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12 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28. 2008 A L MRI SARAH HODGES FROM MY WORD PROCESSOR TO YOUR EARS Sarah Hodges is a senior psychology major from Durham. E-MAIL: SEHODGES0EMAIL UNC EDU OMG! Stop, you sound like an idiot We've moved far from the five-paragraph essays and diagramming sentences of middle school, and our parents are no longer around to correct our grammar (except mas Ik- when were home for the holidays). We need to remember, though, not to slip too far from the rigidity that our teachers instilled in us or else we will become dependent on the lowest form of language: Internet slang. Linguists have long tried to keep up with changes in lan guage. Many slang dictionaries have been published, and now lexicographers reference Web sites like Urban Dictionary to uncover the lat est additions to popular vocabu AT-LARGE COLUMNIST larv. Some words are assimilated into everyday language and a few are even finding their way into the elusive Oxford English Dictionary . Of course, by the time a word is accepted into the general language, the founding group has already coined mul tiple new terms. Slang plays an important role in language. Different social groups use slang to distinguish themselves from others. Young people are especially apt to distance themselves from their elders with their vocabulary. We've already set ourselves apart from our parents with our rapid acquisition of technological skills, and now we are widening the gap with the use of Internet slang. The advent of quickly typed messages, such as instant messages and text messages, created a perceived need for abbreviations and acronyms. But miss|H‘llings like "sux" and "kew-r serve no purpose. These imposters include close to the same number of letters as the real word, providing no benefit for those at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome. These shortcuts and synonyms are fine when used in conversa tion betw een close friends, but a problem arises when people begin to use these terms outside the acceptable media. While some teachers hail the Internet as a fabulous tool for research, others fear that it encourages poor grammar, improper capitalization and mis spelled words. Research shows that people are more likely to misspell a word after seeing it spelled incorrectly elsewhere. These innocent short cuts we use in typed conversation could easily find their way into our midterm papers, and the way our generation relies blindly on spell check, it's not impossible to end up with a few typos in the final draft. While advertisements for text messaging plans are far fetched to portray teens talking solely in acronyms, people do use the occasional "jk" or "wtf?" in spo ken conversations. Scientists have been conduct ing research into the use of the word “like" as slang for more than a decade now. While the word seems to be associated with friendliness, people also view the speaker as less educated. I imagine the same stereotypes fly through many people's heads when they hear *OMG!" aloud, and rightly so. Slang usually serves a purpose, but these acronyms don’t add anything to the conversation except confusion. Are we really so lazy that we need to abbreviate our verbal output? Or are we just so para noid about global wanning that we are trying to curb our release of carbon dioxide into the atmo sphere? Your brain needs to be exer cised just like any other muscle. Save your temporal lobe from atrophy by making good use of the extensive English vocabulary and not just the old fallbacks of Internet slang. And try to capital ize and punctuate your instant messages because, as our elemen tary school teachers always said, practice makes perfect. EDITORIAL CARTOON By Mason Phillips, mphil@email.unc.edu EVOLUTION IN ACTION IS ONLY UGH! ME NO EVEN THEORY. Florida state board or education i s On their honor Universities should hear about cheaters at CHHS Apparently, the UNC men's basketball team is not the only group feel ing pressure during the winter time in Chapel Hill. As Roy's boys try to impress the tournament selection com mittee. upperclassmen in local high schools vie to dazzle col lege admissions officers with essays, applications and most importantly, grades. The cheating scandal uncov ered at Chapel Hill High School shows that this cutthroat race for college application suprem acy has all the competitive spir it of the ACC basketball season but none of its integrity. Unfortunately, the school’s administrators were too lenient in punishing the cheaters. The students used a copied master key to enter the school and acquire answers to an upcoming midterm test. Thus far only four students have been officially suspended. The longest yard Student fee burden a hitch in UNC-C football plan UNC-Charlotte wants its shot at gridiron glory . Students are push ing a proposal to establish a football program at the uni versity. We understand the desire many UNC-Chapel Hill stu dents enjoy spending warm fall afternoons in Kenan Stadium, even if our team doesn’t always win —but we w-onder about the financial feasibility-. UNC-Charlotte’s football feasibility committee released its report Feb. 15, which rec ommended that the university establish a football program by 2012, with two-thirds of the cost of the program coming from student fees. The burden of the program shouldn’t fall so squarely- on the students, and UNC-C would be wise to make sure it secures long-term private donations to help sustain the program. In order to start the program, UNC-C would have to pony up about SlO million. Only a small portion of this budget 5196,000 will go toward a place for the team to play. Now it’s even more sketchy Facebook posts might come back to haunt you The rapid expansion of new tech nology presents com plex legal questions that sometimes cannot be answered before someone suffers the con sequences. Facebook is proving itself to be no exception. Career services officials are becoming increasingly con cerned with the site's impact on students as more and more employers use Facebook to screen applicants. The