Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / July 10, 1975, edition 1 / Page 2
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Jean Swallow f! fl 2 Thuredey, Ju!y10, 1975 mom r Pay q e m 0 on nu I erry s Terry Sanford is an unlikely presidential contender. Out of office for 10 years, he is making a bid on the strength of his qualifications as a former governor of North Carolina. His national political reputation rests on his ties to the Kennedy image-establishment, his role as head of Citizens for Humphrey in J1968, his leadership of the Democratic Charter Commission in 1 974 and his loss to George Wallace in the North Carolina presidential preference primary in 1972. It is the last distinction that Sanford seems bent on using as the springboard to political prominence in I976. - Losing a political battle in one's home state to an outsider might seem to be a surer way to reap stigma rather than to sew the beginnings of a political future. But Sanford has figured out a strategy to convert defeat into victory. From the beginning of his campaign Sanford has set himself up as the nemesis of George Wallace. He told the National Press Club "I came up at the same time in similar climate, region and crucial times, and' it is my responsibility to challenge him (Wallace)." The battleground for this showdown, Sanford says, will be North Carolina. The North Carolina primary is likely to overshadow the New Hampshire primary. Although New Hampshire's primary is still first, big guns like Henry Jackson and Lloyd Bentsen have announced they will sit it out. Attention of the national media may turn North Carolina into New Hampshire because of the rivalry match-up of Sanford and Wallace. And just as New Hampshire's primary helped send George McGovern to the covers of prominent newsmagazines and the front pages of the -national press Sanford is betting on the North n innie Cole eeu 83rd year of editorial freedom Thomas Reef e air DU ignores neighbors' pleas I was not at the meeting of the Board of Aldermen to oppose Delta Upsilon's plans to expand its physical plant, but I wish 1 had been. The editorial (Life amid the ruins) declares that DU's neighbors should have complained to DU first, instead of complaining to the town government. I did complain to DU's officers and membership, and my experience is an example of the problems one faces with DU. As a neighbor of DU I suffered for months with music played past midnight at full blast from the jukebox on DU's Iront porch, honking horns in the small hours of the morning, assorted nocturnal shriekings and shoutings, etc. I can understand blowing off steam on a Saturday night, but at least half the disturbances occurred on week nights. Finally, one night this spring about midnight, I went over to DU in a rage at a member who had just completed his tenth drunken, weaving, horn-blowing pass through the DU parking lot and. into surrounding streets with a carload of friends. ( My wife happened to be very sick at the time.) The next day, after I calmed down, I realized that the neighborly thing to do was to talk to DU's officers and make an appeal for peace and quiet. The officers I spoke to heard my complaints politely and apologetically, but they were either nonconTmital or defensive about remedying the situation. None of them seemed to- be gamb e Carolina race to do the same for him. "The press, with George Wallace's help, has put the spotlight on my campaign in North Carolina. For the primaries. North Carolina is the same to me in 1976 as New Hampshire was to McGovern in 1 972," Sanford said last weekend. (It would probably be more accurate to say that Sanford's help has put the spotlight on North Carolina. VVallace is trying to remain cool about Sanford's charge against him.) Sanford blames his 1972 loss to Wallace on poor campaign timing. But in 1972 Sanford was little more than a favorite-son candidate. In 1976, he will be the new St. George against the evil Wallace dragon. Or so he hopes. And he might very well pull it off. The grudge match addiction of the press (a la Connors-Newcombe and Foolish Pleasure-Ruffian coverage) may indeed blow up the March North .Carolina primary into big news, and if Sanford stops what the media has depicted as an unstoppable Wallace machine, then he may be hailed as the political genius of the year. Where that will lead is uncertain. If history repeats itself, perhaps Sanford and North Carolina will be the new McGovern-New Hampshire combination that will make a candidate out of a dark horse political figure. Perhaps Sanford will land the second spot on the ticket despite his avowed disdain for the slot. And perhaps his campaign will fold in North Carolina if Wallace manages to beat him again. Sanford has picked his ground. He will either defend it or be buried in it, erect a political superstructure on it or leave the wreckage of a political career on it, win it or lose it, "all on North Carolina soil. And thjit ulbne may make the North Carolina primary a very important race. Elliott Warnock Managing Editor Jim Grimsley Associate Editor Harriet Sugar Associate Editor Ralph Irace Contributing Editor Lynn Medford News Editor Greg Porter Features Editor Jim Thomas Sports Editor Campbell Editor willing to take the responsibility to keep his brothers quiet on weekdays. The officers asked me to make a personal appeal to the DU membership. One of the officers explained to me in a private phone conversation that he agreed with my complaints, but that the members wouldn't listen to him. So I made the appeal at a DU meeting, and things got a bit more quiet for a while. But about a week after the meeting several DU's stood out in front of my house at midnight and shouted taunts at me and my family and challenged me to come out of my house. That incident was one of the factors which induced me to move out of the neighborhood. DU's basic problem is that it is too big already for the quiet residential neighborhood of families and retired people on East Rosemary Street. Any expansion of the DU physical plant to enhance group social activities can only lead to more lost sleep and abuse for DU's neighbors. With its relatively large membership there is always a segment of the membership who want to blow off steam on any given week night: the group of DUs screamingand playing the jukebox on Tuesday night is different, from the group of DUs doing the same thing on Thursday night. In my talks with the DUs it became ' f.clear that they take offense at being ' considered a fraternity (a collective of responsible adults) when it comes to. complaining about the actions of it seems I must have spent most of my summer months at Carolina, praying for rain. When I wasn't praying, I was waiting impatiently for the humidity to get so. dense that God would have to do something about it on His own, since He obviously wasn't listening to me. I used to spend a"rot of time in the Tar Heel office because it was air conditioned. 