North Carolina Newspapers

Carrboro choo-choos Toy trains are an enjoyable, and sometimes serious, hobby for children of all ages. See story on page 5. Serving the students and the University community since IMS Volume 85, Issue No. 9 Thursday, September 8, 1977, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Please call us: 933-0245 i i i ii Students drop fewer courses under new four-week policy Ham, rain, rain There is a 100 per cent chance of rain today and tonight with a possibility of thunderstorms. The high today and Friday will be near 80 and the low near 70. I 4 ml UJ.,q p ll 1 1 T " J ri-JUt -t.i I am maun. , .- i "n-w ffT hmh i """jl"1"' nni "-- : J?Hf . ..: 1 NN i hi t n ir--ii nrr Dots mark the spots where 41 Dally Tar Heel drop boxes are located. A new distribution system is now in effect, centralizing and expanding delivery. New drop sites include Rosenau, Beard and Coker halls, Joyner Dorm, Henderson Residence College, the Health Sciences Library, the Franklin Street Post Office and the Carolina Coffee Shop. Not pictured on the map are drop sites at University Mall, Eastgate, Kroger Plaza, By rd's and Carr Mill Mall. For more details, please see story on page 2. Conflict brews on budget committee By BARRY SMITH Staff Writer Student Body President Bill Moss' proposed changes in the process of appropriating student-activity fees have drawn sharp criticism from several Campus Governing Council (CGC) members. The Moss proposal includes four major changes in the budget structure: The budget committee would be composed of five CGC members and two students appointed by the president. The student body treasurer would be an ex officio, non-voting member. Currently, the finance committee is composed of the committee chairperson, the president and five other CGC members elected by the council. Three of the five CGC members of the committee would be undergraduate students and the remaining two would be graduate students. Presently, there are no graduate or undergraduate quotas for the committee membership. The committee chairperson would be elected by the committee. The chairperson currently is elected by the council. The fiscal year would run concurrently with the calendar year. The fiscal year now runs from May 16-May 15. Moss said the budget procedure should be reviewed and his proposal is one alternative for making the process more efficient and less haphazard. The proposed changes are related to Moss' desire to hold campus elections later in the spring semester than at present. Last semester, elections were held in February. Moss wants the terms of elected campus officials to run from April to April rather than February to February. The newly elected student body president and CGC representatives would then work with campus organizations several months during the fall before going through the laborious budget procedure. Moss explained. But Phil Searcy, CGC finance committee chairperson, disagreed: "It looks like they're changes for changes sake and not changes for improvements." "I don't think there needs to be drastic changes in the fiscal year or the makeup of the committee," Searcy said. Changing the composition of the committee has drawn the most controversy. Having two presidential appointees on the committee "puts the most important thing that CGC does into the hands of people who aren't responsible to anyone but themselves and the president," Searcy said. But Moss said, "I think you've got two people who are responsible to the president, who is responsible to the whole University community." Moss said the executive branch of government usually prepares a budget and the legislative branch usually approves it. Having two presidential appointees on the CGC Finance Committee merely combines the two procedures, Moss said. But Finance Committee member Betsy Lindley said, "That's giving him (the president) two voting members. If the president wants something passed, he automatically has two votes plus his own influence. It puts way too much power in the hands of the president." "The president is in theory responsible to the people also," said Chip Cox, chairperson of the CGC Rules and Judiciary Committee and supporter of the proposals. "He is just as responsible to the student body as the CGC members are." The change in the fiscal year would be almost impossible, Searcy said, because the Student Activities Fund Office (SAFO) would be unable to make the changeover in . fiscal years in such a short time. SAFO now Is. ( ' i I St A i' X I ll Bill Moss works during the summer to close the previous year's books and prepare for the following year. Cox said changing the fiscal year would enable the budget committee to prepare the budget in the fall semester. Putting the budgetary process in the fall would improve the atmosphere for preparing the budget, Cox said. "We'll have to see if the thing is feasible," Cox said. "The whole thing is tentative." Cox favors the proposal to require that three of the five members from CGC be undergraduate students and the remaining two graduate students. That reflects the percentage of graduate and undergraduate students at the University, Cox said. By JAM HI CUES Muff Writer Students drop fewer courses and drop them sooner under the current four-week drop policy than under the old 12-week policy, according to figures compiled by Donald C. Jieha. associate dean of the General College. The four-week policy was adopted by the hieultv Council for a onc-vear trial period in April 1976. The faculty's Educational Policy Committee now is studying the possibility of permanently changing the drop period, .licha will present his recommendation on the subject to the committee soon, but he would not say Wednesday what he would recommend. But. Jieha said. "It (the four-week drop period) works magnificently. Students arc making their decisions early in the semester." I'ho number ol courses dropped ut the end of the four-week drop period in the fall of I97f was 10.788. In the fall of 1975. under the old 12-week system. 