6 The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, February 21. 1980
The awakening
With a sluggish stretch and a drawn-out, long-winded yawn, a
sleeping giant rolled over, crawled out of bed and washed the 1970s out
of his bleary eyes. He turned on the television, picked up his morning
newspaper and cried out in alarm at what he saw. He realized he'd been
sleeping too long.
The sleeping giant is our generation. In universities and colleges
across the United States, the world has finally come home to a
generation that grew up seemingly contented with the way things were.
We are told that we no longer feel that way.
Listen carefully on the campuses now and you'll hear "We won't go!"
again. Keep on listening and you'll hear other voices that say, "Yes, we
will go!" One by one, the fence-sitters and the intentionally isolated are
disappearing, jerked from their lethargy by the possibility that for the
first time since Vietnam our leaders will ask us to cross an ocean to kill
and be killed for something they tell us is vital for our country.
There is no bloc this time, though. Letters to the editor on this page in
recent weeks have illustrated the feelings of a divided generation. Across
the nation, the outpourings of opinion have shown that there no longer
is a single voice. At Ohio State, at the University of Arizona, at Kent
State and at this University, opinion polls and informal surveys show
that students are split nearly down the middle. Student leaders invited to
the White House last week said there are lively debates and other
activities on campuses. As Congress begins its discussion of President
Carter's proposal to revitalize the Selective Service System, the renewed
interest on the campuses is likely to become even more evident.
The feelings about registration and the draft cut across the boundaries
of sex and politics and class. For some students, the surge of nationalism
that followed the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of,
Afghanistan has helped to erase the cynicism about our government
bred by Vietnam and Watergate. But others are asking themselves what
they would be fighting for; is it a buried black gold on which a big-business-controlled,
corrupt Congress has kept us pathetically
dependent, or is it really the right to our way of life?
There are answers to these questions that every one of our generation
must face but the answers probably are personal. Students' opinions
indeed may meld into a consensus similar to that of the Vietnam era if
there is a dramatic swing in world events or in the policy of this country.
Regardless of the outcome, though, the apathy seems to have been shed
along with the last tiresome decade. A generation has awakened, and
our voices are being heard again. If any benefit has come of the events of
the last three months, it is that awakening.
The fever's still ragin'
Something's wrong at Carolina, but for once, we're not going to
recommend that something should be done about it.
Standing in line for basketball tickets, that hallowed tradition as
much a part of the University as Carolina blue, seems to be a thing of the
past. Ticket distribution officials reported earlier this week that even
though tickets for the Duke game this weekend were distributed at 2
p.m. this past Sunday, students coming at (gasp!) 2:30 still got good
seats. What's happening here? Has a cure for Carolina Fever finally been
found?
After a tad of research, our worst fears were allayed. We found that
there are several reasons that Carolina students no longer enjoy the
drunken ritual of camping for several days on the sidewalk in front of
the ticket office in Carmichael Auditorium.
One big reason for shorter lines, it seems, is the increase in the number
of televised games. Many Carolina fans belong to the school of thought
that says there's nothin' finer than sittm' down in front of the tube with a
coupla cold ones and lookin' at the Tar HeelsProponents of this view
may be right it is indeed a treat to watch slow-motion instant replays
of Al Wood and company flying down out of the sky with yet another
thundering slam dunk.
Random distribution methods also seem to be responsible for easing
the Carmichael crunch. For some reason, ticket seekers suddenly have
realized that it theoretically is possible for the last student in line to get
the best seat in the house.
We were reassured to learn that despite the absence of the traditional
ticket lines, all student tickets are still claimed. Whew. For a second
there, we thought we'd never get to hear that rousing, goose-bump-raising
line: "There's no cure for Carolina Fever once the last ticket's
gone."
