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,10The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, November 5, 1987 Satlg . b r t . I y" j; yjM .year oj eauoriai jreeaom Jill Gerber, Eor DEIRDRE FALLON, Managing Editor Sally Pearsall, to0r JEAN LUTES, University Editor DONNA LEINWAND, Stat and National Editor JEANNIE FARIS, City Editor James Surowiecki, sports Editor FELISA NEURINGER, Business Editor JUUE BRASWELL, Features Editor Elizabeth Ellen, Am Editor Charlotte Cannon, Photography Editor CATHY McHUGH, Omnibus Editor Conduct first, victory second board opinion Coach Dean ' Smith's unprece- dented suspension of basketball play- .ers J.R. Reid and Steve Bucknall is the kind of action that should be taken throughout University athletics when players ibehave badly. " On Oct. 24, Reid and Bucknall were .involved in an incident at a Raleigh : nightclub in which a student from N.C. ; State was spat on and punched in the : face. As punishment, Smith suspended i the two stars from the Nov. 21 season : opener against Syracuse. ; His action will undoubtedly hurt the team's prospects for victory. But Smith ;has done the right thing, once again illustrating why he deserves his ; reputation. : It has been said that a similar incident involving two "normal" ; students would have been ignored by the media and public. This is missing ; the point. Because of their position on !the basketball team, Reid and Buck ; nail represent the University wherever I they go and whatever they do. j The University should not tolerate ; poor behavior by its athletes, however trivial the behavior may seem. ; The precedent should be set that the j standard of conduct of players on the team comes before victory. If players do not behave themselves as individ uals, the whole team suffers. Reid and Bucknall face charges in connection with the incident. They have yet to be found guilty of any wrongdoing. But it is not because of any retaliatory actions that the two may or may not have indulged in that they have been suspended. The players have been suspended because they did not walk away from verbal harassment. It seems odd that two players who prove themselves on the basketball court and are admired by thousands for their skills lacked the self confidence to ignore a few verbal insults and some pushing and poking from a State student too ignorant to behave better. Had they walked away from the incident, Reid , and Bucknall would have shown their superiority. By not doing so they showed themselves no better than the person who insulted them and publicly embarrassed their university, their basketball team and themselves. Such high standards should be applied to all athletes. It is only through this kind of discipline that the University will maintain the standards that have kept its athletic program relatively clean. Take note of this crime How much would you pay for a semester's worth of notes for your hardest class? Wait, there's more these notes would be taken by graduate students. Now, how much? But wait, there's even more the notes would be fresh from the current semester, not just old notes from past lectures. $100? $150? $200? : Now, for the low, low price of $18.75, almost 2,000 students at the University of Iowa have employed Lynn Mar Enterprises to have a graduate student take notes for an entire semester in the class of their choice. The owner, Laurie Knepp, claims that her business provides a educational aid to the students. Most students, she says, use the extra notes to supplement their note-taking. "They might have missed something impor tant in the lecture that our note-taker got," Knepp says. . This view of human nature, while admirably optimistic, is unfortunately as farcical as the belief that students purchase research papers to expand their knowledge of a subject. Just as these research papers are mostly used as substitutes for original composi tions, the note-taking service will be used as a substitute for attending class. Knepp shrugs and wonders, "I don't know why (the professors) are so afraid of students' getting an educa tion." She does not see that a large part of education is developing the ability to listen carefully and note important points. Her service is not a learning aid; it is a crutch for students unwilling to concentrate in class. Protected by the graduate student's cushion of notes, a poor student will never be forced to improve his listening ability. The service also harms a professor's ability to teach. If a student is covering up a learning deficiency by using bought notes, the professor will not detect the problem or be able to help the student learn to organize notes. The student will slide through the semester and into the next without improving his skills. In addition to ethical problems, there are legal consequences. The service assumes that lecture material is public domain, that a professor's ideas and presentations can be bought and sold in the academic marketplace like apples. But who owns the apple tree? One Iowa professor has declared that he does, and has copyrighted his lecture material. Despite Knepp's lofty claims of helping students educate