4
Are programs that swell ranks of minorities discriminatory?
By TONY GUNN
Staff Writer
The first of two parts
"Admission to, employment by, and promotion in
The University of North Carolina and all of its
constituent institutions shall be on the basis of merit,
and there shall be no discrimination on the basis of
race, color, creed, religion, sex, or national origin."
So reads Chapter 1, Section 103 of the Code of the
U niversity of North Carolina. Although this provision
aims at prohibiting discrimination, many schools
throughout the nation go beyond this to try and
correct past wrongs done to minorities, particularly
blacks.
Some schools have affirmative-action programs,
designed to increase the minority presence.
But in doing this, the possibility exists that whites
will be refused admission in place of less-qualified
blacks. This is called reverse discrimination.
That is what a 37-year-old white student in
California is arguing. Allan Bakke was twice refused
admission to the medical school of the University of
California at Davis because it gives minorities special
preference.
To ensure that all 100 spaces in the medical school
will not go only to highly qualified whites, the
university reserves 16 spaces in each freshman class for
minority students.
The school denied Bakke admission in 1973 and
1974. He says, and the university admits, that he
probably would have been admitted had it not been
for the policy.
The California courts ruled in favor of Bakke. In
February, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the
case. The ruling may not be made for a year.
Two year's ago the Supreme Court had a similar case
before it. Marco DeFunis Jr., a white student,
complained of the admissions policy at the University
of Washington law school.
But in a 5-4 vote, the court refused to settle the
question, terming the case moot because DeFunis
subsequently had been admitted to the law school and
was then about to graduate.
Sunny, warmer
It will be sunny and warm
Thursday with temperatures
in the mid 70s. Today will be
mostly sunny and mild with
temperatures in the upper
60s.
Volume No. 84, Issue No. 140
Medical School
At UNO no quota system for minorities exists in
the medical school, says William E. Bakewell, the
school's associate dean for admissions.
"We select members best qualified to study
medicine and to serve the health needs of the state," he
says.
The medical school looks at the underserved groups
of the state and at the different practice styles, then
chooses the lucky 1 60 accordingly.
Of that number in the entering class this year, 2 1 are
blacks.
A quota does exist for nonresidents. Ten per cent of
those admitted must be from outside North Carolina.
"That's the only quota we have," Bakewell says.
"There's not one for females or one based on race,
marital status or religion, and no cutoff as far as age.
"The fact that we do do look at health-care needs
opens us to criticism and some hostility," Bakewell
says. "We get a lot of disagreements from every
rejected applicant."
Bakewell predicts that the Supreme Court will rule
that the quota in the Bakke case is unconstitutional.
"The court will have to decide which is more
demanding: that we have no quotas, or that we correct
'past inequities.' "
If the court decides quotas are necessary, what
figure does one set? Bakewell asks.
"If Bakke wins, the court might require greater
emphasis on grades and medical school entrance
exams, thus limiting the discretion the admissions
committee may use."
. Bakewell said he hopes the court does not force the
school to become more computerized. "I have a false
sense of numbers," he says.
Graduate School
The eyes of the federal government are staring down
on the country's universities these days, it seems. It
wants to be sure institutions seek blacks and other
minorities actively.
Art by Beth Philpott
"The University is under some pressure to increase
the black presence," says Daniel J. Sheerin, associate
dean for admissions to the Graduate School. "This is
felt in the Graduate School, and it coincides with our
desire to increase the minority presence, particularly
in doctoral programs."
School, 21 1, or 5.3 per cent, are black.
According to the 1970 census, slightly more than
five million persons live in North Carolina. Of those.
The Department of Health. Education and Welfare
(HEW) has let it be known that it wants to increase the
rate of admissions of blacks and other minorities to
graduate work. '
"They're not breathing down our necks," Sheerin
says, "but the position of the federal government is
quite clear."
He also cites the recent court case in which a federal
judge ruled that the desegregation plans of the UNC
system and of five other states do not complv with
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
That act states that no citizen may be excluded on
the basis of race, color or national origin from
participation in any program or activity receiving
federal aid.