1 would watch for the wind to stir up over the Union parking lot, dust swirling and wait for the Upper Quad trees to turn in the wind of the coming storm. 1 didn't work too much then; 1 mostly watched and waited and tried to figure out some kind of paper I could do for a course or some research I could do in the deathly cold carrels of the Grad Library. When I ran out of those excuses and things got to be too much, I would saunter over to the Office of Student Life and wait until Nanci Lang, assistant dean, was finished doing whatever she was doing. I can remember waiting for hours, on the steps next to her office, while she was helping a student who really had a problem. Then I would go in and grin and say I just wanted to get out of the heat. And she would grin and we would both know it was a lie and after the time had passed some and I had cried some, I would begin to feel guilty about taking up so much of her time. So I would gather my cool around me like a cloak and go out and wait for the rain. Somehow I never felt quite guilty enough to stay away. I knew in the back of my mind I was certainly not the only student who was using Lang for such excursions. And I knew that she was glad to be there. Still, I didn't trust her completely. After all? she was a dean and she was being paid by someone I didn't believe in Charles Sullivan TH takes 'paper' too seri . In 1559, the Catholic Church inaugurated its Index Librorum PrQhibJtorumf the lisp, of ; forbidden - books! Historically,' the Church is not the only pursuant in the suppression of heresy; the Daily Tar Heel, defender of the faith, has now joined the chase. Last week's assault on Summer Life by the DTH demonstrates perhaps one should heed Jefferson's admonition that a government with a newspaper signifies tyranny and threatens life, liberty, and the pursuit of a career in journalism. That same government with a newspaper can also foster a career in politics. Summer Life is the weekly propaganda offering of Student Government. The self-flagellation by Suite C delivers praise where praise is due: Bill Bates, Mike O'Neal, and SO in general. First and foremost, SL provides a soapbox from which SG can buy friendship with favorable publicity, announce pertinent SG happenings and express views concordant with the Bates-O'Neal axis. According to the ipssotion The Tar Heel welcomes dissenting opinion in response to its editorial stance. Two of the columns on this page represent responses to editorials in past issues. Anyone interested in offering reasoned dissent in a reaction column is invited to contact the associate editors in the Tar Heel offices. individual members. To DU as a group, the noise problem is a problem of individual behavior, not collective responsibility. I can only conclude from my own experience that without a sense of mutual responsibility for each other's action, without effective leadership and without a sense of neighborhood morality, there can be little hope that DU's abuse of its neighbors will change. If the DU's really want to get along with their neighbors, they would stop their weekday midnight revels, knock on a few doors in their neighborhood and try to get to know their neighbors. Finally, I have asked a neighbor to sign this column with me. That neighbor has refused, because he does not want to be identified to DU as a possible target for verbal retaliation as I was. As my neighbor says, "You're safe. You're moving out of the neighborhood." Thomas Reefe is an assistant professor in the history department. at all. I never would have gone to her in the first place, but one friend had said she was really okay and another had said she was not to be trusted at all. So I decided to do a story on her and find out who she really was, completely expecting another flashy official who put up a good front, but who would, in the end, ultimately betray me and all the other students. And hadn't they all? Kent State was not a figment of our imaginations, but a very livid scar of the past. So I watched her, interviewed her, talked with other people about her and waited. Waited for the slip that would give her act away. I waited for two years. And I never saw that slip; finally I realized it wouldn't ever come because she really was working for the students. I am sure other students tested her in other ways but for the same reason. I have never heard of a test she didn't pass. And now that she has gained our trust, she is leaving. It was probably inevitable; I never quite understood how she got away with working for the students, with her position and her title and the people who hired her not looking for that kind of person at all. 1 wonder if she was an accidental hiring, noting those who were hired before and after her. But 1 wonder most of all if the University knows what they are losing. It is frightening to realize they probably do not. Lang believed the University was for the students. It was not exactly a novel idea, but it is certainly foreign to most people who work there. And Lang believed that University officials should help the students. I don't mean burn a student so badly he is forced to work or playing in loco parentis. newest tin soldier the venerable Elliott Warnock SL considers itself to be a newspaper. The DTH also regards SLas a competing newspaper- and has mobilized to defeat the challenger. Unfortunately, both sides fail to realize that SL is not a newspaper ; and as such does not fall under the