6The Daily Tar HeelWednesday, April 6, 1983
DUX: The offender's anguish
91st year of editorial freedom
Kerry DeRochi, Editor
ALISON DAVIS, 'Managing Editor JEFF HiDAY. Associate Editor
LlSAPULLEN, University Editor JOHN CONWAY, City Editor
CHRISTINE MANUEL, State and National Editor KAREN FISHER, Features Editor
MIKE DESlSTI, Sports Editor ' JEFF GROVE, Arts Editor
BILL RlEDY, News Editor , CHARLES W. LEDFORD, Photography Editor
Rude reception
Last month, when Jeane J. Kirkpatrick arrived at the University of
California to deliver a speech, protestors greeted her with signs and
slogans. They were upset with President Reagan's foreign policy. Outside
the building where Kirkpatrick, the chief U.S. delegate to the United Na
tions, was to speak, they chanted loudly and incessantly. Inside, Kirk
patrick struggled to make herself heard above the din. She tried unsuc
cessfully to address her audience for 30 minutes, then she gave up and
stepped down.
Kirkpatrick in recent months has been prevented from speaking several
times or has been forced to do so under difficult conditions. Such rude
receptions have been typical lately not only for Kirkpatrick, but for other
speakers at campuses around the nation as well.
In response, a group of organizations representing college presidents,
faculty members and students, has issued a joint statement, "Invited
Speakers and Academic Freedom A Call to Action." As reported in
the Raleigh News and Observer Sunday, the statement urges the academic
community to "respect the right of others to listen to those who have
been invited to speak on campus."
The group is concerned with the ability of colleges to maintain an open
forum, a problem that in the past has seldom been associated with UNC.
Because of a low number of highly controversial speakers at the Universi
ty, disruptive audiences have not really been a problem. In the mid-60s,
controversy surrounded a Communist speaker at the University, but the
focus was more upon a now-defunct speaker ban law prohibiting Com
munist speakers on campus. Three years ago, a screaming crowd
prevented a member of the Ku Klux Klan, who was invited here to speak,
from addressing UNC students. Last year, at the Carolina Symposium, a
heckler repeatedly interrupted speaker Maynard Jackson.
Heckling speakers is a violation of the UNC Code of Student Conduct.
According to this code, students cannot engage in "conduct which,
because of its violent, threatening, intimidating or disruptive nature or
because it improperly restrains freedom of speech or assembly." As Betty
Landsberger, president of the local chapter of the American Association
of University Professors, an organization endorsing the statement, says,
"When a speaker is disrupted, it inhibits the university community's
point of view."
Speakers here, as well as at other campuses, should be given a chance
to express an opinion. No one has to agree with what a speaker says, but
to deny that freedom of speech exhibits unacceptable close-mindedness.
Hisses and boos are acceptable as brief expressions of opposition.
However, as the statement says, when the hisses and boos "become in
struments to silence those with whom one disagrees, (they) are inappro
priate at any public gathering . . . especially in places of higher learning.' '
I am a drunk driver.
These words may conjure up thoughts of a red-faced
sot who pulls himself behind the wheel of his beat-up Ford
and, with one swerve into the other lane, wipes out a
whole family; he walks away, bleary-eyed and dazed, yet
unscathed.
It is quite common to categorize drunk drivers as killers
on our roads. However, for me and others with similar
DUI convictions, being labeled a "killer" is just rubbing
salt into an already agonizing wound. The drunk driver
suffers punishment, shame and tremendous mental
anguish.
When I read my morning newspaper over a bowl of
cereal, listen to the car radio on my way to work or watch
television at the end of my day, I am continually and pain
fully reminded of my worst mistake.
On March 29, 1982, the night of the NCAA basketball
championship, I tried to drive a car on Franklin Street
through the middle of 35,000 people. The thing is, I don't
remember. I was drunk. I never thought I would be ac
cused of driving under the influence.
My tale, though somewhat different, is a typical drunk
driving story. The financial punishment has been incredi
ble. So far, I've spent in excess of $2,000 in legal fees. The
figure could reach over $4,000.
