6The Dailv Tar HeelTuesday, April 10, 1984
Jl VY HlDAY. Editor
Jon Broadway. Manaoino Editor
MlCIIAI! TOOI I:, Editorial Pay Editor
Frank Bruni. a swum- Edit..
Kl ILY SIMMONS. University Editor
KYI i: MaRSMAM , State and National Editor
Mf.I.ANIK WI LLS, City Editor
VANCF TrEFF.THEN, Business Editor
Stuart Tonkinson, n Editor
Frank Kennedy, Swb Editor
Jeff Grove, Am Editor
ClNDY DUNLEVY, Features Editor
CHARLES LEDFORD, Photography Editor
JEFF Nf.UVILLE, Photograph Editor
Smorgasbord or
soup du jour?
By KA THY HOPPER
Star Mni
The proposed curriculum retains a substantial
degree of student choice. The proposed cur
riculum is compatible with the requirements of
all departmental and curricula degree programs,
and is'compafible with those of double majors.
The new curriculum makes a more definitive
statement about general education and will
allow students to pursue a broader program in
their o wn disciplinary areas. ' '
The Thornton report on Undergraduate
Curricular Reform.
The College of Arts and Sciences has designed a
"new curriculum" that Dean Samuel R. William
son describes as "both more general and more
specific." This new curriculum has sophomores
scrambling in a maze of department offices, Steele
Building and Hanes Hall. We are all trying to
figure out which way to go, what classes to take
92nd year of editorial freedom
No substitute for water
Nearly half of the nation draws its
drinking water from underground sup
plies. Perhaps that doesn't sound very im
portant. However, when a person con
siders that there is no nationwide system
for monitoring underground water pollu
tion and that there are 2,000 landfills,
pits, ponds and lagoons that have already
been filled with billions of tons of hazar
dous wastes over several decades the
gravity of the problem becomes apparent.
A recent study prepared for Congress
found that where ground water is at risk,
the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act of 1976 is insufficient to prevent land
fills for toxic waste from becoming uncon
trolled areas which will require cleanup. In
light of these findings, the Environmental
Protection Agency should take immediate
steps to make such regulations more
stringent.
Perhaps people think it is less expensive
to simply dump now and worry about
cleanup later. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. Because of current
cosmetic cleanup rules, the waste sights
will have to be cleaned up in the future at
heavy costs. The congressional report
found that it would be far less expensive to
monitor waste sites now than to purify
water after it has already been polluted. In
addition, experts agree that it is difficult if
not nearly impossible to reverse the con
Printer's ink in
What would you think if we told you,
via a screaming front-page headline, about
a "Headless Body in Topless Bar"?
Would you be offended? Or intrigued?
Most New Yorkers would be neither,
their answers instead being in the vicinity
of "non-fazed," "so what" and "who
cares." For years they've been teased to
tedium by headlines like the one above and
others, such as this one in The New York
Post that prompted a lawsuit: "Pulitzer
Sex Trial ShockerI Slept With A
Trumpet!" Nothing less, however, seems
to stir those "non-fazed" residents of the
Big Apple to dig for change like they do to
buy the Post, Rupert Murdoch's suc
cessful entry in the New York market for
yellow-journalism style tabloids.
In coming weeks, though, those same
New Yorkers are likely to become more
selective in deciding for which "street
sheet" they're going to throw down two
bits. Jim Hoge, who only three months
ago was ousted as publisher of The
Chicago Sun-Times by Murdoch, is about
to take over The New York Daily News,
chief challenger of the Post. His move to
New York promises the advent of a nasty
newspaper war.
Mostly it will be a battle between the
two tabloids over circulation and advertis-
The Bottom Line
Is Noah one of your heroes? Do you dream
of becoming a veterinarian, but despair be
cause veterinary schools are even more com
petitive than medical schools? Then maybe
you should try to establish in this country
what Bernd Grundmann has already launched
in Hamburg, West Germany an animal
taxi service.
