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lotly (Tar MM The University and Towns In Brief GPSF Senate Approves 2000-01 Cabinet Posts In the last meeting of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, senators wrapped up last-minute busi ness, approved Cabinet members and thanked former GPSF President Lee Conner. After the body briefly amended and passed the 2000-01 GPSF budget by consent, Conner commented on the Senate’s soon-to-be-over session. “We’ve done a good job keeping the meeting relatively compact and getting things done,” he said. Conner then introduced current GPSF President Thad Woody. “Student Congress is really bugging me - we have a lot of empty seats,” Woody said. “It’s great to have allies in Congress when funding comes up.” The body unanimously agreed to support Woody’s choices for Cabinet posts, casting Kleem Chaudhary in the position of external vice president, Dana Moody as treasurer, Sarah Bycott as secretary, Valerie Pruvost as attorney general and Tara Hogan as internal vice president. The Senate moved on to pass by con sent a constitutional amendment. It replaced the internal vice president with the treasurer as the overseer of the appropriations committee. Ending the meeting, senators passed a resolution commending Conner for his year of service as president. Greek Fund-Raiser Aids Elderly Victims of Floyd The UNC chapter of Sigma Nu fra ternity and others in the Greek com munity will present a check for $2,642 to the community group Neighbors for Speed on Thursday morning. Chapel Hill Mayor Rosemary Waldorf, Greek Affairs Director Ron Binder and Carolina Center for Public Service Director Nick Didow are expected to participate. The town of Chapel Hill adopted Speed after Hurricane Floyd flooded the area last year. The presentation of the check will take place at the Old Well at 10:20 a.m. Students raised money by selling T shirts with Hurricane Floyd images and Greek letters on them. The public service center helped with the funding of production costs. Phillips Math Teams Ace Regional Contests Students from the Guy B. Phillips Middle school algebra and geometry teams will advance to the state math competition May 4 after winning two regional competitions. The algebra team placed first among 28 middle and high schools and the geometry team placed first out of 22 schools in Winston-Salem last week. Algebra team members swept first through fourth place in individual com petition while the geometry team had the thud and fourth place individual winners. Carrboro Celebrates National Library Week The Carrboro Branch Library will have a presentation today from Lorenzo “Logie" Meachum to celebrate National Library Week at 3:45 p.m. today. The presentation will take place at the McDougle School Media Center at 900 Old Fayetteville Road in Chapel Hill. The presentation will consist of sto ries, music and poetry that is aimed at children of all ages. For more information, contact the Carrboro Branch Library at 969-3006. Women’s Center Seeks Volunteers for Service The Chapel Hill Women’s Center is recruiting volunteers to act as First Response support for individuals who walk in to or call the center. First Response Volunteers offer infor mation, referral and support to those seeking assistance. Volunteers are needed for the sum mer and are required to commit at least three hours per week for six weeks. Training begins in late April and early May. For more information, con tact Kim Shumate at 968-4610. Middle School Auction To Be Held Thursday Guy B. Phillips Middle School will hold an auction to raise money for its peer mediation program at 7 p.m. Thursday in the school auditorium. They will auction off gift certificates and other things so mediators can fund a trip to the Peacemakers Conference for Youth and Adults in September. From Staff Reports Residents, Officials Hash Out Town's Future By Theresa Chen Staff Writer Intense discussions about affordable housing and land development marked the first of three public hearings focusing on Chapel Hill’s revised 2000 Comprehensive Plan on Tuesday night. Residents met with members of the town’s Planning Department at the Hargraves Recreation Center to respond W* Mm' rn' Jj • 4HL - : DTH/GREG WOLF Luisa Moreno walks to the bus after a day of class at East Chapel Hill High School, a school that only includes a handful of Hispanic students. Compared to their white counterparts, minorities in the local school system tend to score lower on performance tests. n ~ I' I — I— II I 111 — Students Battle With Test Score Chasm By Ginny Sciabbarrasi Assistant City Editor For many of North Carolina’s minority stu dents, “School Daze” has an entirely different meaning. Often feeling ignored by teachers or not wanting to find themselves in predom inantly white advanced classes, the struggles of minority students go far beyond the next big test. Across the state, less than half of the 400,000 black children in public schools passed state-mandated reading and math tests last year. Scores were only slightly higher for the state’s American Indian and Hispanic students. However, about 80 percent of the state’s white students passed these same per formance tests. Locally, a similar trend exists. Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools recendy ranked at the top of the state in Scholastic Asessment Test scores. Annual Exhibit Showcases Variety of Student Artwork By Joseph Pardington Staff Writer Amid hundreds of helium-filled balloons nuz zling the ceiling of Lincoln Center, the artwork of students from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools was put on display during Tuesday’s Visions Art Show opening. The school system held a reception at its head quarters at 750 S. Merritt Mill Road for the parents and the student-artists immediately following the exhibit’s first day. Hopping, skipping and jumping through the narrow hallways, children were allowed one balloon and two chocolate chip cook ies each, although some escaped with more than their quota. The Visions Art Show originated in 1982, the brain child of art teachers and parents alike, said Paul Hrusovsky, an art teacher at Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village. The first show was held at the now defunct Center Art Gallery in Carrboro. The show has been held at Lincoln Center for the past several years. Hrusovsky said there were no real guidelines University & City to changes in the proposed plans for the town’s future. Some residents, like Ed Caldwell of 107 Caldwell St., also showed up to become better informed of the issues. “I’m here to learn what the plans are going to be,” he said. “I followed them up to a point, but I don’t know what the revisions are going to be. (It’s important to find out) what’s going to happen to the town. With What those scores fail to reflect is a gap between white and minority students. Kim Hoke, spokeswoman for the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools, said