i
letters to the editor
Unconfirmed radio broadcast causes cut classes, raises false hope
To the editor
This letter is a protest against the
blatant incompetence of WCHL in their
failure to confirm a news statement
before airing it on the morning of Jan.
25.
At 1 a.m. WCHL (1360 on your AM
dial) announced that all UNC classes
which met before 12 noon would be
cancelled due to the snow and the poor
driving conditions. You can well
imagine the shock felt by those of us
who heard this news! Diligent students
that we were, we decided to further
investigate this incredible statement.
Several people called the radio station
and were once again told, that yes, all
UNC classes which met before noon
were cancelled. We were also told to
have a nice day! Several signs were made
proclaiming the great news that we
could all sleep late that morning. These
signs were put up the halls, and all
r
comois
4 J V
Academic flexibility exists
despite claims of politicos
It is that time of year again when campus politicos emerge from seclusion
and begin vying for the honor of becoming a student body president. As
usual, one of the major issues in the campaign is academic reform. Calls
abound for the extension of the drop period, the establishment of a four
course load, and an end to the computation of incompletes as Fs.
From these cries, a student is likely to conclude that the University is very
rigid in its academic regulations and allows little flexibility in the choice of
an academic program.
In some instances, this view may be valid. What many students are
unaware of, however, is that the University offers several academic options
which provide great freedom and flexibility to the student. The University's
only fault is its failure to properly advertise these options.
One little known academic option is double registration. Students with a
minimum 3.0 QP A can register for six hours of credit in a regular three hour
course of particular interest to them and double the amount of work they
do. Double grade and credit are given. All that is necessary for double
registration is permission from the instructor and Dean of Honors George
Lensing in 303 South Building.
Another little known option is Special Studies 90. This course, created for
departments without independent study programs, allows students to create
a course not currently available based on their personal interests. Credit and
grades are given. A group of students with a common interest can plan a
course that is not available and draw up their own syllabus and reading list.
If one's problem is not only the lack of a certain course, but the lack of an
entire field of study', this too can be resolved. Students are able to create a
program for a major outside normal department lines. Prof. Lewis Lipsitz,
dean of experimental and special studies, is available to discuss these
interdisciplinary majors. No minimum QPA exists for admission.
These options and others such as the possibility of taking courses for
credit at N.C. State and Duke Universities with no tuition give the student
at Carolina a great deal of flexibility in designings academic program.
Every effort should be made to inform the entire student body of these and
other options and to let them know that the academic structure is not quite
so rigid as the candidates make it seem.
84th Year of Editorial Freedom
Alan Murray
Editor
Joni Peters Gregory Nye
Managing Editor Associate Editor
Dan Fesperman
News Editor
Thomas Ward
Features and Freelance
Merrill Rose
Arts and Entertainment
Grant Vosburgh
Sports Editor
Charles Hardy
Photography Editor
Rob Rosielio
Wire Editor
Campus Calendar: Tenley Ayers Kaleidoscope: Melissa Swicegood
Business: Verna Taylor, business manager. Lisa Bradley, Steve CrowelL Debbie Rogers.
Nancy Sylvia. Subscription managers: Dan Smigrod. David Rights.
Advertising: Philip Atkins, manager; Dan Collins, sales manager; Carol Bedsole, Ann Clarke.
Julie Coston, Anne Sherrill and Melanie Stokes.
Composition Editor: Reid Tuvim. Circulation Managers: Tim Bryan and Pat Dixon.
DTH Composing Room Managed by UNC Printing Mary Ellen Seate. supervisor. Jeffrey
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Austin. Ada Boone. Wendell Clapp. Marcia Decker, Judy Dunn, Milton Fields, Carolyn Kuhn and
Steve Quakenbush.
Printed by Hinton Enterprises in Mebane, N.C, the Daily Tar Heel publishes weekdays
during the regular academic year.
concerned students were notified.
Around 7:15 a.m. there was some
commotion. A few students said that
they had just heard that classes were to
be conducted as scheduled. One of us
called WCHL once again to see what
was going on. We were then told that
classes were not cancelled, and that the
initial statement was a hoax which had
not been confirmed by any University
official. Nevertheless, WCHL never
bothered to announce that their original
claim was false.
Due to this incident, many students
missed their classes unintentionally. We
ask how any news media dare misinform
and mislead its constituents with such
slipshod information. Furthermore, we
demand a public apology for this
injustice!