M
for office i painfull a
latlg
87 th year of editorial freedom
By GEORGE SHADROUI
It was 4 a.m. and my 1968 Green Chevrolet Caprice,
idling reluctantly at the curb of Franklin Street,
whispered softly that it had not foreseen such an
inappropriate end to such a mind-boggling day. I was
standing between a car with a flashing blue light on its
roof and my not-so-sagacious Chevy. The fact that I was
trying to touch the end of my nose with a cold and numb
index finger did seem to indicate an unfortunate turn of
events. Only recently I had left the post-election party
where numerous people drank numerous beers,
congratulated winners, consoled losers and mostly
kicked out the jams. The police officer who pulled my
car was polite enough, explaining matter-of-fact ly that I
had ignored a stop sign and the white lines dividing the
lanes. " Yes, well there was this election and I just won
and..." and somehow I sensed that he didn't care. And
for some reason, I felt cold and alone. .
Indeed, it is difficult to explain a spectacle such as
student elections to students, much less to a Chapel Hill
police officer. It begins in October for some, for others
the preceding spring. And it includes months of
planning, late night meetings, a lot of telephone calls and
hours of agonizing platform writing and research,
crescendoing into a confusing scenario of forums and
door-to-door campaigning. And all of it culminates on
election night. In the end, all of the experiences can be
neatly categorized: some funny, some happy, some
frustrating, some sad....
push a brochure with my face on the cover under a
door in Hinton James and the person on the other side
pushes it back out. I walk by a poster of myself in Stacy
and coming out of my mouth are the words
letters to the editor
JL
"Sha...Sha...Shadroui!" And underneath a little man is
saying "gesundheit." Everywhere I walk, my poster is
plastered on the walls. My eyes look down at me
knowlingly like Dr. TJ. Eckleburg's and as I walk
through campus people stare at me. I learn to keep my
eyes to the ground. I just want to put out a newspaper.
Without a doubt, the most fulfilling and perhaps the
most frustrating experience of campaigning is going
door-to-door. In a period of 2XA weeks I must have met
3,000 students. This campus can become an endless sea
of people late at night when door after door opens and
face after face exhibits the same haunting who-the-hell-are-you
stare. Then, other times, just when you feel as if
one more door will destroy the last fiber of sanity, a
friendly face says "Hello," or "Come in," and you
endure. But their faces? And their names? And the
smiles? In the end, I cannot remember and I feel cheap.
Someone once said that politics is but the art of
deception. And I too played the game. I shaved every
day. Those who know me said that was quite a feat. I
learned diplomacy, though not as well as others. Every
person and every group had ideas, criticisms and
suggestions about the Tar Heel. I wanted to listen and
learn, but sometimes I only wanted to go home, crawl
into bed and forget it all.
In Alderman dorm, a campaign worker ties my
brochure to the doors of every bathroom. In numerous
rooms people I will never know put my picture on their
walb. One suite starts a fan club. Some write personal
ads to me. It is a first-rate ego trip that makes me laugh
and scares me as well.
Imagine a small group of people stranded on an
island. After two weeks they will have become friends, a
tightly knit group who have shared a common
experience. Then the boat comes and each person goes
his own separate way. Such is the experience of the
candidates and the small group of campaign workers
who were always there giving moral support. We were
no. rewaraim,
like the Boys on the Bus, going from forum to forum,
trom dorm to dorm, from frat house to sorority house,
making the same speeches and answering the same
questions, and after the show was over, looking at each
other wearily, knowing each of us could make the other's
speech and wanting to do it just because it would be
different.
People say a lot of vicious things about those who run
for office. Some of w hat they say is true. But a lot of it
doesn't contain even a thread of truth. We are students
who want a job, badly enough to take all of the abuse,
withstand all of the shady politics and bare our failings
to a suspecting public. We learn grass roots politics.
Some love it. 1 merely tried to keep it all in perspective.
Whatever else, a campaign is worth the friendships
that are made. Every candidate discovers friends he
otherwise would never have met. A long time ago, a
student who had run for editor told me 1 would find out
who my real friends were. He was right, and I discovered
that my venture into politics would cause many of my
friends to view my excursion with cynicism and regret
Relationships are in a constant state of flux, and that
night at the party, when hundreds of people were
grabbing me and hugging me and telling me how happy
they were, a friend touched me on the arm and said,
"You see all of these people. They love you tonight. But a
lot of them will hate you in three weeks." So I smiled at
this friend and sipped the beer in my hand, unaware of
the police officer waiting on Franklin Street, just content
to take it all in and accept it for what it was a dream
world that never lasts. By the end of the night, I felt like
the Indians of old, who feared that photographers stole a
part of their soul each time they snapped a picture. I
began to feel as if I were losing a part of my soul to every
person I touched.