purview of the DTH, guardian of the guild's standards. By the same token, SL is abusing its privilege of receiving SG funds and has yet to be seriously- confronted on the matter. The spearhead of the DTH thrust presents applied Jeffersonianism (with some Pulitzer thrown in), and details the professional and ethical vagaries o(SL. The rehash of the "government-shouldn't-run-the-press" spiel is well done and serves as a framework for the reasons why SL should be pronounced forbidden. The backbone of the DTH case rests on two journalistic truisms: "And whenever any governmental unit tries to manipulate the news to its advantage, the reading public governed population must suffer," and "If one presents information in a newspaper format, that information takes on the credibility of a newspaper even if published by a special interest." In response to the first statement, SL barely presents any "news" at all, and consequently has very little news (as Lang was the one person you could go to if you needed someone to fight for you; she was the one to get that extra mattress moved out of your room when all other efforts had failed; she was the one to go to if you had a friend who was pregnant or suicidal or having a bad drunk and you didn't know how to help. She would answer her phone at all times of night, interrupting bridge games or sleep and without ever breaking her stride she would be up and out and helping. She was a friend of students whether they knew her or not and she was a friend who had the power and position to help. She didn't waste that power by filing papers or being official. She was the friend of lonely students, of those the professors never cared about because they weren't always the brightest or the best looking or the obviously troubled. She was the friend of angry students, those so angry they couldn't even show it anymore, those who had been angry for years about some betrayal they didn't even remember. And for each of these, she would help the forgotten help one cry, talk and arrange things for the pregnant one, calm down the drunk, get the mattress moved, push away the tears from those who didn't get any letters and the tears from those who got Dear John letters. She didn't do things by the books; she missed official meetings and her filing system wasn't too good and her private life was dictated by concerns other than hers. She didn't always leave the office because it was time for lunch or it was time for some other appointment. Lang's time was the students' and if we needed her, she would be there. Maybe we never told her how much we needed her. Maybe that won't be known until she's gone. Maybe we were i grateful to ever say anything. But who is left now, for the students? opposed to public-relations endorsements) to .manipulate to its advantage.. Secondly, ywhile SL may. - imitate the appearance of a newspaper, even a cursory examination reveals that the five Ws have been replaced by the five As applause, adulation, admiration, accolade and appreciation. Furthermore, although it may be easy to confuse the DTH and SL, and even mistakenly accept blurbs in the latter publication as gospel truth, anyone who has been spoon fed by English 2 can realize that the generic classification of "newspaper" is inappropriate. Student money is now being squandered by Suite C to prepare for the fall offensive that will find Bill Bates & Company engaged in the traditional power struggles that have involved every student administration since the time of Hinton James. Suite C desires to consolidate resources and has discovered that SL is a convenient and effective vehicle for the dissemination of propaganda. SL is a party organ and is sadly lacking as a publication of any nature. A return to the format used by "S' Information" would end all pretense of SL acting like a newspaper. The DTH probably would not have objected to SL if it had appeared on high-quality 8 x 1 1 Vi paper instead of sacrosanct newsprint. r i ' "l i iMmw Tumi-i mir Nanci Lang wKI soon resign as an assistant dean ol student life. I'm glad I graduated before she left and I feel badly for those of you who will be at the University after she is gone. I wish 1 could believe the University will feel badly too. Maybe if the University had known what they had and how important she was to so many people, she never would have left. Now, as I sit in my apartment and watch the rain come down, after so many weeks of waiting, I remember the days she made it rain for me. And I remember the other students I knew she had helped. And I wish I knew a way to say thank you, not just for me but for the many others' too. But most of all, I wish I knew a way to tell the administration just how much they have lost. 1 wish I knew a way to make them understand just how much we will mourn that loss. Jean Swallow is a former associate editor of the Daily Tar Heel. Assuredly we must be thankful that the ever-vigilant DTH warned us-of the impending danger. SL displays an affront to professional ' journalism; however, most of us are not professional journalists. The DTH has paternalistically assumed that we are too naive to realize for ourselves what SL represents. James St. Clair, in a slightly different context, popularized the phrase "sinister force." Whatever the DTH would have us believe, SL is not a sinister force but merely the overactive manifestation of power politics. Despite its own shortcomings, SL has pointed out problems in other areas of student life that demand consideration. SG should not be allowed to indiscriminately disburse funds for the implicit benefit of Suite C and its occupants; SL reveals that too much authority has been yielded to proven irresponsible persons."And whereas the DTH performed its watchdog-of-freedom role admirably, it is still disturbing that the paper holds the student body in such low regard as to think that the distinction between news and propaganda goes unnoticed by most people. Charles Sullivan is history -economics Washington, D.C. a sophomore major from M 1 iy
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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July 10, 1975, edition 1
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