Yet the real punishment is the mental anguish and em
barrassment, the fear that I could have seriously hurt
someone, the anxiety of what could have happened, but,
thank God, didn't.
The trial in itself was draining; to hear policemen say
things about you that you can't remember, to have to
testify in front of a courtroom full of people, including
your parents, that you got so drunk you don't know what
you did. I cried so much that day it hurt.
To think that the mental anguish disappears with the
final bang of the gavel is a mistake. I look back in disgust
to a night that for many was the most joyous of their col
lege days. Every time I see the replay of Michael Jordan's
winning shot, my stomach turns, my eyes tear. ;
I am not asking for sympathy or a shoulder to cry on. I
am certainly not defending what I did. I just do not want
to be labeled or put into a category. I am different from
Joe Wino who has been convicted of driving under the in
fluence seven times.
I was formerly one of those who thought, "It will never
happen to me." The situation, which has proven to be far
more punishing than any of my expectations, has taught
me a valuable lesson: I know that it will never happen
again. I could not handle the anguish.
Yet I feel that the real cause of this situation is the
alcohol: It sickens me to think that I consumed enough
alcohol to alter my behavior in such a way that I could
perform an act contrary to everything I've been taught.
But in our society, for some frightful reason, to celebrate
means to drink alcohol. Most of the time it means to drink
too much alcohol.
The painful reality of my situation is that my story is the
typical drunk driving story. I have something frightfully
similar to Joe Wino a drunk driving conviction.
"It is just as dangerous for someone of high status to
get drunk and drive as it is for someone of low status,"
said Wade Barber, Orange County district attorney.
Barber, a member of the Governor's Task Force on
Drunken Drivers, became concerned about driving under
the influence after reviewing statistics in Orange County
which showed that drunk drivers were killing more people
than murderers.
"The drunk driver is, without question, the biggest
criminal," Barber said.
In North Carolina, 700 people are killed every year by
drunk drivers, and another 20,000 are injured in alcohol
related accidents. 1
Nationally, about three Americans are killed and 80 are
injured by drunk drivers every hour every day. Drunk
driving accounts for fully half of all auto fatalities, and
kills far more Americans each year than other accidents.
Safety experts say that one out of two Americans will be
victimized by a drunk driver in his lifetime. For Betty
Aiken of Butner, . these estimates are more than just
numbers.
On a Sunday afternoon in November 1977, Aiken, her
husband and two of their neighbor's children were return
ing home after seeing her daughter off to college. As the
Aikens' car rounded a curve, it was hit head-on by a car
driven by a 19-year-old drunk driver.
The driver, who was to have appeared in court the fol
lowing Wednesday on a drunk driving charge, was killed
instantly. Mr. Aiken and the neighbor's nine-month-old
baby were also killed. The other child was in intensive care
for several days; Ms. Aiken was hospitalized for a month
and confined to a wheelchair for eight months.
After five years, Aiken and her daughter, Debra, still
feel the trauma of this experience.
"It sort of ripped our family apart," Aiken said.
Aiken said she does not feel remorse or anger toward
the drunk driver who caused the accident. Yet, she added,
"If he had lived, my feelings would be different."
For Aiken and those like her who have been victimized
by drunk drivers, the loss is real and painful. On the other
side of the road is the drunk driver who must live with the
mental anguish and embarrassment. It is a no-win situa
tion. The question becomes, why do people drink and drive?
Why, in North Carolina, in 1981, were there 29,556 first
offenders charged with driving under the influence?
"Alcohol has just gotten out of proportion in the daily
life of the American people," said Dr. Fred G. Patterson
of Chapel Hill. "Alcohol is an established part of daily life
and social life."
Patterson, a family practitioner, is also a member of the
Governor's Task Force. Since 1967, he has worked with
the North Carolina Department of Transportation to
devise standards for screening drivers' license applicants
on the basis of physical and mental suitability. He con
siders drivers under the influence of alcohol to be handi
capped. "Drinking and driving is detrimental to good health
and to safety on the highways," he said.