This letter was signed
by 56 Granville residents.
"3
Page 6
January 27, 1977
D.P.
News: Keith Hollar, assistant editor; Jeff Cohen, Marshall
Evans, Chris Fuller, Mary Gardner, Russell Gardner, Toni
Gilbert, Jack Greenspan, Tony Gunn, Nancy Hartis, Charlene
Havnaer, Jaci Hughes, Will Jones, Mark Lazenby, Pete
Masterman, Vernon Mays, Karen Millers, Linda Morris, Chip
Pearsall, Elliott Potter, Mary Anne Rhyne, Laura Seism, Leslie
Seism, David Stacks, Elizabeth Swaringen, Patti Tush, Merton
Vance, Mike Wade and Tom Watkins.
News Desk: Ben Cornelius, assistant managing editor. Copy
editors: Richard Barron, Beth Blake, Vicki Daniels, Robert Feke,
Chip Highsmith, Jay Jennings, Frank Moore, Jeanne Newsom,
Katherine Oakley, Karen Oates, Evelyn Sahr, Karen Southern,
Melinda Stovall, Merri Beth Tice, Larry JTupler and Ken
Williamson.
Sports: Gene Upchurch, assistant editor; Kevin Barris, Dede
Biles, Skip Foreman, Tod Hughes. David Kirk, Pete Mitchell, Joe
Morgan, Lee Pace, Ken Roberts, David Squires, Will Wilson and
Isabel Worthy.
Arts and Entertainment: Betsy Brown, assistant editor; Bob
Brueckner, Chip Ensslin, Marianne Hansen. Jeff Hoffman, Kim
Jenkins, Bill Kruck, Libby Lewis, Larry Shore and PhredVultee.
Graphic Arts: Cartoonists: Allen Edwards, Cliff Marley and Lee
Poole. Photographers: Bruce Clarke, Allen Jernigan and Rouse
Wilson.
I
Rock 'n Rimbaud here to stay
To the editor.
Re: Ethan Lock's letter of Jan. 25: I
agree that Patti Smith is the "wave of the
future." She was indeed "bold and
abrasive," and yes, she did "scare a lot of
people."
Patti did much more, though. She
provoked, taunted, exhilarated,
terrified and bewildered us like no other
singer performer could. No one who
heard the chilling lyrics of "Land" and
"Gloria" powerfully resounding
throughout Memorial Hall will be quite
the same. No one who saw her
perform black-matted hair flying,
jaded serpentine eyes shifting, fists
pumping will forget it.
Of course, there will be people who
will chuckle and still call her shallow
and pompous and even boring.
There are many more whose hearts
and souls are in flames, whose minds are
thinking: horses, angels, death, gems,
the sea, histoire. they will be
flaunted for quite some time.
Rock 'n Rimbaud is here to stay.
Elizabeth Richey
504 12 North St.
Wise up, gals
To the editor
As someone who waits tables, I
wondered if some ladies on campus
might be as "stumped" as someone who
wrote to Ann Landers recently. I'd like it
reprinted for coeds because some should
recognize themselves and keep in mind
that a standard tip is still between 15-20
per cent. As Ann would say, Wise up,
gals.
"Dear Ann Landers: Tonight five of
us girls who work in the same building
had dinner together at a good
restaurant. The food was excellent and
so was the service. When it came time to
pay our' checks, I started to figure out
what to leave the waitress. One of the
group (well-traveled and sophisticated)
insisted that since we were all women it
wasn't proper to leave a tip. Two of us
disagreed. May we have the final word
from you? STUMPED.
Forebears include pig wrestler, potato carver
'Ruts' the geneaology of an American slob
By MACK RAY
Last Thursday afternoon, just after
"The Beverly Hillbillies," I was
overwhelmed by a compulsion to trace
my genealogy to its origins. I had been
vexed by the dilemma of the dignity of
the individual in an increasingly
fragmented society . ever since "The
Gong Show" that afternoon. I was in a
quandary. I felt pulled apart, torn in
many directions. I doubted if I could
make it through "Hogan's Heroes"
without collapsing across my rabbit ears
from the emotional strain of a major
identity crisis.
There was only one thing for me to
do. I had to trace my ancestry back
through the years and discover what
divine acts of Providence had guided my
ancestors . in their ultimate, sublime
accomplishment the creation of me.
