Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Feb. 2, 1984, edition 1 / Page 8
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8The Daily Tar HeelThursday, February 2, 1984 Really for education? 91st year of editorial freedom Kerry DeRoohi, bIim Eddie Wooten, Mumi Editor CHARLES ElLMAKFR, Associate Editor Kelly Simmons, University Editor KYLE MARSHALL, State and National Editor Michael DeSisti , Spom Editor Melissa Moore, News Editor FRANK BRUM, Associate Editor Michael Toole, City Editor ' KAREN FISHER, Features Editor Jeff Grove, Arts Editor CHARLES W. LEDFORD. Photography Editor Campaign conflicts This past week, James Exum, Campus Governing Council speaker and candidate for student body president, was caught reserving rooms in the Carolina Union for campaign purposes but in the name of the CGC and the Black Interdenominational Student Association, groups that get a priority on meeting rooms. The misrepresentation was minor at best. Exum discontinued the practice, never attempting to cover up "Uniongate," as he jokingly termed it. The CGC Ethics Committee Monday deemed the offense unworthy of punishment, and Wednesday, the full council accepted that decree. Yet, even Exum's minor incident points tothe potential problems that arise when an elected official seeks a campuswide office while retaining his position. The CGC has some level of control over almost every branch of Stu dent Government, including the Elections Board. The council ratifies board appointees, allocates, funds for the execution of the elections, and even has the final say about polling sites on campus. The speaker of the CGC, therefore, exerts some influence over those decisions, and could indirectly aid or hinder someone's campaign, including his own. In other races, such as for Daily Tar Heel editor, any staff member running for editor must leave the staff before beginning his campaign. Also, any staff member who wishes to actively campaign for, or even openly support, any candidate for DTH editor must leave the staff. In this way, the newspaper and the students can be virtually assured that no injected bias will ever enter a campaign story, letter or column. Even though a candidate for editor can leave the paper, Exum's case is not so easy to reconcile. In the past, some elected officials running for a campuswide office have abdicated their positions for the sake of fairness. Resignation, especially for CQC representatives, however, leaves students in those candidates' districts without representation on the council. . . . A solution, perhaps, would be the adoption of rules that require can didates to abstain from any votes on issues that concern the elections. In addition, other guidelines surrounding the use of position for the purr pose of furthering a campaign should be explored more fully. It's true that in the world outside UNC, candidates retain their positions as they run for office. At UNC, however where these positions have such a direct influence over the elections process, limits must be proposed to ensure fair and equitable campaigns and elections. Helping hands It isn't often when an hour of a student's time can actually help change someone's life, when playing basketball on a weekday afternoon can help a person trust in a new friend. The volunteer program at the C. A" Dillon' School gives UNC students such a chance.' By donating a small portion of a hectic week's schedule, students can make a new beginning for a child and at the same time realize the hardship of parts of the outside world and the need to strive for changes. For those of us at school here, juvenile crime is thought of as a prob lem confined to faraway places,' the ghettos of large cities. But accor ding to national figures, North Carolina at one time led the nation with the highest percentage of juvenile crime per capita youth. And though the numbers have declined since then, at least 800 juveniles are con victed of crimes in this state each year, both misdemeanors and felonies. These children are sent to one of four institutions across North Carolina, such as Dillon, costing the state about $28,000 per child. Perhaps most disconcerting, however, is not the number of crimes or the expense, but the situations leading to the offense. For example, it is estimated that nearly all of the crimes committed by children are done so while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, substances that could only be obtained from an adult someone who should have known bet ter. Furthermore, 88 percent of the children sent to the four institutions have some type of a learning disability. , These figures show a desperate situation and one that isn't going to change without help from the community. So far, about 30 area residents, including several UNC students, volunteer at the Dillon School. Some play basketball; others teach aerobics or weightlifting classes. Each volunteer