Newspapers / North Carolina Wesleyan University … / Feb. 2, 1996, edition 1 / Page 4
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PAGE 4 — THE DECREE — FEBRUARY 2,1996 OFFICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF NORTH CAROUNA WESLEYAN COLLEGE Editor-in-Chief — Kimberly Curseen Copy Editor — Kevin Corbett Advertising Manager — John Morgan Staff — Greg Purcetli Jessica BrownvTequaka Moore, Marcy Stover» Alan Felton^ Jessica Gobooh, Charlotte Pettitt. Karolyn Braun Advisor — Chris LaLonde The Decree is located in th« Hardees Building, North Carolina Weskyan Colley 3400 Wesleyan Blvd., Rocky Moim^ NC 27801. . Wedcfy stair meetings are held Wednesday at 4i30p.in.'in the Decree ''-Vv'.i - V ; fte-pubitratioii of any matter herein without the o^jn^consmt of the Editorial Board is strictly forbidden, r/w Decree is composed and printed by the Spring Hope Enterprise. Opinions pttblisb^ do not Student leadership becoming too elite North Carolina Wesleyan College averages about 1,700 students a year. Wesleyan also has 300-400 on-campus residents. However, out of all these people it appears that approximately only two per cent of the students hold lead ership positions. That is not as disturbing as the fact that the two per cent is mostly made of the same students year after year. This two percent have spe cial attention and interest paid to them. They are allowed privileges, respect, and al most a peer-like relationship in some cases with faculty and staff. These chosen people are drawn in to the information loop of the school when they become privy to only half of what the rest of the student body only speculates about. These students also become alienated form the rest of the student body. Truthfully, how could they not? They become an exclusive community to themselves; the upper crust, the thinkers among a sea of perceived un derachievers. The College has allowed and in many cases blurred the line between student and staff member by giving these stu dents incredible responsibil ity and insider information. These students have become the confidants of the school. They are burdened with the staff and faculties’ negative f " ll I'FV FiHAUY OH UHe T~ CoHKecTep. PiyG6€p m. OR OH ywi kost S«Prt\STicAT«P S15TCH ’oevisei) fog CoMrt«N«:CTH6 WiTtt feiisw perceptions. These students also be come the dumping ground of criticism about their peers. Many of the close intimate contact the staff and faculty have is with these student leaders so they use these stu dents to level criticism about the shortcomings of the stu dent body. For the student leaders, it can only leave them to either feel guilty for not doing enough to change the negative appearance of their “peers” or to have feel ings of intellectual and char acter superiority over their “peers.” In either case, these students are farther removed from the student body. The college not only em braces these student leaders but uses them in too many cases to the point of burnout. These students shoulder the burden of 1,700 people con stantly and often without con cern for what it is doing to them. Often these once hard working, energetic, optimis tic people become bitter and cynical. For every praise from the student body these students receive, the resentment from that same student body rises. Wesleyan has grown a mini community of students. How ever, if the gardener spends all his time tending roses, you are left with overwatered roses surrounded by the rest of the garden strangled with weeds. ^She sounds like God^ A national treasure passes By DR. STEVE FEREBEE During the spring and summer of 1974, I was finishing college and moving from Florida to New Mexico for graduate school. Hardly ever near a television, I kept up with the Watergate hear ings through newspapers and magazines. As my father, two of my broth ers, and I drove to New Mexico, I heard on the car radio what the proceedings sounded like. Traveling in a car full of men, all but one dogged sports fans, is a cacophonous experience. Base ball crowds roar, fans debate mer its and weaknesses, wind woosh, tires sing, bits of music flash by. Add various hot political views and hardly any one noise can cut through the dissonance. But suddenly, during one of those two-minute news “summa ries,” a sonorous melody sus pended our blather. A report about the Watergate hearings contained maybe 15 seconds of a woman’s voice. It commanded that we lis ten. Even my father’s cigar paused in mid-gesture. “The CON-STI-TU-TION DE-MANDS NO LESS,” she thundered. We didn’t need tele vision to show us the deference the committee men were paying; we too nodded in respect and agreement. “Who was that?” I breathed at last. “That’s Barbara Jordan,” an swered my Texan brother. “She’s from Houston,” he said with some pride. Dr. Steve “She sounds like God,” said my father, echoing a now-famil iar comparison about her voice. Barbara C. Jordan: 1936 child of a poverty-laden Houston neigh borhood, Boston University Law School graduate in 1959, Texas Senator 1967-1973, U. S. House of Representatives 1973-1979, keynote speaker for National Democratic Convention in 1976 and 1992. Professor of Law at the University of Texas 1979- 1996. I list her vita because when Jordan died on Jan. 17 some of my students didn’t know who she was. As Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, said at Jor dan’s memorial service, Barbara Jordan was a national treasure. When she declared her faith in the Constitution, even though, she noted dryly, the first draft had left her out, she said, in a voice which chills you and thrills you at the same time: “I am not going to sit here and be an idle specta tor to the diminution, the subver sion, the destruction of the Con stitution.” If a drama is what he wanted, Oliver Stone needed to look no further than that moment in American history. Barbara Jordan gave voice, not to Democrats or women or blacks, but to those who believed, against the grain of the McCarthy-Nixon- Agnew models, that politics could be an honorable and caring com munity of intellectuals. That poli tics is not such a community may account for Jordan’s premature departure in 1979, just as she had solidified her image as an orator with righteous moral force. - Now we also know that Jor dan suffered — first from mul tiple sclerosis and later leukemia. In 1992 she spoke from a wheel chair to the Democratic conven tion, but that mesmerizing voice and meticulous intellect and cou rageous honesty still called us to our better selves, to our belief in a cause greater the momentary re- election. We can not and will not falter in our belief that we should care for each other, she told us. The echoes are perhaps fad ing, but the magnificent strength of Barbara C. Jordan remains to remind us of who we might be. Letters to the editor policy The Decree accepts only signed letters to the editors. Unsigned letters will not be printed. Letters should not exceed 400 words. Letters need to be placed in the campus post office and marked “Decree” or placed in the Decree office in the Hardees building. Letters must be received by Friday of the week prior to the next issue in order to be printed in that issue. The Decree reserves the right to edit or reject letters for grammar, libel, or good taste.
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