10
Wednesday, April 4, 2001
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Jonathan Chaney
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Kim Minugh
uNivEßsrry editor
Ginny SciabbarTasi
CITY EDITOR
Board Editorials
Corporate Perks
The commission Easley appointed to close tax loopholes is full
of people who benefit from them, making real reform difficult.
Promises, promises.
During his State of the State address in
February, Gov. Mike Easley confidently said
he would save the state $l5O million each
year by closing tax loopholes only the elite
are able to slip through.
And now his Efficiency and Loophole
Closing Commission is preparing to deliver
its recommendations to do just that. But it
looks as though some of the elite few will be
able to slip through unscathed while the
average consumer could actually be forced to
pay more.
The commission has dropped the notion
of closing loopholes such as the $1,500 cap
on the sales tax on boats, the deduction for
corporate subsidiary dividends and tax cred
its on industries such as ethanol manufactur
ers, textile producers and airlines.
Instead, the commission is looking at mea
sures that are nothing more than tax increas
es on consumers. It has considered imposing
a 6 percent sales tax on the repair of “tangi
ble property” such as automobiles. In addi
tion, it is considering raising the sales tax on
movies from 1 percent to 6 percent, live
entertainment (such as concerts) from 3 per
cent to 6 percent and on Direct TV from
nothing to 5 percent.
So why have some businesses been able to
get off the hook? Look at the commission
itself.
Standardized Dropouts
Rigorous testing programs are putting new pressure on students.
Schools need to focus on just getting some students to graduate.
If North Carolina does not relax its
emphasis on rigorous standardized tests in
high school, it will continue to bear the bur
den of fewer students donning a cap and
gown.
Since 1990, the state’s four-year gradua
tion rate has fallen from 66.2 percent to 55.8
percent. Even though these numbers reflect
a similar nationwide trend, North Carolina’s
graduation rate is still among the five lowest
in the country.
With more and more students dropping
out each year, some state educators have
pointed their fingers at tougher promotion
requirements added in the past few years as
reasons for the increase in dropouts.
Starting in 1996, high school students were
required to pass Algebra I to be eligible for
graduation. While measures such as this have
been applauded for holding schools more
accountable for progress, many feel they are
leaving struggling students out in the cold.
This situation is unlikely to improve in the
next few years as educators are preparing to
administer a high school exit exam starting
with the class of 2005.
If even more students are unable to finish
high school because of failure of the exit
exam, the state could be in a perilous situa
tion economically as well as educationally.
North Carolina’s economy is rapidly shift
Readers' Forum
Readers React to First Amendment Issues on Campus; GAP, Horowitz Controversies Bring Differing Views to Public Discourse at UNC
TO THE EDITOR:
Like many African-Americans, I have
had the displeasure of hearing David
Horowitz defend his views on Black
Entertainment Television last week.
After hearing him state that Americans
realize the horrors of slavery because of
movies like “Roots” and “Beloved,” I
immediately dismissed him as a total idiot
with a lot of money and time on his hands.
After conversing with some friends
about this very controversial topic, I’ve
come to a conclusion. The reason why I
feel so many black students are upset (and
I do not speak for the entire black commu
nity) is because Horowitz’s arguments are
alarming.
What scares me the most is that this
man’s opinion is being fostered as factual
information. Newspapers use discretionary
measures all of the time, why run his ads?
Anyone who has taken an AFAM 40
class can dispute any one of his claims, but
what about those who haven’t?
Of course, I’m not a survivor of a slave,
however, slavery has beget many children,
one being segregation and Jim Crow.
My parents and grandparents are sur
Matt Dees
EDITOR
Office Hours Friday 2 p.m. -3 p.m.
Alex Kaplun
STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR
Rachel Carter
SPORTS EDITOR
Jermaine Caldwell
FEATURES EDITOR
Many of the members are from private
industry - the same sector many of these
loopholes benefit, so they have little incen
tive to get rid of the loopholes that save them
money when Uncle Sam comes along to col
lect his dues.
Take Chuck Hayes for instance. Hayes is
the CEO of Guilford Mills and has benefited
from an SBO sales-tax limit on mill machin
ery purchases.
He went before the commission and
argued against closing this particular loop
hole, and it magically disappeared from the
list of targeted loopholes.
The commission members defend some of
the exemptions by saying they must remain
competitive with other states, and they have
to keep the tax breaks to stay that way. So the
consumer has to shoulder die burden in the
interest of business.
But the commission has made some head
way in other areas. Easley had asked the
panel to find ways to improve government
efficiency and save $25 million. And the
commission has come up with some innov
ative measures to improve efficiency and
save the state $142 million instead.
But everyone has to tighten his belt during
this budget crunch. And businesses should
be no different. These loopholes should be
closed if they do not serve a strong public
interest. Scale back the corporate welfare.
ing from one of agriculture and manufactur
ing to one of science and technology.