becomes a role model for the youngsters, a way for them to see another type of life. And equally important, the UNC students learn a little alsoabout lives that aren't always as easy as the ones in Chapel Hill or back at home. By being a volunteer they not only help a. child who has made a terrible mistake, they also take large steps to prevent future ones. The Bottom Line Imagine being the mother or father of a child under 10 years old and receiving notice in the mail that your child was supposed to report for jury duty. Or imagine standing trial for a serious crime, only to find that several jurors wouldn't even be able to meet the height requirements for most amusement park roller coasters. Then you can probably imagine the surprise of Susan Ford, a Boston area resident whose son Richard, 7, and daughter Nicole, 4, were ordered to report for jury duty in Suffolk County Superior Court. Naturally, Ford , assumed a mis take had been made. So she called the number given on the notice and explained the situation. A disbeliev ing authority however, told her that he had now "heard everything" and demanded that Richard and Nicole appear in court. Otherwise, he said he would subpoena them. As Ford recalls it, she said, "Go ahead. Then see who has the last laugh," Who did? Well, it surely wasn't jury commissioner Paul Car r, who blamed the foul-up on a new census report system that fails to include birthdates. And it surely wasn't the judge, l ne last laughs were probably had by little Richard and Nicole, who undoubtedly received more attention than any of the other jurors showing up for duty. Kid's Corner You probably thought that once Christmas was over those Cabbage Patch dolls would be out of the news for gpod. But, no such luck, thanks to an 8-year-old in Sherman, Conn. Little Kristy Dixon managed to break her arm in a gymnastics class accident and was afraid to go into the hospital operating room alone. Npt only was the child afraid to leave her parents, Donna and John Dixon, but she wanted her. doll, whose name is Fern Abigail, along, too. An anesthesiologist was able to calm Kristy enough for the necessary surgery by promising to keep Fern Abigail close by. And while Kristy was still under anesthesia, her surgeon fitted the dolJ with a cast on her arm identical to the child's. A hospital representative said Kris ty was delighted with the surgebn's work. The representative also said, "Her prognosis is excellent, and so is the doll's." I guess that means that both. child and doll are doing fine. And that's the bottom line. By MATT MAGGIO . With President Reagan's announce ment that he will seek re-election, all students and parents and taxpayers must focus their attention on two groups that will be heavily involved in his opposi tion. These groups are the National Education Association and the N.C. Association of Educators. Every educational consumer stu dent, parent or taxpayer should realize that these groups are inherently opposed to the interests of education consumers. NCAE. and NEA seek to better their members' own finances by forcing the consumer to buy more not better education, whether the consumer needs it or not. Consider a television ad run this fall by the NEA (the one showing two workers losing their jobs to robots); this ad is so foolish that one of the workers depicted is a chemist who represents an enormous investment in education. While the NEA commercial says that unless America spends more on education its children will graduate to unemployment, the facts are that at least one-fourth of all recent college graduates are under employed, that American firms are mov ing their jobs to countries with sub-N stantially less-educated work forces and that an enormous increase in the share of the federal budget that is given to educa tion programs, has been met with an equally drastic drop in results. Does the NEA seriously believe that the American student or taxpayer will benefit' from further increasing the under employmentovereducation problem at a time when such a surplus of "human capital" already exists? Then consider what the NCAE has recently put forth in the guise of a "merit pay" proposal. A starting teacher would begin at $22,000 annually an enor mous salary when one considers the average N.C. manufacturing wage paid the worker who pays the teacher. (This starting pay figure is also exorbitant in . light of starting pay offers for new college graduates in this state: How many of us will get $22,000 to start, even if we ma jored in a highly technical field?) This starting pay is almost as much as the average full professor a person with a doctorate at the top of merit pay in his profession makes in at least one private college in this state; it is more than a police lieutenant makes in Burlington (despite his having far more responsibility than the average teacher); in fact, the proposed starting salary is