Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Oct. 1, 2003, edition 1 / Page 1
Part of Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
VOLUME 111, ISSUE 79 ANALYSIS Coulter price tag disputed by some Speaker conflict isn’t new to UNC BY MARY BETH BARDIN STAFF WRITER When Ann Coulter speaks today, she won’t be the first con troversial speaker to visit campus. High-profile speakers such as David Horowitz, Cornel West and Clarence Thomas have generated a buzz across campus in the last couple of years. Controversial speakers long have been in high demand at the University because of the discus sions they spark and the crowds they draw. Many student groups agree that when selecting a speaker, it is important to bring someone to campus with strong views and a recognizable name— both of which generate student interest. Unfortunately, big-name speak ers often come with high price tags. Coulter, a conservative author, will speak in the Law School Rotunda at 6 p.m. today, with Student Congress fronting $6,747-50 of her $20,000 hono rarium and the Federalist Society providing the remainder of the fee. “We started planning this last year,” said Paul Foley, Federalist Society president. "She's an excit ing, dynamic, conservative speak er. She’s a three-time New York Times best seller. It’s an impressive credential.” SEE SPEAKER, PAGE 7 • hlktl DTH FILE PHOTO Cornel West gives a lecture Jan. 21 as part of UNC's Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration. His campus visit was controversial. Officials take housing to task BY LAURA HIRST STAFF WRITER Janice Poole lived at 220 Knolls St. in Chapel Hill for less than three months and said she was more than happy to leave. Poole said her landlord, Cleavon Atwater of Carrboro, ignored prob lems in her house such as a leaking roof, a back door that wouldn’t lock, a light that caught on fire and a continually stopped toilet that would overflow into her air condi tioning vent. Atwater said the house passed inspection before Poole moved in. He said that the tenant had caused some of the damage herself and that she did not pay her deposit, after which he refused to fix problems such as a broken hot water heater. “I could not support the way she was treating my property,” he said. The conflict between Poole and Atwater illustrates the complexity of rental housing issues, which the Orange County Assembly of [ I j a INSIDE FULL SPEED AHEAD Renovations to the Student Union, unlike its annex's construction, are well ahead of schedule PAGE 3 Serving the students and the University community since 1893 abr Hatty ®ar liwi ■ fv JL JHH i tiL DTH FILE PHOTO A Chapel Hill police officer watches the crowd of Halloween revelers at the intersection of Franklin and Columbia streets in 2002. This year's celebration is expected to be one of the largest ever and could draw 75,000 people, up from last year's estimated 69,000. OCT. 31 CROWDS MAY SPOOK TOWN BY CHRIS MCLAUGHLIN STAFF WRITER The Chapel Hill Police Department and various other town, county and state agencies already are planning for what could be the biggest and most expensive Halloween gathering in towri histo- T’ This Halloween, which falls on a Friday, is expected to draw a crowd of more than 75,000 peo ple, according to local police officials. In preparation for the large crowd, officials plan to deploy at least 300 police officers, a squad of paramedics and a separate EMS system to deal with on site injuries and medical emergencies. Despite extensive law enforcement prepa rations, local officials say, the event still will be understaffed significantly by police. “Three hundred officers is truly not enough for a crowd of 70,000, especially with alcohol,” said Chapel Hill Police Sgt. Jack Terry. “If anything bad happens, the officers will drop barricades and get out of the way.” Terry said he expects Chapel Hill to spend at least SIOO,OOO on the event. The town spent $131,400 on last year’s Halloween cel ebration, which drew a crowd of about 69,000. Officials have requested assistance from 16 state and local law enforcement agencies, including the Carrboro, Durham and Raleigh police departments and the Orange “/ think in some cases people just don’t know that there may be a process KRISTIN LAVERGNE, ifc Governments discussed at its Tuesday night meeting. The assembly unanimously agreed to create an initial steering committee for a substandard rental housing task force, which will meet by the end of November. The proposal was submitted by Carrboro Alderman Jacquelyn Gist after a discussion at the Sept. 16 Board of Aldermen meeting. At that meeting the board decided to look into updating Carrboro’s Housing Code and SEE HOUSING, PAGE 7 www.dailytarheel.com HALLOWEEN County Sheriff’s Department. Officials also have requested help from several specialist agencies, such as Alcohol Law Enforcement, the N.C. Highway Patrol and the UNC Department of Public Safety. In addition to public law enforcement, Chapel Hill police officials expect to contract the services of about 75 agents from the Wackenhut Corp., a private security compa ny that primarily employs retired police offi cers. Police officials said they are not certain whether these agents wall be carrying firearms. Terry said 80 percent of the additional officers will be positioned between Raleigh and Church streets. He said the primary job of the police officers will be to observe the crowd. Terry added that Chapel Hill police will be patrolling the perimeter of the event in an Health-care costs hit employees hard Family coverage too high for some BY STEPHANIE