themselves, her service does nothing more than tempt weak students to depend on the work of others for academic success. A fine line exists between learning supplements and learning substitutes, and Lynn Mar Enterprises has taken a giant step in the wrong direction. Brian McCuskey r-non seqintur ' Delaware, despair and desecration L Non wasn't in Chapel Hill last weekend. He was reading Hemingway's "Men With out Women" as his plane landed at National Airport. He rented a car, found his way to 1-95, arid headed north to Newark, Del., where a friend of his was going to school. Eventually, he made it to Delaware. When Non walked into his friend's room, the first thing he noticed was that there were no books on the shelves. There were stuffed animals, and beer mugs, and plants. There was an Echo and the Bunnymen album cover taped to one wall, incongruously situated between two Garfield posters. As the afternoon wore on, the people in the room started to doze off. They were trying to rest up for the long night of drinking that lay ahead. Non was reading Hemingway's "Winner Take Nothing," his final collection of short stories. The stories in the collection are, as always, magnifi cently crafted, but certain of them also contain moments of transcendence, of real purity. Non was in the midst of one of those stories, "Fathers and Sons," when one of his friend's roommates looked at him and said, "Hey, this is college. We don't have to read here." Non didn't know what to say, so he just kind of smirked and chuckled when he heard that. It wasn't until later that the impulse to scream in anger overcame him. What he felt at first was just a kind of sadness that a college student could say that, even in jest. But then Non realized that students like her were reading Hemingway, or Joyce, or Salinger, and he felt, how to describe it, offended. He wasn't offended in a superficial sense, as if what the girl had said showed bad manners, but rather deeply offended. It was as if the idea of such a student reading "Fathers and Sons" was sacrilegious, as tf it violated in some basic way the experience of Hemingway's short stories. Non knew how pretentiously silly that sounded. But somehow, he felt personally insulted that someone might read Heming way in the wrong way. Not interpret him wrong, for what does wrong mean in the context of literary criticism, but read him without caring about the beauty and the power of his work. Non thought of Hemingway's passion for a certain code of conduct, a certain way of doing things. Non thought that unless things are done well, they aren't worth doing. And he knew that he wished that girl would never read "Fathers and Sons," for he wanted to keep that story pure. He wanted to keep it his. .. Readers' Foromni Excise malaise and let us learn ne of my professors this semester, a very genial, intelligent man, has made it a habit to levy general sneering criticisms at my whole class. After our midterm, he told us that students usually did better on the final, and explained that he wasn't sure if that was because they had a better sense of the course, or if the midterm simply scared them into "actually reading the material." One day he mentioned an obscure British espionage novel, and asked if anyone in class had read it. When no hands went up, he said, "Well, of course not. Wouldn't expect you to read a book all the way through." I wonder when the last time was that he read John Cheever, or Raymond Carver or Hemingway. I hate being in class when the general atmosphere is one of malaise, when coasting through is an acceptable path to take. This is college. This should be an epiphanic experience. Students should be motivated and they should be earnest. If they are not, they should not be in class. Teaching should not involve the professor talking down to the students, but should involve a mutual process of learning, with discussions framed in a certain, agreed upon context, based upon works (or scientific treatises, or calculus equations) that all have read. Unlike Allan Bloom, though, I don't believe the problem is relativism. The problem is that there are too many people in college who should not be, who would be better off learning things that will serve them in their business lives instead of struggling through English and history and physics classes that they really don't want to be in. To teach people about decon struction, when after they leave school the only text they will ever deconstruct is a Danielle Steel novel, is simply a waste of time, not only for the students, but for the professor. Tliis semester, there are 95 sections of English 1 being taught. There are only four English classes being taught whose main focus is the reading and analysis of short James Surowiecki Sports Editor fiction, excluding the creative writing classes. Hordes of prospective computer salesmen and future entrepreneurs are reading Joyce and yet almost no English majors are reading Carver or D.H. Lawrence. That is simply a travesty. College is not for everyone, and society should not act as if it is. Those English professors who are teaching English 1 would be better served, and would serve the