n^fie Campus ‘Ccdo
Non-Profit
Organization
PAID
Permit No. 374
Durham, N.C.
The official student newspaper of North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC 27707
Friday April 22, 1983
Outstanding students
honored by NCCU
N.C. Central’s 34th annual Awards Day was a time
for acknowledging student excellence and honoring
former NCCU employees. The ceremony, held April 8
in B.N. Duke Auditorium, also featured a stirring per
formance by the NCCU Touring and Concert Choirs.
Presiding at his last Awards Day, Chancellor Albert
N. Whiting presented the university’s highest
honor—the Chancellor’s Award for Academic Ex
cellence (awarded to the senior with the highest
cumulative average)—to Randy G. Vestal, a senior
English major concentrating in Media-Journalism.
With a grade point average of 3.97, Vestal, who has
participated in study-abroad programs in Barbados and
England for the past two summers, also received the
Volkemenia Award for excellence in English on the
senior level and is a finalist for a Fulbright International
Study Grant.
Other special award recipients included Xavier
Cason, the winner of the C. Ruth Edwards Memorial
Award, given to the outstanding senior music major;
II AIL .i LT ..L .r-iL ... A . George Jackson, recipient of the Frances A. Kornegay
Chancellor Albert N. Whiting presents the Chancellor’s Award for Academic Excellence, the scholarship Award, given for outstanding service to the
university’s highest honor, to Randy G. Vestal, a senior English/Media-Journalism major with university community; Thelma Slifer, winner of the
a 3.97 grade point average, at the Awards Day program. (Photo by Alex Rivera) Eugenia McManus Younge Award, given for excellence
— in reading in the graduate elementary education pro
gram; Cheryl Harrington, recipient of the J.M. Hub
bard Memorial Scholarship, given for excellence in
Numero Uno at NCCU
Awards Day speech
chemistry; Claressa Grant, winner of the Octavia
Bowers Knight Scholarship Award, given for excellence
in special education; and Eulalie Brown, recipient of the
Theodore R. Speigner Scholarship Award, given for ex
cellence in geography.
The Marjorie Lee Browne Memorial Scholarship was
awarded to Sophia R. Kenan and Marian J. Peters for
excellence in mathematics. The Duckwilder Memorial
Award was given to Angela Langley, as the outstanding
junior woman student, and to Sebastian Curtis, as the
outstanding junior athlete.
After numerous other academic and organizational
award recipients stood and were applauded for their ac
complishments, Dr. Stephen Fortune, chairman of the
Honorary Degrees and Memorials Committee, an
nounced the naming of the Music Building after Mrs.
Catherine Ruth Edwards, the founder of the music
department at Central, who died in 1972, and the nam
ing of the Old Law School Building after William Jones,
the university’s chief financial officer for 25 years.
As part of the Awards Day program, the NCCU
Touring and Concert Choirs, under the direction of Dr.
Charles H. Gilchrist, excited the audience with its rendi
tion of “Daniel, Daniel, Servant of the Lord,” “Come
By Here, My Lord” and “Dear Old N.C.C.,” Central’s
alma mater.
Call for black reinvolyement
in today’s civil rights struggle
/
By Randy G. Vestal
A call for blacks to reinvolve themselves in the strug
gle for civil rights by a member of the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights highlighted the 34th annual Awards Day
ceremony Friday, April 8, in the B.N. Duke
Auditorium.”
Dr. Mary Frances Berry, a professor of history and
law at Howard University, urged the NCCU students to
commit themselves to three public causes: human rights,
human dignity and educational excellence. “Only a
cynic would argue that we (blacks) have made no pro
gress,” she said. “Only a fool would say the battle is
won.”
An assistant secretary for education in the U.S.
Department of Health, Education and Welfare during
the Carter administration. Berry said that blacks cannot
justify lives devoted solely to personal fulfillment as
long as the three scourges cited by the late Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.—unemployment, poor housing and
unequal education—continue to plague minorities,
especially blacks.
Berry told the audience that it was more glamorous to
fight for civil rights at a time like the 1960s than to
engage in “the tedious work of protracted stragjJe”
called for in a quiet period like the 1980s. But the strug
gle is no less important today than it was 20 years ago,
she said.
On her last visit to NCCU in 1979, said Berry, she
helped “unearth how shabbily the state of North
Carolina was treating its traditionally black colleges.”
Referring to the new construction on campus, she
continued, “I’m pleased to see so much progress has
been made. I think (my) visit may have done some good,
along with the strong leadership of your chancellor,
governing board and the state of North Carolina.”
On the desegregation settlement (Consent Decree)
between the state and the federal government. Berry
said, “We must not sit silently by, when we know some
progress has been made, and let states like North
Carolina get off the hook.”