more than the average American worker earns. The NCAE's proposed top salary of $35,000 for a classroom teacher is almost as high as this university's pay for a full professor . who has years of experience and a doc torate; in most N.C. cities, no public employee from city manager to janitor would make this much outside of the schools. The NEA and NCAE have both bitter ly opposed any efforts to give all families the freedom of educational choice.ea joyed by . the well-paid NEA ad ministrator who sends his kid to a private school. Both groups have opposed . vouchers and tax credits proposed by . President Reagan and Sen. Jesse Helms that would eliminate the unions' monopoly and give impoverished parents concerned about their children's future an alternative to inadequate public j schools in impoverished areas. Both groups have also pushed for increased regulation to make private and Christian schools less competitive with the . monopolistic K-12 system; note that. UNC students who are dissatisfied can transfer to another state school at little or no additional cost and that this factor makes the K-12 monopoly unique in that students and parents almost always can not even choose another teacher in the same building to teach their child or . themselves, instead of a tenured incompe tent protected by these unions. Note the unions' bitter opposition to home teaching they feel that the school's legitimate rights and duties include being a substitute parent in such areas as day care, health care, feeding and political in doctrination on moral issues such as sex education and the nuclear freeze. Both of these unions function more as leftist political parties than as profes sional organizations. When Walter Cockerham tried to help teachers by hav ing the state provide each teacher with free liability coverage, NCAE lobbyists angrily charged that he was trying to' break their union by providing this ser vice that is the sole reason why many NCAE members joined and thus threatened their political power. NEA and NCAE both back such "classroom issues" as the nuclear, freeze, including endorsing the use of students as a captive ' audience for their propaganda. Both unions also back such diverse causes as ERA, abortion, gay rights (including af firmative action!). Not surprisingly, both have backed the ideological compatible Walter Mondale and Jim Hunt; Mondale has promised a $5,000-per-year federal bonus to every teacher in America. As a conservative Democrat and an educational consumer, I urge every stu-. dent, parent, and taxpayer in America to vote 'no' to NCAE and NEA and their higher taxes, higher spending, more underemployment and lower school pro ductivity by voting 'yes' to Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms and Rufus Ed misten. Any student who votes against these candidates is simply forcing himself to attend school longer in order to attain the same level of prosperity- as his parents; no student should suffer in a hot school in July from the NEA-endorsed longer school year when merit pay is not used to weed out incompetent teachers. Matt Maggio is a law student from Burlington. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Flaunting ignorance on the back page To the editor: Thank you, Kevin Monroe. Your description of the "journalism" that confronts us on the back page of the DTH,("DTH dangerous to all," DTH, Jan 31) was both accurate and reassuring. For some reason the editors of our school paper consistently feel a need to expound on every subject imaginable, but without bothering to know much about them. It is frustrating to continually read editorials about important world issues written by so meone who seems to get his views straight from the CBS News or his own preconceived notions. Why are we reading editorials damning The Kissinger Commission Report on Central America, written by someone who probably knows very little about the cultural and political history of Central and South America? Why are we reading editorials on American foreign policy written by someone who has probably never picked up a journal such as Encounter, Foreign Policy, or any of the periodicals that deal with these issues in greater depth? It seems like the editors probably feel that picking up an issue of Time or reading the editorial page of the N & O is enough to set them up for a fresh round of pontifica tion. The list of absurd editorializations seems endless, such as the constant slamming of absolutely everything . President Reagan does. (If the editors refer to him as a They've all had enough To the editor: All right, I've had enough of this! Why is it that people like Peter Layton always defend their home towns using the assertion that "it's not Hicksville, U.S.A.!" ("There's no place like home," DTH, Jan. 31). For your information, Hicksville, U.S.A., lies on the south shore of New' York's Long Island, and its standard of