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14 Thursday, September 28, 2000 Concerns™ comments about our coverage? contact the ombudsman at ombudsinaiminc.edu or call 9334611. Kelli Boutin EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Kim Minugh UNIVERSITY EDITOR Ginny Sciabbarrasi CITY EDITOR Board Editorials Our Right to Know Tonight's open Honor Court hearing is a unique opportunity. But it only reinforces the need for all cases to be open to the public. Tonight, something quite rare will take place at UNC: There will be an open under graduate Honor Court hearing at 6 p.m. in 111 Carroll Hall. But this open case is only a small step in the right direction. The Honor Court should always be open to the public. The Honor Court is extremely important to the University and the community as a whole. Aside from hearing cases involving academic infractions, the court can hear cases involving forgery, sexual assault and weapons and drug possession. The public has a right to know when crim inal activity and academic dishonesty is tak ing place in its community. As such, the public has a right to know what goes on in the Honor Court. Despite the court’s importance, students know little about its operations because most cases are tried behind closed doors. That’s due to a provision in the federal Family Education Right to Privacy Act that allows Honor Court cases to be classified as “educational records,” thus keeping them closed to the public. But considering the importance of the Court, secrecy is not in the public’s best interest. The Honor Court is responsible for enforcing the Code of Student Conduct, which comprises the Honor Code and the Campus Code. In short, it is responsible for upholding the integrity of the University. Give and Take As the UNC Master Plan begins to take shape, communication between town and University leaders is essential. When two governing bodies are at odds, communication is key. University and local leaders have been learning this lesson. And as the town and UNC continue to grow, both sides will have to bend a little to produce the optimal out come. For instance, communication between town and local leaders this week led to a rejection of a proposed transportation corri dor that would run through two town neigh borhoods. Residents complained the corridor would tear up the Westside and Westwood neigh borhoods near the Horace Williams tract. After hearing their objections, the University agreed to delete the proposed cor ridor from the Master Plan, a blueprint for the future development of the campus. By responding to the concerns of town res idents, the University has shown that it can be flexible. It is not a monster seeking to destroy everything standing in its path. Now, the town must be as willing to respond to the University’s needs as the cam pus grows and begins to implement its Master Plan. Trying to push students toward campus and out of residential neighborhoods, as a recent proposal outlined, is not a way to pro- Readers' Forum Reduced Spending, Not Bond Referendum, Needed for Universities TO THE EDITOR: All issues have two or more sides. However, The Daily Tar Heel has been presenting only one side of an issue that they claim critical to the future of the state - the impending bond referendum. Clearly, there cannot be such one-sided support for an issue of this magnitude. Countless articles have been printed pro moting the bond and offering publicity to groups supporting it. There are .59 community colleges along with the 16 universities that receive funds from the bond. These colleges do not receive proportional funds to UNC, which receives roughly one-sixth of the funds from the bond. Such inequity is frightening. Many of the people who attend community college are lifelong residents of the state who work in state benefiting our economy. Many of our own students move away after graduation, abandoning the N.C. economy. Those peo ple who remain here should reap equal Matt Dees EDITOR Office Hours Friday 2 p.m. -3 p.m. Kathleen Hunter STATE St NATIONAL EDITOR T. Nolan Hayes SPORTS EDITOR Will Kimmey SPORTSATURDAY EDITOR Students and members of the University should have the opportunity to see how this body, to which between $9,000 and SIO,OOO of student fees are paid, functions and carries out its responsibilities. The only way an Honor Court hearing currendy can be opened to the public is if the defendant specifically requests it. There have been attempts in the past to open the Honor Court. In 1998, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit involving The Daily Tar Heel and the Honor Court that the Honor Court, though a pub lic body, did have the right to close its hear ings under FERPA. But a 1993 decision by the Georgia Supreme Court found that student judicial proceedings in that state were not educa tional records covered by FERPA. Clearly, the broad term “educational records” needs to be clarified by federal leg islators to exclude student judicial proceed ings from the protection of FERPA. The Honor Court embraces the ideal of student self-governance. Yet the very stu dents it protects and serves are barred from its hearings. Asa public body, at a public institution, it should be open to the public. Tonight’s open meeting is a rarity. Students have the chance to get a glimpse of the Honor Court in operation. Don’t squander the opportunity - it does n’t come around often. mote positive relations between the town and UNC. As the University begins to realize its Master Plan, it will be forced to adapt to increased enrollment and the need for