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14 Wednesday, May 3, 2000 Concerns or comments about our coverage ? Contact the ombudsman at budmaniauiK.edu or call 605-2790. Scott Hicks EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Katie Abel UNIVERSITY EDITOR Jacob McConnico CITY EDITOR Editorial Series Building for the Future Many buildings on campus are outdated, inefficient or dangerous. Chancellor-elect James Moeser must make the Master Plan a reality. When James Moeser takes the reins in August, he must immediately guide a uni versity in the midst of great change. This fall, every entering freshman must buy a laptop. By 2010, UNC will grow by thousands of students. University facilities cannot handle such growth and projects without expansion - especially because facil ities do not meet the campus’ current needs. The Master Plan, a blueprint for campus growth, ensures that UNC will no longer build concrete eyesores such as Greenlaw Hall. But the plan fails to update current facilities. Moeser must prioritize renovating and building projects and work with UNC-system President Molly Broad and UNC trustees to get them OK’d. Chancellor’s Checklist 1. S" 2. O'" Part three of an editorial series examining the issues Chancellor elect James Moeser should make his top priorities Academic Facilities To foster UNC’s intellectual climate, all students in every department must first have adequate facilities to meet their needs. Now, a great inequality in academic build ings exists. Think of the differences between a newly renovated building, such as Carroll Hall, and a much older one, such as Murphey Hall. Students in Carroll enjoy technology-sawy classrooms with central air conditioning, comfortable seats, computers and carpet. Students in Murphey have class rooms with beat-up furniture, poor techno logical capabilities and no air conditioning. UNC does not plan to build any more Murphey Halls, but it should make the exist ing ones like it enjoyable places to learn. Of course, it is easier for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Kenan-Flagler Business School to update their facilities: they have lots of rich alumni and businesses from which to beg donations. Departments such as history, music and art do not have those kinds of connections - and their facilities show it. Asa result, the new chancellor must strive for equity in aca demic facilities by diverting much of the money raised in the billion-dollar campaign to departments that have been neglected. Students toiling in ridiculously inadequate labs in Venable and Kenan Halls deserve bet ter. The Master Plan calls for a science quad of new buildings with labs, classrooms and offices. To keep UNC a premier research institution, Moeser must get it moving by finalizing its design and lining up the dough. He also must make the facilities ready to meet the technology demands of laptop-tot ing students. Besides Kenan-Flagler, only two classrooms currendy allow students to “plug Get Off Your Butt, Yo! If you'd like to be a columnist, editorial board member or cartoonist for fall 2000, come by The Daily Tar Heel front office in Suite 1 04 of the Student Union and pick up an application. Completed applications are due by S p.m.Thursday, and those selected will be notified by 5 p.m. May 9. Questions? Call Editorial Page Editor-select Kelli Boutin at 962-0245. Reader Survey Reveals Challenges DTH Faces Today is a bittersweet day. The sweetness comes in the knowledge that Thursday’s edi tion is the final one this year. I am a student, too, and I have a dissertation to finish. The bitterness comes in knowing it’s over. The staffers here have become my Carolina family, but now our lives will part. I’ll miss them. It’s been a helluva year. This has been their time to shine, their time to learn from experience that riding this newspaper bike is not always easy. They’ve wobbled, but they haven’t fallen down. It hasn’t been an easy year for these staffers. I would guess conservatively that Editor Rob Nelson dedicated more than 2,500 hours to this publication. The remainder of this staff wasn’t far behind. As part of his platform when he became editor, Nelson promised a readership survey to gauge communi tywide opinion on the DTH. 'That survey, while it would fail the graduate school’s methodology requirements, offers some insight into Rob Nelson EDITOR Office Hour Friday 3 p.m. - 4 p.m. Matthew B. Dees STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR T. Nolan Hayes SPORTS EDITOR Leigh Davis FEATURES EDITOR in” to the Internet during class. This summer, UNC plans to expand wireless Internet access to common areas such as the Pit, the Student Union and Lenoir Dining Hall. Jim Gogan, director of Academic Technology & Networks networking and communication, said 10 other classrooms would also be wired. Gogan said as depart ments developed courses that use the tech nology, more classrooms would be added. As chancellor, Moeser should help depart ments adapt their curriculum for Internet friendly courses by creating a post to oversee such development. While it is unlikely that all classrooms will be laptop-friendly this fall, Moeser should make them ready by 2002. Parking and Transportation Parking and transportation can be better, and Moeser should press for change now. The Master Plan calls for additional park ing decks to be built. But because the num ber of students and staff will increase in the coming years, less parking will be available per person even after the projects are done. The plan hinges on better park-and-ride access to campus. But if the current inade quate system is