10
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Board Editorials
Take a Step Back
The N.C. General Assembly should leave the business of managing the UNC system
to the university administrators and stop micromanaging growth.
North Carolina’s economic performance in the
past year has left the state with massive budget
issues. With a budget yet to be finalized by the
Senate, big decisions must be made. Yet our state
congressmen are using poor judgment by trying to
micromanage the UNC system.
While departments are faced with tough deci
sions, the N.C. legislature is making some of them
for them. The legislature is pushing for the UNC
system Board of Governors to develop new edu
cation programs at various system colleges.
Senate and House proposals mandate the cre
ation of two engineering programs at Western
Carolina and Appalachian State universities and a
new engineering school at East Carolina University.
It also stipulates that a full pharmacy school be
developed at Elizabeth City State University.
While the merit of their request is not ques
tioned, their timing is.
UNC-Chapel Hill already has planned for a 5
percent budget cut. Increased academic expansion
in the UNC system only would further reduce the
University’s ability to subsidize departments ade
quately enough to retain gifted tenured professors
and attract other rising talent in the field.
The legislature’s poor decisions have not
stopped there.
UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser scheduled
the closure of the Horace Williams Airport, citing
that it is expensive to maintain.
All operations, including the medical air opera
tion of the University’s Area Health Education
Centers program, could be moved to Raleigh-
Durham International Airport. The legislature, with
the support of area businesses, provided in each of
its budget proposals that UNC-CH shall continue
Plugging Budget Holes
Legislators should focus on fiscal responsibility and not use short-term fixes
to balance this year's budget shortfall.
It seems that members of the N.C. General
Assembly are putting creativity and partisan poli
tics over sensibility and objectivity in finding solu
tions to the state’s budget shortfall.
The state House and Senate plans rely on $650
million and SB2O million, respectively, in one-time
revenue sources to pay for ongoing state expenses.
The money comes via transfers from state reserves,
debt refinancing and temporary tax increases. *
A clever solution, but with one catch: The
money will only be available for one year, leaving
future lawmakers to recover the funds.
Republicans argue that the use of one-time
mopey to pay for on-going costs creates a “rickety”
budget, while Democrats counter by saying that in
the tight fiscal crunch desperate times call for des
perate measures.
The potential consequences of the use of one
time funds became clear earlier this week.
On Monday, the state lost its AAA credit rating
with Moody’s Investors Service in response to the
state’s fiscal woes and the dependence on one-time
revenue in budget plans. The lower rating will
make it more difficult for the state to attract ftiture
investors and complicates efforts to close a long
term debt of $3.5 billion.
But the biggest impact of the use of nonrecurring
funds could be a reduced quality of state services.
The House plan cuts $512,693 in from the state
Department of Correction to reappoint four out
going special Superior Court judges a year earlier
than scheduled. While department salaries aren’t
included in the cuts, the plan could hurt other
operating costs.
Meanwhile, the Senate budget takes $205 mil
lion from the Highway Trust Fund and seizes SIOO
EDITOR'S NOTE:The above editorials are the opinions of solely The Daily Tar Heel Editorial Board, which were reached
after open debate. The board consists of eight board members, the assistant editorial page editor, the editorial page edi
tor and the DTH editor. The 2002-03 DTH editor decided not to vote on the board and not to write board editorials.
Readers' Forum
j?
The Daily Tar Heel welcomes
reader comments. 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.
Best Way to Learn
About Islam Is to Read
The Complete Quran
TO THE EDITOR:
Many people are against Carolina hav
ing their new students read the Quran; yet
if this is really for scholarly purposes then
why use an abridged edition, especially
when so many of the passages being dis
cussed in the media are missing?
Students will read the book and still not
know the full information - how could that
be the basis for a scholarly work?
Is that the way Carolina approaches
scholarship?
Where is the thinking by their board, or
could it be just as corrupt as many of the
corporate boards? Maybe they need peo
ple with some understanding of ethics on
the board.
Although they may just be out for pub
licity, since the only bad PR is no PR! And
they hopefully knew that this requirement
would certainly produce this uproar, or did
they?
What if the book that was chosen was
the New Testament?
Would the administration defend that
decision? Where would academic freedom
be then? Would students defend that deci
sion?
operating the Horace Williams Airport for Medical
Air Inc. operations, the Area Health Education
Cooperative and as a public access airport.
On the surface, it seems a reasonable request to
have the airport remain open for medical air sup
port purposes.
However, the University maintains that all med
ical services would be adequately served by RDU.
Instead, businessmen have been pushing for
Horace Williams to remain open simply so they
can avoid longer commutes than the 30-minute
drive to Chapel Hill from Raleigh.
It’s a tough decision between rich businessmen’s
luxury or University employees’ jobs.
University administrators are trying to make the
right choice. The legislature should let them do it.
The fact remains that there will be budget cuts.
Faculty will lose their jobs, and tuition probably
will rise.
UNC-CH itself has been trying to trim a lot of
fat, careful not to cut too deeply into vital aspects
of programs.
It takes careful examination and discussion
before making cuts that decide the fate of some
teachers’ careers.
