VOLUME 112, ISSUE 17 Graduate hikes blocked RICHMAN: BOG MOVE TO CUT PLANS WILL HAVE ILL EFFECTS •Y MEGAN SEROW STAFF WRITER Officials from the School of Social Work said the UNC-system Board of Governors made an arbi trary decision when deciding to cut a school tuition increase proposal by $2,400. The BOG approved Friday an SBOO, two-year tuition increase for the school, but the original pro posal, approved by the UNC- Chapel Hill Board ofTrustees, had requested a $3,200 increase dur ing the next two years. WM • >' v 'V- v • W* v v* r msBL p '% v.', piIHEHR v ' „ „ ( v ' ; . h ■' /'■ •• iiiiirtiPErZ •• ✓*t&.m H IBHj ' ' . ~ . ' ', ■ * ■,' ' v„ ;• Sophomore Blake Wynia takes aim at a fake hockey goalie Monday afternoon in the Pit to win various Carolina Hurricanes prizes. Hurricanes representa tives were on campus to promote “Tailgate with the Canes,” which takes place tonight at the RBC Center in Raleigh. Hamas pledges to avenge slain leader STAFF AND WIRE REPORT Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians chanting “Revenge! Revenge!” flooded the streets of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on Monday to bury Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by an Israeli missile. As ordinary Palestinians seethed with anger, militants pledged unprecedented retaliation, including threats against the United States. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and many world leaders condemned Monday’s killing of Yassin, the most prominent Palestinian targeted by Israel in 3 years of fighting. The Bush admin istration said that it was “deeply troubled” by the attack and that it had no advance warning. “We will get revenge for every drop of blood that spilled,” said Salman Bdeiri, a Hamas supporter crying near the mosque where Yassin prayed shortly before being killed by an Israeli airstrike. Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, banning Palestinians from Israel, and placed its securi ty forces on high alert. Later Monday, Palestinian mili tants fired several homemade rock ets and mortar shells at Israeli tar gets in and near Gaza. To the north, Hezbollah guerrillas fired an anti tank missile at Israeli troops along Israel’s border with Lebanon. The Yassin assassination was INSIDE INTEGRATION Elizabeth Eckford, one of the "Little Rock Nine," speaks at Women's Week PAGE 2 Serving the students and the University community since 1893 01ir lath} ®ar Heel Jack Richman, dean of the School of Social Work, said the decrease will have an extremely negative impact on one of the nation’s top-ranking schools. “I have to attract the very best students from in and out of state, and I have to keep the very best fac ulty,” he said. “In order to do that, I have to have enough money to keep faculty here. This proposal was my very best attempt at that.” Richman said that 47 percent of the proposed increase was ear marked for financial aid that would HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES! “ Israel is bracing itself for a retaliation that will surely come” JONATHAN LINCOLN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s effort to crush Hamas ahead of a possible Israeli with drawal from Gaza. But Peter W. Singer, director of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, said the efforts could backfire and galvanize Palestinians behind the group. And indeed, rival Palestinian militant groups immediately pledged soli darity with Hamas. “I don’t think the implications are going to be all that positive for (the United States),” Singer said. “The tactics of these strikes in gen eral and the repercussions of hit ting him, in particular, and turning him into this sort of martyr, I think, is just going to lead to more violence in the end.” Since Yassin founded Hamas in 1987, the group has killed hun dreds of Israelis in scores of attacks. Hamas wants to destroy the Jewish state and replace it with an Islamic one. SEE ISRAEL, PAGE 5 INSIDE EXPANDING OUTWARD UNC's development projects on Mason Farm Road concern residents PAGE 3 www.dailytaiheel.com allow the most qualified students attend the school. Without the aid, many students could not attend the school, where tuition and fees per semester now amount to $2,134.27 for residents and $8,133.27 for nonresidents. Richman said the decrease also imposes other restrictions on the school, including keeping up with new technology. “Everybody basi cally understood why we felt the proposed level was necessary,” he said. “The students concurred that it was important, but the BOG decid ed that those perspectives didn’t need to be taken into account.” Calls to BOG members were not returned Monday. The event is a special college night that features lower tick et rates with a student ID: S2O for lower level seats and $lO for upper level. Two bands, Extra Medium and 6 Inch Voices, will perform at a tailgate party prior to the game. The Hurricanes play the Philadelphia Flyers at 7 p.m. Mandatory ASG fee questioned BY AMY THOMSON STAFF WRITER Members of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments defended Monday the mandatory student fee that funds the organization. The state ments came after a member of the system’s Board of Governors pro posed making the fee voluntary. BOG member Brent. Barringer said at the board’s meeting Friday that he wants to review the use and purpose of the fee and that he would like to give individual cam puses the choice to opt out of it. While students are charged only an average of $1 annually, the money collected adds up to about Hip-hop star Nas to headline UNC show BY KATE LORD STAFF WRITER From his humble New York City beginnings to his 1994 debut album Illmatic, Nas has spread his hip-hop influence far and wide. That influence will make its way down South when he per forms at 8 p.m. April 22 in the Smith Center. The concert will mark the first concert at the venue since the Barenaked Ladies’ show Oct. 27, 2000. R.E.M. had been scheduled to perform last fall but moved to Raleigh’s Alltel Pavilion at Walnut Creek, instead. The last show near this magnitude that Carolina Dan Herman, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, said he also is confused about the reasons behind the BOG decreasing the proposed amount for the school. “They