kept, it will not be a solution, and the problem will only be compounded. More shuttles must run on an increased schedule. Moeser should work with Chapel Hill Transit to provide better service. Past student leaders have worked hard to improve transit, but more money is needed. Moeser should join Student Body President Brad Matthews and meet with town leaders to push for changes and improvements. The Master Plan also aims to improve walking and biking. Moeser must make sure that those ideas are carried out by working with Public Safety Director Derek Poarch. Without change, walking and biking will not flourish as reasonable alternatives to driving. Life in Residence Halls As part of his new team of administrators, Moeser must hire anew housing director. Without a focused leader, residence hall problems have abounded this year. Acting housing leaders have put fire safe ty on on the back burner. Moeser must get the money to install sprinklers in every hall. Because of increased enrollment, building new halls to meet housing demands is a must. The Master Plan calls for better resi dence halls to be built on South Campus. Moeser must push the plans forward and work with the state to financially back them. After all, facilities provide the most basic needs for students attempting to learn. With the proper environment, their studies can flourish. Moeser must break ground on these issues as soon as he steps into South Building. The University depends on it. ■ TERRY WIMMER OMBUDSMAN where this paper can go based upon the staffs performance this year. Readers generally liked the paper’s coverage of the chancellor story, from the death of Michael Hooker to the recent appointment of James Moeser to replace him. Coverage of the Final Four, the hur ricane, the tuition hike, BOLO, the snowstorm, social issues and the mil lennium earned praise. In the big pic ture perspective this year, this paper rocked. “The ambition of the DTH is amaz ing,” one reader said. “I don’t know how the students have time for all of what they do.” My old man’s regret from my Opinions (Hip Sailg (Ear 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 \Pon '-h ujeorso C//'ctn,, Soncda.y you '/! UoK "* 77 7 7 7%/s one/ h***- yoorsolP .1 Lessons Learned in Dank Cave So here we are, at the end of a semester that seemed to pass quicker than Brian Bozworth’s movie career. Some of you have been keeping up with your work, and for you finals will just be a painless exercise on your way to phat jobs or internships come summertime. For the rest of us, now is when we come to the realization that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to plan on learning an entire foreign language the night before the final exam. In any case, before you all hunker down and try to memorize a semester’s worth of information for the next morning, here’s what I really learned this semester. If you want to do something, don’t be a wuss and be afraid to try it Seriously, who couldn’t do what I’m doing right now? If there is anything out there that you think would be cool to do, go for it. The worst thing that can happen is you fall flat on your face trying, which isn’t all bad, as you can always turn to the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. Which leads me to my next revelation ... If you write words like “dank” and “beer” a lot in a column, people will think you are funny. Yup, that’s all it takes to write a column. For instance, if you really don’t know what to write about for a particular week, just start it of with a phrase like “I don’t know if it’s because I picked my own mushrooms for this pizza I’m eating right now, but...” No matter what garbage you write after an introduction like that, people will forgive you ... that is, unless you talk about Cobb Beach. If you do that, you’ll probably piss off some uptight individuals who will start a controver sy that will just serve to get even more people to read the very column that they are criticiz ing. Friends you didn't even know you had will come out of the woodwork when undergraduate days is that, like Nelson, my sole focus was the student newspa per. I wish I had found balance between classes and paper. Such is youth. I have been far more critical this . year of this staff to its face than in pub lic. Nelson and I have had some knockdowns. On the occasions where 1 have taken them to task publicly, the point I have tried to drive home is that journalism is more than a calling. Journalism isn’t about being first. It’s about being right. It’s about being fair. It’s about providing a service to com munity. That’s not to allege that the paper under Nelson has been patendy unfair. It hasn’t, and he hasn’t. I respect the man and I am in awe of the work he did here. In the survey, the greatest criticism centered on the paper’s coverage of the student body president race between Brad Matthews and Erica Smiley. Many felt it was biased. I disagree. It was one of this paper’s finest hours. The stories presented issues and the writers took responsibili ty for spelling those issues out. The they realize that you can put their names in print The requests for shout-outs here were so abundant that I thought about making this last column just 800 words of people’s names that I promised to put in this space. Your proposals to get your names into the paper were some of the funniest ideas I’ve ever heard. The best would have to be the requests to magically mention your name in such a way that would somehow give you the ability to “score with chicks.” Though the written word is a powerful tool, there’s simply nothing I can write to get your