Without a high school diploma, a person’s
chance of securing a job in the new techno
logical economy is gready diminished.
When industries consider relocating to a
new area they look at how skilled the area’s
work force is. One of the major statistics many
industries take into consideration is the grad
uation rate. If they do not feel the work force is
skilled enough to do what they would require
the workers to do, they will simply take their
businesses and their tax dollars to another
state. This is the situation North Carolina could
very well find itself in if something is not done
to get more students to graduate.
Instead of pushing students to take more
difficult classes and get higher standardized
test scores, school officials should realize that
for some students just graduating is a goal
some students should have.
North Carolina’s education officials need
to realize that students don’t need more test
ing, they need more quality education. This
could start with efforts to reduce class size. If
class sizes were reduced, more students
would be able to get the one-on-one atten
tion they need. Then these students wouldn’t
feel so alienated by the education system and
would be less likely to drop out and more
likely to contribute to the state in the future.
vivors of that period in our glorious
American history, and so am I.
As we live in a period of racial profiling
(another child of slavery), we as African-
Americans are affected daily by this crime
against humanity, a crime that has killed
more blacks than the Holocaust.
Horowitz’s comments are alarming in
the fact that many Americans (white and
black) feel the way he does, and these peo
ple are heads of corporations, managers
and police officers.
In response to Matt Dees’s column, I
have only one question.
If welfare and affirmative action were
initiated to level the playing field for blacks
in this country due to slavery, what about
the millions of whites, Hispanics, Asians
and women who have benefited from these
same programs?
Veronica Peagler
Senior
Dramatic Arts
TO THE EDITOR:
After reading Matt Dees’ “Disagree,
Debate, but Don’t Kill the Messenger”
Opinion
tSift irnlg (Hat ißwl
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Potluck Roommates: College 101
T 1 T hat’s your astrological sign?”
I J\l What an odd question, I
™ * remember thinking. Why
would he ask that?
“My fiancee wants to know.”
Oh. Right. That’s why.
After my jaw bruised my chest, I covered
the phone and asked no one in particular,
“Do I have to go to college?”
Somebody upstairs must’ve cracked a rib
scheming up this one. I was hand-picked to
live with Mir guy? Carolina has, what, 15,000
undergraduate students, and I’m paired with
the one reading palms and dealing tarot
cards?
Don’t get me wrong. I thought -and still
think - nothing bad about hippies. But living
with one?
“C’mon, tell me,” he said, suppressing a sly
grin I felt subtly mocking me from 1,000 miles
away. “She’s been reading about horoscopes.
She’ll know right away if we’ll get along
good.”
We talked for a few more minutes. I think.
I can’t remember, I was so shell-shocked. I
still am, despite having lived with him for a
semester.
An old adage states, “You can choose your
friends, but you’re stuck with your family.”
Well, that saying forgot someone else you’re
randomly paired with: your freshman-year
college roommate.
Now’s the time to make decisions about
housing contracts and future roommates, and
some students haven’t yet considered it.
If that’s you, consider this column a friend
ly kick in the rear. Start thinking. Don’t
bypass your opportunity to control fate. Claw
grip your winning lottery ticket until you’re
ready to cash in.
Don’t casually toss it aside and hope you’ll
find it later. You won’t. It’ll be buried some
where beneath your new roomie’s laundry. Or
your new roomie’s boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s
laundry.
Then again, things might work out. But
expect it to take a while.
Adjusting to anew roommate is like learn
ing to ride a bicycle. Off to a fast start, you
think you’ve figured it out. You fall off, try to
(April 2), we can see a certain editor could
benefit from a class in African-American
history.
If Matt Dees resents anyone who
would call him a racist for seeing David
Horowitz’s side of things, what would his
feeling be to those who call him igno
rant?
Dees thinks Horowitz “makes some pret
ty good points” in his editorial.
What would those be?
The point that descendants of Africans
earn more here than they do in Africa?
Comparing black Americans to black
Africans is poindess.
European Americans earn more than
Europeans.
This is America; we do OK here.
The figures Horowitz should have quot
ed are the ones that compare how well
African-Americans fare economically
against white Americans.
Quoting Matt Dees, “There are still
injustices that face black Americans, but
reparations are not the answer.”
Well, what is the answer?
Dees agrees that these injustices, the
“aftershocks of slavery,” need to be fixed.
Beth Buchholz
DESIGN EDITOR
Jason Cooper
GRAPHICS EDITOR
Josh Williams
ONLINE EDITOR
■
DAN SATTER
GROUCHO'S MANIFESTO
regroup, stumble before regaining any
momentum and fall again before finding a
smooth ride. When it’s done you’ve got plen
ty of stories to tell and scars to show.
