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14 Thursday, April 12, 2001 Concerns or comments about a coverage? Contact the readers' advocate at ombudsnian*unc.eclii or caß 933-4611. Jonathan Chaney EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Kim Minugh UNIVERSITY EDITOR Ginny Sciabbarrasi CITY EDITOR Board Editorials Lip Service As UNC begins to search for anew housekeeping services director, the grievances of the workers should not be lost in the process. The committee to select the next house keeping services director has an important mission: to find a director who can clean up the mess left behind by the former director and the concerns that remain unaddressed. A nationwide applicant search is being headed up by the University right now to seek out die best person for the housekeep er services director position. The committee has a tough job ahead of them. University housekeepers have been vocal about their concerns. They want better pay and benefits, along with more respect on campus. The labor union, UE-150, repre sents UNC housekeepers and has been working to help them out. However, the housekeepers and UE-150 have been working for more than four years to get their needs met. In December 1996, housekeepers setded their longstanding rift against UNC by establishing an agreement with Chancellor Michael Hooker allowing the housekeepers to meet with top adminis trators once a month. At University Day this year, UE-150 and UNC housekeepers protested and demanded higher wages and access to officials during Presumed Guilt A recent incident involving UNC's alcohol guidelines highlights the need to come up with anew, fairer policy for students. After two UNC students in Hinton James Residence Hall were issued citations for alco hol by University police officers April 2, ques tions have been raised concerning the fairness and clarity of the University’s alcohol policy. Administrators should work to formulate an alcohol policy that is both consistent and fair, and one that students can understand. Freshmen Jacki Fritz and Michael Dorfman were in a Hintonjames room with open alcoholic beverages when University police officers issued citations to both of them. Dorfman said the citation requires him to take a class in responsible alcohol use, complete community service and pay a fine. Both students claim they were not drink ing and said that the police made no attempt to determine whether they had alcohol in their possession. Fritz claims that officers also refused her request to take a breathalyzer test. This was an inconsiderate decision on the part of the officers. According to Don Appairius, assistant dean of students, in instances when an officer might not be able to differentiate between Get Your Opinions Out to 39,000 Readers Applications for editorial board members, columnists and cartoonists will be available at the front desk ofThe Daily Tar Heel in Suite 104 of the Student Union on Monday. Applications will be due April 25 and those selected will be announced May I. Contact Editorial Page Editor-select Kate Hartig with any questions at Hartigk@aol.com. Readers' Forum Sports Clubs Deserve More Coverage in DTH For Accomplishments TO THE EDITOR: I was delighted to see Rachel Carter’s article about sports clubs in The Daily Tar Heel (“Explaining Club Sports Coverage” April 9). In an ongoing effort to publicize the accomplishments of club sports and their respective athletes, I was excited to see an article that addressed the reason that such a large portion of our campus has received little to no recognition. However, instead of receiving an answer to this issue, the article did little but remind me of my frustration with such an endeavor. Club sports are, before anything else, clubs like any other group on campus. We meet, discuss issues and have trips to vari ous venues. Instead of meeting with other schools or groups, we compete against them. Similarly to other groups, we have our occasional highlights, and this is where Ms. Carter and the DTH staff have fallen deaf to our call. Club sports participants are ath letes: student-athletes. Oftentimes, we pay out of our pocket for expenses such as hotels, car rentals and food. The whole time we struggle with this, we find time to play games, and some of us play well. Howeven, the greater UNC community has not been able to hear of such accom- Matt Dees EDITOR Office Hour Friday 2 p.m. -3 p.m. Alex Kaplun STATE St NATIONAL EDITOR Rachel Carter SPORTS EDITOR Jermaine Caldwell FEATURES EDITOR Chancellor James Moeser’s installation speech. He mentioned to the protesters that if they listened to him, he would listen to them. Moeser needs to stay true to his word and pick up where Hooker left off. Meeting with the housekeepers and creating oudets for dia logue to get the workers’ concerns and demands met is long overdue. Due to the stagnant progress of improve ment and the working conditions for house keepers, these service jobs tend to have a real ly high turnover rate. If housekeepers’ long standing concerns and needs are met, the turnover rate will more than likely dissipate. Housekeepers have been lobbying long enough. It’s time that working conditions, wages and benefits improve. The University will continue to suffer from housekeeper shortages if they don’t act soon. The committee to pick the new house keeping services director has to find some one willing to listen to the workers and see that their needs are met. The new director also must stay on Moeser to keep his promise to remain accessible to the workers. Housekeepers should no longer be given mere lip service by the University. students