Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / April 11, 1984, edition 1 / Page 8
Part of Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
8The Daily Tar HeelWednesday, April 11, JFFF HlDAY, Editor 0 Jokl Broadway, Managing Editor MlCHAF.L TOOI.E. Editorial Page Editor Frank Bruni. Asm-law Editor Kelly Simmons, University Editor KYLE MARSHALL, State and National Editor MELANIE WELLS, City Editor VANCE TREFETHEN, Business Editor Stuart Tonkinson, Ne- Editor Frank Kennedy, Sports Editor Jeff Grove, Am Editor ClNDY DUNLEVY, Features Editor CHARLES LeDFORD, Photography Editor JEFF NEUVILLE, Photography Editor And equal access for all When the Senate rejected President Reagan's proposed school prayer amend ment last month, political and religious conservatives vowed that the issue of religion in schools would return. And so it has in the form of a proposed "equal access" bill that would allow student religious groups to use public-school facilities as freely as do other groups. There's a difference, however, to this latest brush of church with state. Unlike the school prayer amendment, the equal access bill is a positive move that would help ensure every student's right to freedom of speech and religion while ad dressing the constitional questions and enforcement problems raised by last month's Senate battle. Much of the credit for such a remarkable compromise goes to the strict limitations included by the bill's spon sors, Rep. Don L. Baker, D-Wash., and Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, R-Ore. The bill, which passed in the House Education and Labor Committee last week, applies only to secondary schools and allows meetings to be held only during non-instructional periods. By inserting these restrictions', Baker and Hatfield have eliminated what many opponents of the prayer amend ment feared the problem of a student's peers or teachers pressuring him into par Mining a sea of The Reagan administration has ag gressively defended U.S. security interests for more than three years now. Some measures such as the provision of substantial military support to Great Bri tain during the Falklands War and the in itial dispatch of troops to Lebanon have been prudent, while others have seemed to demonstrate a flagrant disregard, fqr. international law and an almost reflexive willingness to use force. The CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors falls in the second category, further tar nishing U.S. credibility as a defender of international law and freedom of the seas. Intelligence officials have said that the mines are being laid by Nicaraguan rebels and Latin American employees of the CIA using CIA-owned speedboats. The operation has been controlled by a larger CIA ship operated by Americans in inter national waters. Vessels from Great Bri tain, Japan, Panama, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union have already been damaged in the two-month-old mining campaign. This attempt to cut off Nicaragua's economy from vital imports is the most drastic measure of a U.S. foreign policy completely hostile to Nicaragua. Presi dent Reagan has defended that policy by charging that the small Central American nation is but a puppet of the Soviet bloc seeking the overthrow of neighboring military dictatorships and shaky democracies. If the Sandinistas are not kept firmly in check, Reagan warns, they will spead communism to El Salvador and Guatemala, and come to pressure Mexico's southern border. By ordering the mining of Nicaraguan harbors, however, Reagan vastly over reacts to what is at best a low-grade in direct threat to U.S. interests. The ill concealed plotting of the CIA runs counter to several basic goals of U.S. foreign policy: The United States is bullying miSAMWWRAL PfSIWM TUM IM IN HERE AND IPIWWOW m HANpsup, u PRoSKUM AFIffi bW.0) 1984 Satin Star ni 92nd year of editorial freedom ticipating in religious worship against his will. In a classroom of elementary students, the danger of such peer pressure is obvious. It would be extremely difficult for a young child to excuse himself from the room while his friends and instructor remained to say a prayer. For an older student in high school, however, the pressure of a friend asking him to go to a Bible Club meeting at lunch or after school is much less acute. As could be expected, there have been critics who have voiced opposition to the bill on constitutional grounds. As one reverend argued, "Nowhere in the Con stitution does it say you shall make no law regarding drama clubs or 4-H or Junior Chamber of Commerce. The Constitu-. tion only specifies religion." While that may be true, it has long been legally ac ceptable for government and religion to have such a relationship in other institu tions of our society. Religious groups regularly hold meetings on college cam puses, and patients visit chapels in state supported hospitals. The right to assemble and the right to free speech have been unnecessarily sacrificed in an attempt to preserve a freedom from religion. The equal access bill is the best way to restore the balance. troubles Nicaragua, a Third World nation little able to resist. Would the United States be willing to mine the harbors of a much greater menace to U.S. interests, like the Soviet Union? Of course not the Soviet Union is big enough to fight back and hurt us in response. By picking on the lit tle guy, the United States