the discrepancies were being fixed internally by administrators. “What we’re seeing in the last few years in increasing numbers is there is an increase in pro ficiency where by the eighth grade we have the lowest gap,” she said. “There’s still a gap at the high-school level.” Brenda McCormick, who teaches U.S. histo ry and minority studies at Orange High School, said minorities tended to score lower on tests because they did not want to seem different from their classmates by taking the upper-level cours es that could help them perform better. “(Minorities) choose not to take these classes so they don’t stand out," she said. “They don’t want to be separated from their friends. This is a big problem nationwide. Kids will be kids.” End-of-grade test scores for students in third through eighth grades in Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools showed the growing chasm. Ninety-six percent of white students in the area scored at or above their grade level in reading, while only 64 percent of black students passed this mark. In math, almost 97 percent of white students per Focus on Minorities In Education The OTH looks at an issue in-depth. See Page 5 for the artwork, although in past years there had been a specific theme. “I think there’s a big emphasis on drawing. That’s what stands out in my mind,” he said. Jo Harris, director of special projects for the school system, said there were more art objects this year than ever before. “We are getting more 3-D artwork,” she said. Harris said the new display cases increased the capacity for objects and protected them from being broken by the crowds visiting the exhibit. Some of the objects displayed were copper bracelets, papier-mache masks and a ceramic sculpture of a plate with bacon and over-easy eggs. There was artwork from students in preschool to high school. The selection process was left to the individual schools, Harris said. Janet Oldham, visual arts specialist for McDougle Middle School, said there was an attempt to include as many art themes as possible. “I tried to have a variety of works done through out the year of the highest quality,” she said. “It was See VISIONS ART, Page 8 things growing so fast, the town needs a plan.” Town planners shaped the Comprehensive Plan to address prob lems stemming from Chapel Hill’s rapid growth. Of the nine topics presented, afford able housing was the most thoroughly discussed. The consensus was that more affordable housing should be available, but not everyone agreed on how this formed at or above grade level, as compared to 65 percent of black students. Hoke said there was a connection between the performance gap and the amount of time stu dents spent in the school system. She said that by the time students reached eighth grade, there was an opportunity for administrators and teachers to provide extra help. In Orange County Schools, the scores reflect a similar trend. Sixty percent of black students in third grade showed proficiency in reading, com pared to 85 percent of white students. The gap closed significantly by eighth grade, where 73 percent of black students showed proficiency, as compared to 91 percent of white students. However, scores for math were lower. Eighty four percent of white students showed proficien cy in third grade, while 53 percent of blacks did. Rather than closing the gap in math, 85 percent of whites showed proficiency by eighth grade as compared to 43 percent of black students. Kathy Osborne, the associate superintendent for Orange County Schools, attributed the per formance gap to external forces, rather than to a problem within the system. “There’s a number of See SCORES, Page 5 I 0E / ,‘5 y ' v -: ' 4 ". • .tjgf DTH/CASEY QUILLEN Charlotte Price and her mother admire artwork at Lincoln Center during the opening of Visions Art, a monthlong exhibit of local students' artwork. should be achieved. Caldwell said he believed the gov ernment should provide an incentive for builders to develop more affordable housing. “Builders are looking to profit,” he said. “That’s why we have all these $350,000 houses instead of affordable houses. We need to provide incentive to builders to provide affordable housing.” But Town Council member Flicka Wednesday, April 12, 2000 Bateman said Chapel Hill did provide an incentive for developers. “We’ve had an incentive that says if’ you build so many affordable housing units we’ll provide a density bonus, which allows the developer to build more houses,” she said. Lorin Barnes of the Chapel Hill Planning Department said there were See PLAN, Page 8 Talk Aims To Extend Democracy Speakers at the fifth annual Johnston Issues Forum will debate the importance of integrity in national politics. By Brooke Roseman Staff Writer A group of national politicos will dis cuss building more integrity in govern ment to preserve and extend democra cy at the fifth annual Johnston Issues Forum on Thursday. “Integrity in Politics, Politicians: Serving the Public or Serving the Money” will be hosted by Johnston Awards Program scholars and will take place at 7 p.m. in the Carroll Hall auditorium. Catherine Loftin, assistant director of academic scholarships, said Johnston scholars themselves picked the topic for the forum and spent the full academic year organizing it. She said the Johnston Awards Program provided students with acade mic programming including faculty mentors, leadership activities and hon ors seminars. Senior Tracy Klutz, an issues forum co-chairwoman, said that while she and her co-chairwoman, Belinda McSwain, were discussing possible topics for this year’s forum, politics arose as a viable subject. “We thought a relevant issue would be integrity, because it seems that a lot of times, there is no integrity in pol itics,” she said. Speakers this year will include Ed Turlington, Bill Bradley for President campaign manager; Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at UNC; and Deborah Ross, executive and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. Provost Dick Richardson will mod erate the discussion between guests. Guillory said Americans had a pre disposition to look askance at elected officials. “We’ve just come out of a peri od in American history of successive cynicism about politics,” Guillory said. “In some respects, because we’ve had relative peace abroad, we’ve allowed ourselves to be cynical.” Guillory said this year’s forum topic was critical because democracy needed consistent refreshment and constant attention and nourishment. “We’ve got to come to a larger, more balanced view of our public figures as people with strengths and weaknesses,” he said. Ross’s focus will be the ethical issues involved in politics, and Turlington will reflect on his experiences with both the governor and with the Bill Bradley for President campaign. “Our only goal is to have an open discussion where we bring together dif- See INTEGRITY, Page 8 3
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