academic community better, if they were teaching material that they cared about, and teaching qualified, motivated students. So certainly the standards, of the University should be raised. Society is harmed when supposedly educated people turn down jobs for which they really are qualified, and turn them down simply because they have college diplomas. But the bigger problem is with the entire notion of perspectives. This is not an argument against business majors. If business is what one is called to do, then I have no problem with that. The problem is that this college, as most do, has contrived a system where people interested in business, people interested essentially in college as a means of preparing for life, are forced into the same classes with liberal arts majors (and liberal arts should be taken to include math and the sciences), people interestedln college for itself, interested in college not for what it does, but for what it is. I realize that is an excessively romantic view of liberal arts majors. But there is a dichotomy within the population of this university. There are those who value a college education as an inherent good. And then there are those who look on a college education for what it does in the so-called real world. Those people should never meet in an academic setting. They should not be in classes together. This sounds horribly elitist. But this school has no business perspective, which by implication denigrates the very concept of business as a valid field of collegiate study. The best possible system, then, would involve a dual vision of higher education, with a liberal arts college on the one hand and a sort of technical, or business college on the other. Those who wanted to prepare themselves to spend their lives in business would go to the latter. Those who wanted to become educated, to prepare for graduate work, to experience learning for learning's sake, would go to the former. And within the liberal arts college, a system of perspectives would be fitting, for such a college would embrace a blend of interests, not a clash of goals. . I no longer believe that producing so called educated people is a valid aim for a college, especially when those educated people have had but a smattering of English or history and have graduated without having read Faulkner or Martin Luther. Little slices of learning do not make people really educated, but rather simply create that illusion. More impor tantly, it is not the business of a college to excite unmotivated people. That is what high school is for. This is college. Those who are here should be excited to be here, and if they are not they should leave. I use the word "process" because that's what really matters in college. Education is about process, not results. As we read, as we work in the laboratory, as we argue, we do become better thinkers. But we should not rejoice solely in the end. The joy is truly in the means. And if college is to be transcendent, if it is to be pure, it must reveal that joy and make it flourish. James Surowiecki is a senior history major from Cheshire, Conn., who would like to blame Louis Corrigan in part for this column. Group gives the facts To the editor: I am responding to Jon Van de Riet's letter of Oct. 30 ("Most students against CGLA"), in which he says, "The services that the CGLA claims to provide, such as AIDS information, would be better provided by a group that does not condone activities such as anal or oral sex that spread the virus." May I ask what other organization on campus is more equipped to provide the student body with the necessary and correct facts concerning AIDS? When AIDS became a nationwide concern a few years ago, the service groups that sprouted up in the medical communities and the state health departments were modeled after and employed people from gay organizations that had been dealing with the AIDS issue since its recogni tion, and who knew more about the disease than anyone else. The Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association, as should be expected, has numerous members who are knowledge able about AIDS and certainly has more literature readily available on the subject than any other organization on campus. The CGLA's importance can be demonstrated easily. Assuming that the felony Van de Riet mentions is the felony of sodomy, I'd like to point out that sodomy is committed by heterosexuals as well as homo sexuals, and I will hazard a guess that the relative percen tage of homosexuals practicing sodomy safely is higher than that of heterosexuals. I suggest REALLY SMlHGTO GET ON MY NERVES... 