After braving that initial conversation, I
lived with Will in 821 Hinton James.
Somehow. When comparing the two of us,
you couldn’t even resort to the famous
“apples and oranges” analogy, we were that
different. We wouldn’t be found in the same
store, much less in the same aisle.
Will believed in astrology, alternative med
icine and, on occasion, illegal narcotics. To
me, stars are freckles - fun to look at, but
serving no purpose beside providing an end
less game of connect-the-dots. I think herbal
medications and mind-altering drugs are less
appealing than 8.0. or bad breath, so I wasn’t
exacdy ecstatic that going potluck for a room
mate had brought me a self-professed former
pothead.
Will believed in true love when he was 18.
So did I. Difference was, he thought he’d
found it in a four-month relationship with a
masseuse-in-training named Angie. Will asked
Angie to marry him. I once asked a girl out
on a date. Will was sure Angie was the one for
him. I didn’t know what I wanted for dinner,
much less with whom I wanted to spend the
rest of my life.
Will’s habits differed from mine, but we
both adjusted. Will enjoyed the smell of burn
ing incense, the taste of tofu and the sounds of
Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues, all of which
I reluctantly accepted. That’s who he was,
after all. Who was I to ask him to change?
Will didn’t like sports, so he couldn’t have
been thrilled with me watching so many foot-
His suggested list of repairs include:
working to end racial profiling, reforming
our justice system and raising the quality of
public education.
Guess what, those are all reparations.
Reparations do not necessarily have to
be monetary, though it would be difficult to
achieve them with only smiles and good
faith.
Matt Dees, the fact that you champion
Horowitz’s right to voice his opinion does
not make you racist, but the fact that you
find his argument “cogent” (which means
compelling and convincing) makes you
shamefully ignorant
Someone needs to sign up for an AFAM
40 class.
Leah Irvin
Junior
Economics
Carmen Scott
Junior
Journalism and Mass Communication
Editor’s note: Matt Dees did take AFAM
41 and received a B.Thanks to the wondeful
Professor Reginald Hildebrand.
Lauren Beal & Kathleen Hunter
MANAGING EDITORS
Brian Frederick
READERS' ADVOCATE
Laura Stoehr
SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS EDITOR
ball and basketball games. I’d also bet he did
n’t appreciate my habit of procrastinating,
which caused me to keep a light on late. Still,
he never complained; instead, he’d politely
tell me if something I did bothered him. I
tried my best to do the same. I learned to pick
my spots. So did he.
Despite being so different, we never
argued. We went about over lives like office
acquaintances who nod heads at the water
cooler. Our relationship thrived on the week
ends, during which we got along fantastically.
Most times I had the room to myself because
Will often returned to Arden, N.C., to see
Angie.
Will and I slept in the same room for four
months two years ago, an experience I neither
regret nor forget. Isn’t going away to school
supposed to teach you how to accept people
different from you? If so, Carolina owes me
three class credits. I survived a crash course of
College 101.
Truth is, living with Will was like drinking
orange juice immediately after brushing your
teeth. A somewhat unpleasant taste remains,
but it’s bearable -and certainly not nearly as
bad as it initially seemed.
Will decided to take the pext semester off.
He said UNC wasn’t for him, and he was too
far from Angie -and reality, I think. He
enrolled in massage-therapy school, the same
one she attended. Will did what was right for
him. I wished him only the best and still do.
Granted, I didn’t miss him. We weren’t
friends. We were roommates. I had a single
for the rest of the year. Every day of spring
semester felt like die weekend. The room no
longer smelled of incense. There wasn’t any
tofu in the fridge. But I’ll still listen to the
Moody Blues and Pink Floyd. I’ve found if
you give them a chance, they grow on you.
You might even learn to like them.
By the way, Will’s a Taurus. I’m a
Capricorn. Angie claimed from the start we
were astrologically compatible.
Go figure.
Dan Satter admits to being the Felix of this
Odd Couple. E-mail thoughts and comments
to satter@email.unc.edu.
TO THE EDITOR:
I am writing in praise of the University
for allowing the Genocide Awareness
Project to put up its display on the quad
Monday and Tuesday.
Whether or not you agreed with the
information presented, it is refreshing to
know that we live in a country where any
one can present his or her case and not be
persecuted for it.
At the same time yesterday, there was a
presentation in the pit of people who could
not even peacefully practice Falun Gong
meditation in China without being beaten
and tortured.
Don’t ever say that we should disallow
people who are not like us to practice what
they please (within lawful bounds) in public.
I’m not homosexual, nor do I support it,
but I love the fact that others are allowed
to, if they want. That’s what freedom is.
If you don’t want to look, don’t look.
But don’t try to kick them out.
That’s what oppression is.
Ben Meredith
Junior
Religious studies
Ifje laiUj ular Hrrl
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A
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