The University, UNC system and legislature
should do all they can to preserve them.
Innovative partnerships between universities
could benefit in the creation of adequate depart
ments at Elizabeth City State, Western Carolina,
Appalachian and ECU with the bonus of being
more cost-effective than building new programs.
With little fat left and much still to be cut, the
House and Senate should avoid legislative micro
management and leave the painful decisions up to
the universities that know their situations best.
million in unspent Hurricane Floyd relief money,
two revenue sources repeatedly targeted by law
makers in past efforts to balance the budget.
But perhaps the greatest brouhaha in the budget
comes over plans to fund More at Four, Gov. Mike
Easley’s education initiative for at-risk preschool
ers. The Senate did not include money for the pre-
K program in its budget. But, through some polit
ical wrangling, the House allocated S7O million to
fund the program.
After Republicans on the Appropriations
Committee cut S2B million from More at Four to
restore planned cuts to health-care programs for
the elderly, Democrats requested a revote because
some party members were absent during the ear
lier vote. Then, on a 42-40 party-line vote, money
was restored to the program.
The move comes only weeks after Easley blast
ed GOP leadership for playing “political games”
during budget talks. But it appears that in the revote
charade, complete with Easley staff members for
bidding lawmakers from leaving the More at Four
vote, it was the Democrats who were playing games.
The crusade to expand More at Four funds is a
shallow effort by Democrats to show party unity
heading into the fall elections and is an overall
embarrassment to the political process.
This year’s budget talks should have focused on
finding practical solutions to overcome a mounting
multimillion shortfall. Instead, lawmakers have
turned the process into a game of tug-of-war, mov
ing money from one state agency to another with
out showing much concern for the potential con
sequences.
In the end, the only losers will be the millions of
North Carolinians who depend on state services.
Would the ACLU have defended that
decision too?
I think not, but then again I am not one
of the scholars turned out by the University
of Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Joseph John Rothengast
Raleigh
UNC Officials Should
Offer Different Books
For Reading Programs
TO THE EDITOR:
Dear Chancellor Moeser, it is clear to me
that the University is using “Approaching
the Qur’an: The Early Revelations” to
indoctrinate new students. If the summer
reading program was actually intended to
introduce college-level discourse among
these young people and their professors,
you and your committee would have
included more than one choice.
If quality education is the intent of the
University, then I challenge you to inspire
all of Carolina’s students to learn the truth
for themselves and reject the force-feeding
of the narrow viewpoint offered by Mr.
Sells. It would be a good idea to augment
the summer reading program with a semes
ter break reading program for the winter
months and include Franklin Graham’s
Editorial Page
(The Daily (Ear Mwl
Established 1893 • 109 Years of Editorial Freedom
www.dailytarheel.com
Kim MiNUGH Alex Kaplun Lizzie Breyer
EDTTOR MANAGING EDITOR PROJECTS EDITOR
Office Hours Noon-2 Friday
Lucas Fenske Daniel Thigpen Jon Dougherty Elyse Ashbum
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR UNIVERSITY EDITOR CITY EDITOR STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR
kelly Lusk Aaron Fitt Addie Sluder Nick Parker
SPORTS EDITOR SPORTSATURDAY EDITOR FEATURES EDITOR ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Terri Rupar Kimberly Craven Beth Buchholz & Tiffany Pease Cobi Edelson
COPYEDITOR PHOTO EDITOR DESIGN EDITORS GRAPHICS EDITOR
Adam Shupe Sarah Sanders Michael Flynn
ONLINE EDITOR WRITING COACH OMBUDSMAN
If you have any concerns or comments about our coverage, please contact Ombudsman Michael Flynn at mlflynn@email.unc.edu or
by phone at 843-5794.
Students, Remember Past Frolics,
But Don't Forget Your Economics
Welcome to college. This week, as
you enter the halls of academia
and lean back on ivy-covered
walls pondering the big questions, reading
the great books and planning
the future of your life, you will
also engage yourself in student
life - an age-old tradition of
debauchery, vandalism and
excess.
Over the next year, we will
embarrass our parents. Some of
us might even be expelled.
However, we shouldn’t
delude ourselves into believing
that we’re in any way original.
We’re just the newest addition
to a centuries-old parade of scoundrels
and miscreants who, in their spare time,
also called themselves students.
In his history of Western civilization,
“From Dawn to Decadence,” Jacques
Barzun writes that medieval undergradu
ates were “practitioners of anarchy” for
whom “townsmen were fair game for
mugging and murder with impunity.”
More recently, students who had engaged
in drunken rioting at the University of
Virginia almost brought that university’s
82-year-old founder - Thomas Jefferson -
to tears during their trial by the universi
ty’s Board of Visitors.
The students of our own University
haven’t let themselves be outdone by
their rivals in Charlottesville. Phillips
Russell asserts that the first students at
recent publication or “Unveiling Islam,”
which describes Quran passages that allow
terrorists to justify killing all non-Muslims.
You stated that it took great courage to
choose Mr. Sells’ book. But it will take even
more courage to do what is right for all
Carolina students, the alumni and the tax
payers of North Carolina. We will be
watching.