9.392 courses had been dropped by the end of lour weeks. Alter 12 weeks, under the 12-week system. 12.349 courses had been dropped, as opposed to 12.176 at the 12-weck point under the four-week system. Thus, under the old 12-week policy, almost 3.000 courses were dropped between the fourth and twelfth weeks, while under the current policy, only half that number were dropped in the same period. "One ol the important things behind creating a policy like this is that students are much more serious about what they sign up lor instead of waiting until the last gasp to drop a course." .licha said. 'The shortened drop period has consolidated the drops and adds in the first lour weeks of classes. This opens up a lot of opportunities for students who want in a particular class to find a space." he said. " ( he main thing the statistics show me is that there were a lot ol frivolous drops in the previous years." Student Body President Bill Moss said. "The lour-week policy has minimized that somewhat, perhaps. "1 agree we should not encourage frivolous drops, but we should not discourage them at the expense of academic integrity by preventing students w ho w ill not be able to receive anything of value from a course from dropping it under the present system. Moss proposes that a student be given one week to drop a course after he has received formal notification of his progress in the course, in the form of a grade on a test or paper. "I think we should look at the whole matter in a different respect." Moss said. "A student should be able to look at each course on its own merits, instead of having an arbitrary time period." Jieha explained that a student in the General College or the College of Arts and Sciences can still drop a course after the four-week period has ended by going through an appeals procedure. "In cases of illness or extenuating circumstances beyond the student's control, we do consider appeals to drop a course after the fourth week," Jieha said. The appeals committee meets every Friday to consider the written appeals of students with whatever documents they wish to supply. "We also require a statement from the instructor in the course," Jieha said. Jieha said the appeals committee is composed of three advisers trom the General College. Jieha or the assistant dean act as chairperson. "The decision is left to the advisers," Jieha said. "The chairman is there to supply information concerning rules and regulations, precedents, etc." Jieha said the committee is composed of three different advisers each week. "Each adviser in the General College gets to know what is a reasonable excuse to drop a course." he said. "The results are available late that afternoon or early Monday," Jieha said. "They follow a similar procedure in the College of Arts and Sciences." Jieha explained that the new four-week system gives fairer and more uniform treatment to all students. Weekly Drop Figures. Week Fall 1975 Fall 1976 Official Drop-Add Period 8.296 8.582 Remainder of First Full Week of Classes 513 Second Week 511 304 Third Week 284 466 Fourth Week 301 923 Filth Week 309 91 Sixth Week 383 101 Seventh Week 334 84 Eighth Week 298 44 Ninth Week 344 80 Tenth Week 336 75 Eleventh Week 350 83 Twelfth Week 603 69 Thirteenth Week 165 71 Remaining Weeks 141 4 Totals 12,655 11.549 This figure includes drops during both the official drop-add period and the first full week ol classes. Standby plan for O WAS A Grad student outlines rationing By STEVE Ht'ETTEL Staff Writer If water rationing becomes a necessity, the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) will follow a plan drawn up by UNC graduate student Rob Blum. "OWASA called and said that they needed a water-rationing plan in a couple of days," Blum said. "1 presented the plan on August 3 it was obvious then that the situation would be getting critical with the students' coming." "The plan is the only one of its kind to my knowledge," said Blum, a master's candidate in water-resource engineering, who will submit his thesis, "Water Conservation Strategies for the OWASA Service Area." to the utility in December. The plan is designed to keep the volume of University Lake above 150 million gallons through the end of the year. Water below this amount would be unusable. Water-level readings are to be made on the first day of the month under the plan, the maximum amount which can be drained from the lake per day is determined from those readings. The maximum total consumption is established by adding additional water expected, such as water from Durham or rainfall, to the maximum draft from University Lake. The reduction in customer use is determined by dividing the maximum total consumption into the consumption rates for 1975, which was the last year of average (non-drought) consumption, Blum said he does not know how OWASA would reduce customer consumption, but he said the utility would cut the University's use on a flat rate and leave campus-rationing techniques to UNC. The rationing plan differs from measures being used in areas of California, where officials are determining random figures for per capita water-consumption cuts without monitoring the capacity of their reservoirs, according to Blum. Water Consumption Tuesday's water consumption 4.524 million gallons from University Lake 1.736 million gallons from Durham 2.788 million gallons Level of University Lake 83.5 inches below capacity Water consumed on Sept. 6, 1976 3.8 million gallons Last day for temporary