weren’t being protested at all,” he said of the increase. “In most cases it seemed that the stu dents were okay with it and/or con sulted during the process.” Richman said he will continue to work with private fund-raising efforts to raise money for the school. He said that the school recently received a $1.2 million donation earmarked for maintaining faculty but that the school still needs funds SEE TUITION, PAGE 5 DTH/GILLIAN BOLSOVER $140,000 to $160,000 each year. Without a dependable source of funding, some members of the ASG said, the viability of the asso ciation could be damaged. “The fee has made it possible for the organization to advocate for students,” said Victor Landry, sen ior vice president of the ASG, not ing the organization’s work to keep tuition increases at a minimum. But some in the BOG said they are curious as to how the money is being spent and whether so much money is necessary. “I just don’t know what the pur pose of those funds are, how they have been spent over the past cou ple of years,” Barringer said. Union Activities Board produced was OutKast’s Carmichael Auditorium performance in 2000. CUAB President Chris Lamb said the board considered artists ranging from Missy Elliott to Tom Petty but eventually settled on the Queens native. “Nas is one of the elder states men of hip hop of the early ’9os out of the East Coast,” he said. “He’s been long considered one of the best MCs'.” Student tickets, available at the Carolina Union and Smith Center box offices, went on sale Monday. These $lO tickets are available solely for students for a two week SPORTS LOOKING AHEAD UNC hopes to learn from its losses and reclaim its past glory next year PAGE 11 wkmmjm DTH/JESSICA RUSSELL Chapel Hill Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt presented petitions to expand homosexuals' civil rights at a meeting Monday. Council to mull same-sex rights Kleinschmidt petitions spark debate BY DAN SCHWIND ASSISTANT CITY EDITOR The debate over same-sex mar riage moved closer to home Monday as Chapel Hill Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt presented three petitions to the council designed to expand homosexual civil rights. Of the three petitions, the one likely to gamer die most attention asks local lawmakers to sponsor a yet-to-be drafted state bill repeal ing the Defense of Marriage Act. Kleinschmidt said such an action would open the door for more equal treatment of mem bers of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. While same-sex couples still would be unable to be married in Chapel Hill under state law, a repeal of the DOMA would allow the town to recognize legal mar riages performed elsewhere in the country and provide those cou ples with the same benefits accorded to married couples. “My petition is for the explicit purpose of recognizing any mar riage every marriage that is legally obtained,” Kleinschmidt said. He said he first began contem plating such an action several weeks ago after municipalities nationwide began issuing mar riage licenses. Residents began contacting Kleinschmidt and inquiring “I know it’s only a dollar per stu dent, but it adds up. ... I’m sure they need a certain amount of funds, but I don’t know if they need that much.” He suggested that oth ers in the BOG think the same way, but he wouldn’t name members. ASG President Jonathan Ducote said that although it’s the BOG’s obligation to review the association’s funding, he doesn’t believe Barringer’s proposal will come to pass, especially in light of the association’s yearly audit. “(Barringer) doesn’t have an understanding of what the associ ation fee’s all about,” Ducote said. Ducote said that he and BOG member Ben Ruffin, as well as period until April 5. Then, tickets will be open to the public at the price of $25. Because the total capacity of the concert will take up only one fourth of the Dean Dome seating, students should reserve tickets as soon as possible. There is a 4,000-person cap on the student tickets out of the 5,250 available seats. “We want as many students as possible to attend,” Lamb said, “but we need to sell general public tickets to subsidize the cost of the show for students.” The show will cost $83,000 to SEE NAS, PAGE 5 WEATHER TODAY Sunny, H 54, L 33 WEDNESDAY Partly cloudy, H 64, L 46 THURSDAY Partly cloudy, H 72, L 44 TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2004 about the feasibility of such action in Chapel Hill. “People have been asking me for several weeks now what we can do,” he said. “It finally dawned on me.... The greatest obstacle in North Carolina is (the DOMA).” The act was first signed into law in 1996 by President Clinton. It defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman and further stipulates that states do not have to recog nize a marriage of same-sex part ners in a different state. State Rep. Verla Insko, D- Orange, said she believed Kleinschmidt’s petitions help bring to light issues not given much attention in the debate about homosexual rights. “There are a lot of issues the public is unfamiliar with,” she said. “Some very basic things that we take for granted.... The issue here is the protection of civil rights.” Insko pointed out that the peti tions, if put in place, would allow same-sex couples access to some of the rights extended to married couples. Many states require evidence of relation by marriage or blood for the purposes of hospital visi tation, inheritance laws and other benefits. The first petition Kleinschmidt proposed would expand the pro- SEE MARRIAGE, PAGE 5 some members of the Budget and Finance Committee, plan to meet with Barringer to discuss the money’s usage and importance. He added that the meetings will demonstrate the ASG’s efficiency. “We passed the audit with flying colors last time,” Ducote said. The ASG’s audit showed a dis crepancy of about $20,000 between actual revenues and pro jected revenues. Ducote said the discrepancy is due to inefficiencies in the relatively new collection sys tem. Some schools still are sending in their fees from spring 2003. He added that wrinkles in the SEE ASG FEES, PAGE 5 COURTESY OF CUAB Hip-hop icon Nas, creator of the legendary Illmatic and last year's God's Son, will perform at the Dean E. Smith Center on April 22. a