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8The Daily Tar HeelWednesday, November 16, 1988 i&lf? iailg afar Mn 96 th year of editorial freedom Karen Bell, News Editor MATT BlVENS, Associate Editor KlMBERLY EDENS, University Editor JON K RUST, Managing Editor Will Lingo, aty Editor Kelly Rhodes, Arts Editor CATHY McHUGH, Omnibus Editor SHELLEY ERBLAND, Design Editor Jean Lutes, Editor KAARIN TlSUE, News Editor LAURA PEARLMAN, Associate Editor KRISTEN GARDNER, University Editor SHARON KEBSCHULL, State and National Editor MIKE BERARDINO, Sports Editor LEIGH ANN McDONALD, Features Editor DAVID MINTON, Photography Editor Kelly Thompson, Design Editor Looking past the Zingers board opinion In this never ending whirlwind of fun and excite ment we call col lege, choosing a date for an upcoming stranger riiixer is a major dilemma and having the Pit Stop run out of Zingers is a natural disaster. In such an atmos phere, it's easy to forget to step back to examine real problems in other parts of the country or world. Campus Y is reminding students to take that step back by setting aside this week to educate the campus about human rights violations. Speakers such as Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, a leader of the civil rights movement, highlight a week designed to make students consider issues as diverse as abortion, affirmative action and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ' Campus Y has put together a week of enough forums, discussions and lectures to interest almost anyone. After the long hours and thousands of dollars spent on the Campus Y's biggest wing-ding of the year, the least the students can do is respond through attendance and thoughtful participation. Human Rights Week is intended to be an open forum for debate and intelligent discussion of pertinent issues, both of which are impossible without at least two parties. Although the week is half over, two full days of programming are left, including Andrew Young's keynote address. This afternoon, for example, the political sciece department will sponsor a lecture by Professor Jack Donnelly on U.S. foreign policy and its effects on human rights. Tonight, the Wesley Foundation will feature dinner with David Wilkins, a Lumbee Indian. All these programs can be educational, especially if audience members take the opportunity to challenge the speakers' ideas and even offer a few of their own. Of course, human rights are worth considering for more than five days of Campus Y-coordinated events. If Human Rights Week is a true success, students, faculty and admin istrators will take advantage of its educational opportunities to continue studying and battling human rights violations. This week should leave us grateful for the rights that we often take for granted and thoughtful of those whose rights are violated or denied every day. The Campus Y should be com mended for planning Human Rights Week and seeing it past the drawing board and into reality. Now it's everyone else's turn. Happy faculty, better teachers Calls for increases in faculty salaries and benefits have risen many times from Chapel Hill's hallowed halls. And whef it's true that money must play a central role in the University's efforts to attract and retain top-notch pro fessors, officials should not forget that fostering an attractive atmosphere is also essential. With the newly-approved proposal to establish an Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC, officials have demonstrated their concern for faculty support and development. The insti tute will confirm the University's commitment to its year-old Program for Arts and Humanities, which has already sponsored several events designed to support faculty develop ment and to encourage interaction among academic disciplines. : But the most positive aspect of the program for students is that the benefits to faculty can extend to the classroom, directly improving the quality of teaching at the University. The programming centers around a faculty fellowship program, in which faculty members chosen by a 12 member board pursue semester-long research projects and meet weekly to present seminars on their projects great practice for teaching new research in the classroom. The institute also plans to hold conferences and cultural events to share research results with the community. If these programs are successful, the institute could improve faculty rela tions with each other, with students and with the community. A better academic environment leads to better faculty members, better teaching and better students. And no one can disagree with those results. Jean Lutes olitics won't end epidemic AIDS. Now that the elections are over, politicians are willing to talk -about it again. Unfortunately, they still aren't saying much. ; Last week, Surgeon General C. Everett Coop announced that the AIDS prevention program for minor ities was officially a failure. According to Coop's statistics, blacks constitute more than 26 percent of recorded AIDS cases in the United States, while Hispanics account for almost 12 