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8 MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2008 SHRUTI SHAH AND RACHEL GOLDHABER Shruti and Rachel are co-chairwomen of Holocaust Rememberance Week E-MAIL: SHRUTISOEMAJLUNC.EDU How can we make never again a reality? As Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service once said, “We can not retreat to the conve nience of being overwhelmed.' This week is Holocaust Remembrance Week, and we wanted to take the time to under stand why so many of us become overwhelmed by genocide, while also focusing on the proactive steps we can take toward peace. One of the challenges we might face is the complexity of ending genocide. It is difficult for most of us to truly relate to the horrific life experiences of survivors of geno cide. Many of us can’t even imag ine losing a parent, brother, sister GUEST COLUMNISTS or friend to gas chambers, guns and machetes. It is astounding that this is a reality for hundreds thousands of people even in 2008. As college students, it is easy for many of us to become removed from problems or issues that are worlds away. It seems like most of our concerns revolve around our own lives. Sometimes world issues get lost in the shuffle of life. We hope that one day being concerned with what is going on in the world becomes just as impor tant as what is going on in our own lives. We are all global citizens whose ultimate goal should be the advancement of humankind. After 12 million people were killed in the Holocaust the world community said “never again.' Unfortunately, “never again* has not become a reality. How do we make 'never again” our reality? We propose taking three steps to help make this our reality. First, educate yourself. Educate your friends, your family and your children. Learn about the Holocaust. Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur. With education comes a greater awareness of the hatred and propaganda that led to genocide. Second, remember. Remember the victims, the adults, the chil dren, the homosexuals, the minori ties and the people who were willing to stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves. Remember the survivors, for it is their stories that provide an essen tial link to our understanding of these horrific events. We can remember in differ ent ways. We can light candles for those who were killed. We can paint messages of hope on tents to send to refugees of the current genocide in Darfur; we can read names of Holocaust vic tims in a 24-hour vigil honoring their memory; and we can hear Holocaust survivors tell their sto ries. learning from Holocaust sur vivors is of particular importance because we are the last generation to have the opportunity to talk with them face to face. Each story is unique; every lost story is a lost opportunity. Survivors courageously share their stories to raise awareness of the devastating effects of geno cide, and it is our privilege, honor and responsibility to learn their stories and pass on their mes sage. Their stories of courage give us hope and inspire us to look for the good in humanity Perhaps the greatest way to honor the victims of past genocides is to take action. That is our third step. We encourage you to take an action that is meaningful. Whether you choose to actively participate in organizations like SUDAN or Dimes for Darfur or sign a petition to ask your local representatives to support leg islation that takes steps to end genocide, both help you become a change agent. Part of action is also speaking out against deroga tory speech toward others. We have to be the voice for the voice less, and as educated Carolina Students, we are that voice. We hope that Holocaust Remembrance Week will provide you with the opportunity to edu cate yourself remember and take action to help make “never again' a reality . EDITORIAL CARTOON ByMasonPhillips.mphil@email.unc.edu $ [ROCK CHALK, SHELLSHOCKED! ; The science of teaching UNC-BEST should help ease need for science teachers In the next year the N.C. education system will be in need of about 525 new science teachers. The entire UNC system produced almost 200 certified teachers last year, and that number is down from the year before. While this shortage of quali fied science instructors might work wonders for the bargaining power of the few teachers there are, the value of an N.C. public education certainly takes a hit because of the deficit . Luckily, a savvy new Sch(x>l of Education program called the UNC-Baccalaureate Education in Science and Teaching, or UNC-BEST, should help buck that trend. The program allows under graduate biology or physics Checking on charters Charter schools should be held to certification mandates The state Board of Education made the right decision Thursday when it approved new rules that penal ize charter schools for not having enough licensed teachers. The purpose of the penalties is to pressure charter schools to follow state guidelines that require them to have 75 per cent of their elementary school teachers and 50 percent of their middle and high school teach ers licensed by the state. Under the new laws, charter schools that don’t have enough licensed teachers will face a vari ety of financial repercussions. Schools that don’t meet the requirements for certified teach ers at the start of the school year will have state dollars withheld from the headmaster's salary . The salaries of the highest paid noneertified teachers will be docked in the second and third months, and after Feb. 1, state officials would suggest closing the school. These penalties are an effective way of holding char ter schools to some degree of accountability without dimin Mistakes on a plane The FAA must remember who its real customers are There’s nothing quite like smooth and friendly cooperation between two organizations. Smiles replace grimaces; compromises replace standoffs; and ultimately, suc cesses replace failures. However, when two working organizations become too Close ly involved with each other, as in the case of the Federal Aviation Administration and Southwest Airlines, carelessness and inef ficiency reign supreme, causing public