10
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2004
BOARD EDITORIALS
NOT QUITE JUSTICE
Police were right to classify a recent assault as a hate crime, but they
also should have charged the offenders with “ethnic intimidation.”
According to statute N.C. GS 14-401.14, “If a
person shall, because of race, color, religion,
nationality or countiy of origin, assault anoth
er person ... he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misde
meanor.” In short, this crime is known as “ethnic
intimidation.”
An assault that occurred in Chapel Hill on March
27 certainly seemed to fit the guidelines for this type
of offense, but, apparently, local police didn’t think so.
The incident, in which Sikh UNC senior
Gagandeep Bindra and two friends were accosted by
three teenage boys near the intersection of West
Franklin and Mallette streets, began when one of the
boys referred to Bindra as al-Qaida leader Osama bin
Laden. Bindra, an economics major from Punjab,
India, referred to the boy’s mother in response.
After following Bindra and his friends, reports
state, the boys became violent. Bindra was hit in the
jaw, and one of his friends was injured to the point
of needing medical attention.
According to reports, police categorized the
assault as a hate crime. But they didn’t charge the
alleged assailants with ethnic intimidation. On
A CHOICE HINDERED
It isn’t the place of the University to interfere in students’ personal
health choices and make it harder for smokers to purchase cigarettes.
Smokers throughout the University community
are frustrated —and rightfiilly so over the
fact that cigarettes will no longer be sold at sev
eral campus stores.
There is no doubt that smoking is a deadly habit,
and those smokers at UNC probably should quit.
However, stopping the sale of cigarettes on campus
is ridiculous, and so is the manner in which that
decision was made.
Student Stores Director John Jones is responsible
for the decision to take cigarettes off the shelves at
the Circus Room and the Campus Y.
That decision was made after philosophy
Professor Marc Lange wrote a letter to The Daily Tar
Heel’s Readers’ Forum and personally contacted
Jones to offer a polite warning of the letter’s content.
The letter referenced anew program started by
UNC Hospitals to help students and hospital
patients kick the nasty habit.
Lange argued that the sale of cigarettes in branch
es of Student Stores compromised the UNC Health
Care System’s efforts to wean people off their nico
ACADEMIC PRIORITY
+i Jl
Unfortunately, Emeka Okafor is more the exception than the rule in
terms of college sports stars balancing athletics with good academics.
Emeka Okafor has been the darling of this year’s
men’s college basketball season. The star cen
ter for Connecticut’s championship team is an
academic All-American, wields a 3.76 grade point
average and is on track to graduate a year early with
a degree in finance. There are no worries for him.
It’s the many players in the NCAA Tournament’s
Final Four not graduating who are drawing some
concern. Of this year’s Final Four teams, only Duke
has a graduation rate higher than 50 percent, which
sports reformers are advocating as a minimum stan
dard for collegiate programs.
Nationally, only 44 percent of collegiate men’s
basketball players graduate from college. Four of the
65 teams that participated in the NCAA Tournament
failed to graduate any players at all.
These numbers indicate a serious problem, and
the NCAA is finally taking some action about it.
NCAA board members are slated to vote on a set
of academic performance requirements to help
motivate schools to improve results. Also in the
works are new procedures to gauge the progress of
teams and to calculate their graduation percentages
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above editorials are the opinions of solely The Daily Tar Heel Editorial Board, and were reached after open debate. The
board consists of seven board members, the editorial page associate editor, the editorial page editor and the DTH editor. The 2003-04 DTH
editor decided not to vote on the board and not to write board editorials.
EDITOE S NOTE
DTH s free speech principle extends to Playboy ad
I can’t ever recall being called
“bunny,” but I have been called
“darling, “sweetie” and “sugar”
countless times.
Most recently, I’ve been labeled
a “honey,” a term of endearment
in the South perhaps, but degrad
ing nonetheless. When I protest
ed the label, I was told simply to
get used to it because I was a
“girl.”
In fact, I’m a 21-year-old
woman who has lived on her own,
more or less, for four years. And I
will never get used to it.
So, as I checked the pages of
The Daily Tar Heel on March 24,
an ad on page 9 stopped me cold.
