10The Daily Tar Heel Wednesday, April 20, 1988
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96 th year of editorial freedom
Jean Lutes. Editor
KATHY Pl.TlRS, Managing Editor
Karen Bell, ncus Editor
MATT BlVENS, Associate Editor
KlMBERLY EDENS, University Editor
SHARON KEBSCHULL, State and National Editor
MIKE BERARDINO, Sports Editor
Kelly Rhodes, Am Editor
MANDY SPENCE, Design Editor
JON RUST, Managing Editor
KAARIN TlSUE, News Editor
Amy Hamilton, Associate Editor
Kristen Gardner, University Editor
Will Lingo, aty Editor
LEIGH ANN McDONALD, Features Editor
CATHY McHUGH, Omnibus Editor
David Minton, Ph otography Editor
Students, grab your checkbooks
The Student Union is the center of
student activity on this campus. The
building houses offices for Student
Government, the Carolina Union
Activities Board, the Carolina Athletic
Association, The Daily Tar Heel and
the Black Student Movement, just to
name a few. It also provides meeting
spaces, an auditorium and a multi
purpose hall for use by all University
recognized groups.
Unfortunately, these necessary
services all cost money. Operating
costs for the Union this year total
$1,012,800. This figure includes salar
ies for Union personnel, utilities,
insurance and maintenance and repair
of the building. This money comes
from the Carolina Union building fees,
which are included as part of student
fees every semester.
Those fees are now set at $18.50 per
student. This year, that was not
enough to pay the Union's bills. As
a result, it is more than $200,000 in
the red, and Union officials have been
forced to dangerously deplete their
reserve fund balance to cover the
overrun. This leaves them unable to
deal with unexpected emergencies in
the coming years.
Costs were up this year for several
reasons. Repairs for the building,
which is not owned by the University,
were the main problem. When some
thing must be fixed, the University
doesn't pay for it: the Union does. This
year, one of the women's restrooms
had to be rebuilt at the cost of $10,000.
This is just one of the expenses that
officials can't foresee.
The Union, built in 1967, is starting
to show its age. In the near future,
the roof will have to be repaired, and
wall coverings, carpet and furniture
will have to be replaced. There is no
surplus money to cover these expenses.
Inflation has also taken a toll.
Utilities costs were up 18 percent over
the past year; they are expected to
climb higher.
Meanwhile, the Union needs more
staff to adequately serve student needs.
The money that could have funded
these new positions went toward
building expenses instead.
To solve the problems facing the
Union and to address future needs, the
Carolina Union Board of Directors
have proposed increasing the building
fee by $11.50, and increasing the fee
5 to 7 percent annually to keep up
with inflation. Each student would
then pay $30 per semester to guarantee
the continued availability of the
Union's services.
The proposal goes before the Board
of Trustees this Friday. Such a large
increase may be hard to swallow, but
the Union is too important as an
institution to place at risk. Students
should support the necessary change.
Bill Yelverton
Warhol laughing from the grave
Andy Warhol is dead. And everyone
is trying to profit from it.
The pop-art king must be laughing
hysterically to himself. According to
USA Today, approximately 11,000
people turned out to paw through
Warhol's possessions, which are being
sold off in a marathon 10-day auction
that started Saturday.
Not only is everyone seeking their
15 minutes of fame by owning a piece
of Andy Warhol, but merchandisers,
art curators and publishers are ready
to flood the market with Warhol
memorabilia. Just pick up a Warhol
calendar, pen and pencil set, commem
orative clock or even a painting of the
man himself done on black velvet.
USA Today lists several "don't
miss" Andy Warhol items that mer
chandisers hope will soon be ready for
mass public consumption. They
include Warhol-designed collector's
art watches (only 250 of them going
for $10,000 each better than
Swatches), sweaters, bedsheets, a book
titled Andy Warhol's Diaries (com
piled from 10,000 pages of Warhol's
telephone diary) and a Warren Beatty
film about socialite Edie Sedgwick, a
Warhol film star who died of a drug
overdose, that is rumored to be in the
works.
And three of Warhol's cult films
have recently been released on video
tape. Pick one up, take it home and
pop it into your little black box. The
American public has gone for this
relatively cheap form of entertainment
more quickly than it went for Warhol's
art. Combining the two phenomena
should prove interesting. You can put
it in your videotape library next to
Superman 1, 2 and 3, Star Wars (the
entire trilogy) and Top Gun all of
which proved highly marketable. The
Warhol tapes average about $60 each.
