10
Monday, February 20,1995
(Tltd latlg (Ear Mwi
Kelly Ryu EDITOR
Hunastis Cambani* managing EDITOR
World Wide Web Electronic Edition;
[ . A 1 http://wyiw.unc.edu/dth/iiideiJitml
ITk. Established 1893
101 Years of Editorial Freedom
Make a Difference: Vote!
What does one vote matter? This question is
on the minds of many students around election
time. In case you haven’t received your public
service announcement today, you can get it right
now. Every vote is important.
Students often don’t stop to think about the
consequences of student government elections.
The new student body president will act as a
leader and a representative of this university. In
the coming year, he or she will help decide
where some of our student fees are spent and will
work with the Board of Governors and the
Board ofTrustees toward the implementation of
new programs and projects that will affect the
entire campus. Each and every student has an
interest in who will hold this office for the next
year and, as such, every student should take a
Don’t Upset the Balance
|; A balanced budget amendment sounds like a
.great idea, right? We keep our checkbooks bal
anced, so why shouldn’t Congrest? An argu
ment for a balanced budget is valid. We have a
debt of $4 trillion and a Congress incapable of
even slowing its growth.
_ There are unforeseen consequences to en
graving our desire to rein in government into the
Constitution. For years, Congress has been un
'able to meet its own attempt to achieve a bal
anced budget, the Graham-Rudman anti-deficit
law. In the 1980s, its lackluster attempts to do so
.typically resulted in the deferring of federal ob
ligations to the states. Programs were not actu
ally cut, they were simply transferred to the
states. The states then were forced to find means
' to fund them. The decline in revenues (and
' ranking) of UNC during the past seven years
: illustrates the burden states assumed in order to
• cope with increased fiscal responsibilities. Ev
-1 eryone wanted a balanced budget, right? But at
what cost? Many states with balanced budget
; amendments were forced to borrow against fu
ture revenues in order to keep programs afloat.
-•lnterestingly enough, the federal government
‘•’would not have the luxury of doing so.
’ ’ Imagine the consequences. The federal gov
, "eminent must find a way to actually meet the
4 $1.5 trillion demands of the budget. Everyone is
AIDS Testing: Indecent Exposure
In a society in which it is becoming increas
ingly difficult to defend one’s privacy, when
even one’s e-mail is subject to violation by fellow
students, those most sensitive to the need for
protection have received a final intrusion. On
■June 15, the State Commission for Health Ser
vices will put an end to anonymous testing for
exposure to the HTV virus at county health
•departments in North Carolina.
The decision, which overturns a prior ruling
’ to extend anonymous testing for two years, is a
serious blow for those working to increase the
number of people being tested across the state.
The primary goal of AIDS testing is to have as
'many people tested as possible so that the dis
ease can be identified and isolated. Anonymous
testing allows individuals to be tested without
fear of the results being revealed. If anonymous
testing is abolished, thousands of potentially
HIV-positive people may decide not to be tested
for fear that the information will be leaked to the
. state government. In a state where officials like
' - Jesse Helms have advocated the quarantining of
Aids sufferers, the reluctance to reveal one’s
status to the state is understandable.
When anonymous testing is terminated, con
fidential testing will take its place. Confidential
testing guarantees anonymity if one tests nega
tive; if positive, one’s name and address are
oh YoopTA
LUCK TOO, HUH?J >3
—-II- ■' * f‘fA 4a/ our-of-smA
Tan Servaiiu* editorial page editor
Adam Granin university editor
Rvan HomWg city editor
Jenny Heimen state S national EDITOR
Justin Scheef sports EDITOR
Jon Goldberg FEATURES EDITOR
Alison Maxwell ARTS/DIVERSIONS EDITOR
Peter Roybal special assignments editor
Kathryn Sherer copy DESK EDITOR
Amy Ferguson DESIGN EDITOR
Katie Cannon PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Chris Anderson GRAPHICS EDITOR
Michael Webb editorial cartoon editor
good look at the candidates remaining and cast
a thoughtful and conscientious vote.
Voter turnout has been appallingly low the
past few years. In 1993, only 2,789 voters came
out; 4,440 students voted last year; and 3,985
voted this year. Of the 4,440 people who voted
last year, only 3,884 voted in the runoffs. That
means there were 292 students who didn’t take
the time to vote again.
