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Locals debate alcohol policies
BY LAURA OLENIACZ
STAFF WRITER
Locals from all different areas
of the Chapel Hill community are
engaging in a fight against underage
drinking, but there is less consensus
on the extent of the problem and the
best way to fight its upward trend.
Some Chapel Hill Town Council
members have supported a state
wide beer keg registration policy that
would require merchants to track
keg purchases, allowing law enforce
ment officials to prosecute those who
supply alcohol to minors.
“This is a nationwide issue, per
vasive through all of the commu
nity, not just college towns,” said
council member Jim Ward, who
first requested that keg registration
be added to the council’s legislative
requests in February.
Twenty-three other states and
the District of Columbia now have
similar registration policies.
But concerned parents such as
Dale Pratt-Wilson, who formed
the Committee for Alcohol- and
Drug-Free Teenagers, say better
community interaction might be a
more practical solution.
“There’s a tremendous amount
2 professors earn national award
BY KATHRYN BALES
STAFF WRITER
University professors are two
of 186 recipients of the presti
gious John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation fellowships for excel
lence in academics.
Gerald Postema, a Cary C.
Boshamer Professor of philosophy,
and Donald Raleigh, a Jay Richard
Judson Distinguished Professor
of history, received the distinction
and will receive a portion of the
$7,112,000 available for research.
Judith Wegner, chairwoman of
the faculty, said faculty members’
success in winning the awards
reflects well on the University
because the fellowships are not
easy to get.
“They are distinguished faculty,
and I’m glad they were successful
in seeking the awards,” she said.
The Guggenheim Foundation
provides fellowships for indi
vidual professionals in a variety
of fields.
Raleigh was recognized for his
work in Russian history on a book
about Soviet baby boomers. As part
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the council and the community can
do to address the issue,” she said.
Pratt-Wilson’s group told the
council in December that to curb
underage substance abuse, officials
might hire additional Alcohol Law
Enforcement officers, increase edu
cational programs in schools and
establish more substance-abuse
treatment facilities in the county.
Area high school officials recent
ly reviewed changes to their sub
stance abuse policy, advocating
more preventive measures.
“This is the first time ... where
this kind of energy has been put into
... the need to address substance
abuse,” said Stephanie Willis, health
services coordinator for Chapel
Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
She said substance-abuse worries
always existed but were revitalized
with Pratt-Wilson’s committee.
Pratt-Wilson said substance
abuse is not just a local problem, but
a national epidemic. Bill Patterson
of the Pacific Institute for Research
and Evaluation in Chapel Hill said
such concerns are not unfounded.
He said that in North Carolina,
the total cost resulting from under
age drinking is about $1.3 billion.
of his work, he is preparing a collec
tion of fiill-length interviews for col
lection by Indiana University Press.
Raleigh was unavailable for
comment Wednesday.
Postema was honored for his
work in law and philosophy on
public discipline.
Postema has been a part of the
campus community for 25 years,
but in the coming year he will take
a leave of absence to pursue the sub
ject of his fellowship, “The Discipline
of Public Reason,” and act as a fellow
at the National Humanities Center
in Research Triangle Park.
He said UNC professors’ ability
to receive the award looks good for
the school as a whole.
“It shows that the University has
people on this faculty recognized
for scholastic excellence,” Postema
said. “I regard myself as very lucky
and greatly honored.”
He said the program gives a
small number of fellowships across
the country and in a large range of
disciplines.
“This is an extremely prestigious
fellowship,” he said. “It is a very
A survey conducted last year
showed that 52 percent of Chapel
Hill high school students con
sumed alcohol within one month
of the survey 8 percentage points
above the national average.
Those results sparked much of
the recent controversy, Willis said,
though she said the results might
be exaggerated because only 134
students were polled. A more com
prehensive survey taken from about
3,000 high school students will be
released at the end of May, she said.
Willis said she stands behind
efforts to fight substance abuse and
thinks that it is a problem every
where, not just in college towns.
But Tony Mills, assistant super
visor at the state ALE office in
Raleigh, said is hard to ignore that
there is a larger underage popula
tion in a college town. “You see
more citations in college-town areas
... because of their populations.”
There are two ALE officers respon
sible for Chapel Hill. Pratt-Wilson’s
committee will continue its efforts at
a meeting later this month.
Contact the City Editor
at citydesk@unc.edu.
broadly based academic program
and is extremely competitive.”
Postema said his fellowship has
both a historical and contemporary
focal point.
“I hope to better understand the
nature of practical reasoning as it
was understood in the common law
tradition to understand the idea of
practical knowledge starting in the
17th century,” he said.
Postema said his fellowship
grew out of work he has done for
a long time.
“I see this project as a culmi
nation of thinking and speaking
and writing on this topic, much of
which has formed my teaching over
the last two decades,” he said.
Wegner said the fellowships are
highly competitive awards that are
quite highly regarded and handled
on a national level.
“I think it’s important for us to
emphasize attention on the inter
national issues set forth in these
projects.”
Contact the University Editor
at udesk@unc.edu.
News
Diversity group to issue report soon
BY RACHEL BROCK
STAFF WRITER
The Chancellor’s Task Force on
Diversity is steps away from deter
mining the state of diversity on
campus and submitting a report to
Chancellor James Moeser before
the semester’s end.
The task force met Wednesday
to review a preliminary draft of the
report that it hopes to have complet
ed and brought before the chancellor
by the end of this month.
“I think we’ve come an enormous
way to be this far,” law professor
Charles Daye said of the task force
that met for the first time last fall.
During Wednesday’s meeting,
the group discussed changes that
should be made to the document,
which will be compiled by a profes
sional writer and circulated once
again for final approval from the
committee.
The group viewed a first draft of
the report and brainstormed a vari
ety of ideas for the final copy.
Members debated a number of
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recommendations to determine
how specific each would be.
The process is a long one because
they want to be sure that the final
report reflects the feelings of the
38-member task force, said Archie
Ervin, director of the Office for
Minority Affairs.
In December, the task force devel
oped five core values vision and
commitment to diversity, the pres
ence of diversity, educational benefits
of diversity, responsible interactions
and a supportive climate to guide
them throughout the process.
At the beginning of this semester,
a survey sent to students, faculty
and staff inquired about their views
of diversity on campus. The Office of
Institutional Research used a variety
of methods such as questionnaires,
focus groups and interviews in hopes
of gaining a comprehensive under
standing of the issue.
After subcommittees received the
research results in March, the com
plete task force came together to hear
presentations and discuss how they
would condense the findings into a
coherent report for Moeser.
Although the task force aims to
complete its formal duties when
it submits recommendations to
the chancellor, officials said the
University will continue to exam
ine diversity issues in the future.
“This is not the end of either
examination of diversity or the end
of research on the state of diversi
ty,” said Cookie Newsom, director
of diversity education and research
for the Office for Minority Affairs.
The University community will
need to follow up the task force’s
work by taking meaningful steps
and ensuring that the commit
ment to diversity is not ignored,
members said.
Incentives need to be provided
to faculty and staff to promote
diversity in the future, Ervin said.
“In a year hence, I would like to
see a report card on this.”
Contact the University Editor
at udesk@unc.edu.
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