8
Thursday, July 8, 1999
Ashley Stephenson
EDITOR
Jacob McConnlco
C3IYOTUI fit NATIONAL EDITOR
Board Editorials
On the Record
State law says people need not provide a reason for requesting
public records, but chances are agencies will ask for one.
The results of a recent test of North
Carolina’s public-records access law revealed
that residents could expect to be denied one
third of the time when requesting a city or
county public record.
In addition, the study showed that law
enforcement agencies had a higher refusal
rate and often violated state law by asking
the requester to identify themselves.
State law explicidy states: “No person
requesting to inspect and examine public
records, or to obtain copies thereof, shall be
required to disclose the purpose or motive
for the request”
The investigation was sponsored by the
N.C. Press Association and the N.C.
Associated Press News Council and involved
reporters from across the state who present
ed themselves as average residents seeking
access to records that had been deemed pub
lic by the state.
Most county and city agencies complied
with the requests and reports stated that
some were very pleasant to deal with.
However, reporters ran into the most trou
ble when requesting records from law
enforcement officials.
Some were pressured into revealing their
identity, which is against state law. Others
were told that the records were confidential.
One reporter was threatened with being put
in jail and two others had license-tag checks
run on their cars.
This disregard for state law raises real
questions when considering the fitness of the
men and women that are expected to protect
residents’ rights.
It is alarming that police officers, sheriffs
deputies and, in some cases, sheriffs were not
aware of the law or did not care about the
law.
Editorial Notebook - Rachel Carter
UNC: Soccer Mom
UNC's proud soccer legacy is on center stage as eight of the twenty
members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team are from UNC.
Of all the things UNC prides itself on,
from low tuition to being the first public uni
versity in the nation, the University is still
known for one thing - Michaeljordan.
It doesn’t seem to matter what leaps and
bounds the school takes, Jordan still remains
the most famous alumnus and he seems to be
UNO’s greatest claim to fame.
But now eight women might have some
thing to say about that and kickjordan from
his place of eminence in UNO’s heart.
The World Cup this year has suddenly
turned a spotlight to a growing audience -
young girls. And it is those girls who have
made Mia Hamm a household name.
Soccer has become more popular every
year and children learning to play the game
look at the best players and try to leam.
The best is the U.S. National Team. The
U.S. Women’s National Team.
Saturday’s tide game against China stands
to break the crowd record at a women’s only
sport - the record set at Giant Stadium in
June by U.S. Women’s World Cup fans when
the team beat Denmark 3-0. Officials are
expecting 90,000 fans.
Little girls have posters on their walls of
Hamm, Julie Fouay, Michelle Akers and
Briana Scurry. It’s the first time in sports his
tory that girls in America have had brilliant
athlete role models like the U.S. team.
Two of the team members - Joy Fawcett
and Carla Overbeck - have children and
many, including Hamm, are married.
Fawcett and Overbeck are proof to girls that
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It is the equivalent of a speeder arguing to
a state trooper that he or she was not aware
of the speed limit or did not care, therefore
the law does not apply to them.
The result is that government gets stronger
and residents are made weaker.
N.C.’s public-access statute was created to
provide residents with information about a
number of governmental activities.
The statute ensures that individuals mov
ing to new areas can see crime reports from
the neighborhood they are moving to.
In addition, the statute makes information
available about property taxes, county and
city fees and the salaries of officials that were
elected by the people.
It is time for law-enforcement and other
public servants to realize that just because
they tote a badge, carry a gun or hold a high
ranking position they are not above the law.
In our system of government residents are
forced to comply with the law whether they
agree with it or not. The process provides
legal recourse but requires initial compli
ance.
I-aw enforcement and public officials
should be forced to adhere to the same set of
rules.
After being denied access to a pistol-per
mit application a reporter told Orange
County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass what the
public-records access statute stated.
Pendergrass replied to the reporter, “Don’t
you tell me what the law is. I know what it is.
I’m the sheriff.”
It is this pervasive attitude that should
alarm and outrage residents.
Clearly, the message that a statement like
this imparts is that law-enforcement view
their role as that of law maker and not law
enforcer.
they can balance sports with family.
Leading the team are the eight UNC
women. From Lome Fair, who will return for
her final year of eligibility in the fall, to 31-
year-old Overbeck, the Tar Heel influence is
enormous. They are a credit to the
University, because they are smiling, well
behaved, excited and damn talented.
