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Clear and cold Today will be clear with a high of 43. The low last night was about 1 5. There is no chance of rain today. Recruiting at UNC Staff writer Dede Biles examines how Carolina recruits football players; page 5. Serving the students and the University community since 1893 Wednesday, February 2, 1977, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Volume No. 84, Issue No. 88 Please call us: 933-0245 3 tfifr i i ii 1 -ii ii C Students who want to increase their reading speed and comprehension can enroll in two different speed-reading courses. One, the Evelyn Wood course, is well publicized and National speed-reading course has For only $10, don't expect the red pencils by Merton Vance Staff Writer I took a speed. reading course, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It's about Russia. Woody Allen That quote is at the beginning of an article on speed reading which appeared in the August 1972 issue of Psychology Today magazine. The article is titled "Speed Readers Don't Head; They Skim" and is critical of speed reading courses. The staff members of the UNC Reading Program on the second floor of Phillips Hall Annex keep a copy on hand to show people who are interested in learning speed reading. "We usually get a lot of questions about speed reading every time the Evelyn Wood people come to town," said Hank Powell, a reading program instructor. The Evelyn Wood people are in town again. They offered a free introductory lecture to interested persons. At one of these introductory sessions Monday night, 15 UNC students showed up to hear what the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics program is all about. They were told that the average American reads between 200 and 350 words per minute and retains about 60 to 65 per cent of the information read. Then they saw a film in which a nine-year-old Australian boy, a graduate of the Evelyn Wood course, says he is reading at a rate of 2,500 words per minute wih 80 per cent comprehension. The instructor tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who appeared on Johhny Carson's "The Tonight Show" and demonstrated her ability to read 13,000 words per minute witji 90 per cent comprehension. She was reading a book on bio-feedback, a subject she was supposed to know nothing about, and was able to answer correctly questions on the material. She apologized for reading only 13,000 words per minute. She normally read at by Robin Clark Staff Writer David Ratley's bees didn't make any blue honey last summer. Maybe they weren't in the mood. But some years, Ratley and his bees make tons of blue honey more than 1 1 tons his best year and even scientists who study bees at N.C. State don't know how they do it. Blue honey is unique to eastern North Carolina, and even there it's rare. Of an estimated 200,000 bee colonies in the state, only a handful ever yield blue honey. But as bee-zarre as it may look to people seeing it for the first time, Ratley says his family has seen blue honey in their hives down in- Bladen and Cumberland counties for more than 45 years. Ratley's bees made so much of the stuff in 1969 and 1970 that he shipped several thousand pounds each year to a buyer in .Germany "Of course, it got some publicity then," says Ratley, who at 60 is the world's only 1 exporter of blue honey. "I got letters from people all over the country wanting to buy a jar of blue honey. n. a x CZj '-ierittr'-'KM ajii ii ""HnniT "rfi 15,000 to 20,000 per minute but she slowed down because she was nervous being on national television. Don't you feel dumb? That question seemed to be written on some faces in the group. The instructor says Evelyn Wood guarantees that graduates of the course can triple their reading speed and says that many people learn to read even faster than that. Everything in the presentation is neatly packaged, from the brochures about the program to the red pencils on the tables in front of the students..' .'..... "Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics" read the black letters on the pencil. Underneath, in smaller letters, "Increase your reading ability 3 to 10 times." The brochure contains comments from prominent people praising the program and points out that President Kennedy had the course taught to his White House Staff. Richard Nixon did the same thing. "It's a good thing, because now all of those people have plenty of time to read," says instructor Preston Cranford. The group is told that more than 500,000 people have taken the course, devised by a Utah school teacher named Evelyn Wood,, who is now 70 and living in Salt Lake City. After this interesting presentation, the students want to know how they can take this course. It's simple. They take their red Evelyn Wood pencils and register for a seven-week course which costs $395. A similar speed-reading program is available to UNC students through the Reading Program. The cost is $10 per student. "The techniques are about the same," said Powell. "Evelyn Wood people use a lot of their own material. We use books that are commercially available," he said. "Their program is very well packaged," Powell said. There apparently are not any red pencils which read, "UNC Reading Program." In addition to speed reading, the reading program offers student help in study skills, ue Hon "Then somewhere out in the midwest, somebody changed the blue to green in the news accounts, and that started something else people writing wanting to buy green honey." Ratley says the requests have slacked off now, and he's. glad. He says blue honey is not dependable enough to put on the market. One year he gets tons, the next year practically none at all. "There was one year I made solid supers of it, 30 pounds to the hive in 800 or 900 hives. Then other years there's just a little dribble around the edge of the other honey." Ratley says some people who have tried his blue honey say it tastes no different from normal amber honey. . Others liken its taste to pancake syrup, with a hint of corn. "If you were to look at it and taste it, you'd swear there was some grape