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6 TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2004 Hurricane Isabel socks coast Category 2 storm costs state SSSM BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR. STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR SEPT. 18, MOREHEAD CITY - Hurricane Isabel hit this city hard, dropping several inches of precipi tation in less than 24 hours and dis placing hundreds of families. Some streets and parking lots lay submerged underwater while siding, shingles and other debris were blown across the roadway. Across the state, Progress Energy reported more than 285,000 power outages as of 6 p.m Thursday. There were an estimated 190,000 homes without electricity in inland N.C. counties, including about 80,000 in Wake County. In coastal areas there were about 58,500 reported outages. There would have been more, Progress said, but most people weren’t at home to report them. More than 300 people congre gated at the Red Cross Shelter at Carteret High School— which is in a high-lying area of Morehead City. Lying on cots, inflatable mat tresses and mounds of blankets, they tried to sleep through the night as the wind and rain beat on the windows and doors. In the shelter blacks, whites and Hispanics huddled in family groups, all snoring together. The hallways echoed with the multilin gual whispers of people talking late into the night. A man had a seizure early N.C. legislature redraws district lines BY LAURA YOUNGS ASSISTANT STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR NOV. 25, RALEIGH - After more than two years of debate, multiple court cases and mounting frustration, the N.C. General Assembly approved new redistrict ing maps Tuesday in time to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. The Senate voted 25-23 in favor of the legislative redistricting bill in the 2003 extra session. The House approved it 63-52. “We can now present to you a map that leaves 88 counties undi vided, which is four more than the interim maps,” said Sen. Dan Hob/ Pluck uouic) uou naiu Lose a feco/u) chance? %*!►* Emergency Contraception can prevent pregnancy to five days after unprotected sex. Call Dial EC for more information and _ a prescription, 7 days a week. 1-066-942-7762 1 V www.dialec.org P Planned Parenthood H - ■■■ ■" - " ' ~~ 1 BK JB n SB |Hagg| B K( Monday, January 5 thru Friday January a tet Beneath Franklin Street Post Office H [ Entrance on Henderson Street <%' 10am-spm mu HI Proceeds Bone!it Street Scene Teen Center raL? Visit Us At: huyomlttißwalLcniii Thursday morning. When the ambulance came to take him to a nearby hospital, a woman reported that she was having labor pains. They rode in the same ambulance. One family’s problems instantly became the problems others hud dled inside the cinder block walls. A baby’s crying, a loud man’s snoring, even a restless child’s toss ing and turning kept people up well past midnight. But no noise, it seems, could drown out the sound of the weath er outside. The people inside have heard these sounds many times before, but ears still prick up and one eye opens when the wind gusts or the rain falls a little bit harder. Some sleep soundly, cocooned in layers of blankets and sleeping children. Others are more wary, staying up into the wee hours of the morning. People come here because they have no place else to go. For now, this is home and will remain so until the worst is over. As the night drags on, some stand outside as the rhythm of the rain increases, talking below an overhang that provides shelter from the elements. They swap sto ries, some of women, others of school. Every so often, the conver sation will turn to the weather. Someone always changes the subject. One person asks if the rain outside is the worst of Isabel. “When it comes, you’ll know,” a man smoking a cigar replies, motioning to the sly. “This here is nothing. This is everyday rain.” Most people at the shelter are Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, chair man of the redistricting commit tee. “This was not done without some difficulty.” The new Senate districts are more compact than past ones, with 12 districts containing two-county clusters, three more than the pre vious maps, and with fewer split counties. “This more faithfully adheres to the (state) constitution,” Clodfelter said. Clusters occur when a county of more than 67,000 people, which constitutes a district, is divided into more than one district. The divisions are kept within the coun Year in Review “We don’t know what to expect right now. Ton look for the worst and you hope for the best” BETTIE D. LEWIS, NEWPORT RESIDENT hurricane-hardened. Some can count and name the storms they’ve been through the times they’ve run for shelter. Others, like Bettie D. Lewis, of Newport, lost count long ago. Lewis’ husband has diabetes and both of his legs have been amputated. He’s confined to a wheelchair and has to have dialysis once a day. The Red Cross shelter is the only guarantee that he’ll get the treatment he needs, Lewis says. That’s why they came. “We don’t know what to expect right now,” she said, looking out the window at the trees bending in the wind. “You look for the worst and you hope for the best. When they say, ‘Come to a shelter,’ you keep your mind on the Lord and pray.” Lewis and her friend, Kay Sutton, of Morehead City, say the hardest part about being in the shelter is the waiting. Some read to keep their minds off the swirling winds out side, others talk to their shelter mates. Sutton says she tries to help people out in any way she can. “I just look around,” she said. “There was a three year old he turned three today. We tried to make him a cake. There’s a need that somebody has, if you just keep your eye open.” Sutton remembers when she ty or are paired with neighboring counties to keep districts compact. “Nobody can show fewer coun ties that aren’t split that I’ve seen,” said Sen. Tony Rand, D- Cumberland. The bill now goes to Gov. Mike Easley. If he signs it, the new dis trict lines will be in place until 2010. “The maps are not that terri ble,” said Sen. Virginia Foxx, R- Watauga, in an interview after the Senate meeting, although she added that they should have been taken care of earlier in the year. Both sides of the political spec trum seem to agree that the maps experienced her first hurricane on Oct. 5,1954. She was three years old and horrified. She says despite her efforts, she still feels that same fear every time a storm approaches. “It depends on the category,” she said. “But for that split second, you feel that fear.” J ? Reyes