Rubber mats, plastic tubs, small cages and
even first-aid kits such would not attiact
human passengers, but seem to reassure pet
owners without cars. Instead of shepherding
their furry or feathered charges in and out of
buses and regular taxis, these animal lovers
can call for one of the 14 specially equipped
vehicles.
Dogs, cats, birds and even horses can catch
a cab to the vet at the same cost to their
masters as a regular cab. Owners can ride for
free to soothe their beasts. Rates and volume
are so low, however, that the animal taxi busi
ness is "not very profitable," said Grund
mann, 45.
Drivers cannot be too tough to find,
however. "The animals are. always very
quiet," Grundmann said. "And not one of
our drivers has been bitten yet."
Out of the poorhousv
For a while "Here's Johnny" took on a
new meaning advertising an economy line
, of outdoor toilets. Johnny Carson did not
tamination process of water.
Also contributing to the problem are
waste disposal sites that were in operation
before a comprehensive toxic waste act
was enacted in 1980. These sites have been
permitted to continue operation under
regulations for monitoring and cleaning
that are less strict than those for new
disposal sites. The numerous pits, ponds
and lagoons still receive billions of tons of
hazardous wastes, as they have for several
decades. Many sites are already leaking,
and many others are expected to leak.
More water sources will become con
taminated. Internal reports submitted by the EPA
have agreed that efforts to monitor
underground water supplies are inade
quate, yet the waste continues to be
dumped. Since the EPA has recognized a
rection, one must wonder why the organi
zation exists. With the acknowledged
severity of the problem, and the recog
nized increased cost .for the inevitable
recognized increased cost for the inevitable
future cleanup, it is disturbing that
nothing is being done. It is the respon
sibility of the EPA to strengthen the cur
rent regulations and to enforce the policy
changes it makes. These regulations must
be stricter if our nation is to avoid losing
yet another natural resource. For water,
there is no substitute.
their blood
ing, but in this case there's more at stake.
Neither general has been keen to admit it
publicly, but in this news war Hoge and
Murdoch will be vying to retain their
reputations and power, as well as their
money. Personal animosity between the
two goes beyond Murdoch's recent ac
quisition of the Sun-Times, whose main
rival is The Chicago Tribune. It just so
happens that the Tribune Co. owns The
New York Daily News (Hqge's new
baby), thus making two battle theaters in
the same war.
Curiously, the outcome of all this might
be increased hustle from reporters and a
quieting of the Post's screaming headlines.
As The Washington Post points out, Mur
doch may take note of recent declines in
the competition's circulation and "decide
that the time has come to put more news
under the headlines at the Post and win
back some of the classier advertisers."
Most observers would already admit that
Hoge is certain to make his News a paper
that "has something for people who look
beyond the big print."
Most Americans relish a good fight. In
New York City, where scrappy tabloids
are involved, it doesn't get much better.
Here at the DTH, we'll watch and we'll
enjoy. But we won't take notes.
find the slogan a numerous as the owner ot
Porta-John Inc., Earl Braxton, did. Carson
filed suit in 1976 against Braxton, but Brax
ton did not seem to mind: he enjoyed the
publicity.
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this,"
he said.
A federal judge ruled the company was
trading on Carson's name and ordered Brax
ton to pay Carson all profits earned while us
ing the slogan. Braxton said he would appeal
the decision.
People can not convince Braxton that out
houses are a thing of the past, and with good
reason: his outhouse business in suburban
Detroit has made him a rich man getting
richer.
"Everybody laughed at me at first," Brax
ton said. "I was just another street kid from
the west side of Detroit. What were the
chances of my making it big?"
A former accountant, Braxton quit his job
out of boredom and purchased Porta-John
Inc. in 1970 when it was a $60,000-a-year
business. The company has since expanded to
a $7-million business, the nation's largest sup
plier of portable toilets for such things as con
struction work, outdoor sporting events and
concerts.
