Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / April 11, 1972, edition 1 / Page 4
Part of University of North Carolina at Charlotte 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
' 1 Are you on entreprenur? (CPS) -- Recently a Columbia University student, Leeam Lowin, quit college just ten credits shy of graduation. Lowin, who was an amateur dabbler in the stock market, invested an $800 student loan in the common stock of Ling-Temco-Vought. He also began investing for relatives, friends, and friends of friends, until he had about a dozen clients. Lowin made a quick seccession of wise trades, taking impressive profits for himself and his clients in L—T—V and several other stocks. Today, a couple of years later, Lowin has made quarter-millionaires out of several of those clients multiplying their initial investments 300 times. His own income is well into the seven figure bracket. Lowin, surprisingly enough is only an exception in the degree of success he has accumulated. At UCLA some students capitalized on the recerit health food fad sweeping the country by setting up a chain o organic food carts around the campus. At the University of North Carolina a missionary that recently returned from China to continue his schooling established his own campus rickshaw chauffeur service. And at hundreds of other junior colleges, colleges, and universities across the country student entrepreneurs are developing innovatively creative ways that if aren't making them millionaires are at least helping them to meet the spiraling costs of a college education. According to U.S. News and World Report last year the average cost for one year of college was $2,400. And the same magazine stated that this year the majority of colleges reported tuition increases of between 10 and 30 percent. By the time junior hits college our play-before-you-pay credit economy has its teeth sunk so deeply into dad's paycheck that for most of middle America an extra two or three thousand dollars is more than just the proverbial straw. So more and more the college student himself is made to bear at least a portion of his college cost. According to a recent survey taken on university campuses across the nation "more students are working their way through college today then ever before." And in a style typical of the college mood of the '70s many students by j. michael rawson KRIV operating and Pavlokous in college. Parents can be quite dependable commercial backers too. Joe Martin, a University of Tennessee student, found that out. A month before final exam week he sent out letters to the parents of freshmen and sophomores volunteering to buy a sack of goodies for the kids to munch on while studying. The groceries cost $2.50 a bag and Martin charged the parents $5.00 for his "personal catering service." "For weeks afte; I mailed the letters I was a nervous wreck," Martiri recalls, "The postage alone cost $200." The response finally "trickled in" -about $600 worth the first semester and over $1000 the next. But most college students have a hard enough time just meeting their college expenses. They just don't have the capital for a speculatory venture like Joe Martin's. For those hopeful business promoters Chuck Henry has a solution. Henry, a Hazlehurst Georgia, graduate student, found a way to finnagle credit that would make a corporation president proud. He saw a need in his hometown for a quality music store. But what bank will make a loan to a college student with only an idea as collateral? So Henry borrowed from friends to buy a store that would house his music shop and though it was empty he set his grand opening for Saturday, just a week away. On Friday he went to Atlanta and visited the Sony Electronics Company where he charged some tape recorders, amplifiers, consoles, record players, and other stereo equipment. They asked him for credit references and Chuck listed the Panasonic Company. To carry out his bluff he went across town to Panasonic and listed Sony as a reference. Before the two companies had figured out what was going on Chuck's music store, stocked with the finest electronic sound equipment had a successful grand opening and the fast talking Southerner had two checks in the mail Monday morning to cover his bluff. Part of the "color" those creative college entrpreneurs provide is the contrast they make with the business community. Long hair and blue jeans seem as much a part of their uniform as the black pin stripe suit was to the old Wall Streeters. Delving into his own experience, the man from "B.S.", H.B. Arnett, says the best motivator to success is "to go hungry for a few days." Maybe the college student of today compared with the college student of yesteryear is alot like the ol' tortoise in his immortal race with the hare. If he is any less energetic he is twice as enterprising. page five/the joumal/april 11,1972 today are rejecting the old standbys of jerking sodas, mopping and sweeping their way through school, in favor of a little entrepreneuring. They feel as Gayle McMurray does; "When I got out of the army I made up my mind that I'd never work for anybody else as long as I could think for myself. McMurray, a senior at Brigham Young University, has done a lot ot thinking in the two years he's been out of the service. Last year he put one of