permits Students who were given temporary on campus parking permits during registration have until 4 p.m. today to pick up their permanent permits, if they were awarded one. Due to heavy demand for on-campus parking following Chapel Hill's ban on residential parking, 100 to 1 50 students who have temporary permits were closed out of permanent permits. UNC Traffic Office spokesperson Abbott Mason said that the temporary permits expire today, and starting Friday cars Carter, Torrijos sign Panama Canal treaty as leaders watch parked on campus without a permanent permit will be subject to citation and towing. Student Government legislation gives selection criteria in case demand exceeds supply for on-campus permits. Priority is given to graduate students and upperclassmen. students who live farthest from campus and students who do not live on a bus line. To find out if they are one of the lucky ones, students should go to the traffic office in Room B2 of the Y Building by 4 p.m. Permits not picked up by then will go on general sale Monday morning. WASHINGTON (UPI) - With the stroke of a pen, President Carter Wednesday promised to give up Teddy Roosevelt's Panama Canal at the turn of the century and to open "a new partnership" with Latin America based on "fairness, not force." Carter and Panama's Gen. Omar Torrijos signed the historic new canal treaties Wednesday evening under blazing chandeliers in ceremonies attended by the leaders of 27 American nations, former President Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, Lady Bird Johnson and congressional leaders. The signing ceremony televised live throughout the Western Hemisphere cleared the way for a long, fierce ratification battle in the Senate, without whose approval the pacts are mere scraps of paper. Carter and Torrijos each included a plea for Senate approval in their brief ceremonial remarks. Then they signed four copies of the red and blue-bound, looseleaf treaties, turned to each other and embraced amid deafening applause in the Pan American Union building's Hall of the Americas. The President and Mrs. Carter hosted a gala State Dinner for the 17 Western Hemisphere chiefs of state and other ranking dignitaries at the unprecedented inter-American summit conference. Guests consumed lobster and roast meats with They mark the commitment that fairness, not force, should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world. Jimmy Carter, 1977 gold dinnerware, sipped wine from crystal goblets and were entertained by violinist Isaac Stern, pianist Andre Previn and soprano Maria Arroyo. But outside in the streets of Washington, and in Panama, small groups of antitreaty protesters . staged diversionary rallies the Americans denouncing the treaties as "treason" and a sellout of America's heritage, and the Panamanians demanding much swifter return of the waterway. The treaties, under negotiation for 13 years since Lyndon Johnson was president, would return full control of the 51-mile waterway to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, while preserving for the United States the right to defend the canal's "neutrality" after that. They would replace the 1903 accord negotiated by President Theodore Roosevelt as a triumph of his big-stick diplomacy and the "manifest destiny" policies of that era. American conservatives have already begun a vociferous campaign to block Senate ratification, and both Carter and Torrijos made clear in their ceremonial remarks they believe rejection would be a diplomatic calamity. Carter said the twin pacts would do more than "assure a peaceful and prosperous and secure future for an international waterway of great importance to us all. . . "They mark the commitment of the United States to the belief that fairness, not force, should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world... "The agreement thus forms a new partnership to insure that this vital waterway will continue to be well operated, safe and open to shipping by all nations now and in the future." Striking a conciliatory note, Carter said the original 1903 accord, which gave the United States virtual sovereignty over the waterway permanently "has become an obstacle to better relations with Latin America." Torrijos responded with pointed references to the "colonial conquest of our country" represented by the original treaty. But, looking across at Carter, he said, "by raising the banner of morality in international relations you are representing the true spirit of your people... you have turned imperial force into moral force." Torrijos said the treaties do not have the "full support of our people" because the pacts delay lull Panamanian control until the turn of the century and because the "neutrality" agreement "places us under the Pentagon's umbrella" by guaranteeing U.S. defense rights even after that transfer of power. iut the general, who took power at the head of ? ;ftist-orientcd coup in 1968, also pleaded with "my dear friends in the U.S. Senate" to ratify the pacts. Quoting Abraham Lincoln as his source, he said, "a statesman thinks of future generations while a politician thinks of the coming election" and urged the Senators to behave "like excellent statesmen." Carter pressed his personal lobby campaign for ratification right through the day, briefing a gathering of civic leaders and a group of uncommitted senators who indicated afterwards they are still uncommitted. The main thrust in Carter's pro-treaty publicity campaign, however, was the diplomatic extravaganza surrounding the signing ceremonies themselves. With 17 American chiefs of state present and with international press coverage laid on, it was the biggest and best covered diplomatic event in Washington in decades. Piease turn to pag9 2.