legal privacy issues are still murky, which is even more reason why users should remain cautious about what they post online and even what they do elsewhere online while logged on to Facebook. Perhaps the greatest risks faced by members are their prospects for employment or Opinion but 20 or more others could be tangled up in this embarrassing mess of academic dishonesty that dates back several years as students reportedly passed the key down to the next class. While it is still early in the investigation process, it seems that the offending students will get off with only short suspen sions and zeroes on the exam. Spokeswoman Stephanie Knott also said that there had been no discussion about con tacting the universities that had accepted these students. If these were in fact seniors, as other students and faculty indicated, then a short suspen sion and a zero at that point in their educational careers are meaningless. Rather than doling out a few weak slaps on the wrist. Chapel Hill High principal Jackie Ellis should use the incident as an example and severely punish the students involved. This is actually one of the big ger sticking points of the whole thing. The team could work out a deal with Mecklenburg County to play in Memorial Stadium for a minimum of about $37,000 per year for six home games, which is reasonable. However, the stadium is nearly 10 miles from campus and would require some ren ovations to make it suitable for use as a Division 1-AA or Division 1-A football facility. Other options are to try to get access to Bank of America Stadium or to build its own facility, which would cost in the ballpark of S6O million to $75 million to build. Besides putting the majority of the financial burden on the students, there are other prob lems with the fee increase pro posal, primarily the 6.5 percent cap on fee increases instituted by the UNC-svstem Board of Governors. In order to raise the requisite funds from student fees, they would have to be increased by $l2O for just the football fee in its first year. But the cap only- admission to graduate schools. Kara Lombardi, the senior associate director at Duke University Career Center, said young alumni often examine job applicants' profiles from their alma mater and send their findings to their company’s human resource department. Some law schools also want to use the site to screen poten tial candidates for admission. No less alarming is a feature, added in November, that tracks members’ activities at other Web sites and posts that infor mation on the news feed. Know-n as Beacon, the pro gram posts information about what members are buying and was formerly difficult for Facebook users to terminate. Facebook has since added Em This is the perfect time to send these students a painful message about the dangers of academic dishonesty, especially if many more were involved and it stretched over several years. In college, where a number of these students might still head next fall, cheating is basically an academic death sentence. Cheating also puts the hon est students at a disadvantage, which is important when college admission is so competitive. The school should notify anv universities to which the guilty students are applying or attending of the scandal. Also, the suspensions should be lon ger term, and the students could be assigned after school cleanup or other community service. Any other students caught having participated should also face the same harsher conse quences. Better that students learn early to be accountable for their actions. allows fees to rise by SBS. mean ing that UNC-C would need an exemption from the BOLL We urge the board not to make an exception to the rule until all other funding possibili ties have been exhausted. The report set aside a maxi muni of 5,000 seats for students, which means that for every game, assuming six home games, students will be paying SSO per seat when only about a quarter of UNC-C students would be able to attend the game. The report recommends that the public pay sls per ticket. The need for sustainable investment is absolutely vital, given the fact that football programs don’t actually make money. According to the Knight Commission, only six of the 119 Division 1-A football programs are consistently profitable i.e. they made money every year over a five-year period. If UNC-C goes ahead with getting a football team, which certainly has its advantages, it needs to make sure that the burden for getting it doesn’t fall w holly on the students. easier opt-out feature, but only after more than 50,000 users signed a MoveOn.org petition in protest. What is most disturbing about these trends is the fact that there is so little transparency in how member information is used. For instance, good luck find ing info on Beacon on Facebook's Web site. (Tty the “Businesses” link at the bottom of the page.) With that in mind, be careful about what you are doing and posting online. You never know’ who might be looking at those drunken pictures of you from last Thursday night. Although Facebook is a con venient social networking tool, only informed users will be able to fight back against these gross invasions of privacy. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Folks wont Imk at the water coming out of the tap the way theyll look at filling up their car with gasoline.” RANDEE HAVEN-O'DONNELL, CARRBORO ALDERMAN LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Due to space constraints, letters are sometimes cut Read the full-length versions, or post your own response to a letter, editorial or story online. VISIT www.daifytarheel.com/feedback Alumni have really good reasons to leave early TO THE EDITOR: Gary Kayye’s unresolved parental issues notwithstanding, I can only hope his call for greater efforts to keep people from leav ing games early goes unheeded (“Students, stop alumni from leav ing basketball games," Feb. 26). What already goes on is shame ful and disrespectful enough as it is. and I’m not talking about the people who leave early. I fail to see a problem with people leaving early. They are not taking away seats that would otherwise