Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Jan. 17, 1985, edition 1 / Page 8
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8The Daily Tar Heel Thursday. January 17. 1985 Getting out of bed at the crack of noon II I I HlOAY. Mil.., o I llKOADWAY. MaNaciuy IJit-r Mark Siinm iokix .i. .,.,, i:jttr Bi n Pi kkowski. .i. ....;. i.jn.r Kr.i.i.Y Simmons. rn.r.i FJitor VAN( i: TlU ITTH! N. Man- an J NmhouI FJitor Ml I.ANII- Wl l LS. City FJitor DAN Tll.l.MAN. Fuxhu-ff FJitor I.YNN OAV1S. Svus FJitor Frank Kennedy, sport t FJitor Jl:ITGROVF..rrr FJitor SHARON SHERIDAN. Features FJitor J F.I T NFUVIIIF. Photography FJitor Star jBM 92? ar o editorial freedom Open the floodgates There's a small leak in a mighty big dam. A few thousand Black & Decker shares, only recently owned by UNC, were let go because of the company's ties to the apartheid regime in South Africa. It is a surprising, though very welcome, sign from an administration previously impenetrable when it came to divestment. The University has not come out and said that this represents a change in policy. In fact, administrators did little to publicize the Black & Decker sale. Nevertheless, it is done, and it is good. The University told its investors to sell the shares because it did "not wish to have its endowment funds invested in companies which have not adopted the Sullivan Principles," which basically say that black workers and white workers in South Africa should be treated equally. "Maybe we finally made some dent," said Student Government's Greg Hecht, who has researched the 95 companies UNC invest H Vioc k trying to Search unwarranted persuade the University to make socially responsible investments in other words, those not involving companies with questionable labor practices in South Africa, where blacks cannot vote and human rights apply only to whites. The recent sale is a sure sign of success, be it Hecht 's or that of one of the many other groups that have tried to talk UNC into divestment. But there's more to be done. UNC has demonstrated that it won't deal with non-signers of the Sullivan Principles. Even if they sign, though, the companies don't necessarily enforce the principles. If that's the case, why not use the stockholders' influence to bend their arm? Such is the University's task. To become more active. To write letters asking signees to enforce the Sullivan Principles and help alleviate the effect of apartheid. We look forward to this trickle of hope becoming a river of good conscience. High school. Remember carrying your purse, wallet or backpack to class? Remember feeling confident that no teacher or principal would just walk up and demand to search these possessions? Did you think about it at all? Probably not. But after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on student searches, many public school students must be thinking about it with a" sense of anger and betrayal. This anxiety comes from a 6-3 ruling that permits public school teachers and officials to search students as long as there are "reasonable grounds" for believing that the search will yield evidence of a violation of the law or school rules. The ruling amounts to a loosening of the Fourth Amendment's "probable cause" standard, which says searches are illegal unless there is probable cause to believe that a law has been violated. Such loosening, of course, will make it easier on school officials who must deal with the tremendous problems of drug use and violent crime in today's schools. But should students' rights to privacy be thrown out the window in the name of "maintaining order'? Certainly not. Justice White, writing for the major ity, said students' interest in privacy must be balanced against "the substantial interest of teachers and administrators in maintaining discipline in the class room and on school grounds." Unfor tunately, the ruling tips this balancing scale. In other words, the ruling says, "Sure, students have rights, but since drugs and violence are such big problems those rights become secondary." Call it knee jerk conservatism if you want, but whatever you call it, the court's decision, as a dissenting judge put it, "portends a dangerous weakening of the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to protect the privacy and security of our citizens." Besides this bad precedent, the unclear meaning of "reasonable grounds" exactly how much less restrictive are they than probable cause? could open the door to abuse by teachers with relaxed attitudes about student searches. And this might lead to even greater tension between students and teachers. As one high school senior put it, "I don't think they should be able to just look into your things. A pocketbook is personal and it's yours and you can keep what you want in it." Except your freedom, perhaps. The Bottom Line Perhaps this should begin with a warning for those of you with weak stomachs: DO NOT READ! And you thought you had problems. Some communities have troubles with traffic, others are constantly fighting with city hall. Well, the folks in Castle Rock, Colorado, have problems of a different nature they have mountain lions. Apparently the lions, which number between two and four, were lured to the residential area by a family that fed them meat and table scraps. Things were fine until the family moved away, at which point the hungry lions