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Middle school teachers
address Clinton scandal
BY ANNE CORBETT
STAFF WRITER
Amid the media storm of controver
sy surrounding the president’s alleged
sexual relationship with former White
House intern Monica Lewinsky, the
reactions of one group of Americans
have been overlooked the children.
Current events are a staple of social
studies curriculum, but the recent pres
idential controversy sent N.C. teachers
saambling for ways to discuss the situa
tion appropriately.
The state-mandated curriculum for
North Carolina calls for teachers to
bring related current events into class
room discussions.
Jeanne Haney, a middle school social
studies consultant for the N.C.
Department of Public Instruction, said
the department had not issued any
guidelines for teachers to follow when
discussing the issue.
“We rely upon the professionalism of
our teachers,” she said. “They know the
age level of their students.”
Haney said teachers take care not to
let class discussions stray into areas par
ents might find objectionable or inap
propriate for their children.
“Our folks are very sensitive to the
community that they serve,” she said. “I
don’t think you’ll see the talk-show syn
drome in our schools.”
She also said teachers would use the
issue to talk about relevant subjects.
“I suspect this would be an appropri
ate time to look at how impeachment
works,” Haney said.
Above all, she said, N.C. teachers
would not let discussion of the issue get
out of hand or become inappropriate for
the age of their students.
“Our teachers are trying to be very
professional and responsible,” she said.
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“Our folks are very sensitive
to the community. ... 1 don’t
think you’ll see the taUt-show
syndrome in our schools.”
JEANNE HANEY
social studies consultant for the N.C.
Department of Public Instruction
Several middle school teachers said
they did not intend to talk about the
issue at all.
“I don’t do a lot with current events,”
said Paulette Scott a social studies
teacher at Grey Culbreth Middle School
in Chapel Hill.
She said she would only address the
issue if a student brought it up.
Alicia Zucker, a social studies teacher
at Smithfield Middle School, only uses
current events that deal with the subjects
she is teaching in class. “We deal with
Africa and Asia,” she said.
Zucker said she was glad her cur
riculum did not include American gov
ernment because she did not want to
have to discuss the situation in class.
“I’m lucky enough that I haven’t had
to deal with it," she said. “I don’t want
to deal with it.”
She said she was also grateful that
none of her students have brought it up
in class.
“They don’t bring it up,” she said.
“Anything else, I would talk with them
about, but this is a really touchy issue.”
Zucker said she thinks it is more
appropriate for parents to talk about this
subject with their children than to dis
cuss it in class.
“I think I would tell them to talk with
their parents,” she said. “The way par
ents are these days, you could get sued.”
Death-row inmates place hope in appeals
■ Raleigh’s Central Prison
currently has 175 prisoners
waiting on death row.
BY VALERIE BREZINA
STAFF WRITER
Death-row inmates at Central Prison
in Raleigh maintain hope in spite of
their impending fate.
Nevertheless, the death of a fellow
inmate does affect their actions.
“The tension increases somewhat as
the date to someone’s execution
approaches, but there is very little out
ward emotion,” said Capt. F. S. Walker,
the officer in charge of Central Prison.
“This is probably to keep their hopes
up. They keep hoping there will be a
way out of it, and they don’t want to be
belligerent and mess up their record.”
At 2 a.m. Friday, Ricky Lee
Sanderson, sentenced to death for the
1985 abduction and murder of a 16-
year-old Lexington girl, breathed his last
breath in Central Prison in Raleigh.
Walker said Sanderson could have
appealed the case but decided against it.
“He (Sanderson) could have appealed
it if he had so desired, but he thought his
decision was the right thing to do,”
Walker said.
“He thought this was what he had to
do in order to right himself with God
and his religion.”
Despite Sanderson's death, Walker
said executions are relatively uncom
mon in Central Prison.
“We’ve only had nine executions
since the death penalty came back in
1976,” he said.
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Patty McQuillan, public information
officer for the N.C. Department of
Corrections, said although there are
numerous inmates on death row, actual
executions are an exception to the rule.
“The inmates have natural appeals
coming to them,” McQuillan said.
“There are 175 people on death row
in Central Prison, and some of them
have been there a very long time. The
inmate who has been there the longest is
Norris Carlton Taylor, and he was sen
tenced on July 30,1979.”
Barry McNeil, special deputy attor
ney general, head of the Capital
Litigation sector, agreed executions
were unusual due to the elaborate
appeals process set up for death-row
inmates.
“There are 10 steps in the appeals
process, and only until an inmate has
completed the entire round of state and
federal proceedings, or else has decided
to go no further in the appeals process,
is he actually up for execution,” he said.
“The first stage is the trial and sen
tencing stage, then the direct appeal
stage, in which the sentence is subject to
automatic review by the N.C. Supreme
Court,” McNeil said. “These two stages
are automatic; the inmate cannot elect
to drop the direct appeal.”
McNeil said Sanderson only went
through the mandatory first two stages
of the process and then elected to drop
all further appeals.
Walker said an inmate scheduled for
execution gains some special privileges.
“About ten days prior to execution,
the prisoner is granted telephone privi
leges so they can talk to family friends,
attorneys and clergy. They are also
granted one special last meal.”
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Local socialists fight executions
BY JASON MORRELL
STAFF WRITER
The recent execution of Ricky Lee
Sanderson impelled one local group to
take action against what it said was a
tool of oppression.
The Chapel Hill branch of the
International Socialist Organization
(ISO) is attempting to build a chapter of
the national campaign to end capital
punishment.
Members expressed their views on
the topic at a meeting last week, just
before the execution.
“The way the death penalty is used is
100 percent wrong,” said Jonathan
Wexler, a member of the group.
Wexler, a 1997 UNC graduate,
expressed the socialist sentiment in a
speech at the meeting.
Wexler said capital punishment was a
tool used by the government that propa
gated racism and class oppression.
“(Capital punishment) is a sign of the
barbarism in our society,” he said. “It’s
never been used as a defense but as a
weapon.”
To support his argument, Wexler
pointed to facts relating to the death
penalty.
He said Texas was the leading state in
executing prisoners, but its crime rate
has increased five times the national
average.
Annabel Bower, a member from
Raleigh, shared Wexler’s view on the
issue.
“We believe the death penalty is
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racist, discriminates against poor people
and doesn’t act as a deterrent to crime,”
Bower said.
“Innocent people will die and have
died because of it”
Branch organizer Joseph Tomaras of
Durham described the death penalty as
a brutal tool that society needed to
unconditionally oppose.
He said bringing about change called
for active involvement to Force the gov
ernment to take action against capital
punishment.
“Our job as socialists is not to make
policy programs. We need to fight for
basic rights,” Tomaras said. “So we
need to mobilize people to fight for these
rights.”
The national campaign to end capital
punishment is designed so members do
not have to be socialists or part of the
ISO, Bower said.
“(The campaign) works in coalition
with all other groups that don’t support
the death penalty,” she said.
The ISO is an active organization
that exercises mass protests instead of
prayer or lobbying, Bower said.
“It’s necessary to mobilize a large
amount of people in a very public way,”
she said. “We want to be noisy.”
Group members said people interest
ed in fighting the death penalty must
join the campaign to make the force
even stronger.
“Doing this stuff is really non-glam
orous,” Bower said.
“But the most important thing you
can do is recruit more people.”
5