jelly in it," Ratley says. You'd be influenced like that by the color. "But it you were to close your eyes and taste it, you'd think it was just good honey." While people may disagree on the taste, there's no confusing the color. It's dark blue. What makes it that way? mm Si IP iii 1 v I Staff photos by Bill Russ costs about $395. The Evelyn Wood course was recommended by Kennedy to his staff. The other course is conducted here at UNC in the Phillips Annex, and costs about $10. vocabulary improvement and other study techniques. Students can register for the noncredit course in Room 204 of the Phillips Annex. But does speed reading work? The question lingers in the sceptic's mind. Powell reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a copy of an article by a psychologist which challenges the claims of speed reading courses. The article "Speed Readers Don't Read; They Skim" appeared in the August, 1972 issue of Psychology Today magazine. It was written by Ronald P,, Carver, an experimental psychologist who has done research on learning and reading. Suing the University same as suing UNC lawsuits usually employment disputes by Tony Gunn and Tom Watkins Staff Writers Editor's note: This is the second of a two part series examining lawsuits against the University. This part looks at several important suits and their implications. Besides being an institution of higher education, the University of North Carolina is also a state agency. So when a person files a lawsuit against the University, he is actually suing the state. "The (N.C.) attorney general is really our counsel," said Assistant to the President Richard H. Robinson, counsel for the consolidated University's General Administration. "Whenever a problem becomes a court proceeding, he is our attorney for purposes of that litigation. What we try to dc is supply support, assistance and liaison." Robinson said that while some cases transcend the boundaries of a single campus, the persons at that school are most familiar with the facts and thus are most "You get five' beekeepers together discussing that and you'll get three or four different answers," Ratley says with a laugh. Some people think the bees change the color with special enzymes in the hive. Others think the nectar turns blue in the plants under certain soil conditions and that the bees have nothing to do with it. "For a long time I accepted my dad's theory on blue honey," Ratley says. "He said it came frpm the ripe berries in the woods. "But I've had bees where there's hundreds of acres . of cultivated blueberries that don't make a drop of blue honey." Ratley believes now that the blue nectar is made by the sourwood tree for a few weeks during the summer. Blue honey isn't sold at the supermarket yet, but scientists who study bees at N.C. State say locating its source could be a boon to the state honey industry. North Carolina ranked only 20th among the states in honey production in 1976, and the state honey and bees wax industry grossed less than $3 million. Many beekeepers on the coastal plain lost more than 90 per cent of their honey eyit s Be Town charter am to include fair housing by Mary Anne Rhyne Staff Writer The Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen amended the. town charter Monday night to include a fair housing rule. The amendment will be sent to the North Carolina General Assembly for approval, and, if passed, will govern the sale and leasing of all city and perhaps University housing. The rule will authorize the town to adopt ordinances to make housing in Chapel Hill "equally available to all persons without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.' Citing the 1974 Federal Housing Act, Alderman .Gerry Cohen said the University is in violation of such an act. He said its housing rules discriminate on the basis of sex. Assistant to the President Richard H. Robinson, counsel to the UNC General Administration, said he was unfamiliar with such an act banning policies like those of the University which allow all ' male or all female dorms. "Title IX does not prohibit the maintenance of separate housing. If you have separate housing it must be University After conducting experiments on groups of readers and attending an Evelyn Wood speed reading course, Carver concludes, "I now feel that speed reading is about 5 per cent sense and 95 per cent nonsense. They do not increase your reading speed; they teach you to skim and scan material and to sample the ideas in an article or book." Carver offers technical challenges to the testing methods employed in speed reading courses and emphasizes that there is a difference between reading and absorbing material, and skimming and selecting certain key words or groups j?f wotds.- ,;, V:J "Most reading researchers agree that appropriately involved in preparing the case for trial. Robinson noted that most litigation involving the University stems from employment relationships. "That's the most fertile field of litigation as far as our experience goes," he said. Two such cases are pending against UNC. In the case of Mary Carroll Smith vs. UNC, the plaintiff, an assistant professor in the Department of Religion, contends she was not retained because of her sex and religion (Roman Catholic). Smith, whose contract expired July 31, is still receiving her salary because of an injunction issued by the Durham Division of the U.S. Middle District Court and upheld by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. The case is now in pretrial stages before the Durham court. The other employment suit was filed by Moye W. Freymann, a professor in the School of Public Health and former director of the Carolina Population Center (CPC). I n litigation brough against Cecil G. Sheps, vice chancellor for health sciences until Jan. 1, e -zarre crops to a jate frost that killed the blooms bees depend on for nectar. "If we can find out where blue honey comes from, we can actually charge more for it than other honeys," says John Ambrose, who operates the NCSU apiculture lab on Varsity Drive in Raleigh. "That's our goal. "The trouble with marketing it now is that the