THE BLUE BANNER Volume 33 Issue 7 Film Festival Celebrates Women’s History See Page 3 UNCA Tenms Defeats Liberty University The University Of North Carolina At Asheville UNCA to Cut Budget by $499,670 North Carolina Orders Mandatory Budget Cuts of all UNC-System Schools Amounts State Universities Mus Cut From Current 2000 Budgets University Amount Appalachian State $1.7 million East Carolina $3.3 million Elizabeth City $425,447 N.C. Central $880,090 Fayetteville State $600,828 N.C. A&T $1.2 miUion N.C. School of the Arts $310,462 N.C. State $5.2 million * UN C-Asheville $499,670 UNC-Chapel Hill $7.4 million UNC-Charlotte $1.9 million UNC-Greensboro $1.8 million UNC-Pembroke $472,792 UN C-Wilmington $1.2 million Western Carolina $1 million Winston-Salem State $551,010 GRAPHIC CONTRIBUTED BY UNCA’S BUDGET OFFICE This graph shows amount of funds schools must cut. Keith Cromwell Investigative Reporter UNCA will have to cut $499,670 from its budget in order to compensate for the 1.9 percent budget cut is sued by the state. “Cutting the budget to uni versities seems the wrong step to take,” said DerekCoulson, a freshmen health and wellness promotion major. “It seems UNCA does not have enough money as it is in some programs.” This is a result of the $1 billion in spending cuts or dered by N.C. Governor Mike Easley to help the state meet a projected budget shortfall of at least $700 mil lion. The university has identi fied $300,000 in repair and renovation money that will be cut. “A number of those projects are at the N.C. Arboretum,” said Wayne McDevitt, vice chancellor of financial affairs. “Those projects on campus include several roofing projects that will have to be put off” The other $199,670 will come from delaying the pur chase of equipment. In ad dition, some of that money will come from unfilled fac ulty and staff positions. “When a position is opened for a week or a month, that’s salary money (the university) is not paying out,” said McDevitt. “Also, when someone retires, and they are paid at one level because they have been here 30 years, and von hire in at a lower level, that also creates access money.” No money will be taken out of academic programs, according to McDevitt. “65 percent of our budget goes to academics, and we are leaving that untouched,” said McDevitt. In 1999, the university spent $491,586 on travel expenses. Broken down, $216,197 was spent for in-state travel, $216,065 for out-of-state travel and $59,324 for out- of-country travel, according to the UNCA budget. Some students said they question why travel expenses were not cut. Close to $500,000 on travel “seems a little steep and I think it should be lowered,” said Ginger McKnight, an undeclared freshmen. “UNCA could use the money on renovations, new labs or air conditioning.” The university also spent $719,316 for library books and journals, $706,021 on office, household, educa tional, repairs and motor ve hicle supplies, $345,538 for printing and binding and $106,456 for advertising. There are several reasons the state faces such a massive deficit. In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, N.C. had a number of challenges. The state com mitted $836 million to di saster relief in the eastern part of the state, according to McDevitt. The state faced two law suites in 2000, which cost N.C. about $500 million, according to McDevitt. This year is the first year the state is implementing tax cuts that were passed in 1995, which equals about $1.45 billion. Also this year, the state lost two additional lawsuits to Chrysler and Ford compa nies, which cost the state be tween $60 to $80 million. In addition, revenues de creased due to a slowing economy. “As a result of all this, Easley asked the university system to cut $32 million from its’ budget,” said McDevitt. The 1.9 percent cut will affect schools such as UNC- Chapel Hill, Appalachian State and N.C. State. Since those schools have larger budgets, they will have to cut more, according to McDevitt. The governor plans to make these statewide cuts: $500,000 in college aid, $2 million from the Teaching Fellows program, and $95 million in local government aid. $151 million will be cut from the state employee pen sion fund, $ 157 million from the state’s emergency re serves, and $40 million from the Hurricane Floyd relief package. Conference Brings Experts on China Claire O’Brien 'Jews Reporter UNCA hosted a discussion orum concerning China vlarch 16 and 17, to improve acuity knowledge of the coun ty, according to Bill Spellman, director of the hu- manitieis program. It really opened my eyes to he big picture of how much rouble China is in,” said Eo rrueblood, a senior art ma- or, who attended one of the ectures on China. “It was a 50od overview.” The conference was co-spon- 'Ored and co-funded by the iJniversity of Hawaii’s East- west program, and featured peakers from around the country. The primary goal of the con- erence was to educate faculty ibout modern China, accord ing to Spellman. We looked at our own fac ulty expertise, and decided hat we really don’t have -nough Ph.D. expertise in ar- •as like South Asia or China,” -aid Spellman. Speakers ranged from schol ars from the University ofHa- waii to scholars from UNC- Charlotte, according to Spellman. Other schools represented were Appalachian State, Uni versity of Colorado at Boul der and Kennesaw State Uni versity in Georgia, according to Spellman. The goal of educating UNCA faculty is to allow them to take this new knowledge and educate students, accord ing to Spellman. UNCA hosted a similar con ference on