Braxton is currently concerned with
developing his new business, Enzymes of
America Inc., which will collect urine-based
proteins for resale to drug companies and uni
versiMes for chemical production and
research. His slogan? Perhaps "P is for pro
tein." And that's the bottom line.
looking for the piece of cheese that could mean
graduation.
The class schedule tells us one thing, the
undergraduate bulletin says something else. And so
we sit in our adviser's office sifting through the
facts and fallacies, trying to figure out what it all
means.
I don't like being a guinea pig.
The class of 1986 has been chosen to be the first
td graduate under the new curriculum. The ad
ministration does not understand why we feel like
we've been given the shaft. Maybe it's because we
have the feeling no one knows what's going on
here. Advisers admit that they have not fully
figured out all the ins and outs of the new cur
riculum, and some students have not even realized
that they are affected by it.
William H. Graves, associate dean for general
education, the man in charge of implementing the
new curriculum, said it is "dynamic, always chang
ing". He is right. Students do not know from one
semester to the next what classes will fulfill the re
quirements because classes are always being added
to the list. The only way to know for sure is to
check out the latest hand out in Steele building.
Sophomores might want to think twice before
registering for that geography course if they would
rather wait a year in hopes of taking an economics
course that would fill the same requirement and be
more relevant to post-college plans.
Williamson said that advising under the old
"Merzbacher" curriculum was difficult and
frustrating. "I found it almost impossible to work
with a curriculum that was like a Chinese
smorgasbord you took two of this and two of
that without really knowing why." But students see
the new curriculum as difficult and frustrating. It is
true that it requires five less classes, but it forces the
students to choose from a faculty-approved list in
stead of formulating their own list of allied and
non-allied course electives.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Accentuating the positive of negative ads
To the editor:
I am writing in response to the
grossly inaccurate letter from Sandra
Boyd ("Defense Spending," DTH,
April 4), concerning Sen. Jesse
Helms' campaign advertisements.
Boyd was incorrect in stating,
"None of Helms' campaign ads
reveal any positive aspects of the
senator." In fact, Helms has aired
many television ads which have
stressed some of his positive attri
butes. For example, remember the tele
vision and radio ads entitled "A
Salute to Jesse" that appeared a few
months ago? In these commercials,
President Ronald Reagan, Sen.
Howard Baker and others spoke of
Helms' moral dignity and praised his
will to stand up for North Carolina.
Additionally, ads showing Helms
Denounced denial
To the editor:
The political science department's
denial of tenure to David Garrow
makes mockery of our claim to want
better undergraduate teaching at
UNC. I could understand th denial
if Garrow had published nothing;
universities routinely sacrifice
teaching to scholarship, and one
could hardly expect this University to
be different. But Garrow does pub
lish, and he's publishing the same
kind of work now he was publishing
when the department was so eager to
hire him. To suddenly say that his
work does not -fit within some nar
rowly defined limits of a discipline
that is itself fuzzily defined raises
questions about the real reason for
Rape no joke
To the editor:
Monday, March 26, Dan Rather
reported the outcome of the New
Bedford rape trial. Two of the men
found guilty of rape were sentenced
to six to eight years in prison. The
other two convicted men were
sentenced to ten to twelve years. He
further reported that there was com
munity protest that these sentences
were too severe. Frankly, I am en
raged by this outcome. This has far
reaching implications for both our
justice system and social infrastruc
ture. I think it is a slap in the face of our
justice system that a man convicted
of a violent crime that robs a woman
of her dignity and bruises her soul
could be given such a short sentence.
The sting of this slap is more sharp in
light of the fact that considerably
longer sentences are being given for
victimless crimes, such as the posses
sion of nonsalable amounts of narcotics.
fir I 5NR llA
lit III CQIXS&& I
J
COLLEGE I
We are forced to take five courses because facul
ty say it will make us well-rounded individuals. Yet,
we have to choose from a confining course list that
limits what we can take. Instead of having a diverse
smorgasboard, we get the soup of the day.
