10
Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Concerns or
continents about
our coverage?
Contact the
ombudsman at
budmanto unc.edu
or call 60S-2790.
Scott Hicks
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Katie Abel
UNIVERSITY EDITOR
Jacob McConnico
cm EDITOR
Board Editorials
Complicating the Issue
Chapel Hill's plan to annex University-owned land would hamper
the University's independence. The town should back off.
In the latest example of a situation that is
sure to worsen strained town-gown relations,
the Chapel Hill Town Council is considering
a proposal to annex the Mason Farm Tract, a
144.9 acre piece of land in Durham County
owned by the University, effective June 30.
This plan is completely one-sided and
would benefit the town to the detriment of
the University’s independence.
If it passes, the University will have to
have ask the town for permission whenever
it wants to develop the land.
In other words, the University would have
to jump through Chapel Hill-imposed hoops
before it could even touch its own property.
The land is already subject to oversight
from Durham County. If it became part of
Chapel Hill, the University would have to
deal with the extra bureaucratic red tape that
comes with town government. This would
only complicate an already cumbersome
process.
And at a time when the University is fac
ing the prospect of a huge enrollment
increase and is trying to develop and carry
out a Master Plan for growth, it cannot afford
to be hampered when deciding what to do
with its property.
Keep ’Em Separated
A Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education proposal to integrate
gifted middle-schoolers into regular classes won't benefit students.
When gifted students at Culbreth Middle
School go to school next year, the classroom
might hold quite a different experience if
members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board
of Education get their way.
And if that occurs, the quality of the stu
dents’ education will be in serious jeopardy.
Gifted seventh- and eighth-graders at the
school are currently taught separately from
other students, but if a proposed plan is
passed, the students would be integrated into
the regular classroom.
Similar programs are being cut nation
wide, but that does not make it a good idea
for local students.
Imagine being one of the “smart kids” in
the seventh grade. In a classroom of intellec
tual equals, it’s no big deal that you pick up
concepts quickly or that you seek academic
challenges.
But in an integrated classroom, you stand
out from other students. At age 12, do you
want to be labeled as different?
Of course, that scenario presumes that
already burdened teachers will take the extra
time to cater to the students’ intellectual
needs and create an appropriate curriculum
for them. In an integrated classroom, teach
ers will likely focus more time on slower
learners to catch them up to the class, not in
ensuring that more advanced students aren’t
The Daily Tar Heel welcomes submissions from its readers for its Viewpoints page every Monday.
Guest columns should be about 800 words, written by no more than two people and discuss an
issue relevant to DTH readers. Submissions should be e-mailed to editdesk@unc.edu and are due
by 6 p.m. the Wednesday before the column will appear. Publication is not guaranteed. For more
information, contact Editorial Page Editor Scott Hicks at 962-0245.
Readers' Forum
CUAB Looking for New
Leaders to Head Variety
Of Campus Committees
TO THE EDITOR:
This letter goes out to all students inter
ested in shaping life at UNC. We are the
Carolina Union Activities Board, and we
would like to introduce ourselves.
You might know of us because we
brought Vertical Horizon and Stroke 9 to
Memorial Hall. You might recognize us
from our recent support of Sister Helen
Prejean. You might have noticed that we
sponsor every movie that shows in the
Student Union. Perhaps you enjoyed (or
endured) one of our Karaoke Nights in
Lenoir Dining Hall.
You see, we did all those things, and it’s
really about time that you became
involved.
CUAB needs new leaders to chair a
plethora of various committees during the
2000-01 school year. Whether you wish to
plan next year’s film schedule, bring in big
name musical groups, seek out notable per-
Rob Nelson
EDITOR
Office Hours Friday i p.m - ♦ p.m.
Matthew B. Dees
STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR
T. Nolan Hayes
SPORTS EDITOR
Leigh Davis
FEATURES EDITOR
Besides, annexation offers no tangible
benefits to the University.
Aaron Nelson, coordinator of local and
University relations, said many municipal
services that the town would provide, such as
police and fire protection and garbage col
lection, would be provided by the University
itself, meaning UNC would get absolutely
nothing if the land added “Chapel Hill” to its
address.
Of course, the town has a legitimate inter
est in what its most powerful resident is doing
right outside its borders, and the University
should be courteous enough to let the town
know of any plans for the land beforehand,
giving concerned leaders the chance to
express their opinions.
But that is where the town’s say should
end.
The University needs to retain control
over its own land to be able to best meet its
needs.
There is no way the Town Council would
be able to do as effective a job evaluating
what’s best for the University as the
University’s own leadership.
For the benefit of its most famous resident,
the town of Chapel Hill needs to back off.
bored.
And many teachers aren’t trained to deal
with gifted students - they don’t know how
to tailor work to meet the students’ needs. As
a result, gifted students often receive busy
work or extra work instead of different work.