To honor the memory of Michael Hooker,
who was a supporter of Tar Heel sports, the
UNC team wrote ‘Michael’ on one sock and
‘Hooker’ on the other during Sunday’s game.
The team knows that making women’s
soccer a popular and thriving sport depends
on them. So they are reaching out to the fans.
On the U.S. national team’s Web site, Fair,
armed with a digital camera, gives fans an
up-close look at the team’s fondness for nail
polish and hair dye, their shopping exploits
and the clutter of their hotel rooms.
Figure skating star Tara Lipinski has been
recruited to make commercials begging
President Clinton to go to World Cup games
and he listened, showing up to the July 2 vic
tory against Germany.
Nike has jumped on board too, with sev
eral commercials that emphasize the impor
tance of “team” for the women.
And of course, there’s the Gatorade com
mercial where Hamm challengesjordan to a
series of contests -and beats him.
With the team’s strong drive into the
minds and hearts of the public, it might soon
be a question of Hamm beating Jordan in
popularity too.
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Chapel Hill Race War Imminent
Last weekend while most people were
lighting sparklers and grilling hamburg
ers, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith was plan
ning a shooting rampage in the suburbs of
Chicago.
He killed two men and wounded six.
He joined the World Church of the
Creator, a church where white supremacy is
gospel. The members ain’t boy scouts. They
advocate white power masked in religion.
They have turned hate into a profession.
The members of the World Church of the
Creator have every right to hand out hate lit
erature.
But, they should have more integrity. They
should come right out and say who they think
should die. They don’t because they know
that fighting words are not protected by the
First Amendment After all, they’re leader
wants to be a lawyer. Tricky racists.
Its leader, Matthew Hale, claims that the
group does not condone violence.
Sure. And Hitler aspired to be a rabbi.
Claims that white supremacy groups aren’t
into violence are ridiculous. Picture it You are
a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi. The hate litera
ture you distribute is all nigger-this and kike-
Readers' Forum
Hooker ‘Pain in Neck’
For University Mired
In Unchallenging Ideas
TO THE EDITOR:
Michael Hooker was a pain in the
neck to every tweed-jacketed educa
tional bureaucrat in the UNC faculty
and administration. He was the whirl
wind of change, ruffling the feathers
of every smug academic hack who
had grown too comfortable with non
management by committee.
Michael Hooker came to the uni
versity thirty five years ago a callow
youth from the hardscrabble coal
fields of rural Virginia. What went on
in the classrooms and libraries of
Carolina was not a luxury for him, it
was a miracle. It opened worlds to
him that his own father would never
see or understand. And it salvaged
him from a lifetime in the dark,
cramped burrows, and a lung full of
coal dust by the time he was 40. He
never forgot what miracles could be
wrought in the halls and classrooms
by passionate teachers, who cared
about their students, and who
believed in die power and glory of
knowledge. Miracles that could trans
form a coal miner’s son into a chan
cellor.
To paraphrase Wordsworth, “The
University is father of the man.”
A quarter century later, he proved
another great alumnus wrong. He
could go home again. And when he
did, he had a vision of what the uni
versity should be. He believed in the
promise that education held for all
those who sought it, the power it had
to elevate the humble and bring hope
to those, who only a generation
before knew only despair.
He wanted nothing short of a rev
olution, a return to UNC’s original
ideals, a university of the people, by
the people, but most importandy for
the people
He had a vision, and it was not the
stuffy, etiolated, sarcophagus the uni
versity had evolved into under the
layers of dust deposited by the creak
ing leadership of academic pedants.
Cara Brickman
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Thomas Ausman
DESIGN EDITOR
■
CARA BRICKMAN
Guest Columnist
that. You want them all dead, but you just
want to talk about it? Come on. Hitler did not
make a name for himself by being all talk now
did he?
He thought Jews sucked. He wanted them
all dead. They were to blame for unemploy
ment in his motherland. They hoarded all the
money while his Aryan brothers went hungry.
They were sneaky backstabbers with hideous
hook noses. Hitler wrote that the only way to
cleanse the Aryan race was to do away with
the undesirables, includingjews, gypsies and
homosexuals.
Of course there is no way of knowing what
they talk about at their church meetings. But,
The University had lost sight of its
mission, and sunk into a parody of
the self-absorbed university.