airline safety and security to crash and bum. The FAA needs to remem ber that it is ultimately held accountable to the public, not the airlines. The $10.2 million fine imposed on Southwest is a step toward fixing the system. FAA inspector Bobby Boutris recently testified in front of the House Transportation Committee, claiming that supervisors had downplayed his warnings of skipped fuse Opinion majors to simultaneously earn their science degree and attain N.C. teacher certifica tion during their four vears at UNC-Chapel Hill. TYpically. prospective teach ers major in education or return to college after graduating to be able to teach. UNC-BEST should streamline the process and, in doing so, attract more talented graduates to the waning ranks of teachers. There's always a balancing act for teachers between knowl edge of the material and ability to teach it effectively. Now, UNC science majors aiming to teach should be able to do both well. The School of Education has also offered a few scholarship enticements to the program. The Burroughs Wellcome ishing their independence. The purpose of charter schools, to provide a nontradi tional education, necessitates some degree of autonomy. For the state to exert any more con trol than it does for instance, by dictating curriculum would defeat the schools’ purpose. However, because the state funds charter schools through taxpayers' dollars, it still must have some measures in place to ensure that the charter schools are teaching effectively. It is important to note that every teacher at regular public high schools is required by state law to be certified or actively pursuing a certificate. Compared to other publicly funded schools, the teacher licensing require ments for charter schools are actually quite liberal. In setting fairly loose require ments, the board of education has managed to balance char ter schools' accountability with their independence. The penalties are also appro priate because they initially put only faculty salaries, not funds available to students, at stake. lage inspections bv Southwest Airlines since 2003. While the skipped inspections did not result in any crashes, they certainly could have. Just 10 years ago, a flight attendant was sucked out of an Aloha 737 airplane when it shredded in midflight because of a crack in the fuselage that was missed by FAA inspections. Douglas Parker, another FAA inspector working with Southwest Airlines, relayed a similarly disturbing tale, saying his supervisor threatened to fire him and his wife if he continued to type reports of unethical prac tices by the airline. According to Nicholas Sabatini, FAA associate admin istrator for safety', the inspec tion oversights result from the FAAs overly intimate relation ship with the airlines. The FAA treats and even refers to the airlines it must inspect as ‘customers," when it’s Fund has created a Scholars Program, another smart way to reel students in to the science teaching profession. Scholarships are $6,500 annually for junior and senior years, with a $5,000 annual sal ary supplement if the student continues to teach in the state. By simplifying the process and allowing UNC science students to multitask, we expect this program will succeed in getting more qualified and motivated teachers into high school class rooms around North Carolina. We all owe teachers for some aspects of our academic and personal growth. Its the least we can do to see to it that more talented instructors continue to open minds and change lives in the future. Thus, the punishments will be directed at the people responsible for the noncom pliance, and the effects of any financial withholdings will not be felt by students. While the state has done a good job of finding a way to enforce its licensing require ments without endangering the quality of students’ educa tions, it must keep in mind the limitations of setting numerical standards of accountability'. There are effective teachers throughout the world who don’t have legal accreditation, just as there arc licensed teachers who can’t teach two plus two. It is crucial that the state have some way of closely moni toring schools' performances so it can measure the intangibles that things such as licensing quotas don’t account for. The state should also work with charter schools to help them increase the number of teacher certifications as the penalties take effect. This way, charter schools’ independence will survive, along with their qualified teachers. dear that the FAAs real custom ers those who should benefit from the FAAs services are the people who fly throughout the country on a daily basis. Fortunately, the courage of Boutris and Parker has begun to crack open this dangerous cul ture. In addition to the fine on Southwest, the FAA has called for a thorough and industry wide evaluation of inspection practices. Already, American, Delta and United airlines have can celed flights in order to take a closer look at the planes. We salute the FAA for its newfound resolve to do its job. As it considers ways to revamp its inspection system, it should institute large fines and strong sanctions against airline com panies and employees who seem to forget that their princi pal customer is the public and they are responsible for their customers’ safety'. QUOTE OF THE DAY: U I told someone it looked like we have never played basketball before QUENTIN THOMAS, UNC SENIOR GUARD LETTERS TO THE EDITOR feel strongly about something that has been printed? Post your own response to a letter, editorial or story online. VISIT www.dailytarheel.com/feedback Campus Health should be able to provide info 24/7 TO THF. EDITOR: Before coming here in the fall, 1 had no idea how many times I would have maneuver my way through the bureaucratic, non common sense approach that the University sometimes takes. Friday night about 3 a.m., I'm standing in the pouring rain just off Franklin Street Unfortunately, my friend had just suffered a (very) broken nose, and I needed advice from someone other than Joe Schmo drunk on Franklin. I called the 24-hour phone line at Campus Health. The woman on the line immediately wanted to speak to my friend, and when I told her he was certainly in no condition to come to the phone, she did not seem satisfied. Before my question could be answered, my friend would need to provide some information, including a whole slew of medical information most people would not know offhand. Once again, I simply asked in general, would a person need to be taken care of tonight or could it wait until morning, but it was to no avail. 