Cynthia Downs
Class of 1980
U.S. Must Change Israel
Policy Before Turmoil in
Middle East Can End
TO THE EDITOR:
Michael McKnight seems to think that
the anti-American attitudes in the Middle
East emerged after the World Trade Center
bombings.
These sentiments have existed for a very
long time, and while the actions of terrorists
cannot be condoned, many people (includ
ing non-Muslims) in many parts of the world
understand the frustration felt by Muslims.
McKnight seems to believe that the
leaden of Islamic countries are responsible
for “curb(ing) the tide of anti-American
sentiment that has swept these nations.”
Perhaps the U.S. should also be involved in
Chapel Hill “owned more pistols than
books.” William Snider writes that by the
1830s two competing social clubs - the
Ugly Club and the Boring Club - domi
nated campus life. Their mis
sion? To make their members
familiar “with all the paths of
vice in the college for fun and
frolic.”
Without forgetting or
neglecting this distinguished
heritage, it’s still necessary for
us, as students, to realize how
unique our place in society is.
Despite our nation’s obsession
with work and productivity, we
still manage to carve out four
JIM DOCGETT
REACH EXCEEDS
GRASP
years of introspection and self-improve
ment for our most promising young
adults. What an incredible gift! While
many of us are working our way through
college, many of us are also on the dole -
receiving free tuition, room and board and
alcohol from our parents. Not only are we
scoundrels, we’re mooching scoundrels.
Not everyone is so lucky. President
Bush has recently threatened to veto a bill
that would allow welfare recipients to
attend community college while receiving
government aid. Without support from
the government to pay their family’s bills
while they attend classes, education is an
impossible dream for single mothers who
missed their first chance at post-sec
ondary training. Bush’s attack hardly
seems fair, especially considering he spent
ending this, starting with a change in for
eign policy that stops the support of the ter
rorist state of Israel?
As for die Quran debate, I too disagree
with it being required reading, but for dif
ferent reasons than most people. There
should be a separation between religion
and the state and, although UNC has its
heart in the right place, I would object to
being required to read any religious works,
including the Bible.
Kirsty Carter
Senior
International Studies and French
Sells Neglects the Violent
History of Islam, Serves
Saudi Propaganda
TO THE EDITOR.
Michael Sells’ expurgated Quran book
selections give UNC students a false pic
ture of Islam as a religion of peace. The
book is not “provocative,” it is a Saudi pro
paganda piece.
A specific Islamic sect is responsible for
the Sept. 11 attack on America, the
Wahhabis. All the suicide bombers were
Wahhabis.
Students should know this much Islamic
history: Around 1800 A.D., Wahhab
uUjp Hath} (Ear Hrri
his college years boozing it up while
mooching off of his parents. While it’s
fine for the rich to depend on their par
ents during their college years, it’s appar
ently unacceptable for the poor to depend
on the federal government during theirs.
There’s nothing wrong with following
in the footsteps of our forebears -and
George W. Bush - by having fun during
our college years. If not now, when? I
guarantee you binge drinking isn’t as cool
at 45. But at the same time, it’s absolutely
necessary to realize how privileged we are
by these four years of relative freedom.
This year, when you’re being thrown
out of a window at a party, think about
what you’d like to change if you got to
serve in the U.S. Senate. While you’re
wrestling your brother to the floor at Top
of the Hill on the night of your 21st birth
day, think about new ways you could
raise money for a worthy cause. While
you’re rioting on Franklin Street after we
beat Duke this year, figure out if you’d
rather learn Mandarin or Swahili.
As Baudelaire says, “Get drunk!” But
don’t limit yourself to blue cups and vodka
shots; also get drunk on literature, volun
teering and writing witty, urbane columns
for The Daily Tar Heel. If you overspecial
ize in either, you won’t have gotten all you
can out of this wonderful place.
Not-so-witty, not-so-urbane columnist
jim Doggett can be reached at
jdoggett@email.unc.edu.
preached jihad against infidels, which
included all other Muslim religions, and was
exiled as a heretic. He converted a minor
tribesman, the ancestor of today’s Saudi
princes, to his new doctrine: The mass mur
der of civilians became a passport to Islamic
heaven. The pilots in the Sept. 11 attack trea
sured these Wahhabi passports, and they are
preserved physical documents.
Using terrorism as a religious weapon,
the Wahhabis took over what is now Saudi
Arabia. Wahhab then launched an auda
cious attack against Turkey -then the most
powerful country in the Middle East.
The Wahhabi attack on America which
murdered 3,000 Americans therefore fol
lowed the Wahhabi tradition. However,
this is the only major Islamic sect where
the murder of civilians is meritorious.
We can learn how to win the war on ter
rorism from Islamic history. After repeated
defeats, the Turkish sultan called on his
best general, the Egyptian Mohammed Ali.
The Egyptian knew how to deal with the
Wahhabi: He slaughtered them as easily as
they had slaughtered unarmed civilians.
The Saudi princes fled back to their tents in
the desert and were minor players for two
centuries. What we need is a Pentagon gen
eral who will do the job over again.
Irwin D. Bross
Amherst, N.Y.