Battling AIDS
Speaker ignites
crowd. See Page 3
®lip Sally ®ar MM
www.dailytarheri.com
DTH/ARIEL SHUMAKER
A student walks over the fence in front of Hinton James Residence Hall.
The fence was torn down by irate students Monday night.
Bush Pursues
'Finality' From
Supreme Court
On Friday, the Bush team will ask the U.S.
Supreme Court to overturn Florida court
decisions and end state ballot recounts.
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court should “forestall
an impending constitutional crisis” over Florida’s 25 electoral
votes, lawyers for George W. Bush argued Tuesday, while A1
Gore’s lawyers said the court should not interfere.
Bush, whose appeal the high court is set to hear Friday, said
the justices can bring “legal finality” to the
presidential election by overturning the
Florida courts and ending any further bal
lot recounts.
Florida’s decisive 25 electoral votes were awarded to Bush
on Sunday night. Gore is fighting to overturn results of the
Florida election and claim those electoral votes, and with
them the White House.
“By acting now to reject the
Florida Supreme Court’s unwarrant
ed intrusion into the regulation of the
manner of appointing electors, this
court will eliminate the potential for
a constitutional crisis" over who picks
the electors and how, Bush’s lawyers wrote.
Gore’s team called the Republican arguments “insubstan
tial” and said the Florida court “played a familiar and quin-
tessentially judicial role” in interpreting
state law. They asked the justices to
affirm the ruling and avoid trampling on
what is supposed to be a matter of state
law.
“Principles of federalism counsel
strongly against interference by this
court,” the Gore legal team said in its
brief.
At the same time, the vice president is
asking a Florida judge to undo the sec
retary of state’s certification of Bush as
the winner. That certification came after
the Supreme Court agreed to take
Bush’s appeal.
It is not clear how a high court deci
sion would affect the case now.
“It’s very complicated, and I don’t
think anyone knows for sure,” said Gore lawyer Laurence
Tribe.
If the justices think they do not have enough time left to
decide, they could opt not to hear the
case after all. Bush’s filings Tuesday,
however, argued that the court still has a
role to play.
Bush asked the justices to overturn a
Florida Supreme Court ruling that
allowed hand recounting of votes to con
tinue past a state-imposed deadline of
Nov. 14, saying the manual reviews
opened the door for Democrat Gore to
continue legal contests for weeks more.
“The Florida Supreme Court’s deci
sion, which conflicts with both federal
statutes and the federal Constitution,
will thus continue to affect, and has the
theoretical potential to change, the out
come of the presidential election in
Florida, and thus the nation,” Bush argued.
He wants the results of ballots recounted since Nov. 14
omitted from the official state election tally.
That would give Bush a 930-vote margin instead of his cur
rent 537-vote lead.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Mark Twain
<s]lft
Bush Prepares
For Presidency,
Legal Battles
See Pages 6 & 8
H i *
Sgt 1
Democrat
Al Gore
asked a Florida judge
to reverse
the certification
of Bush's win.
Republican
George W. Bush
wants the Nov. 14
vote count to be
final, giving him the
presidency.
Serving the students and the University community since 1893
Residents Refuse to Accept Fence
By Aisha K. Thomas
Staff Writer
Residents of Hinton James Residence
Hall are taking action against the tempo
rary fence preventing them from crossing
Manning Drive, attempting to destroy
the fence and vowing to keep it down.
The fence was installed because offi
cials were concerned that pedestrians
were jaywalking at Manning Drive, said
Christopher Payne, director of the
Department of Housing and Residential
Education.
But residents say the fence only caus
es more inconveniences.
“I think the fence is kind of point
less,” said sophomore Allison Jackson.
immediate Reaction
By Michael McKnight
Staff Writer
Millions of Americans went to bed on
Election Night thinking Republican can
didate George W. Bush had been elected
the 43rd president of the United States.
But by the next morning, it was clear vot
ers in the state of Florida had managed to
elude the projections of nearly every net
work analyst in the nation - twice.
At about 8 p.m. Tuesday, the five
major television networks and The
Associated Press all predicted Democrat
Al Gore would be the winner in Florida.
A short time later, all six organizations
retracted their projections.
Just after midnight it
became clear that Florida’s
25 electoral votes would
put either candidate over
the top in the hunt for the
270 electoral votes required
to win the presidency.
At 2 a.m., the same five
networks, minus the AP,
called Florida for Bush and
pronounced him the next
president of the United
States. After 3 a.m., the net
works made their third and
final call of the night - say-
Too .
Close A
A three-part series
examining issues raised in
the wake of the historic
2000 presidential race.
■ Today: The Media's Role
■ Thursday: Electoral
College and Voting Woes
■ Friday: Mandate?
ing the race in Florida was too close to call.
Three weeks after the votes were cast,
the election isn’t the only thing still up in
the air -some think the media’s credi
bility is as well.
Several major television networks
have begun internal investigations into
their Election Night activities in hopes of
discovering what went wrong and why
projection practices that worked in the
System Scrutiny
The University of Virginia
is taking steps to reform its
honor court. See Page 9
“People are going to cross the street
there anyway.”
The new fence forces residents to go
through the back door of Hinton James
and walk along Skipper Bowles Drive
before crossing at die Manning and
Skipper Bowles intersection.
But many students continue to cross
Manning in front of Ehringhaus
Residence Hall after traveling down the
Hinton James driveway and walking
along the fence.
Freshman Hilary Greene said the
fence creates more safety problems than
it resolves. “I’m surprised that it is still
up,” she said. “As long as it is up, some
body is going to get killed trying to cross
that street.”
past failed this time around.