started devouring neighbor hood dogs and cats. So far, about a dozen dogs and uncountable cats have been lost to the lions, which weigh up to 200 pounds and are 8 feet long. What really has the residents worried, however, is the concern that the lions will grow tired of their four-legged cuisine and move on to bigger fare namely children. One man has already encountered one stalking his 4-year-old daughter while she was playing in the backyard. He was able to chase the lion off with a stick and a garden hose, but only after the lion made away with the family Scottish terrier. The whole situation is very unusual to Jeff Butler, spokesman for the Wildlife Division, who says that mountain lions are normally afraid of people. The ones in Castle Rock are not afraid, however, since thay are used to handouts from humans. "We warn people over and over again not to feed wild animals. But some people just don't listen," said Butler. Ghosts in the machine It was bad enough when they taught machines how to answer phone calls. You'd build up enough courage to call that special someone for a date, you'd nervously dial the number, your heart would race when you heard the receiver picked up, and then your spirits would drop when you heard the words: "Hi! I can't come to the phone right now, but . . ." End of potential romance. The inventors weren't satisfied with that. Now they're making machines that can make their own phone calls. Insurance salesmen, tired of getting cussed by folks they rouse from the dinner table, now get computers to make calls for them. And, last fall there was the ugly spectre of stockcar driver Richard Petty letting a machine transmit his recorded voice to unwary voters who had the bad judgment to pick up their phone, urging them to vote for Jesse Helms. Talk about technology running amok. Now, Fayetteville, prime tourist spot in Variety Vacationland, was recently mystified by the antics of a couple of chatty machines. City officials tried for weeks to catch an unauthorized telephone user making calls to the same telephone number from two extensions in a city building. "I thought it was two people picking on somebody," said Robbie Buffer, a switch board operator. City officials then learned the calls were all being made to a beeper at the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. It turns out that the culprits were two Coke machines that were programmed to tell a computer how many bottles of Coke had been sold. But these weren't wimpy machines that would give up after a single try; if they got a busy signal, they'd call until another one of precocious machines had given up the line. Don't expect these intelligent Coke machines to be satisfied with making boring phone calls. Pretty soon, they'll want to give you advice when you walk up to one of them for them for the pause that refreshes: "You look like you're putting on a little weight, don't you think you'd rather have a Tab?" Then, a few more evolutionary steps down the scale, well have Hal, the nasty computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey that got perverse pleasure from chunking astronauts out into cold space. Even worse, one of these days, these computers, just like their human counter parts, are going to try to get a few laughs from random-digit dialing. Dont be sur prised when a machine calls you with the trick question: "Is your refrigerator running?" We'd better go catch them, before it's too late. And that's the bottom line. By SHARON SHERIDA N With campus elections less than a month away, candidates for student body president are busy discussing issues they deem important to students. The mandatory meal plan. Textbook prices. UNC's parking problem. Well, I want to add another item to the agenda: 8 a.m. classes. I understand there are "morning people" at UNC. These remarkable individuals get out of bed with their eyes open the first time their alarms ring. They have trouble sleeping past 9 a.m. or staying awake past 1 1 p.m. They actually enjoy eating breakfast. And they like to get their classes out of the way early, starting at 8 a.m. I am not a morning person. I hit the snooze alarm at least four or five times before I stumble out of bed and toward the bathroom 20 minutes before I'm due in class. Eyes squinched tight against the incredible brightness of florescent lights, I grope my way to a sink. Those brave enough to attempt conversing with me generally get grunted at for their efforts. Without my glasses, I cannot see who is talking to me, and my power of speech rarely awakens completely before 10 a.m. My stomach doesn't awaken until lunchtime. I don't mind swallowing a little coffee or orange juice to help me gain consciousness, but the idea of enjoying an early-morning meal is incompre hensible to me. IVe never understood why folks put such an emphasis on breakfast, anyway. I have nothing against eating three meals a day. I just prefer eating the first one at noon and the last one at midnight. I'm not very attractive before noon, either. The other morning I got out of bed in time to attend a meeting at 1 1 . When I arrived, I inquired about the health of a friend who was feeling poorly. "Are you sick?" a passerby asked me. "No," someone else replied. "Sharon always looks like that in the morning." It's not that I have anything against mornings. I have a habit of staying awake all night studying for exams or typing papers, so IVe enountered a few dawns. It really is rather pretty to see the light awaken and creep in the window and to listen to the birds discuss the weather. The problem with mornings is they arrive too early in the day for me to enjoy them. Unless IVe stayed up all night, I never see them. Even if I managed to get out of bed in time, I couldn't get my eyes open wide enough to see the sun rise. YouVe probably deduced that I'm not fond of early-morning classes. I took an 8 a.m. class once. It was the most painful exerience of my college career. It mm n y V7 r m M (Pi ivJ (Q) ft.EE Beer. .' 