average shopper won't buy blue honey unless he knows what makes it blue." A special research project this summer 'at State will try to isolate some of Ratley's blue honey hives and monitor the bees as they come and go. "When blue honey starts showing up, we'll catch bees as they're coming back into the hive and we'll dissect them right there and empty their stomach contents," Ambrose says. "If we find the blue substance there, it would prove that it's blue when they bring it in, and they're not changing it in the hive." ' After that, it's just a matter of tracking the bees back to their source. Ambrose says that sounds easy unless you've tried it. equivalent in quantity of space and quality," Robinson said. No other University housing officials could be reached for comment. Tom Carr, spokesperson for the Carolina Gay Association (CGA), asked the board to add sexual and affectional preferences and marital status to the list of discriminations. Another UNC student, Alison Canoles, asked the aldermen to include age discrimination. She cited examples of discrimination against undergraduate students by apartment complexes. The Board denied both requests. Alderman Robert Epting said the additional areas of discrimination might reduce the amount of housing available. "The kind of discrimination we need to outlaw is discrimination that is historically based, based on superstition and not on rational reasoning or fact, Epting said. Carr said he found the board's decision unsatisfactory. "They're saying they're for individual rights as long as they're spelled hetero." He said the CGA plans to keep up with the board's action in this area and counterpart reading rates above 800 to 1,000 words per minute are physiologically impossible," Carver writes. But there are plenty of speed-reading course graduates who claim that speed reading works for them. "If speed reading does work, it does not work for the reasons that are put forth by its supporters. Perhaps we should just accept it as a benign mystery like aspirin and let it go at that. . Carver writes in his article. Perhaps the world will never really know the truth or falsity of the grafGti which appears . on library- study carrels: "Evelyn Wood moves her lips wheri she reads." ' the state Freymann contends he was fired from the CPC post without due process. UNC has filed a motion for dismissal and is presently awaiting a decision by a District Court judge in Durham. If the court finds in Freymann's favor, it could affect the dismissal of administrators at Freymann's former level. In another case, UNC vs. Dalton, the University is claiming that a student fraudulently obtained a master's degree on the basis of a plagiarized thesis. Dalton has moved to dismiss the case, said Susan H. Ehringhaus, assistant to the chancellor, but the hearing has not yet been held. In a Jan. 5 decision, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the allocation of student fees to the Black Student Movement was not unconstitutional. What was ruled unconstitutional, however, was the allocation of seats on the Campus Governing Council (CGC) and the honor courts. Last Wednesday the N.C. attorney general filed a petition in the case, Uzzell vs. UNC, requesting that the court reconsider its 4JW;- ... ... Bees a-buzzin' seem little more than a potentially painful nuisance. But bees also produce honey, that, tongue-tickling treat that sweetens even the most sour dispositions. Some bees even come from out of the blue yonder to produce, of all things, blue honey. ent rule nam lobby for change. Carr also cited the University as a violator of equal housing standards. He said it discriminates on the basis of sexual preference and marital status. The aldermen also made a change in the town charter to permit the issuance of special parking permits allowing holders to park on specific residential streets. , Furry shadow foretells more wintry days Early today, members of the Lancaster County, Penn., Slumbering Groundhog Lodge will don their silk hats, take canes in hand and trek out into the fields to find the nearest burrow of a woodchuck. As they gather expectantly around the burrow, they will peer intently, awaiting the moment when the furry fellow ventures out into the February air. They will then return to the village and report to the local townspeople on whether the woodchuck (or groundhog) saw his shadow, and as a result, whether there will be six more weeks of winter or the approach of early spring. The colonists along the eastern coast of the U.S. brought the tradition of Groundhog's Day from Great Britain and Germany. According to myth, if the groundhog comes out of his burrow on Feb. 2 and sees his shadow, he will retreat into the ground for six more weeks of winter. If, however, the animal comes out on a cloudy day and does not see a shadow, he will assume spring is coming and will not retreat to his burrow. Sketchy records kept by the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge report that the groundhog has been correct about the weather eight times, indefinite five times and wrong seven times. Linda Morris decision concerning the CGC and honor courts seats. "The court said that unless you can demonstrate a compelling reason for it, facially it violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act: to treat people differently because of their race," Robinson said. "And that's what this does. "But we never had an opportunity to say or to offer proof supportive of the proposition that this was an instance of compelling need or reasonable use of such a thing. We'd like to have that opportunity." In a case that could have far-reaching implications, the Student Bar Association (SBA) is trying to have the UNC School of Law faculty meetings open to the public under the state open meetings law. The SBA won an order from the Orange County Superior Court, but the case is now awaiting decision by the N.C. Court of Appeals in Raleigh. Andrew A. Vanore Jr., senior deputy Please turn to page 2.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 2, 1977, edition 1
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