Andy Warhol is an American icon.
He established an art form, commonly
known as pop art. He made art out
of things the average person was used
to seeing every day: Campbell's soup
cans, Marilyn Monroe, toothpaste,
toothbrushes. It grabbed people's
attention and paraded their culture
before them as art.
However, merchandising the man
after he's dead in such a silly manner
cheapens his art. But that's probably
exactly what he would have expected
from a culture that regarded his soup
cans as art. Whether his work is art
or not is debatable, but throughout
his reign as pop-art king, Warhol
probably laughed at everyone
laughed all the way to the bank.
Some people have even suggested
that he's not really dead. He's just
hiding out, waiting for his art to go
up in price. If this is true, Andy, it's
working. You can come out now.
Amy Hamilton
f-Clip-n-Save
I eat alone quite often. In fact, you could
I even say that I'm somewhat of an expert
on eating alone. However, it is possible to
I get through the experience without great
I trauma.
I First of all, never, never act like eating
I alone bothers you. When the hostess asks
J you "one for dinner?" respond firmly, "Hell
I yes" or for the novice, "Only way to eat."
I As you are escorted to your table usually
a two by four kept in the dead center for
I such situations it is important to alert
I the other customers that you will be
I working the whole time. IVe had great
1 success in muttering "Thesis, thesis, thesis,"
right before I sit down. When you do sit,
immediately spread out your supposed
study materials. Get out the notebooks, the
lab manuals and the slide rulers. (In larger
restaurants, I usually push two tables
together to lay out computer sheets.) When
the waitress sympathetically asks how you
are, do not answer: simply shake your
calculator and moan, like you just stood
up after sitting for six hours. Since you must
pretend to be pre-occupied, it's best not to
order something that requires a lot of
manual labor to eat. Sandwiches are easily
held in one hand while you can scribble
with the other. But dishes such as spaghetti,
raw fish and manicotti distract from your
coverup, and often can give you away. Of
course, there will always be one or two
customers who are intent on staring.
However, they can easily be done away with
a loud public acknowledgement from across
the room. IVe gotten rid of many onlookers
with "Wha' say Jake." (IVe received letters
that giving the peace sign also has an
adverse effect on the peeping patron.)
When the check is brought to you,
pretend not to notice it. Instead, lean to
the table next to you and ask something
about the quadratic formula. When you are
ready to go, move to the cash register, but
not without rapping on every other table
to say good-bye this gives the other tables
you neglected the impression that you are
actually well known. As you make your
way to the exit, finish off the effect by
screaming "God, my work is never done."
David Rowell
And now, Wednesday's guide to life
God, I hate magnanimity. Magna
nimity, if I'm forced to use the
dictionary definition, is definitely
not a lava formation as I had previously
expected, but the quality of being lofty and
noble in spirit. Some prime examples of
this are the pseudo-conversations between
beauty pageant contestants and their
beaming emcees, the "this is the last time
you will all be together" speech at the
freshman convocation and Oscar accep
tance sermons. This is an especially bad
time of year for high-mindedness, as
everybody is about to leave, and those of
us in the entertainment business feel the
neurotic urge to encapsulate and overmor
alize to the point where no one wants to
breathe lest they be thrust into a trend they
never signed up for. I always believed that
once you were defined, a major portion
of your soul commits suicide. Which is why
I hate those little italicized blurbs at the
end of these columns would you guys
think less of me if I was from Newark,
N.J.? Probably.
Yet I can't resist the urge to be at least
subtly magnanimous, so here I go and spew
a few points that have kept me happy
during these horrible post-teen years.
If you confuse everybody, the world is your
oyster.
I suppose this is the "Road Runner"
cartoon credo, but it works wonders. When
it comes down to brass tacks, everyone is
scared of things they don't understand, and
you can use this to your advantage when
dealing with people on the neanderthal end
of the creativity spectrum.
I went to high school in Norfolk, Va.