These numbers show a staggering apathy
among student voters. Ideally, there should be
more people voting in the runoff election be
cause the choice of candidates has been nar
rowed, making decisions easier. It is not too late
to voice your opinion on who should be the new
student body president. Be sure to vote tomor
row.
pleased libertarians, Tsongas supporters and
liberals alike because the government is fi
nally facing its fiscal responsibilities wisely. The
only necessary choice for Congress to make is
whether to eliminate Social Security or to raise
taxes to the level of a former Eastern bloc nation.
Not an ideal choice to make, but a necessary
component of a truly balanced budget in America.
Of course there is one other alternative for
Congress, once having amended the Constitu
tion. Congress could ignore its new law, just as
it does its flimsy Graham-Rudman law, and
allow the deficit to continue to increase un
checked.
But a dangerous precedent for future genera
tions would be set: die amending of our Consti
tution in order to accomplish the impossible.
There is nothing magical about the Constitution;
its articles and amendments have not forced
change, people have. And while amendments
have directed and redirected our nation’s course,
they have done so because it has been a possibil
ity. Congress must consider whether it really
wants to test the limits of the Constitution’s
authority. Much of the Constitution’s authority
resides in its limited but feasible powers. Force
fully stretching what is by definition limited runs
the risk not only of weakening the authority of
the Constitution but ofbreaking it down entirely.
given to health officials. The rationale is that
with a name and an address the state can contact
the HIV-positive individual and assist and edu
cate them about the disease. With cooperation,
health officials can also contact those with whom
they have engaged in high-risk behavior and
therefore limit the spread of the disease.
While logically sound, confidential testing
ignores the most salient fact in anything to do
with such a sensitive disease as AIDS. People,
whether at risk or not, do not want anyone to
know that they’ve been tested or that they are
potentially positive. Beyond the contention that
confidential testing is a violation of a person’s
right to privacy, in a society that places a stigma
on AIDS and the HTV virus, confidential testing
is tantamount to an admission of positivity.
As long as our society continues to view those
who test for the HIV virus as disease-carrying
outcasts, confidential testing will be a self-de
feating policy. Unless people feel that faith is put
in their inherent sense of responsibility, that is,
that they are given the option of anonymous
testing, then they will not have themselves tested.
Until testing for HIV is recognized as a soci
etal norm rather than a perversity and we leam to
treat those who test positive with equanimity,
confidential testing will be ineffective and possi
bly destructive.
EDITORIAL
THE FORMATIVE YEARS vhA) deeper
SYMBOLIC, MESSAGE
U I YoU CONVEY? arc Vou oust
I V (SAVING THAT FREDDY
| / (g)(g) 41 1 HALL (BLACK), AM TOO
! SHORT TO RIDE THE
NIA bfmMlS) - ] Roller Coaster Cpurple)
|§pr TALL f are you saying th/v
fp*-' /\m\ /\ I Black people cam not
I l \ 1 measure up to the standards
Freedom of Speech: The Right to Be Bothered
Although I don’t like to include autobio
graphical details in my column, I will be
gin this week with a personal story. This
anecdote is not intended to inflict my psyche
upon the reader, nor is it an explication of my
opinion on religion. I just want to make my
point clearer: our precious right to free speech
has a price tag.
Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the Pit,
minding my own business and sulking about the
ills of modem life. As it was a dreary day, and a
light mist of rain was falling, I expected no one
to even pay attention to me. Little did I know
that I had been marked from afar for CONVER
SION.
As I rose to go into Lenoir to seek my evening
repast, a hand thrust itself into mine, and I was
faced with the smile of a young gentlemen who
asked if I could talk for a moment. “Sony,” I
said, “Tve already got a date for this weekend.”
Unamused by my comment, yet undaunted, my
companion offered to show me “what the Good
Lord Jesus had to offer me,” and he pulled out
oneofthose black-and-white cartoon books with
the devils and lots of neat one-liners.
Frustrated by this nonsecular salesman, and
a little insulted by his vacation-Bible-school ap
proach, I tried to stop the conversation before it
really got started. “Listen, ” I said, “I’m cold, wet
and tired. My girlfriend has PMS (Post Massive
exam Syndrome). I’m on the way to eat a meal
that vultures turn up their noses at, and on top of
it all I have to write a column by tomorrow. It’s
nothing personal, but I need to go ...”
“Perhaps you need to talk about your prob
lems. Let me show you just a few ways that
Christ can ease your burden. ” I was amazed that
this fellow did not realize that when someone
sits in the middle of a rainy puddle and stares off
into the distance, they probably don’t want to be
bothered, much less smiled at and practically
molested. Iknewthatnothingshortofthe Apoca
lypse was going to free me from the clutches of
this young zealot. Putting on the best poker face
I could manage, I looked him in the face and said
“Please don’t waste your breath. I’m really from
the Nation of Islam.”