class room space. Such changes inevitably will require the campus to grow. The town should understand that the University must grow and should not attempt to stop all development the University wishes to undertake. This is not to say that town residents should have no say in what the University does as it expands. The University has a responsibility to hear out the complaints and concerns of area res idents and factor their responses into its plans for development. Meetings between University and local officials -and town residents - allow both sides to state their case. Wednesday night’s public hearing, where the Master Plan was discussed, was a good start. But it’s just that -a start. The Master Plan will be a long, drawn out ordeal. By keeping the lines of communica tion open between all parties involved early, it ensures that things will proceed as smooth ly as possible into the future. benefit from the bond. In its present form, they do not. The administration speaks about contin gency plans if the referendum were to fail. All ignore the most obvious option for rais ing revenue - cutting spending. The great bureaucracy that is the University could be drastically reduced. Institutions that are used infrequendy by the majority of stu dents, such as the Johnston Center, could have saved the University millions. Those millions, dutifully applied, could have increased the number of professors, increased the amount of pay for University employees and provided hinds for future growth. No one has yet to offer a plan based upon the idea of cutting spending. I am for the growth of education in North Carolina. However, special privilege and reckless spending do not warrant a bond that would put the state in debt. The debt would even tually be paid off, not by many UNC-CH graduates, but more so by other institutions within the state. Keith Cloer Freshman History and Political Science Opinion <Hhe ImUj (Tar Mwl Established 1893 • 107 Years of Editorial Freedom www.unc.edu/dth Jermaine Caldwell FEATURES EDnOR Ashley Atkinson ARTS Is ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Carolyn Haynes COPY DF.SK editor Future and Past Collide at UNC I was a little busy this week, since answering “Yo La Tango” fan club hate mail takes up a good part of the day. (Sorry guys, I will spell “Tango” correcdy next time). So I decid ed to farm out the work of my column. But to whom? Fortunately, this guy John Derrick who lives in my residence hall cornered me in the elevator about sending in a composition he had been working on. So I decided to turn my spot over to John and his ex-roommate Charles Epstein and devote this space to a topic that doesn’t receive near enough atten tion on this campus: time travel. I wish I was only kidding you, but they actually wrote this stuff without me telling them to. Fortuitous really. So I give you the Great Time Travel Debate 2000 ... Point: Time Travel Exists at UNC Mr. John Derrick: So. Which one of us doesn’t belong here? Who’s the time traveler? Follow my thinking for a second. Today is our present. But to someone in the future, it is the past. If time travel is possible in the future, then our descendants will be traveling to their past - our present. So there is a possibility that people of the future are walking among us. If I was a historian or an anthropologist of the future studying American university life in the late 20th to early 21st century, I might pose as a student to get a first-hand view. I would travel back to this day and age, dis guised and equipped with the correct artifacts and blend in. I could say I was from some small town in the middle of nowhere and no one would be the wiser. A school as large as UNC would offer tremendous anonymity. If I posed as an exchange student, I could cover up any cultural inaccuracies with ease. I would live among my ancestors -a spy they would never suspect. But I’m not from the future. I was bom in 1981 and have never heard otherwise. I can be pretty sure of my own origins, but I can’t Reader Finds Column On College Republicans ‘Fair and Interesting’ TO THE EDITOR: I found the Republican response to Will McKinney’s column interesting, if not humorous (“McKinney’s Column on Campus Groups Unfair, Misleading” Sept. 25). 1 suppose that it makes sense for an organization devoted to its own self-inter ests to automatically strike back against any criticisms leveled against it, but I still find it amusing that the College Republicans feel so maligned by Will’s insights. Who would have known that the party so adamantly opposed to the minimum wage, welfare for the needy and affirmative action for women and minorities is actually pretty sensitive when you start talking about them? Apparently Republicans aren’t uncaring; they just use up all their care on themselves. Despite what the College Republicans say, the column was a fair and interesting view for the readers of The Daily Tar Heel. Will wasn’t even trying to attack them; he was just offering our readers a thought-pro Sefton Ipock PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Cobi Edelson DESIGN EDITOR Saleem Reshamwala GRAPHICS EDITOR ■ WILLIAM MCKINNEY CROSSWORD PUZZLE say that about my roommate. He has some unusual habits that I’m not too sure about. How can I tell if he’s from the 20th or the 26th century? Is there a test? Some trick ques tion I could ask? So. Which one of us doesn’t belong here? Counterpoint: No Way Mr. Charles Epstein: I would like to say that Mr. Derrick is com pletely serious. I just happened to be his roommate last year, and can assure you that his column