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10 Thursday, March 22, 2001 oui coverage' Contact the readers'advocate at ombudsmangiunc.edu at call 933-4611. Jonathan Chaney 'EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Kim Minugh UNIVERSITY EDITOR Ginny Sciabbarrasi crrv EDITOR Board Editorials Power Check Student Congress has a responsibility to investigate allegations of corruption in the CAA to restore its credibility as an organization. On Tuesday, Student Congress took steps toward curbing an institution that has grown out of control: the Carolina Athletic Association. Two Student Congress commit tees, citing student concerns about the CAA, passed one bill and two resolutions that may curb the future power of the CAA. Student Congress’ Rules and Judiciary Committee passed a bill to amend die CAA’s constitution, while the Student Affairs Committee passed two resolutions to censure the organization’s top officials and CAA President Tee Pruitt. The three pieces of leg islation will go before the entire Congress next Tuesday and could become part of the Student Code. These are positive steps toward attempting to address growing concerns about the CAA, but it is not enough. A fourth piece of legisla tion -a resolution calling for a congressional investigation of the CAA - was rejected because the new session of Congress convenes in two weeks. When the next Congress con venes, the first piece of business should be to pass ihe resolution calling for an investigation. An investigation into an organization that many feel is corrupt is a necessary step if the CAA is to ever regain credibility. CAA President Tee Pruitt contends that an inves tigation is not necessary, saying to The Daily Housing Headaches The South Campus Resident Alliance will prove to be a valuable tool for residents inconvenienced by construction and housing woes. Some students on South Campus have sim ply had enough. Noisy weekend construction and muddy conditions combined with a lengthy commute to campus have put a damper on some students’ UNC experience. The South Campus Resident Alliance was created to form a liaison between inconve nienced South Campus residents and University administrators. Sophomore Max Gustashaw and freshman Christina Baur, co presidents of SCRA, are asking for compen sation for South Campus residents. It is not unreasonable for the SCRA to be asking for a partial refund of 2000-01 housing costs. Not only do these residents live the far thest from campus in some of the worst resi dence halls on campus, they also have dealt with construction inconveniences all year. South Campus residents should not have to pay the same as North Campus residents, or in newer residence halls like Carmichael. The Department of University Housing says that giving credit back to students takes money away from the funding for upgrades to student housing that comes from residents’ rent However, the students presently incon venienced shouldn’t have to pay for upgrades that they will not be able to enjoy. Readers' Forum Congress Member Gives Explanation of Censure Resolutions Against CAA TO THE EDITOR: The controversy over allegations of cor ruption and misdeeds within the Carolina Athletic Association has come into Student Congress’ court this week. I have played a significant role in this development by introducing two censure resolutions this past Tuesday. I would like to take time now to explain their content and why I introduced them. The first resolution censures the leader ship of the CAA for allowing “internal pol itics and personal differences to dominate the agenda of the CAA and eclipse the ath letic concerns of the student body.” This resolution urges the next session of Congress, which will be inaugurated on April 4, to appoint a special committee to investigate allegation of corruption within past administrations. The second resolution censures CAA President Tee Pruitt for presiding over an administration that has been plagued by numerous allegations accusing him of con duct unbefitting of an elected officer of the Student Body including, but not limited to: ■ The dispensation of UNC’s men’s basketball tickets to non-UNC students ■ Allowing non-UNC students to work ticket distribution in exchange for men’s basketball tickets Matt Df.es EDITOR Office Hours Friday 2 p.m. ■ 3 p.m. Alex Kaplun STATE & NAUONAL EDITOR Rachel Carter SPORTS EDITOR Jermaine Caldwell FEATURES EDITOR Tar Heel, “Everything we’ve handled this year has been very sound.” If this is indeed the case, then Pruitt should have nothing to fear. In fact, at this point, nothing but good can come from a congressional probe. There are numerous questions surround ing the CAA that need to be answered. Concerns of rigged ticket distributions were raised throughout the basketball season, par ticularly after the Duke game distribution, when several students claimed to have known the exact time to acquire a distribu tion bracelet with a good number. Concerns about abuses of power have also surfaced, following Pruitt’s dismissal of sev eral Cabinet members after a highly contest ed CAA presidential election. Three Cabinet members were fired for allegedly putting campaign allegiances before Cabinet duties. Allegations that Pruitt keeps the more than 40 basketball tickets per game he is allotted for personal use have also raised concerns. These are concerns that must be addressed before the CAA is allowed to continue wield ing the amount of power it does. It is a stu dent-funded organization, and the student body - which contributed $7,562.83 in stu dent fees to the CAA this year - deserves an athletic organization absent a cloud of cor ruption, scandal and power-hungry leaders. A balance must be found. An open dialogue between South Campus residents and administrators is also para mount. It is also important