George Shadroui, a junior journalism and history major
from Salisbury, is editor-elect of The Daily Tar Heel.
Conservation has received a bum rap
Jftmw nil nmYTTj
HIS IS THE SECOND VJiMXAd THE FT JED fVil?
David Stacks, Editor
Michble Mecke, Managing Editor
Michael Wade, Associate Editor
Gary Texpening, Associate Editor
Martha Waggoner, News Editor
Eddie Marks, University Editor
Carol Hanner, City Editor
Kathy Curry, State and National Editor
Rr.ro Tuvim, Sports Editor
Susan Ladd, Features Editor
Laura Elliott, Arts Editor
Andy James, Photography Editor
Dinita James, Weekender Editor
The Bottom Line
Flipping out in England
Bad news, pancake-race fans. This
year's competition doesn't count.
The 3 1st annual International Pancake
Race, which pits housewives from Olney,
England, and Liberal, Kansas, in a race
against the clock, had to be called because
a television camera truck slowed down
two English competitors. Housewives
must negotiate a 415-yard S-shaped
course at top speed, all the while flipping
flapjacks in a skillet. Competition rules
say each contestant must flip her pancake
at least twice during the race.
But alas, the blasted TV truck had to
muck things up but at least it saved the .
Kansas crew from having to race.
Because of the time-zone difference
between Olney and Liberal, the racers in
Liberal generally know in advance what
times they have to beat. This year,
though, they didn't even have a chance,
and the series still stands 18-12 in their
favor.
...Chowlng down In Kansas
Meanwhile, back in Liberal, 19-year-old
David Williams scarfed up on top
honors in the town's pancake-eating
contest. The junior college student
gobbled down 52 whole wheat cakes in
one hour to take top honors in the
preliminary to this year's ill-fated
pancake race. Williams' closest
competitor could manage only 43
cakes not even close.
In running away with the top prize.
Williams munched out on five plates of 1 0
pancakes each. And just to grind his heel
in the face of those who dared to
challenge his gastronomic prowess,
Williams jauntily sucked down two
additional cakes. Just for good measure,
the champ belched.
The eating contest is taken just as
seriously as the skillet race, and the rules
even prescribe a regulation size for the
pancakes. All cakes used in official
competition must be between 4 and 4 XA
inches in diameter, and to ensure that
each competitor is faced with the same
amount of carbohydrates, standardized
dippers are used to measure out the batter
for each pancake.
Williams, a three-time winner of the
contest, has developed a special
technique for what appears to be his
favorite sport. Before he starts to eat, he
carefully" prepares his competitive repast
by pulverizing 10-cake stacks and
fashioning them into chewy, air-free
wads. The champ makes sure he has
plenty of water on hand to help wash
down the 10-cake morsels. He does not
use syrup; as he wisely points out, syrup
fills him up too quickly.
Williams may have won this year's
competition hands down, but it just can't
compare with his performance in 1976,
when he was a strapping 15-year-old:
Seventy-six cakes went down his gullet in
regulation time.
- And that, chow hounds, is the bottom
line.
To the editor:
The next time The Daily Tar Heel
sends a reporter to cover an event, it
should make sure she or he knows
something about the event being covered.
The reporter who wrote about the
Carolina Symposium debate on nuclear
power, "Debate held on nuclear
feasibility," (DTH, Feb. 19), obviously
did not. Not only was the article
incomprehensible in several spots, but it
managed to miss the key point of the
discussion.
Dick Munson and Thomas Elleman
did not agree that nuclear power plants
belonged only in industrialized countries.