M. HORVATH SENIOR WRITER Syed Mustafa, a medical tech nologist, has worked at the UNC School of Medicine for 17 years. He says he is middle class, but he cannot afford UNC-Chapel Hill health insurance for his wife and three children. UNC-CH benefits, which are paid for and controlled by the state, pay for Mustafa’s health insurance but not for his family’s. In order to cover them under the state plan, Mustafa, like all state employees, would have to pay $427 per month. He paid for the insurance for years, but increases in the fee along with co-pays and the deductible made it too costly. He dropped the coverage one year ago. “I cannot afford it; that’s one reason,” he said. Mustafa is not alone. UNC CH’s benefits cost employees as much as one-third of their salaries, according to an analysis of these benefits presented at last week’s Board of TYustees meeting. Employees making $25,000 per : .V ■ . " ) attempt to curb vandalism and other destruc tive action. “We want to harden targets as much as we can,” he said. Targets are places most vulnerable to crime during the festivities, including park ing lots and back alleys. Terry said police officers also will patrol local neighborhoods. “We would rather prevent (crime) than catch the person that did it.” When asked how well law enforcement suppressed disruptive behavior last year, Terry- said that “everything went reasonably well” and that there were no serious viola tions. Terry said almost everyone arrested was not from Chapel Hill. Nick Waters, director of the Orange County- Department of Emergency SEE HALLOWEEN, PAGE 7 year are spending as much as 33 percent of their salary on benefits. Those making $75,000 a year are spending as much as 15 percent. The biggest expense is health insurance. Although North Carolina pays for all state employ ees including those at UNC-CH it does not cover employees’ dependents. Employees also spend 6 percent of their monthly salary on retirement and pay for their dental insurance. Most of UNC CH’s peer institutions offer more attractive benefits, including money for dependents’ insurance and some dental coverage. The state’s comparatively unat tractive benefits are making it harder for UNC-CH to keep facul ty and staff. Staff turnover was 16 percent last year, and faculty turnover was 2.9 percent. Tommy Griffin, chairman of the Employee Forum, said increasing benefits costs along with stagnant pay have left many employees in a lurch. Some have stopped family coverage. “It’s really hitting them SPORTS STALEMATE No. 5 North Carolina men's soccer team earns a scoreless draw at George Mason PAGE 4 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2003 EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTION FOR FAMILY HEALTH CARE COVERAGE -g- 500 1 7 xP SOURCE: UNC OFFICE OF HUMAN RESOURCES DTH/ELLIE SNOW hard,” Griffin said. “You’ve got folks w-ho are working two jobs already, and their pay-checks are shrinking.” Any change to UNC-CH’s bene fits would have to be made by the N.C. General Assembly. Last session, the House saw a bill that would allow the UNC-system Board of Governors to establish health-care benefits or insurance WEATHER TODAY Partly cloudy, H 70, L 45 THURSDAY Sunny, H 64, L 37 FRIDAY Partly cloudy, H 66, L 47 Fund raising reaches S3BK BY MAH HANSON SENIOR WRITER Almost $38,000 has flowed into the coffers of Chapel Hill’s 12 Town Council candidates, accord ing to reports submitted Monday to the Orange County Board of Elections. Rudy Juliano, a UNC profes sor of pharma cology, leads all candidates MUNICIPAL HE ELECTIONS with $10,164 in his campaign fund and $7,814 in expenses. Juliano said he loaned himself more than $9,700 of the money. “I foresaw upcoming expenses,” he explained. “I just wanted to have money on account for the cam paign not in my own (account).” The campaign finance reports had to be postmarked by Monday, 35 days before the election. The reports hold candidates account able for their campaign cash flow for the period before Sept. 19. The top five money-getters, in descending order, were Juliano, Sally- Greene, Dianne Bachman, Bill Strom and Thatcher Freund all of whom raised more than $4,000. Greene, a visiting scholar at UNC, was second on both lists with $6,236 raised and $2,438 spent, according to filed reports. Rounding out the top three, Bachman, an architect for UNC’s Facilities Planning department, raised $5,600 and spent $1,072. Still, other candidates just now are gearing up their core efforts to raise contributions. Terri Tyson and Andrea Rohrbacher said they will send out their first round of letters in the next week to solicit funding. Both already have raised about $1,500 prior to shifting their efforts into full throttle. “I’m finding that it’s quite expensive to get the word out,” Tyson said. Creative efforts that would seem to save money don’t always work Mike McSwain found that out the hard way. “We were making homemade signs because candidates have been successful using them in the past,” said McSwain, a senior phi losophy major at UNC. But his campaign staff found that it not only- took more time to make signs by hand, it also cost more money SEE CAMPAIGN, PAGE 7 for employees’ dependents as an alternative to the current plan. The session ended in July before the bill made it out of the House. Rep. Daniel McComas, R-New Hanover, who was one of the bill’s sponsors, said he hopes lawmakers will discuss the bill when the SEE BENEFITS. PAGE 7
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 1, 2003, edition 1
1
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75