The 1984 fall class schedule lists only 13 classes
that will fulfill the philosophical perspective. Why
is this number so small? The schedule lists only one
political science that will fulfill the social science
perspective, and there is no economics course.
Aren't these considered social sciences?
Graves said, "We asked all the departments for a
list of courses that could fulfill the perspectives.
Some departments didn't respond." So until all
departments decide to cooperate, sophomores must
choose from the skimpy list of approved courses.
The new curriculum further limits students by
allowing only upper-level courses to fulfill the
perspective requirements. This means students are
tied to the introductory courses they took in
General College. Students without a background in
anthropology (Anthro 41) would not be prepared
for upper-level anthropology courses like 117, 121,
125 or 139. Instead; they would have to continue in
the same departments they were in as freshmen and
sophomores.
The new curriculum does have worthy, though
idealistic, goals. The Thornton committee's goals
were to help "students to become self-educating in
dividuals," to help them "make responsible value
judgements" and to enable them to "work and live
creatively in a technological world." The ad
ministration believes students cannot do this on
seated at his desk speaking on his
positive aspects have been aired re
cently. In these ads, Helms men
tioned his drive to curb massive
government spending and strong sup
port for agriculture in North
Carolina. Is this negativism? Clearly,
not all of Helms advertising has been
"negative," as Boyd claims.
It is quite common for Gov.
Hunt's supporters to complain inces
santly about Helms' advertising prac
tices because Helms' new ads reveal
Hunt's true hypocrisy. For example,
Hunt said Helms was guilty of not
protecting interests in North
Carolina. But the latest Helms com
mercials showed that a committee to
elect Jim Hunt exists in New York.
This is not negative advertising.
Rather, it is the plain truth about
Hunt's campaign.
The Hunt for Senate Committee
knows trouble is on the horizon be
cause of tremendous gains by Helms
in recent polls. As a result, Hunt sup
porters appear jealous of Helms'
generous out-of-state support since
they are unable to obtain as much of
it themselves.
Boyd mentioned Helms' "issued
avoiding statements" in her letter.
This erroneous accusation is absurd,
for anyone who knows ' anything
about Sen. Helms is aware of his
positions on a broad spectrum of
issues. It is Hunt who frequently
dodges issues and focuses primarily
To the editor:
Although I admire Ashley
Royal's and M. Wall's commit
ment to the cause of women's
rights, I feel that their extremist
views do a great disservice to men
("Red Ribbons of Awareness"
and "Men, media oppress
women," DTH, March 14 and
26). To state that rape escort ser
vices "promote the patriarchal
system which encourages women
to look to men for protection" is
ludicrous at best. A woman who
walks alone at night is a prime tar
get for a would-be rapist. To ask a
man to escort her back to her
domicile is not a sign of weakness
or a concealed desire for male
domination. Rather it is merely
good judgement. I certainly do
not object to a woman being ac
companied by other women, but in
many situations this is not possible
and often does not afford ade
quate protection against rape (par
ticularly if the group of women is
a small one).
denying him tenure.
All those in the chain of appeal
above the department have stood
behind the lower managers, like a
good hierarchy should. But what
about the students? The fact that
hundreds -of them last year signed
petitions asking that Garrow be
granted tenure should tell us some
thing, though it's not clear anybody's
listening. My daughter was lucky
enough to have a course with him
before he goes. What a loss for the
hundreds of others who won't have
him next year or after!
Elizabeth Tornquist
Lecturer in nursing
The shortness of these sentences
could have the effect of negating the
work of women's groups in en
couraging rape victims to come for
ward to report and prosecute
criminals. A rape trial is no walk in
the park. In addition to having to
relive the event, the victim must
undergo an extreme scrutinization of
her character. No one can deny that
rape inflicts a deep emotional wound.