Elleman said that they agreed; Munson
obviously didn't think that they belonged
anywhere except where the cost of
shutting them down would be
economically catastrophic. What they
did agree upon, and what the reporter
missed entirely, was that conservation is
going to be the cheapest, most effective,
quickest and most efficient means by
which America's energy crisis will be
eased.
It is hard to see how the reporter
managed to miss this. Both Munson and
Elleman spoke at length on the subject.
They even used the same descriptions.
What they said bears repeating.
Conservation has received a bum rap.
Most people think of President Carter
sitting in his white sweater shivering
before the television camera when they
think of it. This vision isn't just dated; it's
dangerous.
The term "conservation" has been
redefined in recent years. It now means
"energy efficiency," not income
curtailment. When the latest studies talk
about conservation, they don't mean
having people sit shivering in houses held
to 55 degrees. They're talking about
having people sit comfortably in an
adequately insulated house that doesn't
waste most of its energy spewing heat into
the great outdoors.
Both Ellman and Munson mentioned
the fact that conservation has worked and
is working. The reason is simple. Energy
is now expensive enough that people can't
afford to waste it. Rationing by price is
painful, but it works better than bumper
stickers, and redistributive tax policies
like the windfall profits tax can help ease
the pain.
The reason that conservation isn't
moving faster is because the lines of
communication are clogged. People don't
know how good an alternative it is. They
don't know that insulation is now cheaper
than oil. They don't know how to exploit
this new energy resource. And since
they're only familiar with its old
definition, its name scares them.
The Munson-Elleman debate could
have helped clear away some of the fog.
That two men of such differing
viewpoints could agree so strongly on one
subject was news. The reporter might not
have thought so, but it was. Prior
knowledge can help a reporter know what
really is news, and thus can help a reader
understand what is going on in the world.
If the reporter is confused, in the end, the
. reader will be too.
It doesn't take much effort to acquire
this knowledge. The question of energy
policy may be the most important one our
society has to face today. If what is news
is to be covered as news, then a reporter
should at least understand the terms of
argument.
Tony Seideman
12-Y Kingswood Apartments
Life and liberty
To the editor.
I am responding to the letter in
Monday's paper supporting not only
registration, but the entire Selective
Service System, "Registration
necessary," (DTH, Feb. 18). In it, Neil
Henis raises a number of points which
sound very noble and virtuous.
Underlying his entire argument, however,
is the assumption that the rights which
are ours simply because we are human
(life and liberty, to mention two) must
take a backseat to the pursuit of oil. I
happen to disagree.
Henis says, "If people don't want to
risk their lives for oil, then it seems only
fair that they should not use that oil to
run their cars or heat their homes." No
one is denying a person the right to risk
his life for something, even oil, but to
force others to risk their own lives or to
take another life is, if nothing else,
immoral. Later he argues that if people
"are unwilling to do their part, they
should not reap the rewards of living in
this society." Please do not
misunderstand me. I do support our
country and recognize that a responsible
citizen owes it certain things, but one's life
and individual freedom do not fall into
this category. No nation gives life and
none has the right to take it.
Certain things transcend oil, the price
of gold and other material possessions.
Life and personal liberty are high on the
list. The protection of these truly are in
the best interest of our country.
Bill Might
1530 Granville West
Draft ensures rights
To the editor.
1 am quite appalled that a group of
people who call themselves "libertarians"
would feel that the military registration
"borders on slavery." After all, what is a
"libertarian" but an advocate of freedom
for all? Elizabeth Ann Ratchford's letter,
"Military registration borders on
slavery," (DTH, Feb. 19), claims this
doctrine as the bottom line of her
argument, saying that the military draft
denies U.S. citizens their "fundamental
rights to live their lives according to their
own choice and judgment." Quite the
contrary, the military draft can and will
ensure these fundamental rights of U.S.
citizens.
The first libertarians were our
forefathers, the British Americans. They
were not too busy living their fat, choosey
lives t fight for the independence of this
country. Thus were born our freedom
and even sacred "fundamental rights."