1 1 fc V litis i.yun i i i v. it ..i t i. fc. u it 3 I '$Mi W r nil ilk CAH minus w- that Van de Riet go back to those 50 people on his hall and ask them what they know about AIDS. Fully 26 percent of AIDS cases in the United States are not homosexually related, and that percentage is increasing. Van de Riet's hall mates are not immune to the dangers of AIDS. If they or anyone else would like to learn more about AIDS, Gov. Jim Martin has proclaimed Nov. 8 to Nov. 14 North Carolina AIDS Awareness Week, and this is an excellent time to go by the CGLA and see why it is the best AIDS educational facility on campus. SEAN RINDGE Senior Geography Mutual respect is in order To the editor: In her letter Wednesday, Tanya Person said that the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association is not "a social group trying to prove a point" (BSM is not another CGLA"). This accusation is ridiculous, and couldn't be further from the truth. The CGLA is a support group where people ostracized and attacked by the majority of closed-minded stu dents at UNC can go and be themselves, in the company of others who understand and accept them for who they are, not what they are or what they do. And I wish Person would have shared the point with her readers that she thinksthe CGLA is trying to prove. The only message I can think of that the CGLA would want to get across is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "all of God's children (should) be able to join hands and sing." Person has no right to pro pose that a campus-wide event sponsored by the CGLA would do as well as an event spon sored by the Black Student Movement, or Campus Y, or some fraternity or sorority. Isn't it obvious that she and those who share her opinion, if not willing to give 3 cents of their student fees to the CGLA per year, would do everything in their power to destroy the success of such an event? As far as I can tell, the BSM and the CGLA have more in common than Person would like to admit. Both are groups that have been repeatedly singled out because of certain differences from the majority of society; differences that shouldn't matter when it comes Ao treating and respecting peo ple, as human beings. iOsoems that Person is fiercely opposed to allowing a minority group to exist with funds provided by the student body. Isn't the irony obvious? ALICE LUTMAN Sophomore Undecided Democrats base party politics on winning To the editor The Oct. 28 story "State Democratic chairman discusses campaign strategies," underscores the inability of the Democratic Party to confront or effectively deal with the issues facing our nation. State Democratic Party Chairman Jim Van Hecke says that the "key ingredient" is how badly the party wants to win. On its face, this demonstrates that political victory has assumed a disproportionate importance. One might give Van Hecke the benefit of the doubt and infer that he bases his passion for winning on the effectiveness of his party's ideas. , Unfortunately, his words belie the absurdity of that inference. His only mention of issues or ideas for addressing them is his reference to the party platform. The fact that this reference is couched in terms of its electoral efficacy may indicate some left-handed concern for citizen interests but more properly viewed, indicates an imprudent concern for winning. Other comments made by the state chairman clearly imply that the formula.' for winning is to place blame (even if improper), to avoid responsibility to effectuate that blame, and to hope and pray for a weak, blameable or easily attackable candidate. In saying, "We are going to be running against eight years of a program that failed," Van Hecke ignores the proper apportionment of responsibility and indicates that the Democrats' strategy is to point to past mistakes as a reason to elect them; future policy proposals are foresaken. This is a frightening prospect. " Recent Democratic presidential debates have been Reagan-bashing sessions, particularly to the financial mess in Washington. Democrats have pointed out proudly that in the last eight years, Reagan has not balanced the budget. Presidential leadership is indeed impor tant to a successful budget. However, the constitutional power of the purse resided in Congress, and it is there and there only that the ultimate power and responsibility resided. That this constitutional responsi bility resides in the Democratically controlled Congress in overlooked for the sake of placing blame and electoral success. .. ' Thoughtful criticism coupled with reasoned discussion and debate of poten tial solutions should be the rule of the electoral process. Criticism also furthers no interest except that of getting re-elected. That Van Hecke hopes for a vulnerable Republican candidate only underscores his paramount interest in winning. He strongly implies that a challenging debate of the issues is to be avoided. A campaign strategy that dwells on past mistakes, avoids responsibility and prefers a weak opponent has no constructive attributes. Furthermore, such a strategy continues the sad denegration of our political processes and forces the citizens to become apathetic and or make an undesirable "choice between two evils" (remember that Helms-Hunt race). To better serve our citizens, a campaign strategy should be based upon a firm acceptance of responsibility and a consid eration of past mistakes only for the purpose of and to the extent that such mistakes suggest positive solutions to the problems facing the United States. GARTH DUNKLIN Third Year - .V '' ..::r' .. Law
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 5, 1987, edition 1
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