(proud home of various seamen jokes)
which, although a fairly respectable
metropolis in its own right, was still
enriched enough in Southern tradition to
have a few 7-1 1 cashiers named Elmo with
no teeth. As a pubescent 15-year-old
seeking alcoholic gratification, I would
stroll proudly into one of these stores
Ian Williams
Wednesday's Child
armed with $5 and a homemade I.D. that
made me Etienne Sorbonne, an exchange
student from Martinique. Martinique is a
small island in the Caribbean Lesser
Antilles, famed as a Variety Vacationland
for wealthy French tourists and as the site
of the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pele that
claimed 40,000 lives and made some
hellacious magnanimous formations. But
Elmo doesn't know this, and the mere sight
of a foreign country identification with all
those visa stamps had him so confused that
I had him filling me an Everclear bong
by the time I left.
You don't have to stick to convenience
stores, either you can dupe the entire
country! Take a good close look at Bert
Convy and Ed McMahon. Where did they
come from? They're media personalities,
which means they're famous for being
famous. They tricked everybody! It just
illuminates the sad fact that if you look
like you know what you're doing, everyone
will think you do.
Remember that people are probably not
having any more fun than you are.
As a freshman, it was my bound duty
to go to every social function this school
had to offer after all, you wouldn't want
to get back to class and hear how you
missed taking 47 tequila shots or watching
a girl set her bra on fire. We herded like
cattle to these parties in hopes of having
all the fun there was to be had, and on
the off chance that we might meet our
eventual spouse on the second floor of a
condemned fraternity house. We always
went home a little disappointed, and much
more interested in what our other friends
had done instead.
In most people, there is this inner feeling
that no matter what, someone else is having
more fun. What exactly constitutes "having
fun" in strictly sober terms? I guess that's
why we invented that heinous verb "to
party," so that we could explain what we
weren't doing. Honestly, the happiest
people in the world are their own party
all the time, so whether you're barfing out
the window of a Buick Skylark or poring
over the pages of your Quantitative
Chemical Analysis textbook, don't worry,
you're having just as good a time as
everyone else.
Life is too short to hang out with bozos.
By bozos, I guess I mean fellow humans
that unwittingly rape you of your happ
iness. I had a suitemate in Hinton James
freshman year who, among his varied and
many talents, had a spittle collection that
filled three 2-liter bottles. To add to my
catastrophic nausea, he would burst in my
room drunk, and spill portions of his oral
exhibit all over my silverware.
Now obviously University Housing was
the villain here, sticking me with this fine
gentleman, but you can bet I didn't spend
my spare time hanging out in the suite
bathroom. The problem is the people who
gravely overestimate their importance in
the celestial sphere. There are too many
good movies to be seen, pop tarts to be
eaten and cool people to talk to for anyone
to surround themselves with spittle.
Magnanimous remarks from the child
who is full of woe! All I can hope is that
all of us have the kind of college summer
that we deserve after seeing all those low
budget teen movies, and that our own
volcanos bubble over with nothing but that
lovin' feeling.
Ian Williams is a junior music and
psychology major from Los Angeles who
warns that love is blind, but the neighbors
aren 't.
Readers5 Foraoi
Math professor
deserves praise
To the editor:
On April 11, the DTH pub
lished a column about a par
ticular UNC mathematics pro
fessor which should be publicly
responded to by another stu
dent in the same class. I would
like to say that the information
about the mathematics profes
sor was not correct. I have
attended all classes and have
heard all comments made dur
ing the professor's class. The
mathematics professor is well
qualified for the course he is
teaching. He explains each
problem in-depth by working
it out on the chalkboard; as a
matter of fact, I have averaged
four pages of notes per class.
All tests he has given this class
have been announced, and on
two occasions he extended the
test dates so we could have
more time to prepare for the
test.
Also, I would like to say the
mathematics professor is very
articulate and has a peaceful
personality. He has been very
generous by giving us a chance
to pull our last grade up with
a one-problem test worth 20
points. The majority of the
students in this class do not
complain about the mathemat
ics professor's manner of
teaching.
As for the statement in the
column about the professor not
liking sophomores, in my opin
ion it was completely misinter
preted. What he asked was,
"How many freshmen and how
many sophomores are in my
class?" I remember him jok
ingly saying that part of the
word sophomore had a funny
meaning. I think he was trying
to make the freshmen feel they
should be happy to be fresh
men. Freshmen always want to
become sophomores or juniors.
I found the column demean
ing for the entire mathematics
department. The professor
teaching my mathematics
course is highly competent, and
does not deserve to be put down
by someone who thinks she
doesn't like the way the pro
fessor teaches.