Patterson feels there are two categories of drunk'
drivers: the alcoholic who continues to drink and con
tinues to drive, and the "over-socializers," who drink too
much too frequently while at a party or with friends.
Patterson says the "over-socializers" comprise the big
gest proportion of drunk drivers.
"Most drunk drivers are not alcoholics but a lot of
alcoholics are drunken drivers," he said.
Patterson feels the problem of drinking and driving will
continue to exist as long as the public holds its present at
titude toward socializing.
"Our social life today has beer included," he said.
"When people socialize they drink, and when they drink
they get drunk. If we want to decrease drunk driving, we
have got to put alcohol back into the proper perspective."
According to Patterson, the way to put alcohol back in
to its proper perspective is to start in the home and in the
way we educate our children with respect to alcohol.
"If little Willy sees Dad come home after work and
have a couple of beers, little Willy will come to view this as
the natural thing to do," he said.
In North Carolina, in 1981, of the 35,741 people re
ferred from courts, to the alcohol and drug education traf
fic schools, 42 percent were under the age of 25. Next
year, I will be included in those statistics.
The statistics are numerous and they do not lie. A lot of
drunk drivers are on our roads, and these drunk driven
kill a lot of innocent people. ,
I can find a little solace in knowing that on March 29,
1982, 1 did not seriously injure or kill anyone. However, I
often ask myself, regardless of all the statistics, would I
feel as strongly against drunk driving if it had not hap
pened to me? Statistics can give us the cold, hard facts,
but the painful experience, the anguish, the embarrass
ment will make them real.
Editor's note: The author's name was withheld upon
request.
LETTERS TO THE EDITO
Decision absurd and unfounded
R
Pack power
At the buzzer, it was missed-shot-turned-dunk; a 54-52 lead and an N.C.
State national championship Houston players collapsed on the floor,
their hands over their faces. N.C. State players climbed to the top of the
basketball goal. Coach Jim Valvano ran out of one-liners.
It was State's second basketball championship in nine years; the second
in a row for North Carolina teams. Last year it was a UNC last-second
shot and a Chapel Hill celebration. This year, it was red paint in Raleigh.
They were the Cardiac pack. And despite the red paint and the Raleigh
home address, you couldn't cheer against them. They had a coach who,
after watching Houston play a semi-final game, argued on national televi
sion that dunks should only count as one point; a coach who ran across
the floor of the Albuquerque Pit after Monday night's game, looking for
his-team.
' They had the players who fought back from 9-7 at midseason to baf
fle opponents' defense strategies and defy commentators' predictions.
According to the experts, State should have lost to Virginia in the ACC
tournament finals. They didn't. Two weeks later, they beat Virginia
again, eliminating Ralph Sampson's chance at a national championship.
To the fans, the Wolfpack became the team of destiny; to critics they
were still underdogs, an NCAA championship was an impossible dream
for them.
But as Valvano said later, the team never gave up. At halftime he told
the players they were only moments away. "You'll never forget it as long
as you live, so play, play to win," he said.
And for the next 20 minutes they did.
To the editor:
The political science department's deci
sion not to rehire David Garrow left me
shocked as well as outraged! In light of the
criteria employed by Garrow' s colleagues
(teaching, research and service to the
department and academic community), I
find their decision both absurd and un
founded. In his letter to Garrow, Political Science
Department Chairman James Prothro
concedes that Garrow's teaching "was
assessed quite favorably." Yet Prothro
and the department maintain Garrow's
work "does not represent a sufficiently
high level of scholarship and that it is not
in the subfield of public law." This assess
ment is unfair and wrong. Garrow's scho
lastic ability is revealed in his publication,
Protest at Selma .... the 1978 Chastain
Award winner as the best analysis of
politics in the South. In addition, while at
UNC, Garrow has had published The FBI
and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From Solo
to Memphis, an analysis of the FBI's in
vestigations of King.