that all concerns of on-campus residents affected by construc tion are heard. Next year, North Campus res idents will be affected by construction - mak ing it even more important to set up a foun dation now for constant, open dialogue. SCRA is also asking the housing depart ment to give South Campus residents first pri ority in the recontracting process for next semester. While the affected South Campus residents should be accommodated, this may be pushing the limit. If South Campus resi dents are. given priority, it may put residents who live on North or Mid campuses now back on South Campus, which is not fair either. It is reasonable for the housing department to look out for South Campus residents, but not to the detriment of even more students. Still, South Campus residents have reason to gripe. Nowhere else on campus is the con struction so intrusive to residents. SCRA, stay on the administrators and housing department. And hope in the future, more consideration will be taken for residents affected by campus construction. ■ Participating in a quid-pro-quo exchange of home UNC men’s basketball tickets for tickets to UNC games held away from home ■ Improper use of student fees ■ Dismissal of organizational staff for personal and/or political differences rather than poor job performance ■ Unprofessional dismissal of organi zation staff ■ Knowledge of or participation in the rigging of the men’s basketball ticket distri bution process The resolution concludes by urging the student attorney general to investigate all the allegations mentioned in the resolution and any others brought to his attention by members of the student body and to pros ecute offenders if sufficient evidence is uncovered. I introduced these censure resolutions for several reasons. First, the mere appearance of allegation after allegation during the course of Tee Pruitt’s administration is enough to warrant a full investigation and has undoubtedly crippled the organizations ability to ade quately fulfill its constitutional charge: to represent the athletic concerns of the stu dent body. Secondly, student confidence in the CAA to fairly distribute basketball tickets and represent the student body on athletic issues has all but disappeared. This is the fault of Tee Pruitt and the leadership of the CAA during his adminis- Opinion )t !a% to Established 1893 • 108 Years of Editorial Freedom www.dailytarhed.com Ashley Atkinson ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Carolyn Haynes COPV DESK EDITOR Sefton Ipock PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Paying Homage to a Crude Circle Standing, knees locked, before “The Circle of Life.” Matisse in December, tied up on a green gallery wall, over staffed. Green-faced Chicago. Sunlight through an open window. Cold air corrodes canvas. Sun melts the snow outside. For some reason I’m thinking of now. This minute, much later, on the verge of spring. One of two verbs, one falling, one leaping. This one gives birth, for the living rebirth, and some say, redemption for the dead. It’s redemptive because the dead live on, through the living. It’s a circle. They gave us a way, and words I speak not in any clear manner. Just in the mood am I to say: “That’s spring. The atmos phere descends; the trails are hedged with leaves; vines twist along the sides of build ings.” You ever see it? Spring lends a sense of rebirth, leant because it takes it up again in summer. They’re a pair, summer and spring, conceived of a single letter and ours a mere a feeling, a sense perceived in the mind beyond the nor mal five but curiously fueled by them. Touch die warm air, after Winter’s cold. See the lusty shoots springing from an earthen cocoon, and the color of anew world, of green, blue, and the odd fusion of lights and yellow painted over the sound of His howl. Tastes sweet, or better sour, a lemon. Or a twig, a leaf, a nut. Breathe. In the mind the breath assumes a familiar quality. It seems new, like other things, by its coolness. Better birth a physical world, like a world in the mind made new by the air it breathes. Alike the season makes us new, or so we sense, though not a thing is new but space bom rocks cracking the earthen bubble. Meteors, and all below is variation. The same water, rock and air but with variance. Where tration. A public investigation by the 83rd ses sion of Student Congress that could result in Honor Court charges being brought would go a long ways to restore confidence in the organization. Furthermore, it would allow CAA President-elect Reid Chaney to begin his administration without having to worry about the skeletons Tee Pruitt left behind. Finally, the censure resolutions are not official sanctions nor do they carry binding consequences. They are mere statements of disapproval for the way Tee Pruitt and the leadership of the CAA have represented the student body during their time in office. More importandy though, they are a call to action to other institutions of student government to find the truth and a reme dy for those who have been wronged be they individuals or the student body at large. I ask any student who has evidence or knowledge that either proves or disproves allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Tee Pruitt or any other leader of the CAA to please contact me with this evidence and knowledge, so that ultimately, the truth may be known. Rep. Anthony L. Larson Student Congress Junior Public Policy Analysis and Religious Studies Beth Buchholz DESIGN EDITOR Jason Cooper GRAPHICS EDITOR Josh Williams ONLINE EDITOR ■ PAUL THARP CUISINE BOURGEOISE does it begin? Where does it end? Life, they say, begins with conception. But what was conceived? Many things, for each passing of a season is an end giving way to new. Yet each beginning has its end. Spring finds summer as summer fall, and