mullet-sporting ass a date. 200 Finley Golf Course Road is the best address that I’ve ever had. There are certainly cleaner places, where you don’t have to shower with slippers on or hide from the turd burglar, but after it’s all said and done, the camaraderie you get there makes it all definitely worth it. Tragically, one of the main reasons for this friendship is no longer with us, but Ammar, you will never be forgotten. Chapel Hill isn’t the same without you, big fella; we miss you. Even with Alcohol Law Enforcement authorities passing out underage tickets, it's still possible to be uptown under 21. You know all these stories I’ve been telling y’all all semester? You probably think I’m 21, don’t you? coverage had snap. How did that perception of unfair ness bloom? Elections are always high ly emotional. Newspaper stories that delve into candidates’ characters can be misconstrued to abandon a factual basis. This newspaper abandoned no prin ciples. What happened was good jour nalism based upon candidate positions and interpretation of those positions. Nelson wrote a column about the election. He wrote profiles about the candidates. He never held back his opinion that Smiley was the better can didate. His news writing was not biased. But did having his name atop opinion and then news stories create that percep tion? Possibly. Should he not have writ ten both? Maybe. But college-age readers should know the difference between news and opin ion. Rob assumed they did. Unfortunately, that’s not always true. For next year’s staff, a couple of points from the survey deserve men tion here. An over-riding theme is that readers want more information. And they want Cate Doty & Vicky Eckenrode MANAGING EDITORS Thomas Ausman DESIGN EDITOR Megan Sharkey GRAPHICS EDITOR William Hill ONLINE EDITOR ■ AMOL NAIK FROM THE DANK CAVE it spelled correctly. The former is not always possible. The latter should be standard fare. Both are essential for this paper’s future. The physical size of this paper alone restricts the amount of content that can be published. Complaints about sports coverage focused on more club sports, more sta tistics, more rankings, more basketball, more football. Greeks want more coverage. So do those in the arts. ROTC students felt ignored. Some readers seek more national and international news. All are valid concerns, and I have challenged Nelson and his staffers about both bad editing and the value of basic information. I want my newspaper to tell me that Jane Fonda is speaking on campus on the day that she speaks. I want my newspaper to print sched ules of public lectures and student-run events. I want that schedule to be a driving informational mission of a newspaper. I want to one-stop-shop for my infor mational needs and I want my newspa per to fill those needs. Ultjp Daily (Ear Brrl Terry Wimmer OMBUDSMAN Well I’m not. I’m not saying I’ve ever used a fake ID, but let’s just say I’m not really 5 feet 6 and 27 years old. Because I realize that some of you might also want to get around that pesky problem of actually being of-age to go out, I’m going to be releasing my second book next month. While my first book “Growing Up Indian in Southeastern North Carolina” didn’t exact ly make me a rich man, I’m confident that “The Brown Man’s Advantage - Uptown as a Teenager” will fly off the shelves. In this instructional novel, I have docu mented the plight of a young man- for anonymity let’s call him “tall, dark and hand some” - who wished to go uptown. All his friends are 21 and are going out, so to avoid spending Saturday nights alone watching reruns of “Magnum PI,” he is forced to scheme his way into bars. It’s a heartfelt tale that I’m sure that will make Oprah’s book list any day now. Anyway, now that I’ve placed a big ALE bull’s eye directly on my chest, here’s why I’ll never get a fake ID ticket... by the time you read this, I will be 21. Let’s just hope for my sake that the 5-0 doesn’t find a way to mysteriously get their revenge. Well, I guess this it, but it’s been a helluva ride. Hopefully y’all have had half as much fun reading these things as I’ve had writing _ them. I’m still going to be around though: thank fully, I still have another year in this, the greatest of college towns. If you need me, I’ll be right here in the Dank Cave, happy as can be while I’m sip ping on my (legally bought) brew. Amol Naik is a junior history major from Lumberton. Alcohol Law Enforcement officers can reach him with questions or for more information at unc2ool @hotmail.com. in Future Obviously, space being what it is, that isn’t always possible. But then again, it is. This year’s online edition of the DTH is a Porsche compared to last year’s Model-T. Within that edition is where next year’s staffers have an opportunity to create a better DTH. What can’t be published in the printed edition should be published online. The next DTH needs to establish an online agenda for giving readers what they want, from sports stats to the improvisational troupe’s starting time. That’s a vision that must be nur tured in another year because my time here is done. The words “Daily Tar Heel” are now on my resume. I will be happier only when my dissertation is done. Terry Wimmer Is a Freedom Forum fellow and a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. This fall, he will be the Shott Professor of Journalism at West Virginia Urtiversity.You can reach him with questions or comments at budman@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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May 3, 2000, edition 1
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