North Carolina Newspapers

1 iiiii mux vv 1 i- - QO JLCiJ. 52m Kear of Editorial Freedom 744 FlICi 7- C'fjHlFl 777 All unsigned edltorials'are the opinion of the editors. Letters and co'antns represent the opinions of individuals. Fic-r.Zs J FeLrunry 23, 1C93 ,4 ' I I O There was supposed to be an election today. The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) of North Carolina tried again, for the third time, to get a foothold on the Carolina campus. PIRG wants $1.50 from every student on campus every semester to finance both state-wide and local consumer-protection research. In other words they want $60,000 a year, which is a lot of money. To get that money, PIRG asked the CGC to hold a referendum today. Carl Fox, chairman of the CGC finance committee, filed an injunction Friday to stop the vote. It seems that PIRG stands in violation of a 1957 campus law which prohibits student fees from exceeding $20 a year. The PIRG request would make student fees equal $21 a year. But the real question is whether PIRG has done its homework. For an organization which is supposed to protect the consumer, they do a remarkably poor job of fending for themselves. Two years ago the" board of Trustees vetoed PIRG because of its unacceptable means of securing student fees: a precedent setting refund basis. PfRG should be expert at campus technicalities as 4 0y If you plan to vote in the Democratic and Republican primaries being held on May 7, today is the last day you can register to vote. The offices that will be decided are U.S. Senate, State Senate, State House of Representatives, County Commissioners, Judicial Officers, Sheriff and District Solicitor. Now before you say to yourself that you won't bother to register because you won't be around here on May 7 to vote anyway, you should realize that you can vote by absentee ballot after you have registered. To register to vote, go to the Chapel Hill Municipal Building on North Columbia St., by the firehouse, from 9 a.m. , to 5 p.m. Residents of both Chapel Hill and Carrboro may register here. With the resumption of Congressional hearings on amnesty last month, the question of how best to heal the wounds of the Vietnam war has once again risen to the forefront of popular political debate. In an effort to obtain a first person statement of opinion on the question of amnesty from an American exile, The Daily Tar Heel invited war resister Joe Jones to contribute a column on the subject. Jones, the subject of a three part amnesty r fit Monday. April 8, 1974 EMSW ilii they are with business technicalities. It's for our own, and their own good. Beyond the details, however, PIRG made no publicity campaign for this referendum, or what is now a non-referendum. How can students vote when they don't know what PIRG is, what it does, or what it wants to do? The answer is that most students wouldn't vote at all, and today would still have been a non referendum, even without the injunction. PIRG is willing to accept funding on a semester by semester basis by means of a check-off box on class registration cards. This measure is commendably democratic and would certainly assure adequate student control over the organization, but no efficient group can operate under the threat of semi annual financial destruction. A more practical way of funding must be arranged. If students finally accept PIRG on campus, they will demand an efficient organization. Today's non-election was hurried so that the results could be put before the Trustees at the end of this week, but there is no excuse for ineptitude whatever the deadline. If they are going to protect us they must first know how to protect themselves. If you have registered in Orange Co. before, and you still live in the same precinct, you don't have to register, unless you want to change your party affiliation. If you want to vote by absentee ballot, here is the procedure to follow: write to the Board of Elections, Old Courthouse, Hillsborough, North Carolina, 27278, and request an absentee ballot application. They will subsequently send you an absentee ballot application in the mail, which you must fill out and mail back, and then they will mail you the actual absentee ballot. The final step is to have the ballot notarized before mailing it back. Don't worry. Suite Cis sponsoring a free notary service starting today. The times will be from 3-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from series by David Klinger last December, resides in Toronto and currently works for Amex Newsletter, the magazine of "Americans Exiled in Canada." Readers are invited to respond to the issues raised by Jones in this column. American war resisters exiled in Canada learn to expect certain questions. One of the most recent ones is: "Would you go back if an amnesty were declared?" 7t A V t -i: - :7"';::;--- . 0 :.Vt voice The professor was a man with a past. He had perhaps let things get out of hand once, perhaps he simply got caught in one of those fateful affairs, but when I found him, he was in the shadows of his youth remembering another time and another man who died while trying to be objective. "You must enjoy living in Chapel Hill." He was holding a very dry martini with olives bobbing around the bottom. 