10
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2003
BOARD EDITORIALS
ILLOGICAL PLANS
With state budget talks heating up, UNC-system leaders should fight
proposed plans to cut campus budgets and hike tuition by 5 percent.
State legislators, hungry for any source of money
they can get their hands on, are once again
thinking about picking students’ wallets to
make up for poor fiscal planning.
N.C. House subcommittees are considering rais
ing tuition throughout the UNC system by 5 percent.
To make matters worse, lawmakers also are eye
ing additional cuts to the tune of several million dol
lars.
Any plan that winds its way through the subcom
mittee process and proceeds to the powerful House
Appropriations Committee is almost guaranteed to
be enacted making it vital that students and offi
cials rally to kill off these fundamentally unsound
proposals as soon as possible.
The proposed tuition increase flies in the face of
an earlier recommendation by the UNC-system
Board of Governors to freeze tuition for one year.
BOG members rightfully justified a moratorium
on the grounds that the nation’s lagging economy
and years of high tuition increases had drained stu
dents’ wallets.
The tuition freeze aimed to provide a much-need
ed break for students and families unable to cope
with ever-escalating tuition bills.
Legislators, showing a fundamental disconnec
tion with the financial plights of their constituents,
are preparing to throw the BOG’s sound reasoning
out of the window.
Furthermore, state-mandated tuition increases
have an even more dramatic impact than school-spe
cific increases.
Although campus trustees have shown an alarm
ing willingness to raise tuition yearly, their propos
als always allotted additional binding for financial
aid often as much as 35 percent of the overall rev
enue generated by the increase.
There is no provision requiring legislators to pro
vide additional funding for financial aid, and most
PUTTING OUT FIRES
A bill in the N.C. House to toughen penalties for using pyrotechnic
displays inappropriately is worthless without tough enforcement.
As the old adage goes, people wbo play with fire
are likely to be burned. And several state leg
islators wisely are taking that philosophy to
heart.
The N.C. House is discussing a bill that would
increase the penalties for using pyrotechnics unsafe
ly in the state after a Rhode Island nightclub fire
killed roughly 100 people.
Under the proposed legislation, people who
knowingly use pyrotechnic displays indoors without
a permit would be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor
instead of a Class 2 misdemeanor.
Given the danger posed by pyrotechnics in a club
atmosphere where alcohol is prevalent, the bill is a
vital step tow ; ard safeguarding N.C. residents.
Increasing the penalty and publicizing it will
make people think twice before igniting an unsanc
tioned pyrotechnic display resulting in a safer
atmosphere for everyone concerned.
The necessity for the bill is hit home by the fact
that the band Great White played in North Carolina
at the Winston-Salem club Ziggy’s only two weeks
before its pyrotechnic display set the club in Rhode
Island on fire.
Ziggy’s owner Jay Stephens, who admitted he was
wary of using pyrotechnic displays at all, confessed
to The Daily Tar Heel that the club never bothered
to obtain a permit before the Great White concert,
which did use pyrotechnics on the premises.
Such carefree behavior easily could trigger a dead
ly inferno unless leaders intervene.
Additionally, the proposed bill aims to increase
safety in general by toughening the penalty' for vio
lating the state’s building code.
Drawing from the examples of the Rhode Island
fire and a nightclub panic in Chicago that left 20
people dead, legislators aim to stamp out some of the
building problems that exacerbated the two inci
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 editor and the DTH editor. The 2002-03
DTH editor decided not to vote on the board and not to write board editorials.
fIEADERS’ F9RUM
History of South, Iraq too
different to be compared
TO THE EDITOR:
I was deeply offended by
Professor Horne’s comments in
the Friday issue of The Daily Tar
Heel, and I find fault in a lot of the
things he said. First, the people of
Iraq were the ones who wanted
their statues destroyed because
Saddam Hussein ruled them by
force. They do not support the
government, and therefore they
do not want to remember their
“history.”
The statue of Silent Sam does
not represent slavery, but it repre
sents that spirit of freedom and
independence from outside rule. If
the people of this area wanted the
statue removed, then it would
have been gone by now, but that is
the fundamental weakness in his
argument the people of Iraq do
not want their history, and the
people of the South take pride in
theirs.
Also, I do not think it was
appropriate for a professor to
compare North Carolina or any
state for that matter with Saddam
Hussein’s Iraqi government.