The same is true for the trial that
follows. For many women this emo
tional stress is enough to deter them
from prosecuting a rapist. The
likelihood that a convicted rapist will
serve only six years will further deter
women from prosecuting criminals.
If a jnan accused of rape is found
to be innocent, by all means he
should be free. But, please, let us
avoid making rape a bad joke.
Carol D. Haworth
Chapel Hill
To the editor:
I applaud M.Wall's letter,
("Men, media oppress women,"
DTH, March 26), concerning the
issue of "the current system of
male supremacy" that
characterizes our society even to
day. I do not agree, however, that
the blame should be entirely
placed on the media and men
when it is women who tolerate the
pressures of "any form of
domination.. .verbal, physical or
psychological."
Certainly, it is disturbing that
women have been the victims of
rape and other violent crimes
throughout the centuries. But that
is all part of the patriarchal system
which is alive and well and sends
their own. Graves said, "Students see the Universi
ty as a place to pick up job skills." While it is true
that some students are only interested in getting a
job, some also want to get a taste of many different
areas. The important thing is that the students
should decide the areas they want to explore, not
the administration. Maybe students will regret not
taking a philosophy course, and maybe they won't.
The decision should be their own. '
On April 30, 1969, an editorial in The Daily Tar
Heel supported the Merzbacher reforms. "Each in
dividual man must be allowed to formulate his own
concept of the educated man in the course of his
own education." The new curriculum with its
limited course offerings ignores this point. It also
depends too heavily on these five perspective
courses to adequately achieve the goal of a
balanced education.
Bill Harmon, a UNC English professor, said it
best in a handwritten note to the administration on
Feb. 15, 1980. "It seems devoted addicted even
to inane folly and superstition. Anybody who
knows or does anything knows that there is no such
thing as a skill and certainly no such thing as a
perspective. To hang our program on these two
superstitions will unavoidably introduce such
distortion and hypocrisy into what we do that the
poor students will leave our program even more
depressingly laden with mumbo-jumbo than they
were when they entered."
Kathy Hopper, a sophomore English and jour
nalism major from Greensboro, N.C., is assistant
features editor for The Daily Tar Heel.
on agenda such as education which
he hopes will benefit his political am
bitions. Hunt is a man of politics;
Helms is a man of principles.
I hope I have successfully dispelled
the notion that so-called negative ad
vertising cannot have positive conno
tations. These ads can educate the
public on significant issues, provided
they are truthful. The primary reason
Hunt's camp dislikes Helms' ads is
because they depict the facts about
Hunt's policies.
Christopher C. Sanders
Granville
Sexually interdependent
To claim complete independence
from men as a goal of the women's
movement is naive and unrealistic.
Men and women cannot be inde
pendent of each other but rather
must be interdependent. It is time
for feminists to concentrate on
truly pressing problems (e.g. equal
pay) rather than analyzing every
aspect of traditional male-female
interactions in ridiculous attempts
to concoct evidence of discrimina
tion and male domination. To
walk a woman home, to open a
door for a woman or to treat a
woman to dinner are not medieval
vestiges of male domination. On
the contrary, such actions are
demonstrations of courtesy, kind
ness and respect. To interpret
them otherwise reveals an under
lying anti-male bias and a univer
sal suspicion of the motives of
men in general.
Eric M. Parker
Department of Pharmacology
Staying mum
regards from the top of the totem
pole. What M. Wall failed to con
sider was the attitude of the op
pressed: the women.
Women like their passive roles;
we are comfortable because we do
not have to think for ourselves,
much less protect ourselves. If we
keep our mouths shut, shave our
legs and smile demurely, we'll be
able to get married and have
babies in no time at all. Heck, if
anyone gives us any trouble we
can just call Daddy.
I don't think the people in the
media are the only ones keeping
quiet.
Amy Simmons
Granville