be yours. They are not blocking your view of the game. They are not increasing the chances we will lose. Nor is leaving early necessarily a sign of disrespect to the team. Indeed, when the Heels are up by 25 with three minutes left, for ail practical purposes it is over, and the people who leave early know this. It is the students who chant “It’s not over” who disrespect the team by assuming there remains any doubt about the result. Alumni do not have the luxury of walking 10 minutes across campus to their dorms. Leaving three minutes early can be the difference between a 30-minute trip and an hour and 30 minute trip home, and few people other than under graduates can afford an extra hour sitting in traffic. The resulting efforts to shame people into staying are them selves shameful. The people who leave early are equally members of the Carolina family, and boo ing them is a disrespect to them, to your school and to the team as you divert your attention away from the game and onto the crowd. I ike it or not, these are people whose donations largely paid for the seats you sit in. By booing them, you prove .yourselves to be the spoiled, ungrateful brats they (probably) already think you are. Stay focused on the game, let people leave in peace and take their seats when they’re gone. It’s a free country, and they paid for their tickets, so leave them to use them or not. Seth Bordner Graduate Student Philosophy Crowd was very rude at Will Ferrell performance TO THE EDITOR: Asa recent attendee to the Will Ferrell show at the Smith Center, I was delighted to be present for Ferrell s Ron Burgundy interview of Roy Williams. How awesome to see Roy and Will together on stage. If only I could have heard them over the constant cat calling, screeching and yelling from the audience. I could not believe the barrage of interrup tions screamed from the stands throughout the show nor did I think it fair for drunk or simply rude audience members to dis tract the performers and ruin the experience of everyone else who also paid $45 to get in. I suspect that after the show the performers talked about how obnoxious the crowd was, and I’m ashamed that it will be a Tar Heel crowd of which they are speaking. Kirsten Moe Class of 1999 SPEAK OUT WRITING GUIDELINES: ► Please type: Handwritten letters will not be accepted. ► Sign and date: No more than two people should sign letters. ► Students: Include your year, major and phone number. ► Faculty/staff: Include your department and phone number. ► Edit: The OTH edits for space, clarity, accuracy and vulgarity. Limit letters to 2SO worts. SUBMISSION: ► Drop-off: at our office at Suite 2409 in the Student Union ► E-mail: to editdesk@unc.ethj ► Send: to P.O. Box 3257. Chapel Hill. N.C., 27515. EDITOR'S NOTE: Columns, cartoons and toners do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Daily Tar Heel or its staff. Editorials are the opinions solely of The Daily tar Heel erflto rial board The board consists of eight board members, the associate opinion editor the opinion editor and the editor. The 2007-06 editor decided not to vote on the board (Ihr Daily (Ear Hrrl SDS activities were useful but also misrepresented TO THE EDITOR: Charles Dahan’s column, “Real SDS didn’t need childish gimmicks’ (Feb. 26), amounts to another personal attack against UNC Students for a Democratic Society by The Daily Tar Heel (the fourth in a row for those keeping score at home). Dahan expresses outrage at our use of theatrics and “pub licity stunts,’ alleging that they detracted from the messages of Thursday’s two speakers: Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraq- American, and Jason Hurd, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. I’ve personally talked with many of the folks, new and old, who were present at Thursdays events, and almost everyone found the activities to be posi tive, educational and, in the case of the teach-in (which was again ignored by the DTH), moving. The bulk of the criticism and misunderstandings come from the pages of this publication. The unfortunate fact is that the UNC community is not engaged with what’s happening in Iraq; most students have no direct stake in it, even though we are very much responsible for the atrocities there. We are charged then with finding ways to attract their attention while still being infor mative and persuasive. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But the reality is that we need peace now. If you have any sugges tions, come talk to us. We’re not going anywhere. Clint Johnson Member, Students for a Democratic Society Editor’s note: Clint Johnson is a former DTH summer editor. Americans should know the definition of 'theory' TO THE EDITOR: I’m elated that the Florida State Board of Education has decided to include evolution in the curriculum as a “scientific theory" (“Fla. reopens evolution debate," Feb. 25). Given that there is no classifi cation for a concept that unifies natural phenomena above that of theory, I’m curious as to what they might have termed it were it not for the outrage of scien tifically minded school boards statewide. Less sarcastically, the fact that so many Americans have no idea what the scientific defi nition of “theory" is is extremely unnerving. Something that one observes in nature (gravity, natural selec tion) is a law, the ideas and con cepts that attempt to explain said laws comprise a theory. To attempt to denigrate the theory of evolution by calling it a theory only reveals addi tional ignorance regarding the subject. Kevin Franzese Senior Biology (Thr Daily ear Hrrl Established 1893, 115 years ofeditorialfreedom ERIN ZUREICK EDITOR, 962-4086 ZUREKKOEMAILUNC.EDU OFFKE HOURS: MON.. WED., FRI 1-2 P.M ADAM STORCK OPINION EDITOR, 962-0750 APSTORCKOUNC.EDU JONATHAN TUG MAN ASSOCIATE OPINION EDITOR. 962-0750 TUGMANOUNC EDU EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS JESSICA SCISM SARAH WHITWORTH KATHRYN AROIZZONE SARAH IETRENT DUNCAN CARLTON EIYSE MCCOY GRAHAM ROWE DAVID GIANCASPRO
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 28, 2008, edition 1
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