14
Friday, August 20, 1999
Scott Hicks
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Laura Stoehr
UNIVERSITY EDITOR
Jacob McConnico
CITY EDITOR
Board Editorials
A Shot of Reality
Let’s see if we can get this straight: officials
are using the results of a recent study to give
the impression that two out of three UNC
students don’t drink alcohol.
On the other hand, the Chapel Hill five-oh
arrested 46 people on 56 alcohol-related
charges Sunday night during a sting of
underage booze buyers.
Of those, 33 were college students.
Nineteen of those go to UNC.
And the University says most students
don’t drink.
To be sure, the whole point of the “two out
of three, .00 BAC” campaign is to stop stu
dents - such as the hapless 46 arrested
Sunday - from drinking in the first place.
The discrepancy, though, is between the
laws and reality. Young people drink. Duh.
Denying that is lunacy. Trying to keep
booze out of students’ hands is even dumber.
Remember Prohibition? That word should
send bells ringing in anyone’s head that reg
ulating alcohol doesn’t fix the problem.
It only makes it worse.
UNC isn’t alone in its efforts to stop stu
dent drinking. Locally, both N.C. State and
Duke universities are using a computer pro
gram called “Alcohol 101.”
It allows students to enter virtual-reality
bars and order drinks. The program then
shows students what their blood-alcohol con
Clearly Overkill
In light of the recent wave of violence
sweeping the nation’s schools, office build
ings and even day-care centers, it is clear that
something needs to be done to protect the
children.
But what is less apparent is the answer to
the question of when excessive caution
becomes a problem.
Schools nationwide have been installing
metal detectors, requiring students to wear or
carry identification badges and even banning
backpacks in their efforts to keep guns out.
One local school, A.L. Stanback Middle
School in Hillsborough, has adopted a dif
ferent take on the backpack ban, mandating
that students carry transparent backpacks
made of clear plastic or mesh.
The intention is good, but we don’t need
to turn our schools into prisons, and we don’t
need to treat all children as if they are bud
ding criminals.
What’s next? Clear clothing? It would cer
tainly prevent students from carrying gunS in
their pockets, but it would at the same time
mean that hormonally charged middle
schoolers would be walking the halls naked,
paying more attention to each other than to
Get Your Name in Print
The Daily Tar Heel wants to represent the voice of all its readers from students to professors to
University workers to panhandlers on the street.
A great way for that to happen is for you yes, you to put pen to page and submit a guest col
umn to appear on this very page. You can take advantage of this opportunity every day the DTH hits
the newsstands. Call Editor Rob Nelson or Editorial Page Editor Scott Hicks at 962-0245.
If art is more your thing, apply to be a cartoonist. Come by Student Union Suite 104 before Aug. 27.
Barometer
Board This!
The Carrboro Board of Aldermen's
identity crisis continues. May we
suggest the Carrboro Board of
Chumps? Or maybe they should just kick the
women out and it won't even be an issue.
So(da) Long ...
The joy of cola is no more Lenoir
Dining Hall, the last oasis for Pepsi
lovers on campus, has ditched the
%
taste of the next generation for Coke. Cheers to the
real thing?
Tar Heel Quotables
“It’s a very emotional period.”
Chi Omega President Leigh Marcus
On fall rush. Yeah, Leigh, and so is being buried in an
earthquake, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and being shot at
school or the office.
“These buildings are going to be dramati
cally nicer than the rest of the buildings on
campus.”
Vice Chancellor for Student Services
Dean Bresciani
On plans for new residence halls. Whoa,do you really mean
to say that those beautiful South Campus high-rises aren't
the best residence halls on campus?
Rob Nelson
EDITOR
Office Hours Friday 3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Matthew B. Dees
STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR
Brian Murphy
SPORTS EDITOR
T. Nolan Hayes
SPORTSATURDAY EDITOR
tent would be after taking the drinks.
The N.C. General Assembly has jumped
on the crackdown-on-drinking bandwagon,
too. Lawmakers last month stiffened the
penalty for 19- and 20-year-olds caught with
alcohol. What used to be a simple infraction
is now a Class 111 misdemeanor that carries
up to a SSOO fine.
Taken together, these efforts show just how
serious society is about curbing drinking in
general and underage drinking in particular.
Nothing happens in a vacuum, and that’s
why UNC is so bent on stopping drinking.
But even if state lawmakers won’t wake up
and smell the coffee, the University with all
its wealth of smart folks should -and that
means conceding that students drink.
Sunday night’s sting proved that. Officials
should stop deluding themselves.
If the honest-to-God truth is that 66 per
cent of students don’t drink, fine. As the G.I.
Joe cartoons said, knowing is half the battle.
A better approach would be for UNC to
provide information about the risks of drink
ing to those who are considering it and offer
counseling for those who abuse it.
