VOLUME 112, ISSUE 33
Airport debate halts UNC plans
COUNCIL TO DELAY SATELLITE
TIL TRACT’S FATE IS RESOLVED
BY EMMA BURGIN
CITY EDITOR
The Chapel Hill Town Council
decided Wednesday effectively to
postpone planning for Carolina
North until the N.C. General
Assembly has determined the fate
of the Horace Williams Airport.
The council approved a resolu
tion, proposed by member Cam
Hill, that in effect will discourage
ASG’s woes
also appear
nationwide
Students seek to improve
efforts to lobby systems
BY CHRIS COLETTA
ASSISTANT STATE & NATIONAL EDITOR
They are separated by more than 2,500 miles
of U.S. soil, two states bordering two different
oceans, with one favoring chitlins and one pledg
ing its allegiance to tri-tip.
Nevertheless, South Carolina and California
often share the same goals and missions, one of
which educating their
young.— has forced students
to unite in unique ways.
The last decade has been a
turbulent time for higher edu
cation. Budget crunches and
the recent recession have forced
states to take money away from
colleges and universities while
Passing the
TORCH
A three-part
series examining
the effectiveness
of the ASG
Today: A
Nationwide Look
at the same time asking students to offer more in
the form of tuition, moves that have prompted stu
dents everywhere to look for solutions.
Enter state student associations, notably those
in California and the Carolinas.
The South Carolina association has yet to get off
the ground and has turned to the UNC-system
Association' of Student Governments for help. The
California association has been around in its cur
rent form since 1979.
The SCSSA wants to speak on behalf of all stu
dents in S.C. universities. The CSSA represents
the more than 400,000 students in the California
State University system but doesn’t include the
state’s largest colleges, such as the University of
Califomia-Berkeley, UC-Los Angeles and UC-
Davis.
Both groups, however, are joined by one simple
fact: They want to deal with what they view as the
pressing needs of their university systems.
“You cannot find a better long-term investment
than education,” said Zachery Scott, student body
president at the University of South Carolina-
Columbia and one of the SCSSAs founding mem
bers.
Says Susana Gonzalez, executive director of the
CSSA and a graduate student at CSU-Long Beach:
“How you become a responsible citizen of your state
is really important, and this is how that happens.”
Gonzalez and Scott pointed to a laundry list of
problems faced by their systems: increases in
tuition and fees, the eroding quality of the class
room, midyear budget cuts.
They are problems with which students in both
states long have had to deal. They’re the reasons
the CSSA has a full-time lobbyist on its payroll
who’s now fighting to have recent fee increases
overturned, and they’re the reasons South
Carolina students are dipping their feet in the
water of student governance.
SEE GOVERNMENT, PAGE 4
Students air opinions on signage
DTH/JUSTIN SMITH
Athletic Director Dick Baddour and CAA President Will Keith
participate in an open forum Wednesday night on the use of
corporate signage in the University's athletic facilities.
DIVERSIONS
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
The study of pop culture worms its way into
classrooms around the country and at UNC PAGE 5
Serving the students and the University community since 1893
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the council and the town staff from
negotiating with the University on
its proposed plan for the Horace
Williams tract.
“I’m confused,” Hill said. “The
University of North Carolina is
asking us to move forward with our
discussions on Carolina North, and
at the same time, there’s an airport
there.
“My feeling is we should consid-
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Writer Alice Walker speaks to a packed
house in Hill Hall Auditorium on
Wednesday night. She read a sampling of
her poetry and prose. In her talk, Walker advocat
ed for peace and denounced the war in Iraq. She
www.dailytarheel.com
er postponing consideration of
Carolina North until the issue of
the airport is resolved.”
The legislature has stipulated
that the airport remain open until
Jan. 1, 2005, but lawmakers have
indicated in the past that they might
keep it open beyond that date.
Hill’s resolution to delay negoti
ations quickly gained support from
the council, which unanimously
passed it despite reservations
about acting on an item proposed
so recently.
“It makes perfect sense to me,”
council member Bill Strom said. “I
BY LAUREN HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
Students advocated Wednesday for a
limited and nondistracting use of advertis
ing if it must be incorporated into the
University’s major sports venues.
About 50 students packed Union 3205
for an open forum with Athletic Director
Dick Baddour, during which he answered
audience questions and discussed officials’
stance on advertising.
Baddour said that while the use of cor
porate signage is not inevitable, it would be
one of the better options for funding ath
letic scholarships, which likely will cost an
additional $300,000 because of recent
tuition increases.
This year, the Educational Foundation
SEE ADS, PAGE 4
don’t understand why we’re being
criticized for going so slow with a
project that has a monkey on its
back.”
The discussion about Carolina
North and the airport was prompt
ed by a petition from Northhaven
resident A1 Burk that asked the
council to keep the airport open.