What inspired adventures and heroic
deeds of my progenitors had paved the
way for me to skip class and loll like a
mollusk in front of an electronic tube all
afternoon?
I resolved to trace my ancestry as
extensively as I could, to the original
immigrant to America and beyond, if
possible. It would mean years in musty
libraries, poring over records in obscure
county courthouses, a job that could
quite possibly take 17 years. Or I could .
call up my grandmother and get her to
tell me the entire story in at least half
that much time.
I popped open another Pabst and got
on the phone to my grandmother in
Arkansas. As usual, she was in good
health and glad to hear from me. She
was fixing supper after a hard day's
work down at the slaughterhouse
(entrails department) and was enjoying
an evening cocktail also. "I never take
more than one, you know," she
reminded me, and I chuckled,
remembering how she always served
them up in quart mayonnaise jars. I
explained my research project, and she
gladly settled down to outline my family
history for me.
First, she refreshed my memory about
her husband, my namesake, Armando
Caruso McKnight, who was known as
the Laundromat king of Eufala, Ala. He
singlehandedly built a laundromat
empire from the dust of Eufala, a town
formerly famous only as the location of
Bill S. Dance's Jelly Worm fishing lure
Hiring , firing
To the editor
Prof. Richard Sharvey's letter of
Jan. 24 is right on in its evaluation of
the problems created by tenure. His
solution is logical. . .which will
probably result in a quick put-down
by the "Powers That Be."
However, Prof. Sharvey does not
address the problem of who will
decide whether a teacher should be
fired or his her contract renewed. At
present, this decision is made by a
small group of full professors in each
department whose "carbon
copyness" to each other is exceeded
only by their desire to maintain and
perpetuate the status quo. The great
majority of them think alike, act
alike, dress alike and talk alike. In
our department, 50 per cent of them
have even been educated alike. Seven
out of the 14 full professors received
one degree or another from UNC,
and this incestuous relationship has
created a veritable bastion against
ideas, teaching methods or styles
"Dear Stumped: The waitress who
served you didn't work less because you
were female. Women should tip for
service as well as men."
M. Christenbury
901-B Dawes St.
Festering Sore
To the editor:
The controversy over recent promises
by student government candidates to
support this group or to cut funding to
that organization, illustrates the
contradiction inherent in the claim that
mandatory funding of these junior
politicians' gift bags is in the student
interest. The use of political power to
allocate resources (student fees) creates
a festering sore of intolerance, since one
group can only get its way to the
dissatisfaction and at the expense of
another fund-seeking organization.
laboratory. But a combination of
unsound investments, unscrupulous
business partners and Grandaddy
Armando's philanthropy in regard to
several young ladies of dubious
employment left him penniless by 1965.
He fell out of a fig tree and never fully
recovered. Within six months, the strain
of his debts and his injury proved too
much for this broken man, and he died
by his own hand. He was found in the
kitchen after beating himself to death
with one of Grandmother's largest
frying pans.
Grandaddy Armando's only brother,
Bellafondo McKnight, distinguished
himself by being employed for a total of
two months in his lifetime. He was hired
by a used car dealer in Fordyce, Ark.,
when he was 38, but lost his job seven
weeks later when he was arrested for
drinking the brake fluid out of a '57
Ford and driving the same vehicle into
the display window of the Fordyce K
Mart. The Fordyce Police Department
reported that he found Bellafondo
vigorously assaulting one of the
department store mannequins in the
display window, when he arrived on the
scene. Bellafondo has since received
several promotions, however, and is
now the chief trustee at Tucker State
Prison Farm in Arkansas.
Alfonzo McKnight, father of
Armando and Bellafondo, was born in
Squash Flats, Miss, in 1861, the son of a
chorus girl and an itinerant shoe-dye
salesman. Grandaddy Armando only
spoke- of his father as a cruel and
embittered man who brushed his teeth
with barbed wire and gargled with
battery acid every morning and urged
the other family members to do likewise.
The cause of Alfonzo's bitterness may
have been his physical deformity, for he
was an extremely bow-legged
hunchback. Alfonzo always cursed his
mother for raising him in a footlocker,
and swore that his children would have a
better life.