Finally rendered speechless, my companion
acknowledged the futility of his actions, and
quietly shuffled away. For once, I was happy to
simply stand in line and stare at someone’s back
rather than carry on a conversation. I’m starting
to feel like I’m the target of a conspiracy. While
I actually had an interesting conversation with a
grad student from a church in east Chapel Hill,
two other “witnesses” had determined that I
was headed straight to Hell unless I had their
Heineman, 104th Congress Committed to Reform
During the 1957 World Series, Yankee
catcher Yogi Berra noticed that Hank
Aaron grasped the bat the wrong way.
“Turn it around,” he said, “so you can see the
trademark.” But Hank kept his eye on the
pitcher’s mound: “Didn’t come up here to read,
came up here to hit.”
Similarly, the 104th Congress is not in ses
sion to pay lip service to reform. It is batting a
thousand on keeping campaign promises. The
line-item veto, passed Monday, is one such
reform that is long overdue.
During my campaign, I heard from people
across the district that federal spending was out
of control. People have a right to be upset. It
seems that a lot of taxpayers are suffering from
“shell-out shock,” with little hope of relief in
sight. The 15-pound budget document that was
dropped on my desk last Monday from Presi
dent Clinton would spend $1.6 trillion.
One trillion dollars.
To put this into perspective, Stephen Moore
ofthe Cato Institute puts it in simple terms: “The
newspaper tabloids report that O.J. Simpson is
paying some $55,000 a day in legal fees. The trial
would have to last 26 million days, or almost
100,000 years before the lawyers earned $1.6
trillion.”
As the noted economist Milton Friedman
once wrote, “Government spends what govern
ment receives plus whatever else it can get
away with.”
Government has been getting away with o ver
spending for years. The line-item veto is one
method that will help to curb the overwhelming
governmental ability to spend taxpayer dollars
on repetitive, frivolous or unnecessary projects.
Governors in 43 states have a line-item veto. Of
present and former governors who responded to
a recent survey, 93 percent believe that a line
item veto would help the president restrain fed
eral spending.
have666tattooed on
someone selling I
God ( Yessir, call daii it aaaih
976-4 GOD and hear RoLl j' T *® AlN '
your own, personal JAWta
message from the BIG GUY. We’re trusted by
the Hollywood stars!”) then it was a student
government campaign worker, dripping with
sincerity, telling me that “not only does Stacey
Brandenburg promise to deliver cable, Internet,
world peace and more hours of sunlight per day,
she also doubles as a handy dorm-sized Salad
Shooter/Espresso Maker, which collapses into a
convenient carrying case the size of a nickel!!”
And she’s trusted by the Hollywood stars, right?
Of course.
It’s times like these that make even the most
fervent believers in free speech consider asking
for some sort of relief. However, although free
speech doesn’t seem like such a good idea when
you’re a prisoner of someone else’s rights, it
shouldn’t be any other way, as long as no one
gets hurt. The same right that protects Mr.
Minister’s attempts to convert me to the “true
faith" also protects my column detailing what a
rude individual he was.
Freedom of speech has been an important
political issue for centuries. Names such as John
Milton, Patrick Henry and John Stuart Mill
resound through history as great defenders of an
individual’s essential right to speak freely. With
out free speech, our nation never would have
been formed. Our Constitution would never
have been ratified without the inclusion of the
Bill of Rights, still alive despite the best efforts of
intellectuals and the Supreme Court.
Nowhere is free speech more important than
in the university, as the free flow of ideas is a
crucial element in education and learning. Dur
ing the ’6os, the free speech movements origi
nated at the University of California at Berkeley
as students protested U.S. involvement in Viet
nam.
Paradoxically, the modem university is the
most unfriendly environment for free speech.
Under the laughable guise of Political Correct
ness, university administrators have imposed
speech codes at such prestigious bastions of
Of course, the ef
fectiveness of a line
item veto is depen
dent upon frequent
FRED HEINEMAN |
GUEST COLUMNIST
and firm usage by thepresident. President Clinton
once said, “1 strongly support the line-item veto,
because I think it’s one of the most powerful
weapons we could use in our fight against out of
control deficit spending.”