“(The airport is) not such a bad
neighbor compared to having such
a dense development,” he said.
Burk said the airport, which lies
on the southern portion of the
Horace Williams tract, would pro
vide a buffer for Northhaven,
ALICE WALKER
DTH/JUSTIN SMITH
won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book
Award in 1983 for “The Color Purple,” one of the
most popular contemporary American novels.
Earlier in the day, Walker and her agent Wendy Weil
spoke to writing students in Greenlaw Hall.
Teens face expanded charges
BY SHANNAN BOWEN
ASSISTANT CITY EDITOR
The simple assault charges filed
against three teenage boys who
were arrested in an altercation with
a Sikh UNC senior last month on
Franklin Street will be amended to
charges of ethnic intimidation as it
was determined that the incident
stemmed from a racial slur.
Gagandeep Bindra met
Wednesday with District Attorney
Carl Fox and Chapel Hill police
Chief Gregg Jarvies to challenge
the decision to exclude ethnic
intimidation from the charges
placed on his attackers.
Bindra, who was born in
Punjab, India, said he was attacked
SPORTS
SWING AND A MISS
Sophomore Adam Kalkhof records eight strikeouts
in the Tar Heels' 8-5 win Wednesday PAGE 13
which is the closest neighborhood
to the proposed development.
N.C. Rep. Joe Hackney, D-
Orange, said Tuesday that the com
mittee appointed to investigate the
fate of the Horace Williams tract
and airport has yet to meet.
But, he said, members of the
committee deemed N.C. Area
Health Education Centers an
important reason to consider keep
ing the airport open.
AHEC uses the airport to trans
port doctors from UNC Hospitals
to more than 15,000 patients
statewide and to help UNC facul
after the teens called him al-Qaida
leader Osama bin Laden, referring
to his brown skin and a scarf,
called a patka, worn over his head.
The perpetrators were arrested
and charged with simple assault,
and the incident was listed as a
hate crime, but Chapel Hill police
left out charges of ethnic intimida
tion on the basis that there was not
a direct link between the verbal
insult and the attack.
N.C. General Statute 14-410.14
(a) makes it a misdemeanor to
assault another person, to damage
property or to make threats
because of a person’s race, color,
religion or national origin.
Jarvies had said that police did
WEATHER
TODAY Sunny, H 67, L 41
FRIDAY Sunny, H 72, L 45
SATURDAY Sunny, H 75, L 53
THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2004
ty and staff continue statewide
teaching programs.
Officials have proposed moving
AHEC to another airport, such as
Raleigh-Durham International.
But officials said Wednesday that
relocation could take five to 10
years.
An AHEC representative told
the council Wednesday that more
than half of AHEC doctors say they
would not be able to participate in
the program if it moved to RDU.
Contact the City Editor
at citydesk@unc.edu.
Racial
dispute
lands
in court
Judge calls for
protective order
BY EMILY STEEL
ASSISTANT UNIVERSITY EDITOR
An employee of the University’s
Department of Laboratory Animal
Medicine must, by order of a
Durham County Superior Court
judge, indefinitely refrain from
contact with a co-worker who has
accused him of harassment
through racial slurs and threats.
Latasha Richmond, a black
employee, sought a protective
order from Martin Voss, her white
co-worker, after claiming she
endured more than seven months
of daily harassment that led to psy
chological distress.
Superior Court Judge Orlando
Hudson officially ordered
Wednesday that Voss refrain from
threatening or coming within 150
feet of Richmond, coming within
150 feet of Berryhill Hall and con
tacting Richmond by telephone or
other means, according to court
documents.
While the University is not a
party in the lawsuit, UNC now is
required to implement court
orders, said Richmond’s attorney
Michael Kornbluth. “The
University has a responsibility at
this time to ensure that this order is
carried out, so we are waiting for
the University to do the right thing.”
Richmond, who has worked at
the University for almost four
years, has endured an environ
ment of racial intimidation and
hostility since Voss began working
in the department around August
2003, Kornbluth said.
Voss represented himself in the
case and could not be reached for
comment Wednesday.
Voss has an extensive criminal
record and was on probation dur
ing at least one harassment inci
dent for unauthorized signing of a
credit card in Nevada, according to
court documents.
Documents state that Voss called
SEE COURT ORDER, PAGE 4
not think there was a direct link
between the assault and the verbal
comment because they did not
happen at the same moment.
But a lawyer for the police
department submitted a memo
that states a precedent for deter
mining the linkage, Bindra said.
According to a report released by
Jarvies, the chain of events, from
the initial verbal encounter to the
assault, can be considered a “con
tinuous transaction,” one continu
ous incident instead of two separate
incidents, and thus fits the ele
ments of ethnic intimidation.
“I have assured Mr. Bindra, and I
SEE CHARGES, PAGE 4
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