living is just as good as, if not better than, any other home town in the country. Furthermore, Billy Joel hails from Hicksville, and he's not ashamed to admit it. Who ever heard of anyone coming from Fuquay-Varina, Layton? So, I'd just like to say, lay off the Hicksville jokes! It's ' an okay place to visit, and I don't even live there! Laura Kirby New Hyde Park, N.Y. "cowboy" one more time, I'll scream.) For example, yesterday's editorial explained how JFK expanded the Space Program for altruistic and saintly reasons but that Reagan's attempt to spur us on to new horizons is ob viously because he is viscious, nasty, insincere cowboy. It is not that important issues should not be tackled, or presidential policies criticized; what I am saying is that before an editorial is written the author should really understand the issue and the complexities involved. The type of editorials we are getting are, as Kevin Monroe stated, "dangerous;" not just because somebody who reads them might blindly accept them, but because when these editors grow up they'll want to work for The Washington Post or The New York Times. Some of the media's difficulty in dealing with certain situations honestly and factually might stem from their early train ing, where they wrote whatever they felt whether they were properly informed or not. Everyone is ignorant, but it is shameful to flaunt it so. John Altschuler Carrboro Looking for a sign To the editor: 1 am angry! I made a sign to take to the LSU basket ball game in hopes of getting on TV. However, my mis take was trying openly to take it into Carmichael. I was not allowed to carry it in. I'm not angry so much for the wasted effort of making it, but for the ill-considered policy that kept it out. .,,...,,, I learned later (no one at the door had the courtesy to tell me as I tried to enter) that no signs were allowed because of "rude" and "obscene" signs that had ap peared at earlier games. My sign was in no way rude or ,obscene, and I would gladly have submitted it for in spection as I entered. One would think that the athletic department would want to promote the kind of spirit that signs demonstrate, rather than discourage it. Also, many signs made it into Carmichael, several of which were shown by NBCIf the athletic department has a no-sign policy, why didn't they ask NBC not to show any signs? Why didn't they come and take signs away from those who showed them during the game? By failing to ask NBC not to show any signs, the depart ment ensured that those who went against policy (and they did so deviously by concealing their signs as they entered) were rewarded they or their signs got on na tionwide TV. By failing to come and confiscate signs ex hibited during the game, the department showed the ex istence of a double standard it's okay to bring a sign if you can get it past the people at the door. Lastly, the athletic department has a no-sign policy, it should publicize the fact. If I had known that I would not be allowed to bring in my- sign, I would not have spent more than three hours making it. So, I encourage the athletic department to reconsider its policy. I believe the policy should be to promote signs, for their school-spirit value, with the proviso that they may be checked at the door for appropriateness. I also encourage a response in this space from the athletic department, in order that all may know exactly what the policy is and the reasons for it. In our effort not to go too far, as many think Duke did, let's not go too far in the opposite direction. Stan Farthing Craige To the editor: All right, I've had enough of this! . I've just read Peter M. Layton's letter ("There's no place like home," DTH, Jan. 31) and I am quite per turbed. Does he think Hicksville is a dirty word about someone's uncle? Well,. it's not! Hicksville, N.Y., is a nice, crowded, northern, suburban town that anyone would be pretty darn lucky to call home! Sure, it's crowded, but that by no means makes it Gastonia! William J. Vining Dept, of Chemistry To the editor: All right, I've had enough of this! I've just read William J. Vining's letter and I am quite perturbed. Does he think Gastonia is a dirty word about someone's stomach? Sure, it's not that great, but that by no means makes it Fayetteville! T. David Westmoreland Dept. of Chemistry The right stuff To the editor: I sincerely appreciate the voice that you have given to the conservatives. The sensitive issues, abortion. Hunt vs. Helms, military, Reagan, capital punishment, etc., have given fair and unbiased expression. I want the conservative voice heard and have recogniz ed almost , with surprise, that The Daily Tar Heel is not deaf to the many who embrace the same. Charlton Quaile Carrboro A Tar Heel bom and bred WcJU l". 0) Chapel H.I I
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 2, 1984, edition 1
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