percent nearly the same percentages of two years ago. Coop blames illiteracy for the program's failure to Inform minorities, pointing out the obvious fact that educational literature is useless to those who can't read. Illiteracy, however, is not the heart of the problem. What makes this effort a failure, and what will make future 'efforts at AIDS education a failure, is politics. Preventing AIDS requires tluntness and exact terms, but poli ticians, afraid of attacks on their "moral fitness," make neuter proposals which rarely amount to substantive programs. The result is politicians sitting blindly in the mainstream, while the problem only gets worse. A program such as N.C. Gov. Jim Martin's, which essentially amounts to "Just Say No" rhetoric, is an excellent 'example of an inadequate prevention effort. If Coop is correct, then North Carolina, which suffers from a phen omenally high illiteracy rate, could be preparing itself for an AIDS disaster. ' And although one out of every 17 North Carolinian teenagers already has a sexually transmitted disease, Martin's support of sexual education is nonexistent. Students in North Carolina high schools can't even get AIDS information at a counselor's office or a clinic. It might give them "ideas." Last month, this type of attack on AIDS awareness was also seen on a national level. N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms threatened a filibuster of an AIDS bill, unless promises of confidentiality were removed from testing programs. Coop, the main sponsor of the bill, insisted that confidentiality is critical to a successful program, but Helms would not waver. The AIDS centers got their money, but many wonder how effective they can be under the restrictions Helms demanded. The problem is serious on campuses as well. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that one out of every 300 college students has AIDS. But the only real source of AIDS information at UNC remains the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Asso ciation and the Student Health Center; federal or state government haven't provided the type of information that could prevent you from getting AIDS. Traditional morality or no, there is no excuse for catering to ignorance when people are dying. Until political leaders in America take a positive stand on AIDS prevention, the epi demic will continue to run rampant. David Starnes On having arrived at the age twenty-one TT turned 21 a few months ago, and I'm I j not sure if this is something that JLLentirely pleases me. "Oh sure," I hear a 19-year-old sophomore cry, "You poor wretched soul! You get to frolic and wallow in vats of legal alcohol while I attend RA inspired get-to-know-ya 'icebreakers' with Dr. Pepper and cheese dip in the dorm study lounge." Granted, it's a nice feeling to . waltz right into a bar without having some brickhead bouncer question your ancestry, but indeed a good bit of the excitement is lost in the process. In fact, it seems that half of what has kept us going for the last 15 years has been seeing just how much we could get away with before they caught us. They ranged from our parents to our schoolteachers, from bowling alley attendants to the federal government. The only thing that keeps us kids together is a common enemy, and I guess in a few years well be the bad guys. In the meantime, we are the ones who make fun of bald guys, we are the ones to throw our parking tickets in the lake and we are the ones who know what the verb "to bone" means. So how did we develop this hemorrhoi dal attitude toward our elders? Was it something we ate? Janov would say that the pain of childbirth sucked so bad that we have remained pissed off since minute one. Skinner would lean back in his La-Z-Boy and say that we were conditioned from our first spanking to mistrust anybody who could hit harder than we could. Freud and buddy Jung would chuckle about penis envy and castration fear and say that we were angry because we were in love with one or both of our parents and couldn't do anything about it. So I ask again, was it something we ate? Personally, I had enough Franken Berry as a child to power a small Midw estern city, but I dont know if this made me so hyper that I fed the cat drain cleaner. Perhaps the reason we're so tired ot people who know better is because they always describe us as "being at that funny age." "Honey, Ian just peed in the fireplace." "Well, you know, he's at that funny age Ian Williams Wednesday's Child How's about we look at those funny ages, those horrible cobblestones we had to trip over on the road to 21. 