“Attention female student
body,” it read. “Ever fantasized
about being pictured in the No. 1
men’s magazine in the world?
Now’s your chance to turn fantasy
into reality.”
Yes, Playboy is visiting Chapel
Hill this week, and I had the final
say on whether the ads announc
ing its visit would run in the DTH
—a decision that has been called
into question given the dangerous
stereotypes Playboy and other such
magazines use to turn a profit.
Asa woman, I loath the idea
that a female’s success in life
“Who knows what the future
holds for you?” could somehow
Sunday, Chapel Hill police Chief Gregg Jarvies said
that particular charge wasn’t filed because it wasn’t
sufficiently evident that the verbal attack was a direct
cause of the physical assault.
It isn’t clear whether the alleged assailants were
looking for a fight to begin with or if Bindra’s retort
provoked them. What is obvious from police reports
is that the hostility toward Bindra, based on their
patently negative disposition toward his ethnic
appearance, led to the assault. This was ethnic intim
idation, and police should have filed the charge.
Law enforcement officials should have jumped on
this case with greater ferocity. The offense was clear,
and incidents as heinous as this one rarely take place
in Chapel Hill. When they do happen, it’s up to local
authorities to use the lull force of the law in an effort
to prevent future attacks and prejudice-laced abuse.
Chapel Hill is considered to be a relatively safe
haven for people of all colors and creeds. But this
incident showed that a considerable amount of igno
rance has slipped through the cracks. While police
couldn’t have prevented it, they could have made a
greater statement in their enforcement of the law.
tine addictions.
His letter asked the question, “Does the University
really want to turn a profit from this addiction and
the suffering and death it brings?”
Lange’s argument overly dramatizes the issue,
which should be primarily one of personal choice.
The vast majority of students, faculty members
and employees are adults and, as such, are fully
capable of deciding whether or not they want to buy
a pack of cigarettes.
UNC Hospitals should be applauded for efforts to
help smokers quit. It’s a dirty habit, and it’s deadly.
But University officials have no place pre-empt
ing the personal choice of individuals who just want
to buy some smokes.
Surely, such a decision should not be made at the
prompting of one letter-writer.
This decision, paired with the new ban on smok
ing on the balconies of residence halls, makes for a
rough semester for on-campus smokers. University
officials should think twice before they further usurp
personal choice.
without punishing them for students who transfer.
Some coaches have criticized graduation data,
saying that statistics neglect to account for players
who do end up transferring or entering profession
al leagues early.
Those types of concerns are being addressed.
Meanwhile, NCAA officials should be careful to
implement changes gradually and in a manner that
is fair to all of the teams involved.
It’s important that a sense of responsibility accom
panies such fairness. These measures are a good step
toward ensuring academic opportunities for the ath
letes from whom universities gain so much.
But they can work only with the good faith of
coaches and institutions alike. A fair program also
must be firm.
It almost has become cliche to lament the decline
of academics in college sports, but that shouldn’t be
grounds for forgetting universities’ responsibilities
to their athletes.
Emeka Okafor might be the current bright light of
college basketball, but let’s not forget about the sup
porting cast. They are just as deserving of a degree.
ELYSE ASHBURN
EDITOR
be tied to her height, weight and
measurements. Asa woman, I
hate perpetuating that message.
But as editor of The Daily Tar
Heel, as a responsible journalist, I
had no choice but to let that day’s
ad and the subsequent Playboy
ads run, and not just because of
financial concerns.
Sure, the paper would have lost
money 51,228.50 to be exact.
But more importantly, it would
have lost its integrity as a market
place for ideas. While ads provide
revenue for the paper, they also
serve its mission of upholding free
speech and promoting dialogue.
The DTH ad staff and the
paper’s editor, me in this case, cer
tainly reserve the right to refiise
any ad. We rarely do so, however,
unless the ad contains blatantly
false or obscene material.
While I don’t respect the work
they are peddling, the Playboy
ads, simply don’t meet that bar.
Opinion
The paper would have been
wrong in refusing to run them.
Just as I would never pull an
opinion column because I dis
agreed with its assertions, I would
be remiss to pull an advertisement
because its content was unsettling.
Free commercial speech is
about far more than selling prod
ucts. It’s about the free flow of
ideas. It’s about freedom of
speech as an underpinning of
political freedom.