The granting of political freedoms and
civil liberties to all Americans, which the
movement and King sought to gain, is the
most fundamental aspect of public law to
be explored in the latter half of the cen
tury. Garrow's pioneering work on the
subject matter certainly cannot be rejected
as "not in the subfield of public law" as
the department attempts to assert. The
nature of Garrow's work necessitates a
certain degree of investigative journalism.
It is, however, inappropriate to label Gar
row's work as "closer to investigative jour
nalism than to basic scholarship" con
sidering the lengthy analysis Garrow
delivers in the aforementioned publica
tions concerning the FBI's motivations for
investigating King and suppressing the
movement. Garrow's work should be
viewed not only as a service to his depart
ment and UNC, but as an invaluable addi
tion to this nation's struggle to make
King's dream a reality.
In closing, I ask that Prothro and David
Moreau, associate dean of the College of
Arts and Sciences, reconsider the depart'!
ment's decision not to reappoint Garrow
to the political science faculty. Failure to
reconsider will not only serve as an in
justice to Garrow but will deny future
students the opportunity and privilege to
explore these constitutional and political
issues that I enjoyed under the insightful
direction of Garrow.
Steve Ulley
Chapel Hill
Other reasons for non-reappointment
More than a lecturer
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To the editor:
I was very disturbed recently to discover
that my favorite professor this semester
would not be rehired. Assistant Professor
David Garrow teaches my United States .
Constitution class, "and he makes the
potentially boring discussion of complex
Supreme Court decisions something that I
actually look forward to. Garrow notnly
lectures, but he leads discussion and really
teaches.
The primary purpose of any university
professor should be to educate the
students. The quality of a professor's out
side publications or his service to the
department are secondary to this and
should be given less weight in the assess
ment of that professor's value to the
students and therein his value to the
university itself. I have not yet read Gar
row's two critically acclaimed works, but 1 1
fail to see how a study on how the FBI in
vestigates a private citizen does not fall
under "public law." Harvard professor
Carl Brauer's and syndicated columnist
Edwin Yoder's praise seems in conflict
with criticism that his work "does not
represent a sufficiendy high level of
scholarship." Service to the department is
a very vague and potentially dangerous
criterion.
Also Brauer's praise shows enhance
ment of the quality and reputation of the
department. Except in cases of clear disser
vice to the department, close scrutiny must
be given to this criterion, including how in
, dividual professors criticize Garrow's
potentially controversial study of the FBI.
The weight of Garrow's excellent teaching
should outweigh what seems to me weak
criticism on less important criteria.
- John R. Fonda
Chapel Hill
To the editor:
I feel the decsion not to rehire David
Garrow to the political science faculty is a
grave injustice to him, his students and the
interests of the University.
In my four years at Carolina, Garrow
was one of the best teachers I had. He
cares about his students. It makes a dif
ference to him that his students learn. It
seems as though some of Garrow'sj un
named critics have forgotten that one of
the prime duties of a university and its
faculty is to give students an education,
rather than whatever it is they consider a
"high level of scholarship" for their own
edification.
On that point, I may be barking up the
wrong tree, because Garrow's teaching
"was assessed quite favorably." The
charge that his work is "not in the subfield
of public law" is really hard to believe. If
civil rights and questionable conduct of the
FBI for political ends is not political
science, then I really don't know what is. I
also find the "distinction" that Garrow's
writing is "closer, to investigative jour
nalism than to basic scholarship" an in
credibly convenient one to make in trying
to find a reason to.get rid of someone. It
seems that whoever made that charge is
more interested in esoteric theorizing
rather than something that has to do with
the real world.
I also find the charge that Garrow has
not made a contribution to "the general
quality and reputation of the department"
laughable. His works have been quite well
received as far as I can tell, which would
seem to give the department a good
reputation outside the University; his
teaching would seem to give a good
reputation to the department inside the
University, so I wonder what they are talk
ing about. Garrow is the type of person the.
University should be trying to recruit
rather than run off. I think this whole
business is a bunch of garbage. I also
suspect, rightly or wrongly, that there
might be reasons other than those given by
Garrow's unnamed critics that have
nothing to do with his qualifications,
especially since his is the first case where
there has been a recommendation of non-reappointment.-
.