his ideas to work. He read about a man who made a million dollars printing "pig" tee shirts and selling them to police departments around the country. So after paying his semester's tuition and fees McMurray, who looks like a cross between the Irish and Jewish boy next door, took his last $50, bought some silk-screening equipment and some tee shirts and began printing insignias and designs on them. Today, McMurrary is the president of Bart Smut's Productions, a company that expects to gross $20,000 this year. Not bad consisting the company consists of two full time college students: the company's founder and president and his partner, H.B. Arnett. "I hired H.B. off toilet cleaning," McMurray jokes. "Yea, I was working from four to seven A.M. as a janitor and was pretty desperate," Arnett recalls. In the year since "B.S." has sold tee shirts to high schools and colleges throughout California, Utah, and Idaho, and recently sold a sizable order to the Big Boy restaurant chain. More than just a silk-screening enterprise, McMurray and Arnett like to think of "B.S." as a factory house for ideas. Excited about their initial business success, BYU's junior financiers branched out and invested in such diverse areas as cattle, concessions, and institutional food company, and advertising. They've been lucky so far. All their ideas are making money. Just before the new BYU president's inauguration, Arnett bought space in the student newspaper to the tune of $160. He then sold that space to 60 downtown merchants who paid $300 to give the new university president congratulatory compliments from their places of business. David Pavlokous set up a mini radio station in his apartment. Station KRIV didn't carry past his apartment complex but those 5,000 poteritial listeners proved to be enough. The apartment owner caught on to the idea and began billing his apartment complex as the only one in the city with its own radio station. This brought some commercial backing which kept Black media not black There is no doubt that television is the most powerful means of communication. Its influence upon your life reaches from the most subtle urge to the most odvious action suprred by the good old hard sell. The media, as presently constructed, depends largely on advertising revenues and the sale of airtime to sponors. In major markets one minute of prime time cost from $5,000-8,000. This high cost acts to eliminate or neutralize large segments of the population; it perpetuates the unrealistic protrayal of American life much like the exclusion of longhairs and unconventionally dressed Americans from our public officials appearances. It is quite apparent that black people are being oppressed by exclusion today as they have been in the past. We all know that in the past television has distorted the realities of the black experience through stereotyped bit appearances. In 1957, Nat King Cole's variety show died from lack of sponsor support. Leslie Uggums Show yields to Hee Haw. The high visibility of the black actor makes him appear to be in greater numbers than he actually is. According to Black Business Digest, a New York survey shows that minorities get only about 6 percent of the acting jobs and less than 3 percent of the commercials. The percentage of Blacks presently employed in policy making FX>sitions, technical and production areas of the mass media are even smaller. Americans spend an average of 5'A hours per day watching television. Blacks make up about 11 percent of the popujation and own about the same percentage of televisions as the general population. Black's investment in television exceeds $2 billion; yet the programing and policies of the media do not reflect this segment of the population. There are 863 commercial television stations in this country—none are black owned or manag^. Their profits, viewpoints and perspectives are white. Even Black — oriented or soul radio is not black owned,. These stations function only to deliver their black audience to the advertiser at a price. Charlotte's radio station WGIV is no exception. Because Charlotte blacks by don keaton are so loyal to WGIV the station can offer the best guarantee of a listening audience in town and sell it. White disc jockey Chuck Baron spits out his own brand of vulgur stereotyping that the majority of Blacks do not appreciate, but the white management believes he gets the job done. Nearly a quarter century after a radio station first geared its entire broadcasting format to black interests, there still is no nationwide, black-oriented news network. Except for the minumum requirements under Federal Communications Commissions regulations, it is the general policy of these stations to keep controversy at a minimum. The so-called Black station serves primarily the rteeds of its white owrters, while serving only soul music to its audience. Black people must come to see the broadcasting airwaves as property of the people and realize that the media has the potential to shape their vision and perception of the world. Strategy for chartce is in the making. Next week: The Work of The Best - Black Efforts for Soul in Television.
University of North Carolina at Charlotte Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 11, 1972, edition 1
4
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75