3esse heims is dat? oz. ytoice oVl CHisng mtffUV is ajaitwg-irt the" snc&eiia it's The iaVAFite. ftftdH...cEfi-FT ,T &OSH IS ii iwm iii" m m m m m ti . ii i -v me mm h- - qkj- -77-T surpassed not having anyone to talk to at a freshman orientation mixer. It was worse than writing a 25-page research paper. It was more painful than watching the Tar Heels lose their shot at the basketball title. I tried various methods of getting myself awake enough to think coherently during that class. On some Tuesdays, I attended a 7:30 a.m. church service, for example. If this did not help me wake up, it at least made me feel holier if I dozed off during the lecture. I am a compulsive note-taker. When I exited that 8 a.m. class each Tuesday and Thursday, I did not remember much from the lecture, but I had pages of notes. I wrote them in my sleep. I think it would have helped if my instructor had jumped up and down or yodeled or breakdanced or just screamed occasionally. But he never did. Maybe he wasn't awake yet, either. I am not suggesting 8 a.m. classes should be abolished. That would be unfair to morning people. What I want is equal opportunites for night people. Classes offered at 8 a.m. should be offered at later hours, also. This semester, for example, I wanted to take a class on editorial writing. But it only was offered at 8 a.m. I couldn't register for that. Can you imagine me attempting to write an editorial at that hour? I'd spend the whole period trying to figure out how to get the paper in the typewriter. Other students may vote for the candidate who is cutest or supports their political views or dates their roommate. I want to vote for the candidate who hates to get out of bed in the morning. Sharon Sheridan, a junior journalism major from East Setauket, N. Y is features editor of The Daily Tar Heel. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Where there is doubt, opt on side of life To the editor: We write this letter in response to the poorly reasoned letters of Doug Brewer ("Ill-conceived issue") and Elizabeth Larschan ("Fields' letter off-base") published Jan. 14. Brewer's two problems are easily answered. First, "abortions will not end by making them illegal;" the same thing may be said about other crimes such as murder and rape. Those acts are unlawful, but that has not stopped people from doing them. The fact that laws will be broken doesn't mean we must legalize everything. Second, "the right to terminate a pregnancy is fundamental to the freedom of choosing to bear a child;" is this freedom such an all important goal that we must resort to the killing of innocent human beings to achieve it? We agree that the freedom to choose whether to bear a child is important, but the child's right to life is infinitely more important. To Larschan's worry about bring ing children into the world who will be unwanted or raised in poverty, we respond just who do you think you are to say whose life is worth living? You put yourself in the place of God. By this reasoning I guess you would support the extermina tion of not just the unborn, but of people of all ages who live below the poverty level or who are friend less. Is being born in poverty a capital crime worthy of execution? She next asks, "How can one kill that which is not yet alive?" What do you mean, "not alive?" Is it dead cell tissue you want to take out of the mother's womb? Does that heart that is beating within a matter of a few weeks after conception mean the fetus is dead? And finally I must say something about Larschan's last immature insult of Board. I guess loving everyone is still just a goal for most of us, but do you really think we are "Pollyannas" for believing that even those we don't love have a right to life? Almost two years ago we wrote a letter to the editor saying that the central issue we should discuss relating to abortion is whether a fetus is a human being deserving of constitutional protection. Since then we have rarely heard pro abortionists address that pivotal issue. Notice that all of the argu ments brought up by Larschan and Unite for understanding To the editor: Students on campus are in the midst of a very important survey. The survey concerns UNITAS, an intercultural dormitory project coming to UNC. UNITAS, Latin for "united," would be a voluntary dorm project involving about 100 students. Stu dent Government, under President Paid Parker and the University Relations Committee, has formed UNITAS in an effort to break down the barriers and misconceptions between cultures. Each resident of UNITAS will live with someone of another culture, a different country, or ethnic background. Students will expand their classroom learning to a daily cultural experience. In addition, students will become