1 mean, the weather there must be so much more tolerable than this god-awful Maine winter with its snow and a sun that's little more than a dim, gray ball." We were in his farmhouse watching a fire in the throes. It had been a long evening already, full of roast beef and drinks, but I pressed the professor on. 1 believed him to have a natural intelligence, not tempered with scholarship so much as ambition; he seemed to trade off the textbook approach for understanding. The professor had taught English at a prestigious girls' college in the Northeast. It seems that he was very popular until his engaging lecture style finally drove one of his brighter students into his arms. The administration, not to mention his wife, reacted with such displeasure that he was forced to leave. The girl followed him to a new professorship in New England, and they set up home down the road from my grandparents' place. "When I was doing my dissertation on Thomas Wolfe I spent a spring there. I think I wanted to dig something up about him, but I usually ended up under some dogwood tree. I found it difficult to walk across the campus without falling in love, and, frankly, I didn't get a hell of a lot done. One of the finest springs of my life." The university was always taken for granted as I grew up. Always there was Chapel Hill, and if the executive's son was going to Carolina, well, like as not his secretary's son would, too. It may be that living in the state most of my life obscures the college, and the name Carolina becomes synonymous with basketball, wild parties and Chapel Hill. It sort of vaguely disturbs me. important 7-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. Since absentee ballots must be received on May 6, one day before the primary, and since a lot of mailing time is involved, you would be taking a risk if you mailed in your request for an absentee ballot application after April 20. One final note about procedure: In the past, registration has usually been heavy on the last day, so if you don't want to become annoyed waiting in long lines, it's best to register in the morning rather than in the afternoon. There will be 48 candidates on the ballots for the various offices, so there is a wide choice. As university students, we comprise a large portion of those eligible to vote in Orange County. It is important that our voice be heard through the voting process. First, what kind of amnesty? If it is less than a universal amnesty, deserters probably won't be given the choice. Somehow draft resisters often seem to be granted a moral status that is denied the deserter, who is seen as more of a traitor to his country. To a large extent, the difference is a matter of class background. The educated, informed, and articulate resister was able to make his decision without military experience. The only CTT3 i wmmm ... f it ..... 'mi. ;?(' S!i.5CS' W- . . . "1 ! : : If,,-;:- or cairn T iiii "When this business in New York broke out I just took off in the middle of the night for North Carolina. There was a terrific snowstorm on the Jersey Turnpike, but I followed trucks, and somehow ended up on the Blue Ridge Parkway going 30 miles-per-hour because the windshield wipers had frozen stuck. His voice flowers smoothly in the darkness, rich and articulate. I stirred a bourbon and soda with my finger. "When 1 got to Asheville it was raining. I hadn't eaten in a day, but all I wanted was to find where Wolfe was buried. 1 suppose I thought it would be as close as I could ever Gary Dorsey CoesiiiiirMeir ffiromra wo o ii Raiding, ravaging, busting trusts and surfacing malpractice, Ralph Nader's merry band has been making America safe for the unprotected consumer for several years. There's no denying he's been good for America. So, why can't one of his highly advocated programs Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) get started at UNC? It's been turned down twice, by the Board of . Governors and the Campus Governing Council. PIRG is a nation wide independent non profit organization that works full time on environmental, consumer, housing and municipal government problems. Their staffs include lawyers, scientists and student volunteers. There are 140 PIRG's in the U.S. covering 20 states. In. North Carolina alone there are PIRG's at Wake Forest, Saint Andrews, Duke and Davidson, all of whom work together and separately combating consumer ills in the state and in their own regions. The power of PIRG is real. A PIRG in Vermont recently combined enough persuasive research to prove that 40 of the state's school children had badly deficient dental care. Their research prompted the state to enact a $800,000 program to improve dental care for 30,000 children. In Minnesota a PIRG helped draft and win passage of laws cracking down on the The Daily Tar Heel Jim Cooper, Greg Turos Editors Kevin McCarthy, Managing Editor Michael Davis, Associate Editor Jean Swallow, Associate Editor Ken Allen, News Editor Harriet Sugar, Feature Editor Eiiiott Varnock, Sports Editor Tom Randolph, Photo Editor Bob Jasinkiewicz, Night Editor difference between an exiled deserter and an exiled draft resister is the point at which