have taken place after the main ceremony. Although Cnx)kes does not plan those particular events, she said she beheves it is at those events where the undergraduates will walk; how ever, the decision to allow students to walk remains up to each department. “Each department or school has been given the opportunity to have an event of their choosing on Friday,” she said. The Watson School of Education is stiU planning for its ceremony. Kathy Barlow, the education school’s dean, is unsure if graduates will walk during their ceremony. “We’re still working on that,” Barlow said. In addition to commencement, a light breakfast is scheduled for Saturday morning before the College of Arts and Sciences’ com mencement, which win take place at 9:30 a.m. A light lunch is scheduled before the 2:30 p.m. afternoon cererrwny, which is for the professional schools. According to Crookes, the department of student affairs is sponsoring an all-graduate event Friday night before commencement. The event will take place at 8 p.m. in the Warwick Center and all students, families, faculty and staff are invited. The department is still planning the event, but there are likely to be hors d’oeuvres and music. ‘Morning after PSP’be over ^counter? Heather Brady Assist. News Editor “Sex sells,” but will safer sex sell—right off drug store shelves? That question was posed to the Food and Drug Administration on Valentine’s Day when over 60 medical groups and women’s health advocates filed a petition in order to make emergency contraception pills (ECP), also commonly known as “the morning af ter pill,” accessible over the counter. ECPs, first approved by the FDA in pre scription form in 1997, must be taken within 72 hours to be effective. Advocates for the drug’s crossover into non-prescription sta tus argue that the women who would be most benefited by the dmg are often unable to gain access to physicians within the time period necessary for effective results. “The reality is that accidents don’t just occur during doctor’s office hours. They oc cur on the weekends when doctors are pretty hard to come by,” Judith DeSamo said, presi dent and CEO of the National Family Plan ning and Reproductive Health Association, according to reports fiom the U.S. Newswire. The makers of Plan B, a popular brand of ECPs, are set to begin government-sanc tioned testing on hundreds of women in hopes of further persuading the FDA of mar ket demand for the piUs, according to asso ciated press reports. Proponents hope to see ECPs hit the shelves as soon as next year. According to information provided by Plaimed Parenthood, widespread national use of the ECPs could prevent $1.7 million un planned pregnancies and over800,000 abor tions every year. “We’d love to see [emergency contracejv tion] go over the counter. It’s very safe. We want to make it as available as possible,” said Dana Blackman, director of education and community development for Planned Par enthood. “I think that [making the pills accessible without a pnescription] would be a good thing. I think it should be more widely available,” said Ashleigh Rouse, a junior at UNCW. The pills work in the same manner as pre scription birth control piUs; however, the dif ferences lay in dosing amounts. Most com monly, they prevent the woman from ovulating. If ovulation has already occurred, then the piUs work to thicken the cervical mucus to interfere with fertilization and pre vent sperm from entering the utems. How ever, if fertilization has occurred as well, the ECPs then prevent the fertilized egg from implanting into the uterine lining, thus even tually removing the egg fiom the body, ac cording Dr. Caroline Qements, assistant pro fessor of psychology, who teaches the university’s human sexual behavior course. It is this last method of averting pregnancy that most concerns anti-abortion advocates. f^merj^eiicy CUmlracc'ptkm Pills “These activists are saying a woman is not pregnant because implantation has not taken place. This dehberately ignores the significant segment of the scientific commu nity and public that hold that life begins at fertilization—not implantation. Abortion advocates are pulling the wool over women’s eyes by obscuring the fact that the morning after pUl causes a living human being to die when the [fertilized egg] can not implant in the uterus,” said Dr. David Stevens, Chris tian Medical Association executive director. Planned Parenthood, as well as other groups backing the petition, maintains that ECPs are not in any way equivalent to an abortion, asserting that some pro-life activ ists are misleading the pubUc with such charges. Others, such as Dr. Albert Abrons, medi- See ECP, Page 2
University of North Carolina Wilmington Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Feb. 27, 2001, edition 1
1
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75