The right of individuals in this country
"to exercise sole dominion over their own
lives and to live in whatever manner they
choose" comes from the United States
government, specifically stated in the Bill
of Rights of our U.S. Constitution. These
rights which the Libertarian Party calls
"fundamental" are quite simply a gift
from our American forefathers.
If a draft actually takes place it will be
because an emergency situation or power
is threatening the American way of life,
which to me is worth fighting for.
Elizabeth Ann Echols
42 Cedar Court
The truth about that college over in Durham
By ELLIOTT WARNOCK
I am not sure exactly when I heard the word "Duke"
for the first time.
It might have been in Sunday school, when a teacher
told me to love all people, even my enemies, and even
those people from.. .(dramatic pause to emphasize the
immensity of this burden)...Dukc.
It is much more probable that I first heard of Duke on
a cold night at the end of the 1957 basketball season. I
am referring to 77k? Sight of The Season, when Carolina
endured too many overtimes to count and brought home
the NCAA title. That night is the earliest clear memory
of my childhood. People were throwing chairs from
second story windows to provide fuel for fires on
Franklin Street, and they were screaming something
marvelous about Carolina being No. 1 and something
horrible about Duke.
It took me many years to discover Duke was not
spelled D-O-O-K, and it was years later when I was
informed that Duke was the name of a man who tried to
buy Princeton but settled for a college in Durham called
Trinity. The discovery that colleges could be privately
owned and sold astounded me. My opinion of Harvard
and Yale dropped dramatically, while my admiration of
Princeton's perceptive good taste rose.
Things that were told about Duke were only slightly
above atrocities, not quite the sort of propaganda
spoken of enemies in war. I was never told Duke people
ate their dead, but I was informed, among other things of
a certain air of false superiority pervading the Duke
campus. Dookies have a very hard time accepting the
fact that everyone is not convinced of their natural grace,
good looks and charm.
Duke is not an easy thing to love. Of course, it can be
hard to like a Princeton clone placed in downtown
Durham, even if Terry Sanford is its prcsidcnt.7 he place
just fiat-out depresses me. It always rains when 1 go
there, and I get really depressed thinking about
somebody going to all that trouble to install sandstone t
steps around the campus to give the impression Duke is
an ancient institution.
Dookies are not all that easy to love, cither. My first
memory of Duke folks (though they hardly merit that
homey title) was at a game in Kenan Stadium. I had
crawled under the fence to sneak a look at Those People
From Durham and was amazed at the spectacle. Tens of
thousands of people had jammed into Kenan, wanting
nothing better than a chance to shut up all thine
insulting Duke mouths.
No doubt my memory of that game is a montage of
several games from the 1960s, for it doesn't seem
possible for so many things to happen in one afternoon. I
remember some Duke students holding bloody lamb
chops and bones (they had stolen Ramses the Ram
before the game); the Blue Devil -a man wearing blue
long-johns and sporting papier-mache horns tangling
with the Carolina cheerleaders; and some Dookies
trying to steal the victory bell and tear down the goal
posts before the end of the game.
More lovable people have never visited the Carolina
campus.
Things have improved only slightly between Carolina
and Duke since thove days, and 1 dare say that's only
because we've had more trouble with N. C. State and
Wake Forest during the past few years. There might be
fewer fist fights at Duke-Carolina games now, but
Dookies still want to beat Carolina more than anyone
ebc.
And the upturned noses at Duke have yet to find the
horizontal plane. When I tell my (former) fnends who go
to Duke that Carolina is ranked in academics ahead of
their school, they perform a ritual of scoffing, outrage
and questioning my sources. (They just hate it if you
have proof.) No state university, they insist, can be as
good as Duke -even if Carolina i the oldest.
Arguments over relative academics always end at a
draw , so Dookies fall back on athletics ai a comfort. It is
not a safe place of refuge for Duke. For every 7-0 half of
basketball they remember, 1 have memories of Dudley
Bradley's slam dunks. But 1 don't tike to taunt Dookies;
taunting always has a way of returning to haunt one.
.t Warnock.a senior journatixm major from Chapel
Hilt, is staff co1umnit fur Weekender.