part of an educational program for credit as a supplement to their classes. Dr. Wayne Kuncl, director of housing, established a similar pro gram at the University of Nebraska when he was there. Nebraska's program remains vibrant and did not lead to randomized housing as some may fear. UNITAS will be strictly voluntary and will seek to bring understanding between cultures. Much of the program is still in its planning stages and student input is now sought. A member of the University Relations Committee will pick up your survey by 10 p.m. Friday. Please complete your sur vey, and let us know your ideas. If you did not receive a survey, please drop by Suite C any weekday and pick one up. Christine Manuel Robert Titchener University Relations Committee 7r.rv. ; ; hi in r 11 1 yy nS.' Brewer may be applied to 90-year-olds, 20-year-olds and two-year-olds. . . , In all the debate over abortion, no one has ever been able to prove that a fetus is not a human being deserving basic civil rights. Because of this uncertainty, we should make the presumption that they are persons. That must be our policy when dealing with such serious life and death issues as this. We believe that some day Roe v. Wade will be analyzed in the same category with the Dred Scott decision, the infam ous 1857 U.S. Supreme Court case denying basic civil rights to blacks. How many more segments of our society will we shamefully exclude before we learn our lesson? Chip and Dawn Younce Chapel Hill 11 jtiJm J THSUUIMATC U ATOMIC VAS7E vvi t w wwt w Frou-frou under every bed It 's just good college fun To the editor: In reply to the letter ("DTH takes championship beating on 'Pack", Jan. 10), I would like to say Wells and Turnbull need to learn the difference between college rivals joking and all-out harassment. I'm sure that the Technician at State provides their own spoof of the DTH as well as jokes concerning Carolina's students and athletes. (Check yesterdays drop sites. Ed.) think in last year's Technician before the Carolina-State football game there were various jokes on Carolina's gay students. Every student here is not gay nor does every student at State use a South ern accent. Apparently you think poking fun at Jim Valvano's cookbook means "raking him over the coals." Let's be realistic. The DTH is just prac ticing good old college rivalry in ridiculing the Wolfpack. Although you see it necessary to praise Valvano's coaching ability, I will let Dean Smith's speak for itself. Who knows the last time a Dean Smith squad has won less than 20 games or finished less than first or second in the ACC? Even though State has had two good recruiting years and has their starting five players back, they had better get out of the ACC cellar (2-2) and in the Top 20 before they are considered a "Top-10 caliber team." As to following the Tar Heels' misfortunes, we may have to wait, although they seem to be going through a bad time now with a record of 1 2-2 and a Top 10 ranking. C'mon guys, take the jokes and live with them. The DTH is just poking fun. Tim Moss Chapel Hill To the editor: Bravo for Guy Lucas' scathing column on frou-frou ("How 'bout a big boo for frou-frou?", Jan. 16)! Lucas voiced the concerns of many students, including myself, who have also noticed the infiltration of ... of ... cutesiness upon our beloved campus. But Lucas failed to mention the ultimate manifestation of frou-frou house shoes, also known as bedroom slippers. Since arriving at Carolina in the fall, I've seen house shoes in everv conceivable color and form, from bear feet to elephants. But the other night I witnessed a sight that horrified my very soul. A young lady I was visiting was wearing pink bears with livid red hats and bow ties!!! Everyone knows that pink is simply diluted red, and red is the badge of com munism. Will Russia stop at nothing to corrupt our society? I put it to you, Carolina students, are we not better dead than frou-frou red? Michael Newman Ehringhaus Rekindling unforgettable fire Letters and editorial columns should be triple-spaced and typed on a 60-character line. Deadline is 2 p.m. the working day before publication. To the editor: The new Student Activities Cen ter provides excellent seating for numerous forms of entertainment. It is the largest indoor arena on the Mid-Atlantic Coast. We in Old West, and most other students, feel that the Irish sensation, U2, should pay Chapel Hill a second visit. One of their first, if not the first, concerts in the United States was held here at the well-known Chapel Thrill. They ruled over the other attrac tions and dominated the afternoon with their meaningful lyrics, excel lent stage show, superior talent and rapport with the audience. Obviously, U2 would be an enor mous attraction here at UNC. With their upcoming world tour, and the United States being heavily sche duled, would it not be possible to have U2 at the SAC? Since U2's arrival in America they have become quite successful. We're sure that U2 would consider having their second concert date in Chapel Hill in our new 22,000-seat SAC. We, as well as other lovers of good, pure rock 'n' roll, would greatly appreciate and do anticipate a U2 concert date in Chapel Hill. Jon Carr Tom Froman Kent Spears Old West
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Jan. 17, 1985, edition 1
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