the decision to refuse Vietnam was made. The decision was the same. Amnesty focuses on exiles, but in calling for a universal amnesty, we include the more than half a million Vietnam-era veterans with less-than-honorable discharges. They served their country, some of them in Vietnam. Now they receive no veterans' benefits and have difficulty in finding and holding good jobs. ' - If amnesty is not unconditional, but calls for alternative service, far fewer exiles are likely to return. Many exiles are unsuccessful CO's, or people like me who sought deferment in the Peace Corps or other service. Alternative service would imply that years of exile and attendant lost opportunities are not punishment enough. The root meaning of amnesty to forget is contradicted by alternative service. Having spent years in exile on a matter of principle. I would not be very interested in paying a penalty tantamount to admitting I was wrong and the American military in Vietnam was right. The question of return to America has a personal as well as an ideological side. Most of us have been here for four years or longer, and are in our mid or late twenties. We have friends, jobs, and families. The immediate effect of amnesty would be the possibility of visiting the family and friends we still have in the U.S. No one is going to do alternative service merely for the right to visit. At the peak of immigration, it was estimated that there were 70,000 to 100,000 American war resisters in Canada. There are now at least 15,000 and possibly as many as 50,000. Those who are still here have overcome difficulties that led others to return no matter what the cost. Nonetheless, some exiles want and need to return as soon as possible. Perhaps the simplest reason is that many jobs are controlled by U.S. corporations. I know IT get to the man. When I got there I realized that the grave was empty, that Wolfe still lives in his books, in Chape! Hill, in me. I stood there in the rain and cried. He seemed to be talking to someone else, perhaps the girl, but we were the only ones still up. With the usual self promises that 1 would get rid of an alcoholic chip on my shoulder tomorrow, 1 fixed another round. "The next day I stopped in Chapel Hill. It seemed quite different in winter, rather lifeless. The spring I was there we had tropical heat one week and snow the next. I could see what inspired Wolfe in the annual sales of unsafe toys. In New England two of these groups combined their forces to halt the construction of a $500 million highway system until a study could be made on the environmental effects of the system. In North Carolina PIRG's have been equally successful; halting a phone rate hike by General Telephone Company in Durham and Monroe, pressuring Durham and Chapel Hill supermarkets for lower prices and investigating consumer credit discrimination against women in the triangle area. Recently NC-PIRG lost a fight against Duke Power and its new rate structure, which will now allow Duke to call for rate increases, as it feels necessary, a full year in advance. PI RG lost but at least they put up a Letters to the editor Flushed down To the editors: Our Quiz Bowl team, Mathletes-ln-Action, was disqualified after three wins because five of us are faculty members in the Mathematics Department. There is no rule barring faculty participation, and we were welcome during our previous two years of competition (when we lost in early rounds). This year our presence was challenged by a nervous opponent, The Far Left Suite, the night before we were to play them, The director of the tournament, John Hanneford, sustained the challenge, even though he could cite no regulation in the published rules giving him that authority. Once informed that faculty were not welcomed, we offered to replace our faculty members with graduate students. This offer was rejected, and The Far Lejt Suite was given a free ticket to the semi-finals. At a time when students complain about the lack of non-classroom contact with faculty, it is disheartening to hear undergraduates talking about their Student Union and their Quiz Bowl. We naively thought that our willingness to make dumb mistakes in front of students and to compete as equals with them would be appreciated. Age may or may not bring wisdom but it certainly works against quick recall of subject matter from undergraduate courses. The years spent teaching mathematics do not improve one's speed in writing a number in n so imcDinms someone who has lied to get a job here and lives in a kind of perpetual paranoia. Besides that, further job training or promotion may require return to the U.S. The question that Canadians ask us, often on first encounter, is: "Are you going to become a Canadian citizen?" This is one manifestation of a Canadian nationalism that has grown markedly in the past five years. In the popular mind, this nationalism means anti-Americanism. In addition to the daily psychological pressure of this atmosphere, there is the possibility of being denied a job because you are an American. This is the other side of a double bind. It has become apparent that current on-and-off discussion of amnesty is producing considerable psychological stress