The itinerant shoe-dye salesman was
probably one Uriah McKnight, a
former barber and dentist from upstate
New York who was banned from the
state for unscrupulous practices. Uriah
had been put on probation several times
for shaving customers with his dental
tools, and vice versa. His license was
revoked, and Uriah rode out of town on
a rail when he was convicted of
removing all 32 perfectly sound teeth
from a 12-year-old girl's head and fitting
her with wooden dentures. He began
left to the dull and senile'
which do not conform to their own
entrenched views. In other words, the
very qualities of innovation and
change which are necessary for a
vital, dynamic learning experience
are systematically discouraged or
killed. Consequently, any junior
professor who does not fit into their
particular mold, who tries to be
innovative or add. vitality to the
educational experience through
"unorthodox" methods, is certainly
not going to have hisher contract
renewed.
The students, of courseware the
ones who must suffer the results of all
this with dull, boring, uninspired,
incompetent conformity. In many
cases, students spend thousands of
dollars and hundreds of hours only to
be given mediocre teaching at best. 1
As consumers of education I think
they should be given more for their
time and money. Instead, they are
given student government! They
should demand a great deal of input
as to how their time and money is
War is the norm, peace the impossible.
The only beneficial aspect of
mandatory student fees is an instructive
one. It provides an example of the strife
and bitterness created when the
government, be it federal, state or
student, first expropriates individuals'
wealth and then invites special interest
groups to battle over the division of the
spoils.
If the same allocation of funds had
occured without the student
government first expropriating and then
dispensing our money, then there would
be no justification for such a farce. If a
different allocation resulted, then by
definition some students would
"lose." Greater individual (and total)
satisfaction would have resulted, had
each student had the opportunity to
decide where his money went. That the
"losers", often feel bitter about the
groups and causes that were granted
their money is unsurprising.
What of the individual student that
desires nothing more than to be left
'Uriah removed 32 perfectly sound
teeth from a
hawking his home-made formula for
yellow shoe dye from state to state, and
probably could have been in Mississippi
by 1861.
Uriah's parents were courageous
people. He was the son of, Angus
McKnight, a Scottish immigrant, and
Miss Elsie Boompers, a powerful but
kind woman who managed a living by
wrestling pigs, burros and : other
domestic animals in varidus taverns and
public houses around New York City.
The church records of
Drumhumbumshire, Scotland showthe
birth of Angus McKnight, son of
Smedley McKnight, a groomsman, on
February 5, 1798. By all accounts,
Angus was a cheerful simpleton who
wandered off to Ireland while still a
young lad. Angus was trapped
accidentally in a potato barge while
dining one evening, and found himself
in the United States a few weeks later.
A
- Kit
spent. This includes the selection and
retention or firing of all teachers.
Both students and professors
should decide, perhaps by secret
ballot, which teachers should remain
and which should be let go.
Obviously, such a democratic
process in this "post bicentennial
year" of ours would meet with bitter
opposition from the elite minority
whose power and jobs would
certainly be injeopardy. King George
knew what that trip was all about.
History has demonstrated that those
in power will kick and scream and
fight like hell against any attempt to
take away their "divine rights." After
all, "ya can't have them ignerut
students" deciding how their
educational lives will be spent. Better
leave such weighty matters to the
dull, the boring and the senile.
P.S. I include myself among the
dull, boring, senile, etc.
Jerry Foster
Assistant Professor of Spanish
alone, to make his own decisions on
what groups or projects he wishes to
support? Alas, this is Chapel Hill. And
there has never been any shortage of
authoritarians lurking behind these ivy
covered walls, all eager to impose their
version of "right" on us all.
Tom Ball
2-D Kingswood
The Daily Tar Heel welcomes letters
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subject to editing for libelous content or
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Letters should be mailed to the editor.
Daily Tar Heel, Carolina Union.
Unsigned or initialed columns on this
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Tar Heel. Signed columns or cartoons
represent the opinion of the individual
contributor only.
12 - year - old girl's head
and fitted her with
wooden dentures
LEE
OOtt
Authorities at Ellis Island dismissed
Angus as a common specimen of vermin
found at the bottom of potato barges.
Angus was free to make his own way in
the New World. He became renowned
for his artful carvings of religious
trinkets from raw potatoes, which he
sold on the streets of New York.
I thanked my grandmother for setting
me at ease about my ancestry and
promised to call back soon to find out
the history of all the women in my
family. I hung up the phone a contented
man, secure in the knowledge of my
antecedents, with a strong sense of
purpose and destiny. I was ready to pop
open another Pabst and sit down to
another evening of serious TV watching.
Mack Ray k a junior English major
from Crawfordsville, Ark.