It’s about the ability to float a
theory or statement, no matter
how unpopular, in a public forum.
While the newspaper’s editors
control the news content, anyone
with sufficient funds may adver
tise a service, sell a commodity or
push a viewpoint in the DTH’s
advertising space.
Without freedom in advertis
ing, we as a nation might not have
Playboy ads. But we also might
not have ads such as the one pub
lished in The New York Times in
October 2002 that denounced
anti-Semitic actions on college
campuses, an ad bearing the signa
ture of UNC’s chancellor.
We also might not have ads
such as “Heed Their Rising Voices,”
which ran in the March 29, 1960,
issue of The New York Times.
Published during the heat of the
ON THE DAY’S NEWS
“If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.”
FRANCIS BACON, ENGLISH WRITER
EDITORIAL CARTOON
M IMS*
THE THINKER THE CLICKER
COMMENTARY
Lecturer’s action effectively
suffocated free expression
The brilliant French thinker
Voltaire said, “I may not
agree with what you say, but
I will defend to the death your
right to say it.”
This quote has long reminded
me of the importance of free
expression, regardless of how
offensive it might be.
And short of hate speech and
crying “fire” in a movie house, our
Constitution ensures that the
good, the bad and everything in
between can be aired.
That is what’s so disturbing
about the recent controversy sur
rounding Elyse Crystall, a lecturer
in the UNC Department of
English who lambasted a student
for calling homosexuality disgust
ing and immoral.
These comments were offen
sive and close-minded, but there
should have been no attempt to
censor such expression.
While this is an isolated inci
dent on our campus, contrary to
claims of right-wing conservatives
who argue this is representative of
Carolina as a whole, it is eerily
similar to a trend of censorship
apparent in higher education.
According to articles published
last year in the Chronicle of
Higher Education, collegiate
speech codes imposed during
waves of political correctness dur
ing the past two decades are still
around, despite their overwhelm
ing unconstitutionality and jar
ring constraints on free speech.
For example, a student parody
of a Harvard Law Review article
advocating for a gender-related
perspective of the law was
attacked by feminists and others,
resulting in regulations that,
while not explicit speech codes,
have limited free expression at
the esteemed university.
The publication also reported
Civil Rights Movement, the ad
solicited funds for the legal defense
of Martin Luther King Jr., and
blasted “Southern violators of the
Constitution... determined to
destroy the one man who, more
than any other, symbolizes the new
spirit now sweeping the South.”
The ad angered many white
Southerners and ultimately land
ed the Times in the middle of a
libel lawsuit, which, incidentally,
the newspaper won.
I, for one, am glad that the edi
tor of the Times was dedicated
enough to free speech to run the
“Rising Voices” ad and to deal
with the angry mobs, come as
they might.
The Playboy ads that ran in the
DTH likely won’t fuel progressive
societal change, but they deserved
protection nonetheless. If journal
ists don’t defend more banal con
tent, they threaten the very tenets
that protect more charged speech.
And banal as they may be, the
Playboy ads have sparked debate,
particularly because their first
appearance coincided with
Women’s Week on campus.
I certainly have given more
thought recently to what it means
to be a woman and how society
views female success. Judging
from my e-mail inbox, the ads
fSI
MICHAEL DAVIS
COUNTRY FEEDBACK
on incidents at Pennsylvania’s
Shippensburg College and
California’s Citrus College,
demonstrating that this is a wide
spread problem in academia.
Today, concerns about not
offending anyone have chipped
away at free speech, causing chill
ing effects on campuses that
claim wholeheartedly to be “mar
ketplaces of ideas.”
In an intellectual marketplace,
much like at a business, you don’t
have to buy everything you see.
Some of it is pure rubbish, but
those selling the junk sure have
the right to do so.
It’s up to us to discern the good
from the bad: That’s half the edu
cational experience.
And a frightening double stan
dard exists when people want to
express their opinions in favor of
certain ideas or lifestyles, but
then raise hell when others sim
ply disagree.
From all accounts I’ve read,
that’s what happened in Ciystall’s
class. And when educators dis
courage discourse simply because
it might offend some people, they
are imposing speech codes of sorts.
