Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Feb. 3, 1983, edition 1 / Page 3
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Thursday, February 3, 1983The Daily Tar Heel3 ?IRG gets referendum Hiring practices By LISA PULLEN Surf Writer In Tuesday's campus elections students will have the op portunity to express an opinion on University investment in firms operating in South Africa. The issue has been placed on the ballot by the UNC Public Interest Research Group, a student activist group. In past months, PIRG has called for University divestment of firms operating in South Africa. According to the Student Constitution, any organization collecting signatures of 10 percent of the student body can direct the student body president to call a referendum. Elec tions Board Chairman Stan Evans said Tuesday. PIRG presented Student Body President Mike Vandenbergh with 2,692 signatures last week. Because the effort fell so close to the campus elections date, the referendum will be included on the ballot Tues day, Vandenbergh said. The ballot question will ask whether the UNC Board of Trustees Endowment Fund should remove stockholdings in firms operating in South Africa. The referendum also calls for the BOT to establish a task force to investigate criteria by which University funds are invested. But whatever the vote, the result will carry no legal weiebt ' Fvn Instead, it will serve as a recommendation to University officials, he said. ,If students support the University's removal of invest ment in South African firms, "then we can approach the BOT with the confidence of the students behind us," PIRG member David Goldman said Wednesday. "Right now students have no input into the investment process," Goldman said. "That's something we'd like to see." Vandenbergh said that he would like to have seen the issue discussed in the Campus Governing Council but he was glad to see that students were concerned with the invest ment of their funds. "1 think the University should address the problem," Vandenbergh said. "If any measures can be taken which will produce a similar return on investment without supporting apartheid government, I would support them." PIRG will have a chance to air its grievances at the Feb. 18 meeting of the BOT, said Farris Womack, vice chancellor for business and finance. Womack refused to comment on the investment issue Tuesday. "I'm aware of the referendum and I'm aware of the feel ings of many with regard to the whole question of South Africa," he said. Students and Fordham discuss faculty By KYLE MARSHALL Staff Writer About 12 students met with UNC Chancellor Christopher C. Fordham III last week to discuss the lack of minority and women faculty at the Universi ty. The students, who have been marching almost every day for the last two weeks with signs and placards criticizing the University's hiring policy, began voicing their complaints in early December. Chuck Hennessee, a senior from Fayetteville and one of the driving forces behind the student protest, said the meeting with the chancellor was a positive step toward increasing the number of minority and female faculty. The students, who say they represent no par ticular organization, have scheduled a protest rally in the Pit at noon Friday, Feb. 4. The rally will con sist of a short speech and a march to South Building. Hennessee said. Fordham shares the group's concern, hesaid in an interview Friday. The students might be able to help the University in areas such as contacting potential black faculty applicants, he said. "At all Faculty Council meetings since September, I've encouraged the faculty to assist with locating and hiring minority and women facul ty," Fordham said. Judging from some of the preliminary surveys sent to the University's academic departments, there were some "definite possibilities" that improvement would be made, he said. "But we won't know for sure until after July 1. We won't be able to do any hiring until then because of the salary freeze, (im posed on state employees by Gov. Jim Hunt)," Fordham said. Sherrod Banks, one of the student protestors, -said one of the topics discussed at the meeting was the use of "Affirmative Action advocates" in the departments. The advocate would be. a hired posi tion in each department and would have the respon sibility of reviewing the recruiting and hiring methods, Banks said. "We asked the chancellor to mandate that the ad vocates be placed in all departments," Banks said. "He was sincere in wanting more minority faculty here, but he didn't really show a desire to use his authority as chancellor to mandate hiring the ad vocates. "He said he would pressure departments through encouragement," Banks said. "And he said we (the students) must continue to put pressure on." Hennessee said the group "was assured, within the areas we spoke on, that the chancellor is doing his job." The current position of Equal Employment Op portunity officer in each department was not ade quate because it had no power over selection of faculty applicants, Hennessee said. The Affirmative Action advocate would have selection power, he said. '42 graduate lives for music, poetry. SWAD forum strikes out at racism By CLINTON WEAVER Staff Writer Suddenly he appears. You may not notice him until he presses the button on his small cassette recorder. Sounds of a concert come from the tape, blasted at near-full volume. Someone is singing songs and they are hilarious. You look up and an elderly man stands above you in an old, brown-checkered coat and a dusty, tan golf hat. The cassette trembles with his hands, and he smiles, mouthing the words to the songs, as the tape runs. He is Robert Castle Fisher, 63, retired. Fisher comes to campus three