"We're making an effort in this area and taking a
more flexible approach in the evaluation of minority
applications." Sheerin says.
In admitting students, Sheerin says. "We act on
what the department (the student hopes to enter)
recommends. But the departments share in and are
responsive to our desire for a greater minority
presence."
If all applicants were considered regardless of race,
how many blacks would be admitted?
"A smaller percentage." Sheerin admits, but it
would not be significant.
"There are rare instances, perhaps, of reverse
discrimination, but no policy requires this," he says.
If the court declares the University of California at
Davis' affirmative-action policy unconstitutional,
Sheerin said he believes the ruling would have no
effect at UNC.
"We don't admit blacks with a present or future
quota-percentage in mind." But he says he would like
the minority presence in the Graduate School to
reflect the population distribution of the state, or
given the school's national character, that of the
nation in general.
Of the 3,989 students enrolled in the Graduate
22 per cent are black.
To take in a dramatically increased number of
blacks, given the pool of minority applicants now
available. "We'd have to lower standards so much that
we'd be doing a disservice to everyone," Sheerin says.
"We have an honest, and I believe, educationally
sound policy. We discriminate, ultimately, only
between the better- and less-qualified applicants."
The Graduate School has an arbitrary minimum
standard for admission, based on such criteria as the
Graduate Record Examination, the grade-point
average in the major, letters of recommendation and
prior work experience.
"But no one is excluded only because they're under
that standard." Sheerin says.
Sheerin said he is against quotas of any kind, saying
they would be the end of the Graduate School.
"Only a small percentage of the population is truly
qualified for graduate-level work," he says.
Because the University is state-supported, however,
it must provide graduate education for all well
qualified applicants from its various constituencies.
"Any quota which might make anything other than
academic credentials a criterion for admission would
render impossible the achievement of a high level of
graduate training," Sheerin says.
Instead of a quota, the school recruits blacks. But
that is not an attempt to make up for past
discrimination, Sheerin says.
"Blacks don't seem interested in reparations. The
blacks we admit are quite motivated and appear, more
than most graduate students, to know what they are
doing. They have tremendous contributions to make,
and the community stands in urgent need of these
contributions."
Sheerin adds that many faculty members go out of
their way to recruit potential black applicants. "We
give every encouragement we can to blacks to apply
here."
Please turn to page 2.
v . - N
V il I I
Serving the students and the University community since 1893
Wednesday, April 27, 1977, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Krafcisin transferring
Freshman center Steve
Krafcisin has decided to
transfer to the University of
Iowa so that he can be closer
to home. See story on p. 5.
Please call us: 933-0245
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25
nominated to fill seats
on
Board
Much maligned and often criticized (see related letter on page
6), the folks at Pizza Transit Authority serve hundreds of
students and townspeople every day. Like any good waiter, this
young man knows the best ways to increase the likelihood of a
tip. Still, potatoes and bottles of Wesson Oil occasionally make
the job a hazardous one. staff photo by Bruce Clarke.
By TONY GUNN
Staff Writer
Nominations for the UNC Board of
Governors were closed Tuesday in the N.C.
General Assembly.
Twenty-five persons were nominated to
fill the 10 seats available on the 36-member
board.
Victor S. Bryant, an incumbent member
of the board whose name was eliminated
from the House and Senate committee lists
on April 1, was nominated from the floor of
the General Assembly Tuesday.
The Senate will elect two at-large persons
and the House will elect three at-large
persons, all for eight-year terms.
Salty greetings spice up PTA deliveries
By STEVEN SHRADER
Staff Writer
12:30 a.m. D.C. steps from his P.T.A.
truck, reaches around back for his mini-oven
and strides towards the door of the South
Campus dorm. Pretty quiet outside, must be
football season. Dooley's demons
slumbering; maybe there's a big test in
Anthro 41 tomorrow. They're all studying.