6 to 11 years old: Obviously this is a large group of ages to lump together, and I'm sure your average 11 -year-old wouldn't be caught dead on a see-saw with a 6-year-old, but if you remember correctly, you were about as naive going in as you were going out. For me, these were the years 1973-1978, and having nobody to tell me differently, sex was an unmentionable magazine in my uncle's piano bench, and girls were wonderful, mystical objects in second grade that all the other boys hated. Teachers were ogres who only cared about keeping you quiet, and parents were beings three feet taller than you that forbade Pop Tarts at every meal and wouldn't let you spend the night at someone's house even though everyone else was. No wonder we blot out this entire fourth of our lives. Do you remember where you were in February of 1975? I sure as hell dont. 12 to 15 years old: Just when everything seemed to be weird enough as it was, along came puberty like a piano falling from the 16th floor of a building onto your head. One minute you're playing with the G.I. Joes in the backyard, the next minute you're in the bathroom staring at parts of your body you didnl even know you had. I used to be fairly cute little kid, and then puberty grabbed me by the crotch and dragged me through a minefield of testosterone, the likes from which I have yet to recover. I don't know what it's like being a girl through puberty, but for a guy, it's walking a sexual tightrope over a sea of steel thorns. Ever want to know why your junior high school brother always carries his books at waist length? Have you ever slow- danced with a guy in the throes of puberty? Does everyone have some high-diving board genitalia nightmare story? Some of us are still angry at God's teenage jokes. The 16-19 Story: Then comes the succession-of-privileges years, where each birthday means one more inalienable right to put under our belt. With 16 comes the car; 17 gives you R-rated movies; 18 lets you vote, die in war and purchase pornography; and 19 used to mean your first legal sip of an alcoholic drink. Somehow, none of these privileges came fast enough, and suddenly we were pitted against the federal government. In our 15th year on this planet, my friends and I started a fake I.D. business, in which we and our clients would assume the roles of foreign exchange students in search of a good American time. My entire life of alcohol, porn and gore movies was the fault of my alter ego Jean-Pierre Ramois, a red-headed exchange student from Vichy, France, who only came out at night and had the good fortune to have been born in 1964. And now ... I spent seven long years as Jean-Pierre, dodging Fast Fare clerks, duping movie ticket booth trolls, and spouting francais at big bouncers with I.D. flashlights. And then one day this summer, I woke up and I was 21. Suddenly I could walk into a liquor store as myself and walk away with 15 cubic liters of grain alcohol and not have to worry. All this power and I still feel so young! People my age are getting married, a few of us are losing our hair, and I still have no idea what an income tax return is. Talk about being at that funny age! Are there any authority figures left to be pissed off at? Feeling old and depressed, I went to Avis to rent a car last week for a small trip. As I ambled up to the counter, the clerk lady said, "We're going to need to see some I.D., sir. You have to be 25 to rent a car by yourself." "D'accord. Celui-ci," Jean-Pierre said smiling, and he ran off with the keys. j Ian Williams is a music and psychology major who will probably get kicked out of Davie Hall for paragraph three. -Readers9 Foraoi Freedom fight appreciated To the editor With their focus firmly fixed elsewhere on the recent presidential election UNC students may have overlooked our campus' debt to Joel Segal and Anne Duehring, the two students who have endured criminal harassment for their championing of free speech. In suffering the Nazi-like tactics of phone threats and break-ins, Segal and Duehring remind us all that free speech, the crown ing right of our political liberty, comes too often at a price. In this case, that price means being targeted by thugs. Though this may only be a small consolation for having their lives threatened, the two students earn our thanks for exemplifying the best, most courageous kind of campus activism. CHRIS HOOD Junior Interdisciplinary studies Education not propaganda To the editor: "Education through action action through education" is the goal of Human Rights Week sponsored by the Cam pus Y and at least 20 prominent community organizations. Knowledge is freedom. It is unarguable that atrocities and inequities exist in the world, and only education will hasten their change. I was therefore incensed by the Palestinian and West Bank Yoo'fce So good.. And -meee wee.e v 11 V V Sen Oct. S Ccc& &&DxW -fo CWre WITH us You W&uc SCHOOL a 8 3 "5 1H neup -ro fc-ourte 7& to vo v.l ir Presentation held in Great Hall as part of Human Rights Week. The program was one-sided, politically oriented and pres ented in a non-academic fashion. One speaker called the meeting the "first annual fund raiser" for Palestinian issues. Members of the audience were asked to sign anti-Israel peti tions and send letters to the same effect. Violence on the West Bank and Gaza Strip was advocated. Vague speculations and accusations were made. Quotes intended to represent the majority of Israeli officials were taken from members of small Israeli right-wing fac tions. There were grand omis sions of historical fact, and