Michael Hooker seized the
University by the scruff of the neck
and shook the dust from every comer
of campus. He kicked open the doors
and windows and pointed to the far
horizon and declared that the true
campus of this University lay there in
the tiny valleys of the mountains, the
sprawling mill towns of the Piedmont,
the isolated tobacco farms of the east
tidewater plains and the tiny fishing
villages of the coast. He returned with
vigor to make good the promise of
Chancellor Battle in the university’s
first renaissance, where “the bound
aries of the University would be co
terminus with the boundaries of the
state itself.”
The Chancellor ordered the school
of education to reach out to the high
schools of the state. He smashed the
ivory towers and insisted the
University live in the world of busi
nesses and government across the
state. He dragged the University kick
ing and screaming into the real world.
He insisted that the university cease
its role as chief beneficiary of the peo
ple’s largesse, and return again to its
role of servant of the people.
Previous chancellors were the
noble keepers of flame, acolytes of
the grand tradition. They loved the
bricks and mortar set by General
Davie and the stones trod by Thomas
Wolfe. But for Michael Hooker, his
university was the people, and the
people who mattered most, his stu
dents. He sought to return the cam
pus to the electric atmosphere of his
youth. He fought to revive a universi
ty where the faculty cared more about
molding a generation’s leaders than
what was on the lunch menu at the
faculty club.
He refocused the attention of the
University back to the undergraduate
school that defined its character, his
tory and meaning. He demanded that
the faculty lavish its best efforts, not
just on the tiny graduate classes of
tomorrow’s professors, but also on the
undergraduates who would stream
Allison Bums
ONLINE EDITOR
Ted Basladynski
GRAPHICS EDITOR
something tells me the discussions have more
to do with stringing up black people from
trees and less to do with the Blessed Trinity.
“Gee, we never saw anything like this com
ing,” Smith’s neighbors told news crews.
Whether or not Smith had violent tendencies
or looked like he was capable of murder, he
did in fact kill two people before turning his
gun on himself after a police chase. There was
something about hearing day after day that
blacks, Asians and Jews among others were
parasites of the United States that got to
Smith. And while the World Church of the
Creator does not condone violence, it has
indisputably bred it.
Smith went on this killing spree in affluent
neighborhoods not unlike our own in Chapel
Hill. It might be wise to remember that while
we are out walking our dogs or at the drive
thru window at Wendy’s.
You never know when a walk can turn into
a crime or when a dispute over french fries
can turn into a race war. Thank the racists.
Cara Brickman is a senior English and pho
tojournalism major from Indian Trail. Reach
her at cbrick@email.unc.edu.
back across the state, changing the
face of society.
He wanted the very best for every
student, and embraced technology to
ensure the world would hold as much
promise for them, as it had for him.
He mandated that every freshman be
able to own a computer by 2000, and
that every professor integrate com
puters into die classes as fundamental
tools of learning. He fought to estab
lish four new Kenan Professorships
for undergraduate faculty and made it
clear that excellence in undergradu
ate teaching was the keystone of his
administration. He restored the
promise that education held for those
who had none without it.
The last time I saw Chancellor
Hooker was in the spring of 1998. It
was bright April afternoon, and I
spotted him charging down a walk
way on the south quad, in that per
petual bounding gate that marked his
personality, pushing through the
swarming sea of students. I watched
as he nodded and flashed that famous
smile at each and every student, star
tling them as he charged through
their midst. One lanky youth raised a
clinched fist over his head and called
out with a toothy grin, “Yo, Captain
Hook” and the Chancellor smiled
back and waved. “Most Excellent
Chancellor" cried a scruffy, over
weight kid with glasses. He respond
ed with a Cheshire Cat grin and a
mock imperial turn of the wrist with
out breaking stride, leaving a fleet of
grinning, startled students, bobbing
like tiny boats in the wake of a great
carrier, awed by the sudden
encounter with the leader they all felt
knew and shared their own hopes
and dreams.
That is the way I will always
remember Michael Hooker, striding
down the sun-dappled quad of his
youth, surging through the innocent,
the eager, the hopeful sea of beaming
faces that reflected back his charis
matic grin, joyful to be surrounded by
his true university.
Randolph Ryan
Class of 1982
tTltr Saily 3-ar Urd
j?
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