1 understand that such a large University has rules in place for a reason, but I believe that what separates a simply large institution from a large, quality institution is the willingness to make critical distinctions where such exist. In addition, this policy makes students less likely to seek medi cal help for fear of “getting into trouble’ and makes it nearly impossible for a student to seek medical advice if the student is not in a situation conducive to locating all this information. I still can't believe such a simple question could not be answered. Mart Cohen Sophomore Political Science Columnist cited incorrect interpretation of study TO THE EDITOR. It should be noted that Sam Perkins completely misinterpret ed the study he referenced in his column, “Take the race card out of the deck" (April 4). In the study, called “The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities," Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung determined that ‘elimi nating affirmative action would reduce acceptance rates for African-American and Hispanic applicants by as much as one-half to twx>-thirds and have an equiva lent impact on the proportion of underrepresented minority stu dents in the admitted class.’ In addition, they found that if affirmative action was removed, “Asian applicants would gain the most’ because “they would occupy four out of every five seats created by accepting few African-Americans and Hispanic students." This does not mean that Asians are currently disadvantaged by affirmative action, as Perkins sug gested. Thus, Perkins’ entire argu ment that we should take the race card out of the deck was based on his misinterpretation of a study. Being that the study emphasized the necessity of affirmative action, we all should question why we were so quick to believe Perkins. Anthony Maglione Junior Psychology 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 DTH edits for space, clarity, accuracy and vulgarity. Limit letters to 250 words. SUBMISSION; ► Drop-off: at our office at Suite 2409 in the Student Union. ► E-mail; to edhdeskOunc.edu ► Send: to P.O. Box 3257. Chapel Hiß, N.C., 27515. EOrrOB’S NOTE: Columns, cartoons and tetters do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Daily Tar Heet or its staff. Editorials are die opinions solely of The Daily Tar Heel edito rial board The board consists of nine board members, the associate opinion editor, the opinion editor and the editor The 2007-08 editor decided not to vote on the board (Ehr Snilij (Ear Hrd Subconscious racism can be eliminated from society' TO THE EDITOR: The recent debate on this page concerning crime rate compari sons between races leads me to point out some things I believe to be true. First, as Anthony Maglione points out (“Use of statistics with out context is misleading,’ April 3), discussions of these statistics must be viewed from a socioeco-. nomic perspective in order to be better understood. This helps us explain why crime and convic tion rates are disparate between certain demographics. Also, the problem with a per son reporting a suspect as a “black male* Ls that this assumption is a racist one. Maglione calls it an ‘individual racism," and I would call it subconscious racism. While the person who reported the crime probably does not har bor hatred toward other races, the positioning of the “black male" in his mind as the most plausible suspect represents a racism that lies within the core of our culture. This is the same reason that races are largely separated in the Pit, Lenoir and other social hot spots. So what do we do about this? We stop qualifying descriptions of characters in our personal anecdotes as “black” or “white." We no longer describe a friend to another friend as “the black guy who works at the deli." We make friends with persons who do not look like us, and we invest in unity by getting to know them. To some this may sound ridic ulous, but I doubt anyone who has tried a similar approach has regretted their endeavor. Tim Wander Senior History Senior class used budget wisely for seniors' benefit TO THE EDITOR: I would like to state my disap pointment at the lack of under standing by The Daily Tar Heel writers and cartoonists that seem to think that something is missing from the senior class this year. As special projects chairwom an and events coordinator for Spring Fest, I know how difficult it is to put on large-scale events on a small budget. There is no reason to spend over SIO,OOO on a speaker who will only benefit 300 seniors and historically has low attendance. Nor is there a reason to spend over SIO,OOO on a concert that only benefits 400 seniors with a C-level performer. Instead we have brainstormed creative and meaningful ways to end the year with a great Senior Week. In addition to Spring Fest, which gives seniors ticketing pri ority and the capacity to benefit every senior as the stadium is so large, we also are having a Senior Send-Off, which will include a three-course meal and slideshow in our historic quad. These events use our budget wisely and give EVERY senior an opportunity to participate in Senior Week. Hilary Marshall Senior Women's Studies £hr lailii <Tar Hrrl Established 1893, 115 years ofeditorialfreedom ERIN ZUREICK EDITOR. 962-4056 ZUREICKOEMAII.UNC.EDU OfHCE HOURS: MON.. WED.. FRI. 1-2 RM. ADAM STORCK OPINION EDITOR. 962-0750 APSTORCKOUNC EDU JONATHAN TUGMAN ASSOCIATE OPINION EDITOR. 962-07S0 TUGMANOUNC.EDU EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS JESSICA SCISM TED STRONG SARAH WHITWORTH KATHRYN ARDIZZONE SARAH IETRENT DUNCAN CARLTON EIYSE MCCOY GRAHAM ROWE ‘ DAVID GIANCASPRO
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 7, 2008, edition 1
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