blunts its appeal to the Third World and lends credence to accusations of being an imperialist power. The U.S. economy is heavily depen dent upon international trade and thus relies on freedom of the seas for ships to transport goods between nations safely and efficiently. Through the piratic destruction of neutral shipping, the United States undermines an interna tional principle of which it is the chief beneficiary. U.S. criticism of Iraq's attempts to cripple Iran's economy by attacking tankers using Iranian ports proves hypocritical. The United States lacks even the feeble justification of wartime desperation. U.S. commitment to international law in general has been called into ques tion by this aggression toward a country which has not attacked U.S. soil or military forces. Moreover, in an attempt to avoid what would probably be a losing case before the United Nations' judicial organ, the World Court, the administra tion has sought to remove its Central American policies from World Court jurisdiction for the next two years. The administration's action weakens aunique medium for the peaceful resolution of in ternational disputes. The CIA mining of Nicaraguan har bors escalates a covert war that is un justified by the Reagan administration's stated aim of checking communist expan sion in the area. Congress must step in with its budgetary powers to stop a policy that has run amok and resorted to ter rorism. 111 fiOTMMIMINDI We can only imagine the combination of curiosity and disbelief that rushed through the mind of 48-year-old Maude Bell as she stood in the den of her Winnesboro, S.C., home and watched the giant funnel of one of the first in a deadly string of tornadoes approach. To Maude, who shunned the shelter of the bed under which her husband and son dove, the rare sight of the tornado must have seemed improbable, dream like, majestic. Not hideously destructive. Not the kind of freak occurrence that would rob the lives of more than 60 South and North Carolinians and inflict more than $100 million of property damage. The price Maude Bell paid for a brief glimpse of one of nature's most destructive phenomena was no less than her life. She was one of the first casualties of the March 28 storm that rampaged across the Carolinas and spawned some 30 tor nadoes. As such, she probably never seized the gravity of what was happening, never fully realized the incredible peril in which she suddenly found herself. She was not thinking in terms of how her life was how all our lives are at the mercy of nature. The tornadoes of two weeks ago drove this point home in a vivid, gruesome fashion. We saw photographs of both the hideous destruction and the faces of those whose homes, whose belong ings and, in many cases, whose loved ones were a tragic part of that destruction. We heard stories of entire residences being lifted into the air, of cows being deposited in trees, where their bodies were found hanging. We greeted all this stranger-than-fiction news with the same kind of disbelief that undoubtedly swept over Maude Bell in her final minutes. How could this have happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly? What could we have done to prevent it? The answer to the first question has provided the stuff for meteorological study for the past weeks. The storm's course from its violent birth over Utah to its finest hours over the Carolinas to its less spectacular, but still destruc tive, denoument over the middle Atlantic states and New England has been charted for us. The storm's dynamics have been explained to us. We've been barraged with numbers: the potential speed of a tornado's surface winds, the average diameter of its funnel, its expected duration. But for all this scientific knowledge, the answer to the second question, concerning what could have been done to prevent the catastrophe, re mains "nothing at all." It is an answer that not A disaster touches close to home By TOM CONLON Four UNC students are grateful today that their families and relatives are safe, but some of their properties weren't as fortunate. Tornadoes swept through parts of North and South Carolina last week, causing millions of dollars worth of damage and leading to Gov. Jim Hunt's declaration of eight counties as disaster areas. Bertie, Pitt, Duplin, Robeson, Scotland, Sampson, Greene and Wayne counties were declared federal disaster areas. r Paula Wiggins, a sophomore from Mount Olive, saw the remains of her grandfather's carpentry business the day after the tornado. "It was totally destroyed all that he had worked for as long as I could remember was sud denly gone," she said. 