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Miss UNCA page 4 NCAA Inside Woods DWt program, {>age 5 Cornedy Oub, page 9 Combs, page |0 The Blue Banner "Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier." Kettering Volume XVIII Number 9 The University of North Carolina Asheville March 28, 1991 Carroll withdraws candidacy; new finalists named Steve Peake Staff Writer The chancellor search committee announced Wednesday the pending visits of two more candidates for the chancellorship of UNCA. The annoimcement comes in the midst of controversy over the selection of three finalists for the job last week. A group of senior faculty members wrote the UNCA board of trustees last week, asking for a meeting on the subject of the current search. At a meeting of the faculty senate March 21, some of the professors who signed that letter expressed dissatisfaction with the candidates for the chancellorship. In a related matter, Roy CarroU, interim chanceUor, issued a memo last week in which he formally withdrew his name from consideration for the permanent position of chancellor. "We have a real problem here," Laurence Dorr, professor of philosophy, said at the senate meeting, "The almost universal response to the candidates has been, ‘These people don’t look like what we need here’." Malcolm Blowers, university hbrarian, said there is no sense of agreement among staff and faculty members on the worthiness of the candidates. "I have yet to detect any consensus," Blowers said at the senate meeting. "We should look at least two more candidates. The actual number of three was inadequate." The three finalists include Rebecca Stafford, president of Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Richard H. Ekman, director of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ division of research programs; and Peter W. Stanley, director of the Ford Foundation’s education and culture program. The two additional candidates for the chancellorship are Samuel Schuman, chief academic officer at Guilford College; and John Robert Strassburger, professor of history and vice president for academic affairs at Knox College. The letter to the trustees came on the heels of recent campus visits by the finalists. A search committee, chaired by John FA.V. Cecil, had recently narrowed a field of over one hundred candidates down to the final three. Cecil also chairs the UNCA board of trustees. Cecil, who attended the senate meeting to field questions about the search, defended his committee’s actions. "We’ve tried to be objective," Cecil said. "We’ve tried to be a consensus-builder. We’ve tried to find candidates who fit the (university) mission statement. We’ve thrown the net as wide as possible." Henry Stern, professor of German, helped draft the letter to the board of trustees. He said March 25 the letter was not meant to reflect poorly on the work of the search committee. "I don’t think it should be hinted or implied that these people (search committee) have done anything but a tremendous job. They’ve given a great effort," said Stern. "We didn’t know six or seven months ago, though, just how fine an interim chancellor we had in Dr, Carroll," said Stern. The list of three finalists did not include Carroll, who has served as interim chancellor since David G. Brown’s resignation last year. In an apparent response to dissent over his exclusion from the list of finalists, Carroll circulated a memo to faculty and staff last week in which he formally withdrew his name from consideration. "In view of the unfortunate dissension and unrest over the past week or so, I wish to clarify my status as a candidate for the chancellorship," Carroll wrote. "I am not now and shall not be, under any circumstances, a candidate for that position." According to procedure, the search committee will recommend two finalists to the board of trustees. If the board concurs with the committee’s suggestions, the names of the two finalists will then go to C.D. Spangler, Jr., president of the sixteen constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina, for final review. Not all the faculty agreed with the letter to the trustees. Alan Comer, who chairs the biology department, questioned the propriety of the letter. "I would object to the committee meeting with a group that has self-appointed itself as ‘senior’ faculty," Comer said at the senate meeting. "It seems a little late in the game for that." Schuman has served as the chief academic officer of Guilford College since 1981. Prior to that, he directed the honors program at the University of Maine. Strassburger has been dean of the college, professor of history, and vice president for academic affairs at Knox College for the past seven years. From 1982 to 1984, he served as the acting assistant director and program officer for education programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milan speaks on value of MTV Susanne Roper Staff Writer Cat Nilan, an assistant professor of history at UNCA, stepped outside the popular argument about the negative effects of MTV (an all-music television cable channel) to discuss some of its liberating values as opposed to the oppression issues. Her lecture, which was a part of the Faculty Last Lecture series, was advertised as an activity for Women’s History Month, but Nilan said, "there are many different types of feminism and I’m probably going to be able