Making people uncomfortable
to speak their minds because of
the views of instructors or peers is
not only unconstitutional, it is
disgusting.
Those students and faculty
coming to Crystall’s defense are
missing the severe consequences
of her actions, which not only
have made readers think about
that as well.
Perhaps in the future, a female
editor at the DTH won’t have to
worry about whether to run a
Playboy ad soliciting nude models.
Perhaps in the future, hundreds of
college women won’t jump at the
opportunity. Perhaps in the future,
thousands of college men won’t
snatch Playboy’s “Girls of the
ACC” issue off the shelves.
Until then, I hope those ads
continue to run in the DTH.
Because perhaps we —as a uni
versity community, as future lead
ers should talk about it.
Contact ElyseAshbum,
editor of The Daily Tar Heel,
at eashbum@email.unc.edu.
TO SUBMIT A LETTER: The Daily Tar
Heel welcomes reader comments.
Letters to the editor should be no longer
than 300 words and must be typed,
double-spaced, dated and signed by no
more than two people. Students should
include their year, major and phone
number. Faculty and staff should include
their title, department and phone num
ber. The DTH reserves the right to edit
letters for space, clarity and vulgarity.
Publication is not guaranteed. Bring let
ters to the DTH office at Suite 104,
Carolina Union, mail them to P.O. Box
3257, Chapel Hill, NC 27515 or e-mail
them to editdesk@unc.edu.
afy SaiUj (Hot HIM
brought unnecessary negative
attention to a beacon of free
expression, but also questioned
just how free it is.
As reported in The Daily Tar
Heel, one letter read in defense of
Crystall at a press conference last
week argued that she was enforc
ing the University’s nondiscrimi
nation and anti-harassment poli
cies concerning sexual orientation
by confronting the student.
“Instructors have both a right
and an obligation to set the terms
for discussion in their classes and
to determine what constitutes rel
evant and appropriate content,”
the letter stated.
Using this university’s policies
as justification for explicit con
straints on protected speech is
manipulative and insulting.
Instructors can fulfill their
responsibilities without attacking
free expression. The student’s
comments appear to be relevant
to the class discussion and appro
priate in that they did not consist
of hate speech or threats, but
were merely opinions.
It’s worth having to stomach
offensive speech just so I can
enjoy the comfort of knowing that
I can freely speak my mind.
Students in Crysta H’s section
have told the DTH that they no
longer feel as free, since the class
is now being monitored.
When you curb potentially
offensive speech, you set a dan
gerous precedent for the murky,
subjective world of censorship.
Just because you don’t agree
with an opinion, you have no
right to deny folks with those
viewpoints the ability to be heard.
And, I’ll defend that to the
death.
Contact Michael Davis
at dnvismt@email.unc.edu.
Established 1893
111 years of editorial freedom
(Eljp Hatty ®ar lirri
vmw.fi allytaiheel.com
ELYSE ASHBURN
EDITOR, 962-4086
OFFICE HOURS 2:15-3:15 PM MON , WED.
DANIEL THIGPEN
MANAGING EDITOR, 962-0750
JENNIFER SAMUELS
PROJECTS MANAGING EDITOR, 962-0750
NATHAN DENNY
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, 962-0750
BROOK R. CORWIN
UNIVERSITY EDITOR, 962-0372
EMMA BURGIN
CITY EDITOR, 962-4209
CLEVER. WOOTSON JR.
STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR, 962-4103
BRIAN MACPHERSON
SPORTS EDITOR, 962-4710
MICHELLE JARBOE
FEATURES EDITOR, 962-4214
NICK PARKER
ARTS a ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR. 962-4214
ALEX OBREGON
COPY EDITOR, 962-4103
BRIAN CASSELLA
PHOTO EDITOR, 962-0750
MICHELLE KUTTNER
DESIGN EDITOR, 962-0750
KRISTEN OLIVER
ONLINE EDITOR, 962-0750
JOHN FRANK
PROJECTS TEAM LEADER, 962-0246
ERIC GAUTSCHI
OMBUDSMAN
If you have any concerns or comments
about our coverage, please contact
Ombudsman Eric Gautschi at
gautschi@email.unc.edu or 918-1311.