As long as there’s a legal age, there will be
underage drinkers. As long as there are col
leges, there’s going to be drinking.
And despite legal ages and penalties, peo
ple will decide on their own to drink or not.
their studies.
WTien not carried to their logical end, bans
and restrictions on backpacks seem like good
ideas. But they have the potential to aggra
vate the problem.
Face it, kids will be kids. And kids like to
break rules.
Harsh restrictions to keep children from
sneaking guns into schools could backfire in
a big way. The rules present a challenge, and
kids will be tempted to sneak a gun, be it a
toy or the real thing, into the classroom to see
if the new rules can be broken.
The preventive measures being taken by
schools across the nation are nothing more
than remedies designed to cure a symptom
of a much larger problem.
Real change will not occur just because
school children have to carry ID badges and
tote around clear bags.
While those measures might help trim the
number of massacres that happen in the
nation’s classrooms and on its playgrounds,
they will not stop the underlying cause.
For that to occur, a fundamental societal
change must take place. Let’s not hamper
that with precautions that become problems.
Of Rush and Rom
God bless technology UNC's
sorority houses now have a
computer program to match
rushees to houses. Does it take into account hair
color, bust size and number of tank-tops?
Welcome Change
Department of University Housing
officials say there won't be any
construction in residence halls this
xKp-
year. Maybe we'll be able to sleep past 6:30 a.m.
this year without backhoes rumbling outside.
“The young people that we met (Sunday
night) were pleasant. Nobody got hurt.”
Chapel Hill Police Chief Ralph
Pendergraph
On a weekend bust of underage booze buyers. Makes you
wonder how often the cops rough up those underagers.
“(At age 18) teenagers are ... old enough
to get married. Why can’t they, if they want
to, buy alcohol?”
N.C. Sen. Ham Horton Jr., R-Forsyth
Even Republicans make a damned good point once in a
while.
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_
SUV Appeal Stems From Penis Envy
Some years ago, a car commercial ran on
TV that depicted a flock of geese flying
over a field. Suddenly, the background
shifted, and they were flying inside a Buick
sedan.
The gist of the accompanying voice-over
was this: “Americans love big things, so here’s
a big car for them.”
It seemed innocent enough. After all, who
doesn’t need a little extra room to stretch out
in the car?
Flash forward to the present, however, and
the demand for larger automobiles seems a lit
tle more insidious.
Carmakers haven’t confined their augmen
tations to the interiors of vehicles (or even to
cars, for that matter).
Instead, they’re adding on where the frills
will be most noticeable - the outside. Asa
result, sport-utility vehicles are at the forefront
of a sickening new trend in American con
sumerism.
All Americans know that Ronald
McDonald makes a better apple pie than
mom, just as everyone knows that Wal-Mart is
the convenient alternative to the grocer, tailor
and bric-a-brac shop.
So why disparage a product like the sport
utility vehicle, which also exists solely on the
basis of the public’s demand for them?
Because SUVs are more than just a result
of market forces. They are indicative of deep
er defects in the collective American psyche,
namely, the inability of the bourgeoisie to
think socially.
Practical cars seem to have gone the way of
the dinosaur as far as the middle-class is con
cerned. The bottom line in car buying is that
bigger is almost never better, and yet there
are waiting lists for some of the most popular
SUVs.
Many of the people willing to shell out for
these monstrosities rationalize their purchase
with such excuses as needing a large towing
capacity or off-road capabilities.
Some even insist that they need room for
Take Advantage of Safety Services
As we begin another school year, we all
have a lot on our minds: buying books,
getting those last minute classes, catch
ing up with old friends.
But there is one more thing we should all
think about. Over the past few days, two
assaults have occurred on campus.
While we are all aware that these things
happen, too often we think that they will not
happen to us. Unfortunately, incidents like
this can happen to anyone, even when you
think you are being safe.
These things are not caused by the actions
of the victim; they are the result of disturbed
individuals who absolutely do not belong on
this campus.
In light of all of this, we can all take precau
tions to better protect ourselves and others.
The University has responded to these
unfortunate assaults in several ways. After the
incidents, we implemented an emergency
alert system as soon as we could.
Administrators made the first calls to a pre
arranged residence hall phone tree, so that
someone in each residence hall knew what
had happened and alerted residents.
They also used a similar phone tree to con
tact all Greek houses, so that people living in
the houses could not only take extra precau
tions themselves, but inform anyone who was
coming over to the house for a social event or
to visit friends.
Vicky Eckenrode & Courtney Weill
MANAGING EDITORS
Miller Pearsall
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Thomas Ausman
DESIGN EDITOR
Megan Sharkey
GRAPHICS EDITOR
■
JOSH FENNELL
CAUSTIC CORNER
several passengers. Here’s a tip: Buy a mini
van. Even better, take the bus. It may not
have a great stereo system, but it seats 60.