to offend a good number of feminists as well as anti-feminists in ray remarks." She wore a Guns n’ Roses concert T-shirt as a joke, calling it, "probably the most politically incorrect T-shirt you can wear these days." Most of the controversy involving MTV has been focused on both the visual and lyrical content of the videos. Nilan read a New York state senate proposal for a bill requiring labeling of audio records containing lyrics that were considered offensive or obscene. The bill defines lyrics as obscene or offensive if they contain "written text or spoken words which advocate or encourage suicide, murder, bestiality, sado masochism, incest, rape, sexual abuse, illegal use of drugs or alcohol, harassment of or commission of a crime against a person because of their sex, race, color, religious beliefs, or national Soviet demise affects Cuba Stacy Libby Staff Writer Please see MTV, page 5 Photo by Diane Maney Cat Nilan addresses the subject of MIV during the Last Lecture Series. T, Patrick Killough, senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, spoke at the March 24 Great Decisions lecture. The discussion, titled "Cuba: What Future for Castro and Communism", was held in the Owen Conference Center. "Castro has said as long as there is one little island named Cuba to say no, then George Bush will be frustrated," said Killough. "A couple of things are on the mind of Fidel Castro very much these days. One, he is absolutely shocked at the collapse of Soviet power in Europe, It keeps coming up in speech after speech," he said. Castro keeps repeating that no one could have foreseen the dcmi.se of the Soviet Union, said Killough. "It has been a terrible blow to him. "Another thing that bothers him enormously is the United States’ effort on human rights. United Nations groups have been going in there since 1986. He has done a little bit to clean up his prisons and so on, but the human rights effort has been awful," he said. "Castro really dislikes the United States. It comes up in every speech he gives. Many experts believe there is no way to improve relations [with Cuba] while Castro is in power," he said. In addition to the money Cuba owes the United States,' they now owe money to the Soviets, he said. "[Castro] has vowed in a recent speech that ’the Yankees will never again own this country.’ He has made Cuba far more dependent on the Soviet Union than it ever was on the United Please see Castro, page 5 Handmaid’s Tale depicts male dominated society Julie Partin Staff Writer Women’s History month continued Tuesday night with the viewing of the film The Handmaid’s Tale. A discussion period, led by Ann Weber, associate professor of psychology, and Cat Nilan, assistant professor of history, followed the film. Weber said the film had shown at the movies earlier this year but they, sponsors of Women’s History Month, felt that the film should be brought onto the campus. "[We] couldn’t assume that people had seen it," said Weber. The movie portrayed a society that was completely dominated by men. In this society, many of the women became infertile because of toxins in the air. As a result, women who had committed a crime were forced to become handmaids to the women who wanted babies but were sterile. According to the film, the term "handmaid" comes from the Bible when Rachel wanted a child so badly that she allowed her husband to impregnate her maid. Weber said the movie is based on a novel by Margaret Atwood. According to Weber, the movie revolves around a gender theme in which the entire society is dominated by men. The movie uses costuming to get the segregation of roles across. The hand maids wear red while the wives wear blue. Weber calls this gender imagery. "It’s a segregation of the roles to the point that you actually wear a particular color," said Weber. "Every system of oppression banks very much on the idea of divide and conquer," said Weber. The idea of a gender dominated society is not a new one to Weber. 1^' "I can’t imagine how many books I’ve read that have this kind of theme," said Weber. Weber explained the reasoning behind the women in the film’s sense of helplessness. "It doesn’t take very much to take a way [a person’s] identity," Weber said. Weber said that if you take away a person’s name and not allow people to dress however they want it takes away a person’s identity. "If you want people to go with the program then you have to diminish their sense of individuality," said Weber. "It generally makes them more compliant," Weber said. Weber related the lack of personal freedom of women within the movie to women in real life. "Doesn’t take very much to Please see Women, page 5 I Photo courtesy of John Stevens Tracy Proctor and Phyllis Lang view student papers at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in Pasadena, California. New Fellows program begins Victoria McCoy Editor The office of Student Development is currently taking applications for the North Carolina Fellows Program, but according to Director Nina East, the number of applications received so far is low. The deadline for applications was set for Mar. 27, but East has ^aictended the deadline to Apr. 3 at 5 p.m. to allow more students to apply. "We will pick 15 to 20 rising sophomores for this program," sh'e said. According to East, the North Please see Fellows, page 4
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