who have not been drinking and those who have, citations can be given to everyone in the room in the presence of open alcoholic beverages. This is an unfair policy and should be changed. Officers, while not required to administer a breathalyzer test, should. Every attempt should be made to differentiate between those who have consumed alcohol and those who have not Students cannot be expected to control the actions of every other student in a room. It is not right to give out citations for being “guilty by association.” It is true that the two students were com mitting an Honor Code violation by not reporting the underage drinkers for violating the Honor Code. But now, the students must go before the Honor Court facing charges of underaged alcohol use -a far cry from simply not turn ing in a fellow student. It’s not right that the alcohol policy can unjustly punish a student for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. plishments. The Carolina Team Handball Club has sent representatives to interna tional competitions in Brazil, Iceland, France and, most recently, Atlanta. We play with and against some of the world’s elite players at our competitions and con sistently interact with these players, accom plishments that not many of Carolina’s var sity athletes can claim. Yet, for every one of the releases we have sent, the DTH has not had the cour tesy to respond to let us know they have received them, let alone to bring them to press. I can only speak for the group that I know, but I am sure you can just imagine the type of accomplishments that club sports athletes have made. These are achievements that are both a part of sports and a part of our larger society. These are real accomplishments by real people. Club sports has not asked the DTH to cover all of our events. There are far too many and too wide of a range of venues for this to be possible. What we have asked, though, is for the DTH not to exclude us and our accom plishments simply because we are not “var sity,” “money,” or whatever caliber athlet ics that the DTH wishes to cover. The DTH needs to recognize that we are members of the UNC community before anything else. As well, we are members of the said com munity doing many dynamic and applaud able actions. Ms. Carter has noted that a change is on the horizon, and I applaud her Opinion Satlg Sir MM Established 1893 • 108 Years of Editorial Freedom www.dailytßrhed.com Ashley Atkinson mS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Carolyn Haynes COPY DESK EDITOR Seftoa Ipock PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR - ■ ' '' ' * ——£ ' ; .. All Made for the King’s Jewelry Some 400 years ago the English philoso pher Thomas Hobbes wrote a parody on identity known as “The Ship of Theseus.” The ship that carried that mythical hero to triumph over the minotaur, and to Antiope, took its lumps in the roughening waters of the Aegean Sea. Each time it returned, on the dock the old repairman carried the splintered boards of the wooden hulk and laid them in his shed. After a time, all of the ship’s original boards were heaped in the shed, waterlogged, and the ship that ferried Theseus over the sea was made solely of repair parts. Surely the ship on which Theseus contin ued to sail was the fabled ship of Theseus. But what if the old repairman at the dock should construct of the old parts kept in the shed the former ship? Which then would be the true ship of Theseus? The problem is one of identity. It concerns the relationship between the physical ship and the conceptual. Precisely, the problem is that a thing can retain its con ceptual identity without the physical. The ship kept up the appearance of the first, so that even though its parts were new, the ship con ceptually was not Appearance is not determinative - St. Peter’s was St Peter’s from Michelangelo to Bernini -but it raises an interesting question: Are not we humans mere ships, preserving with spare parts the outer hull of our physical ity? And is not our identity, whose basis is the physical, purely conceptual? When you judge another person, the assessment is both physical and not. The look of a person, the tone of one’s voice match not the power of the words made of the tones and the look. The words and the sense beyond make in the mind the concept. The concept, its name a sound made from the mouth, takes on properties in the mind apart from the physical sound. vision. She notes that “The sports desk still isn’t going to cover club sports, but that doesn’t mean this paper is going to contin ue to ignore the efforts of hundreds of UNC students.” Sadly, this is exactly what has happened to the thousands of past and present members of sports clubs that have had significant, newsworthy accomplish ments. If the DTH insists that it will “treat the (sports) clubs like most clubs on cam pus and cover them as such,” it is past time for them to do so. Until then, Ms. Carter, et al, you will be receiving many more e-mails and letters from us. Myles Bacon Junior International Studies President-elect Sports Clubs Council Students, Organizations Detract From UNCs Beauty With Graffiti TO THE EDITOR: At one time in this University’s history, students used to take pride in the appear ance and upkeep of the campus. Unfortunately, it appears that time has passed. These days, it seems that anyone with chalk and free time feels he or she has the Beth Buchholz DESIGN EDITOR Jason Cooper GRAPHICS EDITOR Josh Williams ONLINE EDITOR 1 PAUL THARP CUISINE BOURGEOISE To say a person has a good heart or a good soul is to mean the person is a good concept. The concept finds its base in reality, in the