says he feels the fear, me 33-year-old came to the United States from El Salvador in 1991 and has endured about a half dozen serious storms. He says he came to the shelter because he has a lot of friends whose homes aren’t trustworthy in severe weather. He’d rather them all be together at the shelter. “It was supposed to be the hard est storm since seven years ago,” he said. “It’s going to be bad.” Reyes said he thinks the shelter will hold out, and eventually, everyone will pack up and leave. But that’s only the beginning, he said. Morehead City residents still have to go home and pick up the pieces that Hurricane Isabel will leave behind. “I believe we’re going to have the flooding this time," he said. “Plus all the trees will be down. We’ll see how it is tonight.” Contact the State Cf National Editor at stntdeek@unc.ediL are a reasonable outcome and are in compliance with the state con stitution and the federal Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect minority voices in elections. In 2001, Republican legislators took Democrats to court arguing that the district lines drawn at that time were unconstitutional. N.C. Superior Court Judge Knox Jenkins ultimately redrew the lines for the 2002 elections but said legislators had to redraw them again when the new session began in January. Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu. heyondthewaU / Trent GrapMcs Conservative group opposes summer book ‘Nickel and Dimed’ called too liberal BY EMILY STEEL ASSISTANT UNIVERSITY EDITOR AUG. 25 UNC long has con sidered itself a guardian of aca demic independence and freedom of expression. Yet many conservative North Carolinians worry that first-year students will begin a four-year journey of liberal indoctrination today. “There is no attempt to be bal anced,” said N.C. Sen. Ham Horton, R-Forsyth, a frequent crit ic of UNC’s intellectual climate. “As it stands now, I think any conser vative would feel so uncomfortable (at UNC).” During the past two years, con servatives have pointed to UNC’s Summer Reading Program as the manifestation of what they per ceive to be the University’s liberal bias. This year’s selection, Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” first caught the attention of the newly formed Committee for a Better Carolina, a conservative stu dent group. Debate about the choice eventually made its way to the N.C. General Assembly and even onto Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes." Last year’s reading, Michael Sells’ "Approaching the Qur'dn: Hie Early Revelations," sparked an intense national controversy. Academic freedom at the University was questioned when a conservative group filed a lawsuit alleging that UNC’s book choice violated the constitutional require ment of separation of church and state. “Chapel Hill has always been a lightning rod for the state,” Horton said. The debate on “Nickel and Dimed” has placed the University’s supposed political bias, the con tent of the Summer Reading Program and the treatment of low-wage campus workers under scrutiny. Initiating such debate is pre cisely the book’s purpose, UNC administrators say. “The point of the reading is to provoke and incite discussion, and that is what we as a university are all about,” Chancellor James Moeser said. Today, freshmen will discuss the 221-page “Nickel and Dimed,” in which Ehrenreich recounts her three-month experience working as a waitress, housekeeper, dietary aide and Wal-Mart employee. Ehrenreich, who holds a doctor ate and is the author of 12 books, emphasizes the struggle the near impossibility —of surviving on a low-wage income. “Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addi tion possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow,” she writes. Initiating discussion about the condition of low-wage workers on campus was partially why the selection committee chose the book. “It is a useful window into li| |1 PLATES Wap Eailg ®ar Hrd the hardships and the reality of people who have that kind of job,” Moeser said. But critics say the book is too sympathetic to members of the working poor and presents a liber al view of working-class condi tions. “What type of perspective is being played out if you tire putting out a book by a card-carrying socialist?” asked Jim Eltringham, a conservative advocate with ties to the Committee for a Better Carolina. When officials selected “Nickel and Dimed” in April, they didn’t expect the assignment to amount to last year’s national controversy. The choice largely went unno ticed until UNC senior Michael McKnight, founder of the Committee for a Better Carolina, read the book. “I was appalled by what was in it and the resources the University was using to discuss it.” With help from the state’s con servative leaders, the chairman of the N.C. College Republicans knew exactly where to turn. He called on the Ralrigh-based John William Pope Foundation to provide SB,OOO for full-page ads in The (Raleigh) News & Observer and The Dally Tar Heel, accusing UNC of assaulting academic fair* ness and Intellectual honesty. Soon after, some Republican members of the N.C. General Assembly said the book is unwor thy of students at UNC, while oth ers accused UNC of holding a bias against a conservative perspective. Sen. Virginia Foxx, R-Watauga, said the book is fluff. “If the University wants to be thought of as the number one university in the country, then they ought to give books with more substance.” Sen. Hugh Webster, R- Alamance, also discredited “Nickel and Dimed,” calling it “intellectu al pornography.” “The motivation behind the choice of this particular k was not to educate or stimu late; it was to direct,” he said. McKnight said he thinks it’s shameful that outside sources were necessary to provide UNC students with a perspective countering that in Ehrenreich’s book. But Moeser said there are more than two sides to any issue. “It is utterly simplistic if we reduce everything in this country to liber al and conservative,” he said. UNC is the only school to have experienced such widespread con troversy despite the fact that stu dents from more than 15 schools across the nation are discussing “Nickel and Dimed” as part of a summer reading program. “The book would have slipped under the radar if the University hadn’t used ‘Approaching the Qur’an’ last year,” said Janet Arnett, associate dean of students at Indiana State University, which also requested that its students read Ehrenreich’s book this sum mer. Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Jan. 6, 2004, edition 1
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