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cm] ^€tm0 UNC Tuition Issue Raises Questions About the Budget Change Feared Detrimental to Black School^ first black student admitted to the University of North Carolina Law School was Harvey Beech. Beech, at right, is Kenneth Lee who attended the law school with Beech. (Photo By Alex Rivera) Beech, one of UNC’s first black graduates, dies at 81 TON (AP) - fjarvey E. Beech, one of t black graduates from the University th Carolina at Chapel Hill has died at 1, who.died Aug. 7 after an extended was one of five black students ad- tothe university’s law school in 1951 lengthy, court battle. He was a student rham’s North Carolina School for Js • now North Carolina Central Uni- '. when Thurgood Marshall asked join a case against UNC-Chapel Hill, hall, who eventually became the first justice on' the U.S. Supreme Court, iged the separate-but-equal status of V school. The case won admission for and four others in a decision from the hurt'of Appeals. h and 5. Kenneth Lee became the first graduates from the university the next Fhree years later, the school admitted t black undergraduates. Still, Beech talked about the tough times he endured while at the law school. "He wasn’t always treated as well and with as much respect from his fellow students as he should have been,” said David Brown, senior associate editor of publications for the school’s General Alumni Association. "He spoke very openly about it in recent years." George Graham, a friend and chairman of the Lenoir County Board of Commissioners, said it was a "struggle" for Beech. "All through it, he stood up for what was right, what is decent and what was - and is - in the best interest of ail people," he said. The Kinston native practiced law for 40 years, serving on the university’s Board of Visitors and the Board of Directors for the UNC Law School Alumni Association. Last November, the school honored Beech with the William Richardson Davie Award for extraordinary service to the school or to society. By Gary D. Robertson RALEIGH (AP) - The storm over whether campuses in the University of North Carolina sy.stem should have the authority to set their own tuition rates has abated at the Gen eral Assembly. Hours after lawmakers passed the third temporary spending measure of the year, Senate negotiators backed off demands in the still- unfinished budget to grant two schools the power to set a portion of their tuition rates independent of the University of North Carolina BoSrd of Governors. The. issue pitted well-to-do alumni, particularly at UNC-Chapel Hill, who want their school to gain the power to charge more tuition, against UNC board members and former political leaders, among others, opposed to the change. In between sat dozens of legis lators who attended one of the stale’s 16 public schools, trying to determine relatively quickly what is best for the university system as a whole. "It’s complex. It’s emotional," board chairman Brad Wilson said. Senate leader Marc Basnight, D- Dare, said the proposal raised a larger question: "How you pay for education in North Carolina is the nut to crack." Supporters of changing the tuition system are worried that UNC- Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University - which akso would have received the special authority - will not have enough money to hang on to talented professors tempted by bigger paychecks of fered by other schools. Campus leaders are also worried about sup porting new members of the faculty that are just starting out, Basnight said. "They’re wincing at how to pay for it," he said. But opponents say making such an dramatic change to the state's higher-education policy deserves its own debate, and shouldn’t be hashed out during the often private budget negotiations. Inserting "special provisions," or items that make policy changes but don’t directly affect spending, into the budget lengthens the negotia tions process and the legislative session, said Ran Coble of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research, a nonpartisan policy think tank. And it’s happened before with the UNC system. In 2001, the budget granted UNC schools the authority to ask the Board of Governors for tuition increases specific to each campus. And this year, a provision that remains in the budget would treat all UNC scholarship winners (Continued On Page 3) HI®® - Matthew L. Ramadan was introduced to comiiiuiiit> as the new Imam at the Ar-Razzaq Islamic Center at 1009 W. Chapel Hill St, Below, Ramadan, left, was greeted by Rev. Joseph Harvard, center, First Presbyterian Church; and Rabbi John Friedman, Judea Reform Congregation. Ramadan is executive director of Operation Breakthrough. Duke Researchers Working to Isolate Glaucoma Gene in Ghana ' william L. Holmes IGH (AP) . In his waiting r. Rand Allingham saw all fence he heeden of glau- Jisproportionate impact on k patients - the speed and with which the disease eyes,' robbing victims of lit. d the reason, and a poten- Iment, the- ophthalmologist to seek an answer in the ' blacks. His joum'ey took ' the eyes of Ghana, a west nation where glaucoma is fespread. bam. believes researchers Wter chance of finding the ‘8 gene in Ghana .because * is more than 98'percent He and his researchers hope the lack of outsiders in the population will help them isolate the gene or genes that lead to glau coma in that nation - and possibly in blacks in the United States, many of whom trace their ancestry to slaves brought to this country from Ghana. Trying to find a potential genetic cause of glaucoma in blacks in dif ficult in the United States, where blacks have lived alongside Euro peans, Asians and Native Amer icans for centuries, he said. "I really didn’t think African- Americans came to this country and then developed glaucoma." he . said. "The U.S. is a melting pot. When you look at it genetically, 25 percent of African-Amencans have European blood. Our population m the U.S. is not what you’d call a pure population genetically." Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world and affects about 2 percent of the American population 40 years and older, according to the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Md. Blacks are nearly three times more likely than whites to suffer from the disease. It acts slowly. Over-time, it pre vents fluid from draining properly from the eye, increasing pressure and inflicting damage. The disease rate isn’t known in Ghana, where no studies of glau coma have been conducted, Alling ham said. The entire country has (Continued On Page 3) Judge Says Busing Unlikely A Remedy in Charlotte Case RALEIGH (AP) - A state judge told civil rights lawyers Aug. 9 he is unlikely to restore busing to Charlotte- Mecklenburg schools to address academic problems at the system’s poorest high schools. "Busing is not going to solve it, Mr. Chambers, because you can’t move all the children out" of poor schools. Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. told attorney Julius Chambers on Aug. 9. Chambers and other civil rights lawyers had asked Manning to consider declaring the system’s student assign ment plan unconstitutional, A federal judge ordered an end to race-based student assignments and busing six years ago, saying the school system was desegregated. One result of the current student-assignment system has been high concentrations of poverty at some schools. Manning is presiding over the long-running Leandro school financing case. His ruling that the state was not doing enough to ensure a "sound basic education" for its poorest students was upheld by the state Supreme Court last summer. Since then. Manning has been holding hearings aimed at finding solutions to the problem. The hearing focused on persistent low test scores at some 44 high schools, including 10 in Charlotte- Mecklenburg. Chambers is one of the lawyers who helped win the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision in Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that opened the door to court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation. He and other lawyers from the University of North Carolina’s Cefiter for Civil Rights told Man ning that the existing system doesn’t work and leaves some schools unable to provide.their poor students with an equal education.
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