'I was thankful that he wasn't hurt." Mount Olive, located in Wayne County, 12 miles south of Goldsboro, was one of several nearby communities hit by the tornado where five people had been killed. The nearby towns of Faison, Calypso and Clinton were also hit. "A subdivision where we knew a lot of people had been hit hard and people were displaced," Wiggins said. "I went home the next day. To see it in reality was a lot worse than just hearing about it it looked like bombs had dropped. "An aunt and uncle of mine also lost their home, and they're staying with their daughter," she said. "Fortunately, in a small community everybody knows each other, and peole have taken people into their homes until they get relocated." Five miles south in Faison, the Duplin County LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The thing to fear may be fear itself To the editor: Last Wednesday night I was raped ... mentally. This may sound as ab surd to you, both male and female, as it would have to me just last Tuesday. However, the psychological repercus sions of conceivably being raped are a terrifyingly real aspect o1 the crime of rape itself. Perhaps the fear of rape is the most crippling effect of the crime as it is most universally experienced; one does not actually have to be raped to fear it. I'm not going to detail the events which led to my intense fear for my safety which, I might add, I have never before felt to such a devastating degrej because the incident that made me feel threatened is not a significant focus. Different situations scare different people. The significant factor is the fear itself which, though existing only in the mind, is nonetheless very real, often inhibiting one's freedom. After a series of bizarre events A long row to To the editor: Before congratulating ourselves for living in the nation's "best educated city" ("Bureau calls Chapel Hill best educated city," DTH, April 4), we should note that North Carolinians as a whole are among the most poorly educated populations in the United States. School teachers in this state At nature's beck and call Frank Bruni Ferret's Wheel only disturbs and saddens, but also perplexes, many of us who have grown all too accustomed man's many triumphs over nature. We live in a nation where skyscrapers defy gravity, vaccines render certain diseases all but obsolete, and the genetic code of life is subject to man's manipula tion. Where the various innovations in transpor tation and shelter and clothing often lead to a for getfulness of our vulnerability to climate and weather. And where even the most frequent of nature's cruel tricks rainfall that leads to perilous flooding conditions, snows that trap peo ple in their homes, droughts that devastate thousands of acres of crops catch us off guard and confound us. The fact is that modern man all too often fails to recognize that his life is just as contingent upon nature's bounty, and almost as imperiled by its malevolence, as the lives of his ancestors were. Few of us living in the more metropolitan areas of the United States appreciate the farmer's ex istence or our dependence upon it. For many ur banites, broccoli and cauliflower are not plants picked from the soil, but frozen foodstuffs picked out of colorful supermarket packages. Cereal comes from a box, not from the vast wheat and corn fields located at the heart of the United States. Our ignorance only serves to further endanger our existence on this planet. We manifest this unawareness when we fail to recognize the gravity of the problem posed by overpopulation of the earth. We flaunt it when we refuse to recognize that the elobe': natural fuel reserves are dwindl Scenes like this one were commonplace hometown of junior Mike Miller, the tornado destroyed open fields as well. "I went home after the tornado and remember seeing a farm field completely leveled," Miller said. "All the topsoil had been blown away. It really hit me how devastating the tornado was." Miller's first reaction was unexpected. "I was in a friend's room at school and hadn't even heard that there had been a tornado watch when someone came in and said four to five people had been killed," he said. "I asked where it was and they said Mount Olive. "I told them I'd be right back and called home," he said. "My parents had tried to call me at the same time. Fortunately, they said they were safe. My father asked an acquaintance of his how hard his house had been hit and was told, "I don't know, I haven't found it yet.' " The tornado pulled the community together and everyone reached out to each other, Miller said. "There was a lot of brotherly love among the people after the disaster struck," he said. "My mother got together through church to take food to the victims. Fast food places were donating food to temporary shelters, armories and chur ches it was a warm feeling." No reconstruction has taken place nor have people left the shelters since the tornado, Miller said, but people are surviving and keeping their spirits up despite their losses. Kathryn Dixon, a sophomore from Ayden, I 1U AU . "II II II IIWHWIIIMII II !! WlMiail nifiriffliiliimiriiTMmiMMliiliiMMMMwMKWiiMWiililiiilli Wednesday evening, the possibility of being raped seemed so real I was near hysterics. I felt safe inside the Union surrounded by people, but the walk home seemed an untraversable nightmare. I was paralyzed. Crippl ed. I felt as vulnerable and helpless as a lost child needing adult protection. Suddenly my carefree collegiate life was shattered; I had no freedom. Now I realize that the trauma I went through Wednesday evening was self induced and the helplessness I felt merely a specter of my imagination. It was fear that robbed me of my freedom. Recently, with the rash of rapes, increased press coverage and Rape Awareness Day, many women have become more concerned for their safety, as they should. However, I would like to make an appeal to women not to allow the fear of rape to unduly restrict or even destroy their lives and livelihoods. I am not suggesting women walk boldly down Airport Road alone at 1 a.m. whistl ing "Que sera, sera." I am" saying that we, as women, should not stop living as we