among exiles. A good example is the case of a young professional who completed his training in Toronto, married a Canadian, and intended to spend the rest of his life in Canada. Talk of amnesty after the signing of the Paris Accords led to pressure from family, friends, and colleagues in the U.S. to get his case fixed by whatever means necessary. This brought into question the values implied in his choice of exile. Second thoughts about what had seemed a firm decision to remain in Canada almost destroyed his marriage. Uncertainties created by discussion of amnesty have had a marked effect on exiles. About a year ago I joined in amnesty work after three years of deliberately remaining as inconspicuous as possible (mild paranoia). In the past six months, our group at Amex magazine has seen the affiliation of a considerable number of exiles who are largely apolitical, but who sense the basic importance of settling the question of amnesty. Last week a visiting newsman expressed his surprise that there is no real exile community in Toronto, in part because of asiimilation, and that what community there is consists of a remarkable heterogeneous war that spring and winter wage in your skies, but I imagine he wrote little in February. The professor sat silent for quite a long time, brooding over his drink, watching the nearly dead embers. He whispered some confidence to himself now and then; I thought I could see him smiling. Finally, he rcse. "I envy you going South tomorrow. I really do. You're so fortunate to go to school down there, you just don't know. The next morning was overcast, and it snowed all the way to Virginia. y legitimate fight for a real issue to help the consumer. There are those who think PIRG is not needed at UNC because there is already a Student Consumer Action Union. This simply shows a lack of foresight and insight. PIRG will strengthen SCAU. giving it access to information, facilities and finances that it wouldn't already have. SCAU is looking forward to a PIRG on this campus and wants to work with it. PIRG will bring a strong state and local consumer action group to Chapel Hill. It is not structured as a toy, like so many other college organizations. When it raids and ravages it is for real and it is in the public interest. Students are finally beginning to realize that they are citizens and should be getting the protection they deserve. PIRG could provide that protection. binary notation (a problem we missed to the delight of the audience) but they certainly help one forget the reason for the rise of secularism in the United States. We assume that matches against other faculty teams would be made easier than matches against students. Our team was the only one (to our knowledge) which substituted a "Blue Team", in the -middle of a -match (which procedure, incidentally, was also challenged ' by The Far Lejt Suite in their effort to have us disqualified). Our philosophy was simply to let everyone play, improve rapport among department faculty and students, and to have a good time. We thought this was the object of such Union activities as the Quiz Bowl. We viewed the Quiz Bowl as an oppor tunity to mix with students. We are sad that the governing body of the Quiz Bowl assumed students would rather keep to themselves. The Mathletes-In-Action: Tom Brylawski David Brylawski Ray Cannon Dan Curtin Paul King Karl Petersen Jon Wahl UNC Math Coffee Room Phillips Room 385 o asanim group of people associated with Amex. To some extent our group serves as a social function for those exiles who have collided with the burgeoning Canadian nationalism and have not been accepted by Canadians. Of course, the isolation of exiles owes a good deal to self-reinforcing paranoia as well. In the foregoing I have attempted a general account of the exile situation. I would like to turn briefly to some personal reflections that have been developing over the past few months. For the six years preceding my immigration to Canada, I considered applying for conscientious objector (CO) status, but could never,see my way clear to it. Whether 1 would apply even now is highly problematic, although I am much closer to a pacifist position. My main difficulty then was a religious one. As a child I was told that America had never lost a war because God had always been on America's side. In America today, separation of church and state is minimal. Institutional religion is often a tool of the politicians. Wittingly or unwittingly, Billy Graham puts what many Americans would accept as God's stamp of approval on Richard Nixon. My decision for exile was made in the "midst of a tremendous conflict of values. For a number of years, I felt that 1 must reject my religious background as being a part of the American nightmare. Recently 1 have come to recognize that my commitment is fundamentally Christian and that the "American" religion is a horrible perversion. Most of the founders of Amex come from strong religious backgrounds, although their explicit commitments may now lie elsewhere. 1 believe that the values I share with them must return to America and most of all to her leaders, if America is to be named with anything but shame. Joe Jones Toronto, Canada Bowl