Lindsey Taylor
Everett
The I-don't-give-a-damn syndrome
By CARLOS MARTIN-GAEBLER
This column is not intended to praise our wonderful
basketball team, the beautiful spring at the Hill, or UNC's
reputation as an educational institution. Things like these
are on every Tar Heel's mind. I am a Spanish citizen who
has lived in the United States for the past three years and,
as an outsider, would like to contribute my political in
sight to what is going on in this country. Even though I
was somewhat reticent at first, I finally decided to write
these words out of encouragement from my politically
motivated American friends.
It is a shame, though, that this column may not fall into
the hands of the people to whom it is addressed, since they
don't usually read anyway, but spend their time watching
soap operas, drinking beer or playing video games. In
' their apathy, they believe that this is what college is all
about. After all, who cares anyway? In Europe, we call it
the new American I-don't-give-a-damn syndrome!
I would like to remind those people, those Americans
from Rednecksville, U.S.A., that in this state women still
. don't have equal rights; people are still arrested for pro
. testing United States intervention in El Salvador; gay peo
ple are still verbally and physically harrassed every day,
everywhere (in fact, homosexuality is still considered a
1 "crime against nature" punishable with up to 10 years im
prisonment in North Carolina); blacks and leftists are still
dhcrirninated against and even assassinated by the Ku
Klux Klan, and, what's more, their arrested members are
acquitted after a "trial" in which a video, showing the
killings, has not been considered sufficient proof. The list
could go on and on, but let's stop here.
In other words, this is not the southern part of any
heaven, because nowadays there can be no heaven on a
planet which can be blown up in a matter of xnds by
either of the nuclear empires.
Now, here comes a little piece of well-intentioned ad
vice: when you leave this country, try to be a little more
humble and less presumptuous. Why don't you just let the
Russians be the only imperialists, 'say in Afghanistan,
Poland . . . ?' But, please let the rest oT the world live in
peace, free of nuclear threats, military build-ups. Most
urgently, don't let this administration, which only 25 per
cent of the eligible American voters have elected, mess
with the red buttons. One never knows when they will
push the wrong one. And that is all it would take. Presi
dent Reagan would like to play cowboys again, but this
time with no fake revolvers in front of the camera, but
with real MX, Pershing II and cruise missiles and Star
Wars technology, the latest style in military "fashion,"
with a European scenario.
Some of us non-U.S. citizens feel that this administra
tion should not talk so much about "American interests
abroad" (a ridiculous euphemism standing for blatant im
perialist intervention), but should implement and fund
more social programs and student aid for its citizens at
home.
Also, in 1984, remember that not only other fellow
Americans would be grateful if an end would be put to
this reactionary-quasi-fascist-Reagan-Wei nberger-
Kirkpatrick-Helms crowd that seems so much "in charge"
these days, but also we Europeans, and others in every
corner of this Earth, would breathe in relief if the people
of America for once would mind their own business and
would not let the McCarthy pupils at the Pentagon
andor the Moral Majority TV politicos interfere. How
about keeping state and church separate? How about
making an attempt to overcome the "Red Scare"
paranoia that is so damaging to international detente?
Finally, one last message for those American students
going on exchanges or on vacation to Europe or anywhere
in the free world: try to keep in mind the responsibility
you carry with you of regaining your country's reputable
image as that of a leader in human rights and democratic
principles that used to exist not so long ago, and in which
most allies used to believe. Put down that superiority com
plex which has so seriously harmed your great country's
credibility abroad. Enjoy different people, different
lifestyles, and learn to be citizens of the world!
As far as I am concerned, before things' get any worse
and the Reagan administration decides to pull the trigger
in Central America, I have made up my mind to leave this
country and, by so doing, avoid an unbearable feeling of
complicity which I don't believe I have to put up with.
Since a great number of Americans lack a minimal
amount of self-criticism, I just thought that by providing a
foreign perspective, I would wake them up and for once
be critical of and for them.
Carlos Martin-Caebler b a graduate student from
Seville, Spain.