want and need. We should take precautions such as lock ing doors and use available services such as the RAPE service to minimize our vulnerability and go on with our Take To the editor: Everyone remembers that 52 U.S. citizens were held for 444 days in Iran a few years ago, but who realizes that 2,490 U.S. citizens are still being held, some for over 5,000 days, in In dochina? Increasing public awareness about theses prisoners of war and men who are reported missing in ac tion is the goal of POW-MIA Awareness Week. The Arnold Air Society, a service organization within Air Force ROTC, has painted the cube and placed petitions that relate to this event in the Campus Y, the Undergraduate library and various other locations. The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing has worked for years to gain in formation and to keep the public aware of its dilemma. The Defense Intelligence Agency also has helped, investigating 1,959 reports concern ing sightings of Americans, crash locations, grave sites and the handl hoe are among the nation's most poorly paid, and only four other states have a lower proportion of high school graduates than North Carolina. There is still work to be done. Ken Chew Carolina Population Center ing rapidly and that alternative forms of energy merit immediate exploration. We foster an illu sion of independence from nature; we envision theintricate machinery and impressive edifies of modern society as self-realized structures and forget that minerals and metals extracted from the earth are responsible for such constructions. This ignorance is at the root of the surprise and disbelief with which we all greet news of such natural disasters as the one that struck the Carolinas two weeks ago today, but there is little reason for it. Earthquakes continually ripple, and occasionally ravage, portions of California. Less than a year ago, Galveston, Texas, was devastated by a hurricane that also battered Houston and sent a torrent of shattered glass down upon that city's sidewalks and streets. And in the same week that the tornadoes hit the Carolinas, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, erupted, depositing broad rivers of lava within four miles of Hilo, the state's second-largest city. In spite of all these reminders, we are still left dazed by demonstrations of nature's power. Although the pilgrimage of sightseers to those areas in the Carolinas worst hit by tornadoes was perceived by many as ghoulish, it was most likely incredulity, not a sadistic curiosity, that motivated the travelers. Like Maude Bell and like the many of us who carefully read newspaper and magazine accounts of the destruction, they found themselves fascinated by the mighty fury of which nature proved itself so effortlessly capable. For a brief moment, they understood: We are Mother Nature's children, like it or not. Her ruling hand, both benevolent and destructive, never ceases to hover over us. Frank Bruni, a sophomore English major from Avon, Conn., is associate editor of The Daily Tar Heel. DTHMeff Neuville after the tornadoes of March 28 struck. said the tornado was only two blocks shy of hit ting her family's home in her Pitt County com munity. "A lady we knew had her boyfriend killed when a tree fell on his car," she said. "My father also knew two or three people who died in rescue attempts of others." Dixon said although the tornado didn't destroy her home, the storm caused extensive tree damage and her family was without power for nearly two days. Pam Yelverton, a junior from the Duplin County town of Kenansville, said her community had not been hit but that the local hospital was full. "My mother said 47 people went to the hospital with minor injuries that night," she said. "It really shook up the community." The tornados hit communities about 20 miles east of Kenansville, the county seat where the hospital is located. It is fortunate that these students survived and that their families are safe. A few days later, a smaller tornado hit Northgate Mall in Durham, taking part of the roof with it and overturning a few cars. Although the victims who survived are pulling together, let's hope no one else is faced with this crisis again. Tom Conlon, a senior journalism and political science major from St. Paul Minn., is a staff writer for The Daily Tar Heel. lives. Otherwise, by succumbing to our fears, we have been victimized just as those who have actually been raped. Nancy E. Slocum Chapel Hill action on MI As ing and disposition of American re mains from Indochinese refugees who have come to America. These refugees from Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos report seeing American prisoners held in caves and forest en campments, and there is even a report of the remains of 400 Americans be ing held at 17 Ly Nam De Street in Hanoi. Slowly, progress is being made in obtaining information about the POW-MIAs. Recent developments include the release of the remains of nine Americans on June 3, 1983, but there are still 1,100 POW-MIAs known to be dead. In view of this fact, nine bodies are not enough. Try to imagine the anguish the families of these missing have en dured for years, and perhaps then you can see that they could use your support. Karon Uzzell AAS Squadron Commander
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 11, 1984, edition 1
8
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75