physical. The good heart and the good soul after all, are functions of the physical actions of a person. A person may speak, may carry your sack for you or merely look a certain way, to craft in your mind a good heart or good soul. The trouble is often what people represent for others is less than true. People stow from others the things that make diem unique, creating for the outer world a straw man or woman with a name, with an identity of its own that becomes a concept, until one person is two concepts - one of the self, and one of the self in the eyes of others. Your room, for instance, is kept a certain way. It’s in case someone sees it, then some one will think you are clean. And your shirt remains tucked, the collar drawn and your feats worn across your face, or in tide. It’s all to make in another’s mind a good sense of you, a good concept. But is it you? Really do you sleep above sheets? Sling your clothes on the floor? Do you allow the boxes of half-eaten food to gather on the counter, and for the silt to grow between the tiling above the tub, as long as no one is looking? Do you go unwashed, or in short, make for others a person not you? People, when they relate to one another, present by virtue of their physical appearance a concept that is in some respects untrue, so that by others the true person is never per ceived. The narrator in a poem by Matthew right to deface our campus for the sake of a message. The recent “Do You Agree With Marty?” campaign is only symptomatic of a recent trend that threatens to undermine the once-proud beauty of our campus. The symbol of our University, the Old Well, is surrounded by graffiti. One person was even bold enough to write on its steps. Friends take it upon themselves to decorate Stadium Drive and the Pit with birthday congratulations. One can still see where someone spray-painted “Doherty Is God” in the Pit and Polk Place. And of course, Marty’s name is as übiquitous as ever. These examples are not harmless adver tisements. They constitute no less than van dalism. The brightly colored chalk that deco rates our walkways undermines the dignity of our school. In the last few days, our cam pus has begun to look more like the park ing lot of Kinder Care than one of the world’s top research institutions. The solution to this problem lies in the hands of us, the students of UNC. Campus groups and individuals must take respon sibility to safeguard the historical beauty of our campus. This campus is every student’s home. We should treat it with the respect it deserves. Carl Erik Fisher Sophomore Biology and Music Lauren Beal & Kathleen Hunter MANAGING EDITORS Brian Frederick READERS' ADVOCATE Laura Stoehr SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS EDITOR Arnold calls that part of the person hidden away from others “The Buried Life.” He writes: I knew the mass of men conceal’d Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; I knew they lived and moved Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves - and yet The same heart beats in every human breast! To only the eyes of a lover do we reveal our true selves, when, the narrator writes, “by the tones of a loved voice caress’d -/A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,/And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.” Most relations with humans, however, do not involve love. With most we wear the king’s jewelry, and the king, adorned with a most beautiful set, achieved a heinous decep tion. The king was the representative of power. This power was manifested physically in his person by jewels. Jewels connote wealth, a collection of wealth power, and therein a col lection of jewels power. But the power whose base was the physical person of the king, manifested by the jewels worn thereon, was conceptual. For what if the king deceived us, wearing fool’s gold, false gems? Would not he retain the concept of his power? We wear the king’s jewelry, creating for others a concept based on fraud. The deception is physical, yet by what we make of ourselves physically we make in the minds of others conceptually, so that nothing, as concerns the person, is ever real other than the question of it Paul Tharp is a first-year law student. Reach him with any questions, comments at ptharp@email.unc.edu. Women Should Have The Opportunity to See Fetus Before Abortion TO THE EDITOR: The recent debate regarding abortion and the Genocide Awareness Project exhib it has especially interested me because of my own experience of pregnancy. As part of the excellent prenatal care I received through Student Health, I had the oppor tunity to see my children with ultrasound technology before they were bom. Sonography enables us to see the fetus far more clearly today than we could in 1972. I was about seven weeks pregnant when I had my first ultrasound and learned (to my shock) that I was expecting twins. Even that early, I saw tiny pulsings where their hearts were beating. At 19 weeks, ultrasound showed me each of their fingers, the profiles of their faces and many of their internal organs. If every pregnant woman could see what I saw, I doubt that many would terminate their pregnancies that late. But not every pregnant woman does see what I saw. Many do not have access to this kind of technology. Can a woman make a fully informed decision regarding her preg nancy without seeing her fetus? Julie Straight Ph.D. Candidate Department of English ©lje latiy ®ar HM (3) Ai 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 1o: editdesk@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 12, 2001, edition 1
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