fall winter, and then spring again. It makes a circle. Persons move in a similar vein, hovering elliptically about the center. What is striking about our picture is there is no true end or beginning, just circles, endless ly but for the tiniest of breaks, a sad fate that awaits us all, truly, death. There’s a hope we’ll live on through children, yet we fear, as the fingers don’t quite touch, all in time will end. So our lives move on that way, with no beginning or end, within a framework bent similarly: summer, fall, winter, spring. Stages, steps neither up nor down, from one end to the other and back again. Occasionally, checkpoints. Sign in, sign out. As you please, and think for yourself. But the more you fill your name, the more checks,, the more chores, new names and tides. It’s enough to get by, enough to fill the needs and feel comfortable. It’s an effort not to think of seasons, not of howling birds pass ing with the clouds overhead. It’s a getting-by complicated to the point that we are taken up in it. It feels artificial, in fact, we call it artificial because it feels as though it is. Ours is an arti ficial manner of satisfying needs. A system, like seasons, or a “fiscal” year. A calendar, a rain check. What we save for later is an idea of it, a notion of the future that never pans out. Sweeter than reality is the idea of it, bitter- Columnist’s Viewpoint On Racism Clouded by Being Atop ‘lvory Tower’ TO THE EDITOR: My knee-jerk reaction upon reading Linda Chupkowski’s column in The Daily Tar Heel (“Racism Can Be Difficult to Notice,” Feb. 19) about “only white people are racists” is to respond, “Is that what they spend their time teaching students at UNC with our tax dollars?” Actually, it probably is. I always cringe every time I hear white liberals speak against racism, mainly because I know they are in such denial of their own racism; purporting otherwise, while spending a great deal of time point fingers at others. White liberals, like the ones in Chapel Hill, work for “open borders,” integration and marches against racism while having severe zoning restrictions (so much so that an old cat can’t walk across a neighbor’s yard without being euthanized at the pound hours later), as well as overpricing all housing. Also, how many poor or poor minorities can afford to live somewhere in Chapel Hill? That’s just a loophole to keep the poor and poor minorities out of town. “If we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” I think they do this because they don’t want to see their true prejudices. Lauren Beal & Kathleen Hunter MANAGING EDITORS Brian Frederick READERS' ADVOCATE Laura Stoehr SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS EDITOR sweet is the memory of what could have been. Maybe there are some other things, like a big contract we sign when we’re bom, a social contract that tells the others to keep us in line for our best interests. It’s not a line we cross either, rather it is a line in which we wait. For what? There are more contracts, later, after we’ve been taught to read. The more we sign the more we get to do, though the more we get to do the more we realize what we’ve given up. It’s nothing we gave up physically. Not a flower, not its pot. Just a conceptual square, or the possibility of it. The square of life, not the circle. Is that how it is supposed to go? Maybe Summer will tell us. Spring says it’s time to find work, summer work to fill the time between classes. The dead dictate: “We’ll reduce ourselves to a sin gle page, and send the page in our spirit forth.” It’s an artful way of telling others we need them and they could need us. But what do they see? A phantom of the self, surely, no less. Eventually it will be for good. We’ll settle into the calendar of our years and form the routine of every day. And every day, by the thousand, will paint its own variation, so that many together form an impression of a time. Then times pass, and people. Meanwhile the seasons march. It’s a crude circle, telling: “Just as we tarry in the framework of a system handed down from the dead, so must that system be in the framework of the seasons, which themselves are subsumed by the framework of finitude, which all things, large or small, physical or merely conceptual, share.” It’s a complex circle, simply, a crude circle. Paul Tharp is a first-year law student. Reach him with any questions, comments at ptharp@email.unc.edu. To apply Chupkowski’s theory, any white person living in an area tbat has another racial majority besides whites can not be guilty of racism. That means whites can’t be guilty of racism in almost every city in America as well as the world. That’s an automatic out - they can do no wrong. I think we both know this is not true. , If we really wanted to apply hyperbole to this, then on this planet whites can never be racist since they are not the majority and only Asians can be, since they are by far the majority. I would like to see Chupkowski walk a few steps in my shoes. Then she will experience racism direct ed at her. She should work as a food server earn ing tips to live off of in an inner-city restau rant or an inner-city school system for a few years so she can apply some real-world experience to her columns, not ivory tower commentary from far above the crowds below. Personally, I think Chupkowski will have a great future in journalism. That’s because she will be exactly in sync with the rest of her colleagues in the media and entertainment industries in their denial of their own racism. Steve Ghent Raleigh utyp StrtU} sar Heel |2> 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 or e-mail forum to: editdesk@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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March 22, 2001, edition 1
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