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* Community colleges' numbers rise
• Raleigh to gain Latino Credit Union
Volume 110, Issue 85
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DTH/JESSICA FOSTER
Chuck Palahniuk, author of the cult classic "Fight Club," speaks in front of an overflowing audience at the Bull's Head Bookshop
on Tuesday afternoon. Although Palahniuk was promoting his newest work, "Lullaby" he did not read from the book.
Self-Renewal by Self-Destruction
By Nick Parker
Arts & Entertainment Editor
“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”
Tyler Durden, the alter ego of the nameless protag
onist in “Fight Club,” searched for anew identity
through radical and violent change.
Chuck Palahniuk, author of “Fight Club,” the cult
sensation that inspired the Twentieth Century Fox film
by the same name, apparently lives by the same cre
dence.
“There is a great deal of joy in destroying that beau
tiful thing that you have created because you know that
you can go back and rebuild it even better than
before,” he said.
“After one or two drafts of whatever
I was working on I would shave my
head to remind myself that nothing is
sacred.... We are all in flux.”
And his belief in self-destruction as
a form of self-renewal has spread
across the nation, infecting corporate
CEOs to father figures to the men who
patrol your streets.
“I have an enormous stack of mail
in my house,” Palahniuk said. “People
send me all kinds of photos of their
clubs or their faces all beat up -but
they are all smiling. The pictures are
all over my refrigerator.”
Even a few UNC students admitted
to participating in their own makeshift
fight clubs. Though they all wished to
7 like to take
something that
people see a
million times
every day...
and show them
the truth. I
want t 0...
wake them up. ”
Chick Palahniuk
Author
remain anonymous, they wore their scars like badges.
But Palahniuk has seen the underground obsession
spring up in much more public forums.
At the University of Califomia-Berkeley, students
dressed as waiters with bloody kisses on their hands
paraded through the crowd throwing dinner rolls at
audience members while a man choked on a roll and
had to be saved with the Heimlich maneuver. Both
were scenes from Palahniuk’s works.
“It was total chaos,” he said. “But it was amazing
because we all got to share. It was more of an experi-
Senior Class Narrows Down Gift Options to 3
By John Frank
and Brian Hudson
Staff Writers
After taking suggestions from University
officials and students for the past month,
senior class officials have narrowed the
options for the class gift down to three.
Seniors can vote on the gift Oct. 30.
The first option would create an
Undergraduate Library endowment of at
least $20,000 that would raise money to keep
the library’s resources current.
“The idea is keeping anew library new,”
said Rob Albright, senior class vice presi
dent, saying the money could help keep the
Foil are not a beautiful, unique snowflake.... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Chuck Palahniuk
Trading Places
Poor showing against the run forces Bunting
to shuffle the defensive line once again.
See Page 5
YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB
i _J
DTH/JOANIE TOBIN
Chuck Palahniuk signs a copy of his new novel
for a student after his presentation Tuesday.
ence than one person up on stage blabbing.”
College students seem to have a special bond to his
work, Palahniuk said, because they are young and feel
disconnected from society and- more specifically -
from literature.
“A lot of (college students) have given up on books,”
he said. “Books don’t serve them the way that music
and video and movies do.
“They expect a lot more plot and thought for then
investment and more entertainment... something with
weight and meaning.”
And Palahniuk’s ability to shock and amuse with
dark and taboo topics carried over to his presentation
before a socially diverse audience in the Bull’s Head
Bookshop on Tuesday.
Instead of reading from “Lullaby,” his newest book,
he told the audience about his experiences with kidney
stones, Vicodin and a perverted childhood neighbor.
His monologue was as bold and unrestrained as his
novels. Audience members laughed and blushed as he
recalled passing kidney stones the size of marbles and
See PALAHNIUK, Page 7
library up-to-date in a quickly changing
world.
Another part of the first option would
allow seniors to select quotations that would
be engraved into the 12 new benches outside
the Undergrad. A plaque inside the library
would memorialize the class’s gift
“We would be the first class to give to the
new library,” Albright said. “We are really
the only class to remember both the old and
new Undergrad.”
The second option would create an artis
tic glass etching on the four large windows of
the Campus Y building.
Albright said the etching would depict a
scene memorializing Sept. 11. The gift would
Serving the students and the University community since 1893
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
also include a glass showcase for art to be put
in the Campus Y lobby. Excess money from
the fund raising would be given to Campus
Y renovations.
Although no definite plans have been
made, the project would conceivably cost a
minimum of about $25,000, Albright said.
The third option is a special need schol
arship, which would be given through the
Office of Scholarships and Student Aid.
“Like the library, we will try to raise a
$20,000 endowment for the scholarship,"
said Emily Stevens, young alumni director
with the Office of Development. “Five per-
See GIFT, Page 7
County Line
Residents draw differences
between towns, county.
See Page 3
Author Talks
With Students
About Success
By Ashley Harrell
Staff Writer
At his Tuesday question-and-answer
session with the Carolina Production
Guild and Writer’s Block, the UNC
screenwriter’s club, Chuck Palahniuk
summed up his success strategy in one
key phrase.