We are mortgaging the future of our nation on
pet pork projects that vary from the sublime to
the absurd. A few of the more absurd projects
that your tax dollars funded include:
■ $34,645,000 for screw worm research,
■ $5 million for honeybee research,
■ $1,471,000 for a poisonous plants labora
tory,
■ $1 million to conduct chiropractic demon
strations in lowa,
■ $520,000 for the Monk Seal,
■ $300,000 for a U.S./Canada lobster study,
■ $260,000 for cranberry /blueberry disease
and breeding
■ research; and
■ $200,000 for grape virology research.
Milton Berle once said, “I am a patriotic
American. But I would be equally as patriotic for
1/3 the cost.” You don’t have to be a comedian
to realize that the government spends too much.
When I was chief of police in Raleigh, I spent
less than the police department budget for the 15
years of my service. I was still able to ensure that
Raleigh was one of the safest cities in America.
It can be done.
Congress has an inability to curtail the cost of
government and special interest spending
even of the absurd variety. One think tank esti
mates that the line-item veto, if effectively uti
lized, could pare the budget by $5 billion to $lO
billion a year. Had the line-item veto been law
during the last half of the 1980s, it would have
saved S7O billion.
®lfp SaUg ®ar Bppl
learning as Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton and
Duke. That’s right, Duke. All those obnoxious
snots at Cameron Indoor Stadium have rules
about what they can and can’t say. I would laugh
if the same weren’t true at Carolina.
Every issue of The Carolina Review is threat
ened with at least one unjustifiable lawsuit. If the
editor feels he should run a cartoon portraying
Philip Charles-Pierre as Fat Albert, the Constitu
tion of the United States guarantees him the
right. PCP is a public figure who dishes out as
much as he takes. And no matter what you think
of Charlton Allen or John Phillippe, they have
the right to post “Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve” fliers wherever they wish. The last time I
checked, the debate over homosexuality had not
been decided, and I have inside sources who
inform me that the gay community does not have
a monopoly on the truth. Just don’t tell the
Campus Y.
For those who habitually ciy “Harassment!”
don’t read the material!! No one has ever forced
me to read the Review, and I have yet to see a flier
pull itself off of a wall and follow someone
around the Pit (unlike campaign workers). Ifyou
don’t like what you read or hear, either respond
or walk away. Don’t whine.
Concerning the notorious fliers, SBP candi
date Stacey Brandenburg remarked that they
made people feel “uncomfortable” and that it is
an Honor Court violation to make someone
uncomfortable. Sheer idiocy! Tell me Ms.
Brandenburg, does that mean I can file charges
against my overzealous missionary friend for
making me feel socially “uncomfortable”? Per
haps I’ll file charges against YOU for making me
so politically “uncomfortable” that I had to write
this column. Paternalism has no place in an
academic community of adults.
What’s the point of all this rambling? Simply
that we all have to deal with situations, people,
ideas and words we may not agree with. We’re
here to leam, which means that the chances of
being fundamentally challenged, and offended,
are pretty high. At no other time in life will I have
perfect strangers seeking to make a profound
change in my life. Even if I don’t lie being
verbally assaulted all the time, I at least value and
respect the rights of others to do so.
In short, even in the face of ignorant rantings
or well-intentioned tirades, leam to respond ap
propriately, or simply turn your back and walk
away. And if you don’t like my column, SUE
ME!!
Tadd Wilson is a junior English and political science
major from Charlotte.
President Clinton will now have his opportu
nity to save American taxpayers from Congres
sional appetites and bureaucratic whims. Money
saved could go to real needs and priorities of
government, or, heaven forbid, back to the tax
payers.
In his inauguration speech on Jan. 20,1981,
Ronald Reagan said, “It is no coincidence that
our present troubles parallel and are proportion
ate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives
that result from unnecessary and excessive growth
of government.”
In a fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan on his
birthday, Feb. 6, Congress passed the line-item
veto.
The occupational disease of government is
spendicitis. It is amazing to note the generosity
of even the most conservative individuals with
other people’s money.
American families balance their budgets and
make difficult choices every day. Congress must
make those same difficult choices and leam to
live within their means. We must cut spending
first. After all, it’s the spending, stupid.
Rep. Fred Heineman is the 4th District's representa
tive in the U.S. Congress.
Got an Opinion? Join the
DTK Editorial Board
The Daily Tar Heel is seeking new editorial board
members. The board meets at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday,
Tuesday and Thursday. Members will be expected to
write editorials two or three times per week.
We are looking for informed individuals who like
to argue and write. Join the fun! Pick up an applica
tion in Union Suite 104 today. If you have any
questions, please contact Editorial Page Editor Tara
Servatius or Editor Kelly Ryan at 962-0245.