8
Thursday, July 15, 1999
Ashley Stephenson
EDITOR
lacob McConnico
CITY/STATE 6t NATIONAL EDITOR
Board Editorials
Back in Effect
As William McCoy returns to UNC as interim chancellor, his
background in finance will help the University fix its budget woes.
When UNC-system President Molly
Broad selected William McCoy to become
interim chancellor for a second time, Broad
made a very smart choice for a very difficult
time.
McCoy stepped in as acting chancellor in
April while Chancellor Michael Hooker
went to Maryland to battle cancer. Hooker
died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma June
29.
McCoy showed in his two-month stay as
acting chancellor that he could handle the
pressure and position - evident from his
dealings with students protesting the
University’s sweatshop policies.
But unfortunately for McCoy, the sweat
shop protest is going to seem like child’s play
for what he’s got to do now.
Waiting at South Building like a monster
hiding under someone’s bed, is a mess of
trouble with which no one wants to deal.
First, the N.C. House of Representatives
has gotten its scissors ahold of the bond pack
age, which would have given the University
$2.7 billion. Now, the package is worth $1.2
billion in total, and the University could gain
$206 million for construction.
The bond, which Provost Dick Richardson
labels the most important bond in UNC his
tory, is in the midst of a political tug-of-war
between the Senate and the House.
But the problems don’t stop there. McCoy
also has to deal with a budget deficit that is
approaching $ 10 million.
There is also the problem of anchoring the
Smoke This
People suing tobacco giants have no one to blame for their poor
health but themselves. They knew the risk and took it.
Suing tobacco companies has become
more popular than recreational drugs and
promiscuous sex were in the sixties.
It is practically the new American pastime.
Everyone is getting into the mix. TTie pres
ident advocates that the federal government
sue tobacco companies. The states are suing
because they want reimbursement for
Medicaid payments they made to cover
tobacco-related illness claims. And of course,
every sick smoker in the nation believes he
deserves a kickback from the tobacco com
panies to ease his pain and suffering.
They don’t deserve dime one.
Some people claim that when they started
to smoke, nobody told them it was bad for
them. Well, no one claimed it was good for
them either. You don’t need a surgeon gen
eral’s warning to use common sense.
Inhaling any form of smoke day after day
cannot be good for you.
And even after tobacco companies issued
warnings that nicotine was addictive, smok
ers continued to smoke and the youth of
America, targeted by camels and cowboys or
not, started to inhale.
People make the choice to smoke. They
like it. However, when the smoker gets sick,
after knowing that might be a possibility, he
is ready to curse the tobacco company.
It is not as if officials from the tobacco
companies go door to door with guns to the
heads of innocent Americans. There is no
marketing magical enough to lure consumers
to the cigarette counter against their will.
Once people start to smoke, again it is
their choice. The states would like us to
believe that quitting smoking is an impossi
bility. lawyers prosecuting the tobacco com
panies practically compare quitting smoking
to getting off of heroine. Cigarette consumers
are the victims because they can never quit
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campus leadership while the hunt for replac
ing Hooker, Richardson and Vice
Chancellor for Finance Jim Ramsey.
The committee that picked Hooker took
18 months before choosing him; the selection
could take as much time, though Broad antic
ipates a choice in nine months to a year. The
selection committee will begin in two weeks.
Despite the trouble McCoy finds himself
facing, he is right for the job. Although Broad
said his business skills were not why he was
chosen, his background could not have come
at a better time.
He was vice president of finance for UNC
General Administration, which gives him an
excellent background to try to fix the
finances of the University.
Of course, as interim chancellor, McCoy
must remember that his time here is tempo
rary. This will mean he will have to contin
ue Hooker’s policies, because McCoy won’t
have the time to create and implement his
ideas.
By the time fall semester gets here, McCoy
ought to be ready to handle the inevitable
protests on any variety of subjects, com
plaints from faculty when difficult budget
decisions kill funding and the harsh criticism
of his moves that will surely come.
What McCoy will soon learn is that the
problems of his two-month stint are nothing
and that the honeymoon between him and
the campus is over.
It’s time for everyone to get down to busi
ness.
no matter how hard they try.