Besides, at a base sticker price of $27,396,
it’s a safe bet that nobody is four-wheeling in
a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
For that same 27 grand, a poor family
could have bought a house. Maybe not in a
neighborhood littered with sport-utility vehi
cles, but hey, who wants to live with people
who are so easily ordered about by popular
culture anyway?
Larger-than-average vehicles are more than
socially irresponsible; they’re also a danger to
everyone on the road.
Every driver who has been behind one
knows that SUVs block out a great deal of vis
ibility for other drivers, making it nearly
impossible to pass or to judge stopping dis
tances.
Also, while it is well-known that SUVs pro
vide excellent protection for their drivers, it is
a rarely discussed fact that when an SUV and
a car collide, the driver of the smaller vehicle
is probably going to die or at least be badly
injured.
Running a stop sign no longer results in a
fender-bender; it now ends in a trip to the
morgue.
Asa matter of fact, Ford has had to install a
four-foot steel bar under its newest SUV to
prevent it from driving over a car in an acci
dent.
That’s not just death; it’s decapitation. Such
■
NIC HEINKE AND
MONIKA MOORE
GUEST COLUMNISTS
Finally, University officials used a database
to send a mass e-mail message to users of the
University e-mail system informing them of
what had occurred and listing certain safety
tips.
University Police also responded quickly.
Along with recruiting help from extra officers
and informing Point-2-Point drivers to not
refuse anyone a ride, they swept all of the bars
and late-night establishments on Franklin
Street and informed owners, bouncers and
some club patrons of the incident.
These efforts were done in hopes that peo
ple on or near Franklin Street would make a
special effort to see that no one was walking
home alone.
Student government took a few steps as
well.
We contacted all resident assistants in
Granville Towers and asked them to inform
their residents.
Also, we went door-to-door at bars and fra
ternity houses that looked especially crowded,
reminding them of the incident and asking
them to be safe when returning home.
(Tljr Saily (Tar Uppl
Allison Burns
ONLINE EDITOR
Whitney Moore
WRITING COACH
Terry Wimmer
OMBUDSMAN
disregard for fellow humans is more than just
the consequence of greed or stupidity - it’s
ghoulish and perverse, and it indicates a will
ful desire to harm others.
With all of the facts in mind, it would seem
that SUVs are both the problem and instru
ments of a larger one: the drivers who own
them.
Naturally, those drivers would be men.
Let’s not kid ourselves - when the words
“bad” and “driver” are used together, we are
usually speaking of men or little boys mas
querading as such.
But, oddly enough, the perusal of any busy
intersection yields this fact: The majority of
SUV drivers are women.
How did that happen? Why would a
woman want to drive something so obviously
useless and obnoxious?
The answer is this: penis envy.
Fact is, women want to be men and vice
versa. In exercising her new-found rights at
the turn of the century, the American woman,
though still bound by myriad taboos and the
influence of a husband, is attempting to distin
guish herself from faceless and silenced gener
ations of the past.
And the way she does that is by exerting
her will on others, specifically men. Freud
would have it that the SUV phenomenon is
the expression of an inferiority complex gen
erated by the lack of a phallus.
In the “mine is bigger than yours” game,
the winner now can be a woman, since mid
dle-class, homebound wives have both plenty
of disposable income and no other means of
power.
As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her book
“The Second Sex,” when a woman responds
to being humiliated by men through “mascu
line protest,” she masculinizes herself.
Those who own cars had better watch out.
Josh Fennell is a junior biology major from
Charlotte. You can send hate mail to fen
nell@email.unc.edu.
The University is doing all it can to ensure
our safety, but we must also play a part. While
not foolproof, there are certain things which
we can do to reduce our risk.
■ Ride P2R If you are not near a P2P
Xpress stop, call for a van to pick you up.
While we all get in a hurry and sometimes do
not want to wait, it is always worth a few extra
minutes to get home safely.
■ Use SAFE Escort to get home if you are
in the library late.
■ Use the buddy system. There is safety in
numbers; do not walk anywhere alone!
■ Stay in well-lit areas, and know the loca
tions of emergency call boxes near you.
■ Do not let strangers into residence halls -
the main entrances are locked for a reason!
While we have all heard these before, we
must realize that this is not an arbitrary list.
Being on such a peaceful campus, we often
fall into a false sense of security. But bad
things do happen.
If you have questions, or suggestions of
other things we could do, please call the stu
dent government office at 962-5201.
Remember, nothing is more important
than your safety.
Reach Student Body President Nic Heinke
at nheinke@email.unc.edu. Reach Student
Body Vice President Monika Moore at moni
kal@email.unc.edu.