In other integrated classrooms, gifted stu
dents forgo the role of learner and instead
are forced to serve as additional teachers,
especially during group work.
Educational theorists have professed that
by integrating gifted students into the class
room, the overall performance of the class
will be elevated. Even if this were proved
true, it would still come at a tremendous cost.
In an integrated setting, an appropriate
class pace is difficult to find. If a teacher
accelerates the pace to meet gifted students’
needs, the rest of the class suffers; converse
ly, if the pace decelerates to meet slower
learners’ needs, gifted students suffer.
The board’s plan fails to realize where
integration breaks down and does not create
a mechanism to ensure that accelerated stu
dents’ needs will be met.
The best way to do so is to leave gifted stu
dents in a separate classroom.
Let them learn with each other in an envi
ronment that meets their needs rather than
thrusting them into a classroom where they
don’t belong.
sonalities to speak on campus or plan and
promote the performing arts at this
University, CUAB has an opportunity for
every interest.
Or if publicity or public relations is your
thing, we have that, too. So come check us
out!
Pick up an application at the Union
Desk (due Wednesday), and feel free to e
mail cuab@unc.edu if you would like to
know us better.
Tony Arcese
Carolina Union President-elect
Lawmakers’ System
Tour Included Both
Student, Faculty Voices
TO THE EDITOR:
Thanks to The Daily Tar Heel for
expressing strong interest in the
University’s urgent building needs in the
March 22 editorial “Incomplete Tour.”
Improving the facilities on our 206-year
old campus is one of the most important
Opinions
ahE lathj (Ear Mtti
Established 1893 • 107 Years of Editorial Freedom
www.unc.edu/dth
Robin Clemow
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Carolyn Haynes
COPY DESK EDITOR
Miller Pearsall
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
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NATO Made Bad Situation Worse
March 24 marked the one-year
anniversary of the commencement of
NATO airstrikes against Serbia.
Curiously, the very media that once cham
pioned American involvement in the conflict
don’t seem to be celebrating the occasion,
perhaps because the situation in Kosovo is
worse than ever before.
Brace yourself for disillusionment.
You might already have been aware of cer
tain NATO blunders during the air campaign
that, due to sheer magnitude, the media could
not bury.
These included the bombing of two hospi
tals, an embassy, a power plant, a prison and
numerous ethnic Albanian refugees leaving
the territory.
But you might not be aware of how the vio
lence continued even after the NATO attack
stopped.
In the first seven weeks of NATO’s occupa
tion after the cease-fire, Human Rights Watch
reported there were 198 confirmed homicides
and 573 confirmed arson attacks, mosdy at the
hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In
addition, more than 80 percent of the Serbs in
Kosovo left or were driven out by ethnic
Albanians hungry for revenge.
State Department spokesman James Rubin
said such violent incidents were the result of
“rogue elements,” and not an organized cam
paign on behalf of KLA leadership. Ironically,
that is what Slobodan Milosovic said about
Serbian government attacks on Albanians.
Now, a year later, the KLA has taken con
trol of Kosovo, establishing a network of self
appointed ministries and local councils, seiz
ing businesses and apartments and collecting
taxes and customs payments.
In addition, independent Macedonian
newspapers report the existence of KLA-like
formations and say the units are waiting for an
opportune time to link up with units in
Kosovo and Albania.
There are also reports now coming from
Western and independent media inside
Yugoslavia telling of KLA infiltration into
Serbia proper.
The Washington Post reported that senior
U.S. officials have privately dropped their
opposition to Kosovo independence, and the
Clinton administration sees the secession as
inevitable.
issues facing the University.
I am pleased that the DTH is articulat
ing such needs from the perspective of stu
dents.
Nonetheless, your readers need to know
more about the tour, part of a fact-finding
effort across the 16-campus university sys
tem so committee members can see first
hand what a consultant has documented:
outmoded buildings, mounting deferred
maintenance and a shortage of key science,
technology and study facilities.
First, the committee visited three, not
two, UNC buildings: the Medical Sciences
Research Building, Venable Hall and Hill
Hall. In all of those settings, members
heard very poignantly from faculty and
students alike about the detrimental effects
of substandard classrooms, laboratories
and learning spaces.
Second, committee members heard
about a wide range of facility concerns
campuswide, not just in those three build
ings. A Power Point presentation, viewable
online at www.unc.edu/news/newsserv/
facilitiesneeds/, showed the legislators
some of the same concerns cited in the edi
Thomas Ausman
DESIGN EDrTOR
Megan Sharkey
GRAPHICS EDITOR
William Hill
ONLINE EDITOR
JONATHAN TRAGER
THE LIBERTARIAN LETTERS
In sum, Kosovo is now a possession of the
terrorist KLA, and NATO involvement is
what made that possible.