The South might have had its
faults, but we have learned from
them, and what we are today only
came abor t through our experi
ences in the past. The fact that
someone would attack the her
itage of the South upsets me
because you do not see anyone
therefore don’t even think about it before voting to
pass a tuition increase.
Additionally, there’s no guarantee that funding
from legislative tuition increases goes to support
UNC-system schools.
The money from legislative increases goes into the
state’s general fund to be used for everything from
filling potholes to hiring kindergarten teachers
instead of improving specific campuses within the
UNC system.
And forcing administrators to make even more
cuts virtually ensures that student services will be
curtailed and, in some cases, outright eliminated.
After several rounds of making budget cuts, the
UNC system can’t make any more without firing
professors, canceling classes and increasing class
sizes.
These threats being discussed by the House sub
committees represent the first real test for Student
Body President Matt Tepper, who took office just two
weeks ago.
Also, it provides a fundamental challenge for the
UNC-system Association of Student Governments.
ASG President Jonathan Ducote must prove to stu
dents throughout the system that the group is worth
its $165,000 budget by mounting an effective offen
sive against the House proposal.
Tepper and Ducote need to work together close
ly to provide a coordinated response to the offensive
waged by representatives in the N.C. House by ral
lying student support, building interest in a letter
writing campaign and cooperating with system offi
cials.
System leaders already have appealed to legisla
tors to abandon plans for further cuts by continuing
various tax increases slated to end this summer.
Student leaders should rally behind that banner
as the best way to keep legislators’ hands in their
own pockets.
dents:
■ exceeding the occupancy limit in a public
building used for public assembly,
■ locking or blocking access to exit doors in a
public building used as a place of public assembly,
■ using plastic foam or any other type of com
bustible materials as interior finish or trim except as
permitted.
Knowingly breaking two of those provisions
would result in a Class II misdemeanor, while vio
lating all three would be a Class I misdemeanor.
Although some building owners almost certainly
will be displeased with the tougher penalties, the
proposed bill is easier for owners to swallow than
some responses being considered by local commu
nities.
Chapel Hill officials, for instance, are debating
whether to require sprinklers in local businesses
a measure that easily could cost business owners
thousands of dollars.
The state proposal doesn't require owners to
spend additional money provided that they are obey
ing the state’s building codes. It only increases the
penalties for people who violate them.
But the tougher penalties are pointless unless
state leaders are willing to back them up with fund
ing for communities to hire additional inspectors
a tough proposition given that the state’s budget
deficit amounts to 10 figures.
Without that inspection effort, the tougher penal
ties almost certainly aren’t severe enough to scare
owners into obeying them meaning that the odds
of the bill preventing a tragedy similar to the inci
dents in Rhode Island or Chicago are slim to none.
If legislators truly want to look out for the inter
ests of the public, they’ll pass this bill and ensure
communities have the teeth needed to enforce build
ing codes properly.
from North Carolina attacking the
Northern way of life or their his
tory. If you agree that a Civil War
statue in North Carolina should be
destroyed, then so too should a
statue in Massachusetts or New
York. I guess we should just forget
the Civil War even took place.
It simply is a matter of pride
and respect. The South was
defeated in 1865, but outsiders are
still attacking our history and
making us, as a people, feel that
we should not take pride in our
heritage.
Matthew Keene
Junior
History
Silent Sam represents the
choices available in U.S.
TO THE EDITOR:
Perhaps Professor Gerald
Horne is unaware of American
history in relation to the Iraqi dic
tatorship of Saddam Hussein.
Destroying a statute of Hussein is
the same as tearing down the
Berlin Wall and stomping on the
Nazi flag, and not the same as
bashing a statute of a Confederate
soldier who symbolizes, even in a
mild way, democratic principles.
We traditionally banish symbols
that are repulsive and hold to those
that remind us of our heritage.
The Civil War was a conflict which
ultimately decided the nation’s fate.
In the end, the generals who led the
Editorial Page
North and South shook hands and
went home friends. The nation sur
vived, and we offer some respect to
those who took sides.
It seems that in the Iraq war,
the leaders ran and vanished
before the war even began. Maybe
they were killed, but it is clear that
they did nothing to defend the
country. It is also clear that most
Iraqis did nothing to help topple
their government, even if it was
oppressive. So, in contrast, Silent
Sam is a symbolic gesture to
American freedoms in which peo
ple can choose sides and speak for
themselves.