In my opinion, mathematics
professors should be given
higher salaries for their keen
minds. In America, their salar
ies are much lower than in
foreign countries. We should
not put down the mathematics
professor we should praise
him for his intelligence.
CAROLYN LUCAS
Evening College
Psychology
Top 25 list
stereotypical
To the editor:
In George Markham's
column, "And now the top 25
list," (April 18) he posed some
questions that have been puz
zling him about UNC and
Chapel Hill. Though Mark
ham's column was obviously to
amuse, one hopes he would not
execute such attempts at anoth
er's expense. We are specifically
referring to the question, "Has
anyone ever met a Kappa Delta
who wasn't incredibly gorgeous
and incredibly stuck up?"
It is irrelevant whether one
believes this affront; such a
generalization is unnecessary
and an example of the kind of
prejudice a college atmosphere
should discourage. Is it any
different than calling all Sou
therners racist? Or all Jews
cheap? Does anyone have the
right to assess the personalities
of 1 70 women in one statement?
With attitudes and general
izations like Markham's, Greek
organizations, no matter how
hard they try, will never be able
to break their stereotypes for
good. However, we respond
not only as Greek affiliates, but
as students concerned that such
an unjustified attack might go
unchallenged. Perhaps by chal
lenging those stereotypes that
are spoken, we can reduce those
that remain unspoken as well.
KRISTIN BREUSS
Sophomore
Political Science
Economics
EILEEN DORDEK
Sophomore
English Speech
itobeson grateful for Jordan's help
"TThave recently been supplied with a copy
of an editorial written by Stuart
IL Hathaway, in which he attacked Lt.
Gov. Bob Jordan for his participation in
a conference held in Robeson County. The
conference involved the Legislative Dele
gation from Robeson County and the
supporters of Julian Pierce, the deceased
candidate for Superior Court judge.
I do not know Hathaway personally, so
I don't know whether he is a student or
a mature adult, but I do know he has
written the above-referred-to editorial with
a complete disregard for the facts or the
truth.
I feel so strongly about the inaccuracies
in this editorial that I feel compelled to
outline below the true facts as to how the
meeting came about and how Jordan
happened to be there.
On Saturday, April 2, our legislative
delegation met to discuss the racial
problems in Robeson County and what
we, the delegation, might do to settle down
some of the racial tension in the county
resulting from the recent murder of Pierce.
After a two-hour discussion, we all came
to the conclusion that it would not be in
the best interests of racial harmony in the
county for our problems to be aired in
the N.C. General Assembly. We asked
David Parnell
Guest Writer
Rep. Sidney Locks (D-Robeson) to
arrange a meeting with the supporters of
Pierce for Monday, April 4, at 2:30 p.m.
for the purpose of seeing if there was some
common ground we could reach with the
Pierce supporters that would persuade
them to withdraw their request to Gov.
Martin for a special session of the
Legislature.
Over the weekend, we continued to
discuss the meeting by telephone, and
during that discussion we decided that the
settlement might require some legislative
action and, if at all possible, we should
try to get the lieutenant governor and the
speaker of the house to attend. Speaker
Ramsey could not attend, but after we
pointed out the gravity of the situation in
Robeson County to Jordan, he accepted
our invitation to sit in on the meeting.
1 want to be sure that your readers know
that this meeting was called by the Robeson
County delegation and that Jordan
attended at our invitation.
During the meeting, an agreement was
reached that the Robeson County Dele
gation would attempt to get an additional
resident Superior Court judge for Robeson
County during the short session of 1988
that would be appointed by the governor.
The Pierce supporters accepted this
proposal and, agreed to withdraw their
request for a special session of the
Legislature.
It is my understanding that Jordan
telephoned Martin as soon as he returned
to Raleigh and received his support for
the plan. Jordan also talked with Ramsey
and received his support. Jordan's partic
ipation in this conference was invaluable,
and I do not believe that we could have
accomplished a settlement without his
help.
I want your readers to know that Jordan
was not usurping the authority of the
governor, nor was he running behind the
governor's back. Rather, he was helping
the duly elected legislative representatives
of Robeson County solve a very tense
situation, and the citizens of this state
should be appreciative of Jordan, as we
are in Robeson County.
David Parnell is a Democratic state
senator from Robeson County.
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