How did we in American society con
tribute to the current state of Kosovo?
The path to destruction was inevitable
when many citizens allowed themselves to be
seduced by official propaganda that claimed
NATO wanted to intervene in the conflict
because of “humanitarian concerns.”
If those concerns were enough to warrant
NATO involvement in Kosovo, why didn’t
America attempt to stop the Rwandan gov
ernment from claiming the lives of almost a
million minority members (more than the
number killed by Milosevic in Kosovo) just a
few years earlier? Why didn’t America inter
vene in the Krajina region of Croatia when
the government killed 300,000 Serbs? Why
didn’t America stop the brutal suppression of
the Kurdish minority in Turkey or the
Chechens in Russia?
Even though our proclaimed interest in
international ethnic minority affairs didn’t
square with NATO inaction elsewhere, many
media members and academics gladly swal
lowed it wholesale, especially after war hawks
claimed a moral obligation similar to what
caused our intervention in the German
Holocaust.
In reality, the two situations were funda
mentally different.
At the time of the Holocaust, most Jews
had lived in Germany for generations, obeyed
German laws, voted in German elections and
paid taxes to the German government.
The National Socialist Workers Party
(Nazis) used the financial success of the Jewish
minority as a tool to incite the jealousy and
bitterness of other citizens and cement Nazi
authority.
torial: a classroom in the aging Murphey
Hall, for example.
Your student body president, Nic
Heinke, took time during Spring Break to
address these legislators, too, along with
key administrators and professors. Nic
spoke eloquently about how having a class
in a building like Murphey can harm a stu
dent’s ability to learn effectively.
He also discussed the obstacles faced by
a friend coping with a recent injury in try
ing to get to her chemistry class in Venable
Hall. Legislators saw for themselves why
that building is difficult for any student to
navigate and heard of our plans to ulti
mately demolish it because more renova
tions will not be cost-effective in the long
term.
It is important for the community to
know that both student and faculty voices
were heard by this committee, which is co
chaired by two loyal UNC alumni: Sen.
Tony Rand of Fayetteville and Rep. George
Miller of Durham.
Their reaction was heartening. They
said they were embarrassed by the prob
lems and poor conditions they saw here
Vicky Eckenrode & Cate Doty
MANAGING EDITORS
Terry Wimmer
OMBUDSMAN
In contrast, the relationship between the
Serbs and Albanian citizens has always been
riddled with mutual violence. When ethnic
Albanians became the majority in the Kosovo
region ruled by Serbs, the KLA made clear its
goal of autonomy, and the Serbian govern
ment was faced with the prospect of losing its
territory permanently.
Basically, the Serbian government set out
to crush a legitimate political threat, a threat
that did not exist in Nazi Germany.
It seems now their fear of KLA domination
was aptly warranted.
As one intelligence officer with the U.N.
Mission in Kosovo said of the KLA, “We are
their tool, and when we stop being useful to
them, they will turn against us.”
Horrifically, it seems as though that night
mare is already coming true.
Last month in the city of Mirtovica,
Albanian snipers shot and wounded two
French peacekeeping soldiers. The French
then killed one rooftop sniper and wounded
at least four others.
Consequendy, about 150 soldiers from the
British Royal Greenjackets, who have exten
sive experience in civil unrest by patrolling
Northern Ireland, are now stationed there.
Experts have said that Kosovo is quickly
becoming the “Belfast of the Balkans.”
It’s time to face the facts that idealists
would rather ignore. When a government
sends its military to intervene in a deeply
entrenched cultural conflict, it breaches its
obligation to protect the individual rights of its
citizens.
As NATO alliance commander General Sir
Mikejackson recendy told the London
Telegraph, “We are doing all we can, but atti
tudes can’t be changed, thinking can’t be
changed, with a soldier.”
Maybe our government should have real
ized that before killing dozens of civilians and
tacitly condoning a KLA takeover.
Make no mistake; all we accomplished in
Kosovo was help one gang of thugs beat up
another.
How humanitarian.
Jonathan Trager is a lover, not a fighter, and
a senior journalism and mass communication
major from Long Island. N.Y. Send hugs and
kisses to trager@email.unc.edu.
and hoped to persuade their colleagues in
Raleigh to help us address this issue.
I am counting on the University com
munity to do its part by staying engaged
and informed.
William O. McCoy
Interim Chancellor
The length rule was waived.
Fan Suggests 2 More
Lessons to Be Learned
In Basketball 101 Course
TO THE EDITOR:
“Basketball 101” revisited - We’ve
learned to be happy that the Tar Heels and
Coach Gut didn’t listen to what has been
said during most of this season.
We will pass the course as fans when we
learn to follow this team’s example and
exhibit great heart.
Resa Coleman
Chapel Hill
Sljp Satlij sar MM
F
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