does not surprise me. In fact, he has told me much more shock ing theories that I dare not mention in The Daily Tar Heel. But enough with the character attack, let’s analyze just how insane this idea is. First, there are the technical aspects. I am not particularly well-educated in any sciences. I seriously considered majoring in classics, which has no application in the real world. Hell, I even made a C in geology - not an easy task. Despite my complete lack of practical knowledge, I promise you that time travel is not feasible since it involves traveling faster than the speed of light and lots of other abstract quantum physics theories I am not sure of. (I am guessing the science is quantum physics, since Scott Bakula traveled through time on the show Quantum Leap). For the sake of argument, let us hypotheti cally assume that scientists did perfect time travel. I seriously doubt that any future anthropologist would use it to observe student life at UNC, since numerous historical voking view of the connection between our own social groups and student organiza tions on campus. I know it’s hard for them, but the Republicans would do themselves good if they didn’t get so upset over what they perceive as slights to their organiza tion and instead started thinking about the real problems that ordinary people face in our community and across the nation. I doubt that many students or Americans in general would consider the GOP a poor victim of social and media bias. It’s hard to feel sorry for a party whose major tenant is a multibillion-dollar tax cut that gives near ly half of the money to the wealthiest 1 per cent of rich Americans. So all you Republicans out there: Stop whining and don’t worry. There isn’t a vast conspiracy out there to get you. Try to spread out some of that self-concern - there are plenty of others that could use it. You might even stop being conservative with your compassion. When that happens, congratulations! You’ve become a Democrat. Phil Feagan Freshman Political Science Cate Doty & Lauren Beal MANAGING EDITORS A— n GPSF President Woody Encourages Participation In Future Events TO THE EDITOR: I would like to thank the more than 300 graduate and professional students who made it to the Graduate and Professional Student Federation ice cream social at the Bell Tower on Thursday. We were excited to have such a large showing from departments and profession al schools across campus. I would like to thank the members of the GPSF Cabinet, especially Dorothy Acee, Ashley Matlock and Nicole Schmid for making the event possible. This event materialized from the sug gestion of a student - so keep the ideas coming! If you have a suggestion, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at twoody@email.unc.edu. To serve as the President of the GPSF is a pleasure and we hope to make your time here at Carolina the best it can he - ice cream included. Thad Woody GPSF President <Tljr iaily (Ear Hrrl Josh Williams ONLINE EDITOR Brian Frederick OMBUDSMAN Laura Stoehr SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS EDITOR accounts would still exist. Anthropologists would also be aware of the inevitable dangers of time travel. Being sci ence types, they would have watched all those damn Star Trek movies and seen the implica tions of time travel. And anyone who has seen the Van Damme epic “Timecop” knows that only evil pluto crats would dare exploit such a dangerous device. These businessmen would manipulate the past for financial gain. I could make more arguments against the logic of time travel. But if you believe that in the first place, reason is not going to persuade you. So 1 have decided to revert back to one final character attack, since they are more exciting. I cannot believe John Derrick worries about the unusual habits of his roommate, since they probably pale in comparison to the many ignominious displays I witnessed last year. I do not wish to cut too deep (mainly because John Derrick lives in the suite next to me and he was in the ROTC), but let’s just say hanging up Christmas lights and Coke can ornaments in February ain’t quite right. * * * It’s me, Will, again. I hope you found this stuff they came up with interesting. Sadly enough, 1 swear to you that they meant it all. William McKinney is a sophomore history and political science major from Greenville, S.C. Reach him with questions and comments about UNC now -and in the future at wmckinne@email.unc.edu. John Derrick is a sophomore international studies major from Wake Forest. Reach him with questions and comments about Mr. Fusion and other time travel devices at jderrick@email.unc.edu. Charles Epstein is a sophomore history major from Atlanta, Ga.,Tuscaloosa, Ala. and all points in between. Reach him with questions and comments about wrestling and how to wreck a once-prominent SEC football team at cepstein@email.unc.edu A The Daily Tar Heel wel comes reader comments and criticism. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 300 words and must be typed, double-spaced, dated and signed by no more than two people. Students should include their year, major and phone number. Faculty and staff should include their title, department and phone number. The DTH reserves the right to edit letters for space, clarity and vulgarity. Publication is not guaran teed. Bring letters to the DTH office at Suite 104, Carolina Union, mail them to P.O. Box 3257, Chapel Hill, NC 27515 ore-mail forum to: editdesk@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Sept. 28, 2000, edition 1
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