In reality, the only real victim is the
American judicial system. It is being flooded
with people not willing to take responsibili
ty for their own actions and greedy lawyers
interested primarily in fattening their wallets.
(Although you would be hard-pressed to find
a wallet big enough to handle $275 million,
the average paycheck).
Neither lawyers nor state officials are inter
ested in public health. It’s always been about
the benjamins.
A judge in Florida recently awarded the
state sl3 billion in reimbursement for
Medicaid payments the state covered dealing
with tobacco claims. Yet, all the money is not
going back into the healthcare system of
Florida. Only a portion of it will be used for
anti-smoking campaigns. The state really
wants better roads and schools.
Who doesn’t?
The only problem is that the state sued the
tobacco companies under the argument that
this was for the greater good of the public
health of the state, not the highways.
Even the victims get lost in the argument.
In Florida, the state legislature barred private
citizens from trying to get a piece of the sl3
billion.
In Florida, a jury decided that the 500,000
sick smokers in the state were entitled to
punitive damages. These victims will be able
to tell you endless horror stories about how
smoking ultimately ruined their lives.
Mary Farnan was diagnosed with lung
cancer three years ago. She’s tried everything
to quit including patches and gum. She still
smoked through parts of her chemotherapy.
She’ll tell the court that addiction made it
impossible to quit. Of course, she will also
have to tell the court that she did for a living.
She was a registered nurse.
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‘Thou Shalt’ Stay Out Of Schools
I‘ve recently decided that I’m going to be
home-schooling my “future” children.
This is an enormous change for me.
I’ve always been a faithful supporter of public
education. I’ve personally attended public
schools for nineteen years now and I am a
“retired” public school teacher. But due to
some recent actions from our fine friends in
the U.S. House of Representatives, there is a
distinct possibility that 1 might be teaching
again.
For those of you who have been too
absorbed by those exciting summer UPN
reruns and Prince Edward’s nupitals, the
House recently passed a series of amendments
to the Juvenile Justice Bill that would among
other things increase penalties for students
who carry weapons to school, make it easier
for states to try children as adults, and require
schools and libraries to use internet filters to
keep kiddies (and adults) from downloading
nudie pictures of Britney Spears. The most
controversial of these amendments would
allow school districts to post the Ten
Commandments in the classrooms.
The supporters of the amendment claim
that the answer to school violence is not about
reducing children’s access to guns, but
increasing their access to religion. The logic is
that if we force school children to pray and
read Bible verses, they won’t grow up to be
psychopaths and gun down their classmates.
If only it were that easy.
it* —^
Readers' Forum
‘Apocalyptic’ Editorial
Ignores Capable Staff
Hooker Left Behind
TO THE EDITOR:
I was reading the Sunday Edition
of The Raleigh News & Observer,
dated July 4,1999 and I read the arti
cle reprinted from The Daily Tar
Heel titled “Time to Mourn, Search.”
I would like to offer the following
commentary.
I have never met Chancellor
Hooker, but I can understand where
his passing is a solemn event for
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. By all accounts he was a
first rate man and educator. A
tremendous loss to be sure. However,
the apocalyptic tone in this article is
certainly an exaggeration.
It would seem to me that if
Chancellor Hooker was such a won
derful administrator he would have
surrounded himself with qualified,
competent and able people to tend to
the university business. The doom
and gloom scenario given could
never eventuate itself if the
Chancellor was on top of the situa
tion, which is the portrait constantly
being painted. 1 am not questioning
this.
But consider this, if UNC-Chapel
Hill was in such fine hands under one
man, then how could it sink into the
abyss by the departure, however trag
ic, of that same, one man? Part of
being an effective administrator is to
create an environment whereby the
top individual, in this Chancellor
Hooker, can depart with nary a rip
ple in the pool.
The question being, which is it? If
the University is going to be in such
dire straits then perhaps Chancellor
Hooker was not doing such a great
job. If the University will keep or
Cara Brickman
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Thomas Ausman
DESIGN EDITOR
MELINDA MANNING
GUEST COLUMNIST
Making 13-year-old students stare at the
Ten Commandments all day will not return
sanity to the schools, but is simply a slick
attempt to inject religion into the classrooms
of our secular nation.