But while the media is looking into the
problems of Election Night, some in the
industry have gone on damage control
duty to counter the harsh criticism they
have received from various media ana
lysts after the election miscalls.
Not only are the networks looking into
the miscalculations on Election Night,
Congress is as well.
A congressional probe planned for
January will look into the networks’ early
calls of the presidential race in Florida
and its impact in places where polls had
not yet closed.
Steve Randall, senior analyst at the
media watchdog group Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting, said this year’s
election coverage is just
another incident that has
caused public perception of
the news media to take a
downhill slide.
He said the reason the
networks made premature
calls was simple - they vio
lated one of the principal
rules of journalism by rely
ing upon a single source,
the Voter News Service
(VNS), to make their calls.
VNS is an organization
funded by ABC News, CBS
News, CNN, Fox News,
NBC News and the AP and provides pro
jections to all of them on Election Night.
Like Randall, UNC journalism
Professor Charlie Tuggle said the projec
tions and retractions on Election Night
indicate serious problems in the way the
networks handle election coverage.
Tuggle, who recently conducted an
audience assessment poll on live news
reporting, said that according to his sur-
jf)
Many residents have complained
about the location of the fence, so the
Hinton James Area Government spon
sored a forum Monday night for stu
dents to voice these concerns.
But after the forum, irate students
took matters into their own hands and
tore down part of the fence.
Junior Jonathan Lowman was one of
many Hinton James residents who said
they would not allow the fence to stay.
“It’s just going to get knocked down,” he
said. “If somebody else doesn’t do it, I
probably will.”
University officials said they do not
want to inconvenience students and that
they are disappointed students are van
dalizing the fence.
DTH/MIKE SUTTON
vey, the networks’ rush to be the first to
report election winners was unnecessary
because most viewers care more about a
network’s accuracy than whether it is the
first to break a story.
The recent criticism the networks are
receiving from media watchdog groups
and analysts in the aftermath of the elec
tion has some in the broadcast industry
on the defensive.
Barbara Cochrane, president of the
Radio-Television News Directors’
Association, blamed this year’s miscalls on
the closeness of the race. “Very few elec
tions are as close as this one. That’s what
made the calls more difficult,” she said.
Cochrane said that while this year’s
miscalls were understandable given the
closeness of the race, they were unfortu
nate because candidates often rely on the
networks when deciding whether they
should celebrate or concede. “When the
networks declared Bush had won Florida,
Gore was relying on that and prepared to
make his concession speech and then had
to take it back,” she said.
The networks themselves are keeping
quiet, at least until they complete their
internal investigations.
Kelly Keane, a spokeswoman for
CNN, would not go into detail about
CNN’s projection procedure, but she
said the network relied upon information
from VNS in conjunction with its own
research to make its projections.
Keane said there is an internal inves
tigation under way at CNN. She refused
to comment on whether CNN sacrificed
accuracy to make the first projection.
“Again, that’s part of the review. We’re
dissecting what happened on that night,
so 1 really can’t comment,” she said.
See MEDIA, Page 5
Makin' It
Today: Showers, 63
Thursday: Cloudy, 56
Friday: Sunny, 53
Wednesday, November 29, 2000
“We recognize that (the fence) wasn’t
the best solution, but it was a solution,”
said Associate Director of Housing Larry
Hicks.
“We are not going to go back and
forth with students on that, but the fence
will be replaced if it is damaged.”
Students also said it takes an extra 10
minutes to get to class because of the
detour.
Some students said the fence is so
inconvenient, they want to move next
semester.
“South Campus is already out of the
way, and now there is at least 15 minutes
added to your morning,” said senior
See HINTON JAMES, Page 5
Congress
To Pay Off
Large Debt
Settling its debts will leave
Congress with fewer funds
for student groups, despite
this semester's surplus.
By Jason Arthurs
Staff Writer
While Student Congress might finish
this semester with an unexpected surplus
in this semester’s budget, it faces a debt
$44,000 larger than usual due to opti
mistic projections in last year’s annual
budget funded by student fees.
Congress
plans to pay off
the debt next
semester, a
move that will
leave few dollars
available at that
Congress Accepts
Code Revisions,
New Secretary
See Page 8
time for campus groups, said Finance
Committee Chairman Mark Townsend.
Only a few weeks ago, Congress
faced a quickly dwindling pool of funds
to allocate to campus groups this semes
ter, taking time to question exactly how
it would dole out the remaining dollars
in the subsequent allocations fund.
But when no groups requested money
during the final finance committee meet
ing, leaving $5,431 originally earmarked
for allocations this semester, Congress
and student body leaders began looking
ahead to next semester - specifically to
—jj—- — I
Iy|IIL ■
fill in a more than
$44,000 hole dug
just last year,
Townsend said.
“We’re going to
take all this debt
and eat it next
semester,” he said.
“We just want to
nip it in the bud.”
Student Body
Treasurer Patrick
Frye said that
while Congress
typically runs in
the red because of
miscalculations of
Student Body
Treasurer
Patrick Frye
says this semester's
budget surplus
surprised him.
revenues from student fees, overly opti
mistic projections and a start-off deficit
of $5,195 caused the current debt to be
about $44,000 more than it should be.
Frye said the $193,666.90 annual bud
get for 2000-2001, drawn in February of
last year, is between 5 and 11 percent
higher than it should have been.
The overall budget figure is based on
enrollment projections and subsequent
student fee collections, money rolled
over from the previous year and esti
mated reversions - money not spent by
groups that must be returned.
Frye said the budget figure for this
year was presented by last year’s
Student Body Treasurer Ryan Sdilitt.
Schlitt probably made the optimistic
See CONGRESS, Page 5