Maybe those ludes finally came in, maybe.
j "Whirrr-Spla-thud!!!"
"Gawd-damn!!! Some pinhead up there
just dropped a half-gallon jar of Wesson oil
off the balcony. Just missed my head.
Coulda killed me."
D.C. dives for the stairs, makes them, runs
up three flights, delivers his pizza.
"What took you so long? Oh, it's only
been twenty minutes? Sorry, somehow it
seemed longer. Maybe not. Is it cold outside?
Are my eyes red...?" Back down the stairs,
check the balcony for shadows; none, run for
it, make the truck, in, no lousy tip and a near
fatal brush with a Wesson bottle. It's a rough
job.
Not every P.T.A. delivery boy is faced
with this kind of situation every time he
delivers a pizza. On the contrary, the job is
usually on a much lower key with nothing
more than an occasional taunt midnight
inspiration to fill the void. But there are
those times when the natives are restless, and
this is when the trouble starts. D.C. was one
of the luckier ones, he wasn't hurt.
Another delivery boy was struck on the
head by a potato thrown by someone on the
sixth floor of another South Campus dorm.
The potato knocked him down.
"This sort of thing is rare," says Steve,
P.T.A.'s dayshift manager. "We have
problems, but they're all not quite so
dramatic as D.C.'s case."
The problems range from stolen cars to
wrong addresses. Each case usually ends in a
laugh for everyone.
"One night, not too long ago, someone
stole a truck sitting right outside the back
door of the shop," Steve recalls. "We called
the cops, and the both of us spent a good part
of the night looking all over for this truck.
Please turn to page 3.
7
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Carrboro shopping-mall pavement
smothers trees, upsets ecologists
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Pavement at the Carr Mill Mall, now
under construction in Carrboro,
surrounds the base of several trees, and
local botonists fear the trees may die as a
result. A tree at Carrboro's Kentucky
Fried Chicken also was surrounded by
pavement and now is dying, staff photos
by Bruce Clark.
By STEVE HUETTEL
Staff Writer
Eight large oak trees on the site of the new
Carr Mill shopping mall in Carrboro are
seriously endangered because the
contractors paved to the trees' bases,
according to several area botanists.
The compacted earth around the trees will
prevent air from reaching the trees, and the
surrounding asphalt could keep rain water
from reaching the roots, said Bill Gensel, a
former tree surgeon from Connecticut who
will be doing graduate work at N.C. State
University in the fall.
Also, most of the trees have suffered
damage from scrapes probably caused by
construction equipment, Gensel said. The
scrapes allow moisture into the trees, which
promotes rotting and disease and attracts
insects, he said.
"This is definitely damaging the trees, and
it could eventually kill them," Gensel said.
Anna M ueller, who lives near the mall and
has a doctorate in botany from UNC, cited
the dying tree in the Kentucky Fried Chicken
parking lot in Carrboro as an example of
what such paving can do.
"Carrboro should have an ordinance for
this," she said. "They can't cut down old trees
without a permit they shouldn't be able to
pave right up to them, either."
It would have been simple to surround the
nearby trees with islands of grass or stone
without the loss of many parking spaces,
Gensel said. '
"This lacks imagination, it lacks
professional expertise," he said. "Maybe
they'd lose 15 spaces, but it wouldn't be all
that important."
B.J. Allison of the Edy Corp. of Carrboro
and Southern Real Estate of Charlotte,
developers of the project, said he had no
knowledge of the situation. "The landscape
people will be in by Monday or Tuesday," he
said. "It will be one of their things. Nothing
there is finished."
The trees could be saved if the asphalt
around them were torn up, Gensel said. The
asphalt is thin enough that it could be taken
up with hand tools, and if the trees survived
their roots conceivably could break through
the surface, he said.