little objective evidence was pres ented. Attempts at peace by Israeli groups were ignored. No positive plans of Palestinian action to achieve peace were stated. I am not making a statement against Palestinian issues or their right to assemble, but the point must be made that the Campus Y cannot be a blind consumer. There is never a place for uneducational propa ganda, politics, advocation of violence within the occupied territories, or fund raising for a political organization within the scope of a Campus Y program. It is unfortunate that the Palestinian issues could not have been addressed in an educational forum with both sides fairly represented. It is the sole responsibility of those programming the events to see that a balance is achieved. This kind of oversight has the poten tial to remove the credibility of Human Rights Week as this University's single greatest tool against oppression. A job half done is worse than one not done at all. ANDYTAUBMAN Senior Chemistry economics Letters policy a The DTH reserves the right to edit letters for space, clarity and . vulgarity. Remember, brevity is the soul of wit. n All letters must be signed by the author(s), with a limit of two signatures per letter. Poor voter preparation means problems hile I sympathize with many of those who had to wait in line to vote at the police station on Tuesday, I would like to point out that most of these people need not have faced that delay if they had taken the time to check their voter registration at the beginning of the fall. The process is simple. A phone call to the Orange County Board of Elections in Hillsborough (they even have a Chapel Hill telephone number so there's no charge for the call) would have told these people whether their new address involved a change of precinct and how to go about changing their registration. The same information was available at any number of permanent or ad hoc registration sites: the Chapel Hill Municipal Building, the Chapel Hill Public Library, the Carrboro Town Hall, Festifall, a variety of registra tion clinics on campus, in apartment complexes and at shopping malls. The opportunities were there, and they were widely publicized. Students who served as special registration commission ers for on-campus registration in particular are to be commended for making these opportunities available. So why were so many people in line at the police station? The editorial "Lining up against demo cracy" (Nov. 10) suggests that most of these voters didn't realize that they had changed precincts when they moved. No doubt. But Marcia Decker Guest Writer they did know that they had moved. And they had been told, when they first registered, that if they moved within Orange County, they should inform the Board of Elections of their new address. Apparently, in many cases, this advice was ignored or not taken seriously. As a result, these voters faced either long lines at the transfer site or the unwelcome information that they had been challenged at their former address and removed from the pollbook, in accordance with election law. That is a hard lesson in responsibility, but the responsibility does lie with the voter. Let me acknowledge at once that some voters faced problems not of their own making. Administrative snafus or inaccu rate instructions caused delays and frus trations for these voters. In most cases, phone calls from precinct officials to the Board of Elections cleared these up. These problems were our responsibility. I do agree with the editorial writer that more than one transfer site may be necessary. While sending all election day transfers to one site is a far better approach than sending them to another (frequently incorrect) precinct, as in previous years, it is not an ideal situation. I expect the Board of Elections was taken by surprise by the number of Election Day transfers and will plan for more transfer sites in the future. As for comments about understaffing at the polls, I heartily agree that I would have welcomed additional help at my precinct. Unfortunately, election law requires that any persons assisting at the polls on election day must stay at the polling site from the time the polls open at 6:30 a.m. until the last vote is counted and reported; in the case of East Franklin Precinct, that meant 6:30 a.m. until 1:30 a.m. 19 hours. You don't find a whole lot of people who are willing or able to put in that much time. So while the sentiment is admirable, the solution is not going to be easy. A lot of things about Election Day could be improved. Most of them better voting machines, more personnel, computer hook-ups at all precincts cost money (elections officials make about $3.50 an hour). The cheapest, easiest and possibly most effective improvement would be for voters who change their address to change their registration. Before Election Day. Please. For everybody's sake. Marcia Decker is a Democratic judge from the East Franklin Precinct.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 16, 1988, edition 1
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