History will prove that the over
throw of Saddam Hussein was the
right thing to do, and even if the
people of Iraq could not do this by
themselves, they will remember
that a free nation far across the
Atlantic came to their aid.
Walter Hoar
Chapel Hill
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ON THE DAY S NEWS
“The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today”
WILLIAM KING, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER
■3iXrJS SWa iU.r*.
5fW -
COMMENTARY
‘Real world’ doesn’t exist
solely outside college walls
■yr yr -jrait until you get into
% f\J the real world," some
V Y people whine. Excuse
me, I thought I was in the real
world. I guess college is some par
allel universe that only looks like
the real world and we’ll find the
secret portal and cross over after
graduating. Whatever that’s
ridiculous. While some students
are walking around in some rose
colored world, enjoying the best
years of their lives and sunning
themselves out on the quad, some
of us have already gotten a heavy
dose of the “real world,” and were
not happy.
If your idea of college life
comes from “Animal House” and
MTV Spring Break then sure,
you’d probably think that every
one was on a four-year vacation
from life. People think that if you
are in college that automatically
means that you have it easy. Since
we’re on the road to a successful
life, we should be carefree, right?
What could possibly be so bad
about the life of a young adult
attending one of the leading pub
lic universities in the country?
Have you ever thought about
those students who cry at night?
What about that girl or guy who
doesn’t know how she or he is
going to make it this time?
Some of us are in this thing all
by ourselves. Mommy and Daddy
aren't cutting checks every two
weeks. Some of us are miles away
from home, unable to reach out
for the support of our families,
friends and familiar surround
ings. There are students who are
parents, juggling being a mom or
a dad with statistics and biology.
We have to work; we need to
pay rent, pay the bills, and we
must eat. We’re in debt because of
credit cards and student loans.
Some of us have problems with
ahr Daily (Ear Hrrl
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NAKIA HANSEN
NOWHERE TO UNPACK
relationships, and our social lives
are practically nonexistent.
Basically, there are students here
who are just trying to get by. And
they’re barely doing it. There’s no
doubt, we are in the real world.
When people think about col
lege students, I don’t think that
they picture the frustrated stu
dent trekking back and forth
between the cashier's office and
the financial aid office trying to
get his account straight so that he
can stay in school another semes
ter. I don’t think people see the
guy who’s trying figure out what
he’s going to do with his life since
it’s already April and he has no
job and hasn’t gotten into gradu
ate school. It’s almost like they’re
invisible. These are definitely not
the students that make the pages
of the admissions brochures.
Or are they? Contrary to popu
lar belief, these students aren't the
ones walking around wearing
angst and self-pity on their sleeves.
These are athletes, the club offi
cers, the cute guy or girl at the last
party, that girl who raises her hand
in class all the time and the guy
who works in Student Stores.
So what’s the point here? There
are so many people here at UNC
and all around the country that are
definitely living in the real world. I
want people to recognize that
there are bunches of 20-year-olds
who feel twice their age. We’re
tired, and we need a break. But
there’s no break to look forward to
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(Ebr Daily (Ear Hrrl
until retirement. And nowadays,
that’s not looking so promising
either. How are you supposed to
feel when the so-called best years
of your life suck? What do you do
when you’re young and already
tired of the real world?
Maybe you could go to
Counseling and Psychological
Services and tell someone about
it. Unfortunately, many people
aren't taking advantage of CAPS,
and I don’t blame them.
You can talk until you’re blue in
the face sometimes and— guess
what nothing has changed.
Your life still sucks, except now
you’re not the only person w r ho
knows just how much it does.
Besides, most people talk about
how' things are going to be all
right. Well, most of us know, that;
already. Of course things could be
worse, and we’re all fortunate in
many ways. We are in college, and
we expect our four or five years of
work and sacrifice to pay off so
that one day everything will be
OK. But hearing someone tell you
that it’s going to be all right does
n’t make you feel better about the
way things are right now.
What do you do then? Well,
you pick up your baggage and you
keep on moving. There’s no use
feeling sorry for yourself or hav
ing others feel sorry for you. We
still have to go to work, class and
meetings and keep our commit
ments. We still have to pay rent,
figure out what we’ll do with our
lives and take care of ourselves.
But every now and then, it’s
OK to set dowTi those bags and
break down, let out that frustra
tion and then get back up, keep
on moving. It doesn’t get any
more real than that.
Contact Nakia Hansen at
ndenise@ email.unc.edu.
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