or four times a week to play his tape. He also recites poetry. The tape is of Tom Lehrer, a friend of Fisher's who taught mathematics at Harvard in the 1940s. It includes songs about Hitler and "smut" and music and just about everything. Some students are intimidated by the tape; some are offended; some are greatly humored. Fisher retired from newspaper work four years ago, after writing for the now-defunct Herald Tribune (Manhattan) and for The Buffalo Times. He settled outside Chapel Hill on 30 acres of woodland with his wife, Rosita. "My mind was slipping," Fisher explains. "It was embarrassing to be around my friends, so I retired." Having an impaired memory. Fisher began to rely on poetry and his cassette to talk to people. He interrupts the cassette occasionally to deliver a poem: t. .' The bee is such a busy soul, He has no time for birth control; And that is why in times like these, You have so many sons-of-bees. an- Fisher said that although he cannot remember most things, he can always remember poetry. One of his poems, "The Eagle and the Ant," was recently published in The Treasury of Great Poems. Fisher proudly delivers an impromptu version of the poem to students huddled on the steps of Lenoir Hall. Several people clap, and he announces the poem's notoriety. Fisher graduated from UNC in 1942, a Phi Beta Kappa philosophy major. "They asked me to teach here," Fisher said, "but I said, 'No, I want to spread Chapel Hill to the world.' " Now he spreads his last passions poetry and song to Chapel Hill. He has written two books of poetry, Heresy (co written by Mary Potter Jones) and Rubied Springs. Fisher gave copies to the Bull's Head Bookstore. "They only sold one or two," he said. "I did it for myself." Fisher's memory is short. He can only remember your name for a second. He knows the name of one friend by first recalling her initials. His eyes are wide and piercing behind his thick-frame glasses and he speaks rapidly, urgently searching for words that sometimes don't come. He says he knows he will die soon. "I'm so de pressed," he says. "I'm so depressed they had to take me to Duke (hospital) for a week. Now I take five or six pills a day." He beats out his message on the recorder, looking anxiously and hopefully at the students sitting around him. He will smile when you smile. Listen to what he is saying. Time just won't stop Robert Castle Fisher. lodge a man I never knew was there. Emerging from the travail of the years. Slowly he grows and slowly I am aware, Slowly I know, and slowly shed my tears. His is a body with many a flaw, A mind with vital gaps forsooth. Now that I have reached threescore, He uncovers the elusive heart of truth. And all the while he lay in wait, Invisible to his host and kin! He planned his entrance sure as fate, t And at last I know the man within. R.CJF. By JOHN TONKINSON Staff Writer The goal of the Sorority Women Against Discrimination group is not to integrate the sorority system but to eliminate racial discrimination, Andrea Stumpf, coordinator for SWAD, told about 100 people at an open forum Monday night. VWe are not striving for affirmative action," she said. "We do not want race to be an issue when sororities make bids." "All student organizations should be open to those who wish to join, regardless of race," Fred Schroeder, director of the department of student life, said at the forum. SWAD is helping sororities to recognize this fact, he said. The open forum was held to describe to students what" SWAD was trying to do to end racial discrimination as well as to get some sort of reaction from the audience, said Carol Holcomb, adviser to SWAD- SWAD was formed last semester by concerned students after they decided that sororities had not extended a bid to a black rushee because of her race. "I could not remain a part of a sorority system which dis criminated on the basis of race without doing something about it," SWAD member Leigh Leutze said. Emotions propelled sorority members to form SWAD to work for some form of concrete change, Stumpf said. Some change has become visible, she added. Any change that is made within the sorority system must be sincere, said Sharon Mitchell, adviser to the Panhellenic Council, which represents the 15 UNC sororites and coor dinates sorority rush. It is important for members of soro rities to learn to appreciate differences between one another, Mitchell said. t As part of Panhell's attempt to eliminate racial dis crimination, the organization now represents the three black sororities. In the past, Panhell only comprised the white sororities. Now, black and white sorority sisters are able to fit into the total Greek system, Mitchell said. Panhell also is working to do away with racial dis crimination by making race relations the theme of this year's Greek Week, Mitchell said. "We want to bring the black and white sorority members together," she said. Sororities have not always explained to their members the University's policy of non-discrimination against race, Schroeder said. Student organizations are required to ex plain this policy to members in order to be recognized by the University, he said. "If sorority presidents have been signing the statement affirming that members have been told of the policy (of non-discrimination), and if sorority members are not ac quainted with the policy, there is a problem," Schroeder said. "Sorority rush itself is a discriminatory process," Leutze said. "Race should not be a part of that discrimination." I r -i Durham Coca Cola Bottling Co. 5 xstWjc 121 E. 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Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 3, 1983, edition 1
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