And don’t worry about offending the
Hindu children, the Muslim, the Sikh, the
children of Agnostics, Wiccans or those of tra
ditional Native American beliefs. The mem
bers of the House of Representatives who
voted for the bill seem to have forgotten
about these young Americans.
What the posting of the Ten
Commandments will not do is reduce the like
lihood of another Columbine tragedy. What
the posting will do is make students of other
faiths feel unwelcome in their own schools.
The fact is that we are an increasingly
diverse nation-in race, culture, ethnicity and
in creed. And just as teachers cannot favor
children of one race over another, we also
chugging, which I suspect is the case,
then the writer of this particular arti
cle has really not thought this
through properly and should take
more care in the future before writing
such irresponsible material.
Michael R. Spun
Wake Forest
Headline Misleads,
Wrongly Warns
Of Possible Race War
TO THE EDITOR:
My years of journalism experience
taught me that headlines sometimes
fail to capture an article’s content, so
I reserved judgment on Cara
Brickman’s July 8 column (“Chapel
Hill Race War Imminent”) until I
read the piece. Sure enough, the
headline misrepresented Brickman’s
argument. Though my editorial
experience also taught me not to crit
icize other editors for small errors,
this one merits attention.
The first 11 (of 13) paragraphs
merely refute Matt Hale’s assertion of
non-violence. The final two para
graphs draw a loose connection
between Chapel Hill and the “afflu
ent neighborhoods” stricken by the
recent shooting spree.
Asserting that “you never know
when ... a dispute over french fries
can turn into a race war” is drastical
ly different from stating that a race
war is “imminent.” Such inflamma
tory language in a large, three-col
umn headline is irresponsible, given
that even the most benign treatments
of racial issues inevitably rub raw
nerves on campus.
The DTH, of course, should
refrain from censoring the content of
columns, even those that express
unpopular opinions. To attribute a
Allison Burns
ONLINE EDITOR
Ted Basladynski
GRAPHICS EDITOR
cannot favor the tenants of one faith over
another in the public schools.
Many have already tried to argue that the
Ten Commandments are more than religious
laws. I might believe that except for the fact
that these laws are the centerpieces of two
major religions and contain certain provisions
which exhort us to, “Keep the Sabbath holy”
and “Have no other gods before me." What
these particular directives have to do with
reducing school violence is beyond me.
There are better alternatives out there.
Many schools already have their own “rules”
directing students to treat their peers and
teachers with respect.
I just don’t think that a public classroom
wall should be confused with the wall of a
church or temple or shrine. And I don’t want
my future children to feel inadequate in
school simply because they won’t be raised
Christian or Jewish.
I want them to be able to choose their own
faith and not have one forced on them by
their neighborhood school.
Due to proposals like this one, I’m afraid
that by the time I have children our schools
will be no more safer, but much more intoler
ant.
My children wall deserve better.
Melinda Manning is a third-year law student
currently working at the Bazelon Center for
Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C.
sensationalistic sentiment to an
author who was careful not to use
such language, however, is inexcus
able.
I would like to assure any incom
ing students and parents who saw last
week’s DTH that, though racial issues
can be contentious at times (as at any
university), the campus and commu
nity most certainly are not on the
verge of a “race war.”
Adam Schiffer
Graduate student, Political Science
Police Should Use
Shotguns, Not Pistols,
Due to Safety Issues
TO THE EDITOR:
Obviously no one on your editor
ial staff knows anything about
firearms (“Overkill’ which ran July
24). If you don’t know something, do
some research. Shotguns are typically
much less deadly than pistols. You
can fire slugs (bullets) from shotguns
and you can shoot someone point
blank. That kills. Usually, though, you
use birdshot. A birdshot shell shoots
hundreds of small BBs. What does
this mean? You can more easily hit
your target and that target is damaged
far less. Any poor sap who’s acci
dentally shot by being in the wrong
place at the wrong time is also dam
aged far less. Also, you don’t have to
worry about missing your target and
hitting someone standing four blocks
down the street, because a shotgun
has an incredibly short range.
I, personally, would feel much
safer if the police department would
replace all of their sidearms with shot
guns.
Dean Clason
UNC Acquisitions Department
Slip Uatlii (Ear Uppl
P
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