According to Berry, “It’s not a sin to dream and fail,
but it is a sin to fail to dream.” In addition to seeking
personal goals, “each person has a moral obligation to
make a contribution to society,” she said.
Dr. Mary Frances Berry, a
member of the U.S. Commis
sion on Civil Rights, speaks at
Awards Day.
Mayor Bradley to speak
Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles will be the principal
speaker at North Caolina Central University’s commence
ment exercises Sunday, May 15. The exercices will be held
at 9 a. m. at the university’s O’Kelly Stadium. Bradley will
also receive the honorary degree Doctor of Laws. Bradley
is in his third term as mayor of the city in which he has liv
ed since he was 7 years old. Bradley spent twenty years on
the Los Angeles Police Department retiring as a lieute
nant.
Draft registration proof
not needed for aid grants
By Jim Jarvis
The U.S. Department of Education says the NCCU Financial Aid Office and
1,800 NCCU students won’t have to obey the law...yet.
The law, known as the Solomon amendment, states that all male students
who refuse to show proof of their draft registration are ineligible to receive
financial aid. It was slated to go into effect June 30 of this year.
But a federal judge last March granted a temporary injunction blocking en
forcement of the law.
W.C. Blackwell, director of financial aid at NCCU said, “I’ve recently
received an informal phone call from the U.S. Department of Education saying
that we should continue our present policy of accepting financial aid applica
tions from draft age men without them having to show proof of their registra
tion.”
The law, passed by Congress last summer and signed by the president in
September 1982, touched off an enormous controversy. Several colleges and the
American Civil Liberties Union challenged its constitutionality, and on March
10, Judge Donald D. Alsop of the U.S. District Court for Minnisota said
students faced the “threat of irreparable harm” if the law was enforced before
the legal dispute over its validity is resolved.
Selective Service estimates that 45,000 draft-age students—4 percent of all
potential registrants—have not registered. Until the question of constitutionali
ty is settled, some 2.2 million students at the nations more than 8,000 colleges
and universities would have been screened under the “no registration no aid”
requirement during the 1983-84 school year.
Among the aid programs covered by the amendment are Pell Grants, Sup
plemental Educational Opportunity Grants, National Direct Student Loans,
Guaranteed Student Loans, State Incentive Grants, and federally sponsored col
lege work-study programs.
The Selective Service says its regulations forcing each college to police the law
would not place an undue administrative burden on colleges or delay processing
aid applications. But colleges object that the regulations inappropriately rely on
them to enforce the Selective Service law.
Blackwell agrees. “The way the law was originally conceived it would have
been a tremendous burden,” he said.
As for the future of the law, the dispute is expected to drag on for at least
another year, says David Landau, legislative counsel of the American Civil
Liberties Union. “The Supreme Court may have the final say,” he added.
Grand jury indicts
9 in Klan-Nazi case
WASHINGTON (UPI) — Six Ku Klux Klansmen and three American
Nazi party members were indicted Thursday on charges of conspiring to
disrupt an anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, where five Communist
Workers Party members were killed in 1979.
The Justice Department announced that a federal grand jury in
Winston-Ssdem returned a 14-count indictment against the defendants.
They were charged with conspiring to interfere with the federally pro
tected rights of the demonstrators to participate in a parade authorized
by the city of Greensboro.
Five members of the Communist Workers Party were killed Nov. 3,
1979, in the clash with Klan members and Nazis just prior to an anti-Klan
rally organized by the communists.
Indicted were:
—Virgil L. Griffin, 38, of Mount Holly, who was grand dragon or
head of the North Carolina chapter of the Invisible Empire, Knights of
theKKK.
—Edward Dawson, 64, of Greensboro, a former member of the
United Klans of American and North Carolina Knights of the KKK.
—Jerry P. Smith, of Maiden, who held the Klan office of colonel of
security guards and was a member of the secret inner circle.
—David W. Matthews, 27, of Granite Falls, who held the Klan office
of night hawk, the officer in charge of initiation of new recruits.
—Coleman B. Pridmore, 41, of Lincolnton, who held the Klan office
of inner guard and was head of the Lincolnton unit of the Invisible Em
pire.
—Roy C. Toney, 35, of Gastonia, a member of the Lincolnton
klavern.
—Roland Wood, 38, of Winston-Salem, leader of the Forsyth County
Nazi Party unit.
—Jack W. Fowler Jr., 31, of Winston-Salem, a member of the Forsyth
County Nazi unit. c.
See Klan page 3
Outstanding Juniors
John H. Duckwilder of Washington, D.C., the patron
for the Duckwilder Memorial Award, given to certain
outstanding juniors, chats with Duckwilder recipients
Angela Langley, the outstanding junior woman student, and
Sebastian Curtis, the outstanding junior athlete. (Photo by
Alex Rivera)