India last fall, ac cording to Spellman. “We’d like to develop fac ulty workshops on Sub-Sa haran Africa and on the mod ern Middle East,” said Spellman. Speakers at the conference were those who are an expert in some aspect of Chinese his tory, philosophy, literature, or folk culture, according to Spellman. “(We) can immerse our selves, at an introductory level in Chinese issues and history,” said Spellman. The topics covered by these experts varied. Terry Weidner gave a lecture on “The Price of Modernization in China,” and Roger Ames spoke on “Con- fucian Religiousness: Another look at the Godless Chinese.” “Each speaker brought with them a one or two page bibli ography of books that we can turn to and develop more ma terials for the humanities pro gram,” said Spellman. “The idea is to enhance the non- Western component of the humanities program.” Weidner’s presentation was incorporated into the present humanities curriculum. Weidner has a doctorate in Chinese history. He has also served as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. He is currently the director of the Asian Affairs Center at the University of Missouri- Columbia. Weidner said China grew so rapidly that it faces a massive downslide. He addressed issues of pollu tion, the transition from a Communist government to a more capitalistic government, and Western cultural imperi alism. I f.. L O See Page 5 WALTER FYLERySTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Penny Prime, economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, speaks about trade with China. When Weidner lived in China, the air quality was so bad, he often awoke to the sound ofhacking coughs from his roommates. The cough, caused by air pollution, was so prevalent that “I thought it was the Chinese national anthem,” joked Weidner. These type of issues are what students and faculty need to be more aware of, according to Spellman. March 22, 2001 Judge Gives Former Officer Prison Term Thad Fckprd News Reporter Former UNCA public safety officer Darrell Rathburn re ceived a prison sentence Feb. 28 for abusing suspects while he served as Woodfin’s chief of police. U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg sen tenced Rathburn to threeyears in a federal penitentiary for physical abuse on six people as he arrested or inter rogated suspects. “His sentence should send a clear message to law enforcement officers who over step their author ity,” said Eric Winters, a senior history and politi cal science major. “I think the sen tence is very fair.” UNCA’s public safety does not want to comment on the subject. Louis Caliendo, director of public safety, said he did not feel comfortable commenting on the sentence. He also said he felt that directing inquiries to another source would be inappropriate. Rathburn overstepped his authority on one specific oc JASON GRAHAM/ PHOTO EDITOR Darrell Rathburn was convicted Feb. 28. casion shortly before his dis missal from UNCA, accord ing to Winters. “Several guests and I were in my room when Rathburn and another officer entered,” said Winters. Since Rathburn saw beer cans in Winter’s room, he threat ened to give everyone in the room a breathalyzer test, ac cording to Winters. “I basically told him he was going to do no such thing,” said Winters. Rathburn did not have the legal right to take such action because Winters was over the age of 21, ac cording to Win ters. When Winters refused the test, Rathburn threat ened to take Win ters to jail. Rathburn did not press the mat ter further, but did issue citations for alcohol and noise violations, according to Winters. Winters said he filed a com plaint immediately with Jerry Adams, public safety investi gator. An Oct. 28, 1999 Blue Ban ner article quoted Merianne See SENTENCE Page 10 Public Safety Arrests Suspects Angela Brock News Reporter Four individuals were ar rested early March 5 and charged with breaking and entering an office in Rhodes Hall. The suspects were also banned from the UN CA cam pus. “We were sitting in the office for creative retirement,” said Abe Haim, 21, a local resident involved in the UNCA com munity and various student groups on campus. “A couple of minutes later, public safety officers (came) in, and we (were) arrested,” . Prior to the arrests, public safety received information from the creative retirement officestating that faculty came in that morning and noticed their offices and computers had been tampered with. Public safety set up surveil lance cameras in this area, and with the cameras, arrests were able to be made, according to Jerry Adams, public safety in vestigator. The “night of the arrest, we observed one person, Charles Johnson, who came in the of fice earlier in the night, and then three others entered later,” said Adams. “Johnson let the three other people into the building while he finished up his computer work. That is when we made the arrests.” “They did not physically break down the door, but they gained entry somehow,” said Adams. “There was no dam age to the computers, but Johnson and the others had no right to be in the build ing.” Johnson was the only person inside the office for a couple of hours. He let three other people who were there to pick him up inside the office, according to Adams. Johnson “told me he had a See ARREST Page 10 Serving UNCA Since 1982 WWW. unco. edu/banner

Page Text

This is the computer-generated OCR text representation of this newspaper page. It may be empty, if no text could be automatically recognized. This data is also available in Plain Text and XML formats.

Return to page view