Frank Parker, employed by the North
Carolina Botanical Garden, said he believes
the contractor probably did not realize what
was being done to the trees. "It's another
example of a practice where trees could be
saved, but aren't," he said.
of Governors;
Nominated for these five seats were:
Furman R. Bodenheimer Jr., Cary; Victor
W. Dawson, Fayetteville; Charles Z. Flack
Jr., Forest City; C. Felix Harvey, Kinston;
James E. Holmes, Winston-Salem; Wallace
N. Hyde, Asheville; George R. Little Jr.,
Elizabeth City; Jimmy Love, Sanford;
Reginald F. McCoy, Laurinburg; Lennox P.
McLendon, Greensboro; William D. Mills,
Maysville; Clint J. Newton, Shelby; and
William Staton, Sanford.
Nominated in the Senate election for the
eight-year seat reserved for a minority
representative were Maceo A. Sloan of
Durham and Adolph L. Dial of Pembroke.
Nominated in the Senate election for the
eight-year seat reserved for women were
Betty McCain of Wilson and Kathleen
Chitty of Raleigh.
Nominated in the Senate election for the
one at-large seat for a four-year term were
George Watts Hill of Durham and Thomas
J. White Jr. of Kinston.
Nominated in the House election for the
eight-year seat reserved for Republicans
were: Lawrence Cobb, Charlotte; William C.
Hasse, Kenly and Harvey A. Jones,
Lincolnton.
Nominated in the House election for the
one at-large two-year term were: Lenox G.
Cooper, Wilmington; Robert L. Jones,
Raleigh; John Vaughn Sr., Woodland;
Grace Epps, Lumberton; and Victor S.
Bryant, Durham.
Internship proposal soon
to come under review
of Boulton and Williamson
By AMY McCRARY
Staff Writer
A centralized office that will help UNC
students find summer internships
through their departments will be
proposed by two persons hired jointly by
the Campus Governing Council, Student
Affairs and the College of Arts and
Sciences.
The internship proposal will be
submitted to Donald A. Boulton, dean of
Student Affairs, and Samuel R.
Williamson, newly appointed dean of arts
and sciences, according to Harriet Sugar.
Sugar and Judith Tillman have been
working on the internship idea since
March and will complete their proposal
within the next three weeks.
"After Dean Boulton and Williamson
get the proposal, it's up to them what
happens to it," Sugar said. "I'm not sure
when the service would begin if the idea is
passed, but it could begin next year or the
year after."
If the proposal is approved by the
administration, UNC will use what Sugar
and Tillman call a "departmental model"
of an internship program. In this form, a
central office would serve as a type of
.-, clearinghouse, finding and developing
internships relevant to participating
departments, curricula, and schools.
This central office may be a
partnership eff ort of the Off ce of Student
Affairs and the College of Arts and
Sciences, Sugar said. "The Office of
' Student Affairs is identified with student
services, while Arts and Sciences is
identified with educational concerns.
This program would combine both
services.
"We would begin by contacting UNC
alumni in responsible positions and
asking them if they would take on interns.
We'd also look to faculty members who
might have job contacts."
After the central office finds internship
positions, it would give the job
descriptions to the relevant participating
departments, curricula or schools.
Department, curricula or school faculty
advisers would then work with the
students in applying for the internships.
"The main office would depend a lot on
the departments in the program," Sugar
said. Because of the size of this
University, the faculty advisers will be the
ones to work directly with the students".
The first year of the internship
program would be limited to a few,
possibly 10, departments. The service
would evolve in a few years to handle all
the departments wishing to participate.
"We have talked to a lot of
departments and schools that have shown
interest in this idea," Sugar said. "There
are about 20 departments and schools
that are tentatively interested."
The employers of the interns will have a
large say as to what the requirements will
be," Sugar said. For example, there may
be 50 applicants "for a political-science
internship, but the employer may only
want the 10 best applicants. A committee
of the political science faculty and
students then may decide which of the 50
applicants are best, Sugar said.
"These internships will be more than
just summer jobs; they will have definite
educational benefits."
Although the type of program depends
on the number of students it serves, many
universities throughout the state and
nation offer internship ProIam,s;
Appalachian State University and the
University of Kentucky both have good
internshin nmr, snear said.