“I decided to write as offensively as
possible,” he said.
Speaking on
a variety of
topics such as
“TV-induced
Alzheimer’s,”
and silencing
Author's Latest
Work, "Lullaby,"
Is Strongest Yet
See Page 7
the rational mind, Palahniuk easily
matched the persona his books reflect
It’s hard to believe that publishing
his most widely known book - the cult
classic “Fight Club” - was a fluke.
Palahniuk sat in a backward chair
with his shoes off as he told eager
screenwriters that both his book and
movie contracts fell into place because
of one or two determined individuals.
The majority of people at Twentieth
Century Fox studios and publisher W.
W. Norton were adamandy opposed to
accepting the deranged and incompre
hensible novel in any form. “If the mar-
See SESSION, Page 7
Senior Class
Gift Options:
• An Undergraduate
Library endowment
of at least $20,000
• An artistic glass
etching on the win
dows of the Campus
Y building memori
alizing Sept. 11
• A special need
scholarship to pay
for incidentals
K
Weather
Today: Partly Cloudy; H 86, L 62
Thursday: Partly Cloudy; H 87, L 64
Friday: Mostly Cloudy; H 84, L 65
Cancer Center
Legislation
Dead for Now
Session's conclusion, budget doom bill
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
Assistant State & National Editor
Legislation that would establish a
$l3O million cancer center on the
UNC-Chapel Hill campus was effec
tively killed Tuesday in the N.C.
General Assembly.
The pew center would replace the
50-year-old Gravely Building, which
was built as a tuberculosis sanitarium in
the 19505.
The legislation also called for a $45
million biopharmaceutical training cen
ter at N.C. State University, as well as
training centers across the state that
could provide about 100,000 jobs in the
next 10 years.
The N.C. Senate sent the legislation
back to its Finance Committee on
Tuesday after the House Finance
Committee voted Monday to reject
funding for the center.
“Based on the fact that the House will
not pass it, no action will probably be
taken,” said Amy Fulk, spokeswoman
for Senate President Pro Tern Marc
Basnight, D-Dare.
Legislators say the bill’s death is part
ly due to its late introduction - poten
tially just days before the legislature’s
adjournment. The Senate passed an
adjournment resolution Tuesday. If the
House approves it, this year’s extended
session will end at 4 p.m. Thursday.
But Senate Majority Leader Tony
Rand, D-Cumberland, said legislators
had plenty of time to consider funding
the bill. “We were talking about it for
quite a long time,” he said. “It wasn’t
like anybody just heard about it.”
Rep. Bill Hurley, D-Cumberland,
who proposed the legislation, said rep
resentatives also were hesitant to send
UNC Will Continue
Cancer Center Plans
Officials will bring it
up again in January
By Will Arey
Staff Writer
University officials said Tuesday that
they will resume pushing UNC’s pro
posed $l3O million cancer treatment
center next year after legislation to pro
vide funding for the project failed to gain
traction in the N.C. General Assembly.
Jeffrey Houpt, dean of the UNC
School of Medicine, said planning for
the center will continue as normal and
then be evaluated when the legislature’s
next session begins in January.
“We will continue design for the cen
ter and then go back in January and see
where the interest level is,” Houpt said.
“We’ll definitely take the center back to
them if there is interest.”
Houpt said most legislators recog
nized the need for the new center but
simply could not allocate the necessary
funds at this time.
“Everyone involved w'as very recep
tive of the idea,” he said. “They all rec
ognized the cancer center as worthy but
simply couldn’t spend any more
money.”
Kevin Fitzgerald, UNC’s lobbying
coordinator, said the need for the treat
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Sen. Howard Lee, D-Orange, said
the end of session is just an
excuse for the bill's failure.
mixed signals to the public in the face of
a $2 billion budget deficit.
“The public perceives that we are
broke and yet we continue to allocate
money to all these projects, and that
confuses them,” he said.
Funding for the cancer center would
have come from the state’s share of a
tobacco lawsuit settlement.
But Sen. Howard Lee, D-Orange,
said there were other obstacles to the
legislation, not just timing.
“I think (the session’s impending
end) is just one more excuse by the
House to not be able to do anything,”
he said. “If this bill had been introduced
earlier on, it would have run into simi
lar obstacles.”
Lee also said he was surprised repre
sentatives did not want to enact legisla
tion that would provide jobs for citizens
across the state. “I don’t understand not
wanting to create ... treatment centers
across the state,” he said. “Why we’re
sitting here letting jobs escape from the
state - that is baffling to me.”
See BILL, Page 7
DTH/STAFF
ment center is clear.
Officials have said the current facili
ty, the N.C. Clinical Cancer Center, is
outdated and too small to accommodate
demand.
“The current space is inadequate and
cannot continue to accept more patients
and traffic growth,” he said. “It’s good
that the new cancer center has been rec
ognized as a need of UNC’s Hospitals
systems.”
Fitzgerald attributed the rejection to
the last-minute addition of the treatment
center provision into an economic
incentives bill.
See CANCER CENTER, Page 7