Erin go bragh! Saturday is the day we drink green beer and think Irish. For area activities, see page 5. Weather Partly cloudy. High in the mid 70s. Cooler at. night. Low in the low 40s. Serving the students and the University community since 1893 Volume 91, issue 149 Friday, March 16, 1984 Chapel Hill, North Carolina NewsSportsArts 962-0245 BusinessAdvertising 962-1163 jp "' 'i -I, , f & Mft tilt Single floor 4 A J n r uses integration proposed for trial year By HEATHER HAY Staff Writer A proposal to integrate one floor of a North Campus dormitory for one year on a voluntary basis will be considered at a meeting of the Faculty Council today. The proposal, forwarded by the Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Minorities and the Disadvantaged, is be ing suggested as one method of improv ing blackwhite relations at UNC, accor ding to William Small, Committee Chairperson. "Both sides have a lot to gain from an experiment of this type," said Small. "Most students come from very homogeneous backgrounds, and I think many have preconceived notions about students of other races." According to Student Body President Paul Parker, also on the committee for warding the proposal, the experiment is "a step in the right direction." "The basis of prejudice is ignorance," Parker said. "What we hope this will do is increase awareness. If you're aware, and you can see from different cultures and backgrounds, you can see how ridiculous prejudice actually is." If the Faculty Council, an advisory board to the chancellor, approves the proposal, it will go before the chancellor. Small said the proposal included a recommendation from the committee to continue the current University Housing policy of allowing freshmen to choose room assignments. The committee is also recommending roommate questionnaires be revised to include questions which could encourage integration. "There are students who want to live in integrated housing, and there are students who would just like to try it out," Small said. "It would provide a more integrated environment of North Campus." Recommending the integration of an entire dormitory would not have been feasible, Small said. "Only 8 or 9 percent of the students here are black, and involv ing enough black students to integrate an entire dormitory would have greatly af fected the remaining black population. "A key consideration is that this hous ing arrangement is experimental," he said. "As a start towards more equitable distribution of blacks and whites on cam pus, it's worthy of experimentation." Faculty member Barnett continues to act and direct By MIKE TRUELL Features Editor This is the fifth in a series of articles about UNC faculty. She speaks of Shakespearean dramas with a smile across her face and a sparkle in ther eyes. Slowly, the dark-haired woman leans back in her chair and begins to reminisce about her earlier days when she and 13 others performed plays throughout the country. She laughs and recounts her job as a Chicago script girl and her work with the Writers' Guild.. These are what Patricia Barnett calls her "young and foolish days." Although she never won a Tony for ac ting, an Emmy for writing or an Oscar for directing, the UNC associate pro fessor of drama says she has led a rich life doing the things she enjoys. "It's the kind of thing you wouldn't take a million dollars for now, but you wouldn't give a plugged nickel to do again," she says. Barnett says her involvement with the performing arts came about almost by ac cident. "I became a theater major in col lege by default," she says. Barnett ex plains that after graduating from St. Catherine's College at St. Paul, Minn., with a bachelor of arts in Spanish, she was waiting to receive a graduate scholar ship from a college in Peru. "But something happened; The scholarship was delayed. But luckily another one was waiting for me at Catholic University of America's theater department. So I went there." After graduating from Catholic University of America in . 1952, Barnett made one of her first serious attempts at making a career of acting. "When I got out of school, I became involved in a small company that toured," she says. "We took our own costumes and lights and music and make up and all piled into a big red truck and traveled around the country. We played one-night stands all over. It was a marvelous experience. "Of course I'd never have the stamina to do it again." ' inriillil- in in i run m rt" J" . ". V v v-' tST7" ' ifi ' s , ' . - , , ' : . -v.'-. J '.-' '.s DTHSusie Post Death-penalty protestors held Thursday night a vigil and a march in Raleigh, protesting the execution by lethal injection of convicted murderer.James W. Hutchins. Smith disagrees with momentum theory, says UNC is ready for NCAA tourney By MICHAEL DeSISTI Sports Editor ; The regular season has been history for two weeks now, with the ACC Tourna ment heding on one. North Carolina's third season begins on Saturday, and a few of the experts on basketball fate and fortune have said it might be short. ... Dean Smith wasn't one of them. 'Tdon't biiy that momentum theory," the North Carolina coach said. "Some one said that Carolina hasn't done well in the (NCAA) tournament if 'we didn't win the (ACQ Tournament. There are a lot of cases where you end up on a bad note in the ACC Tournament and come on and do well. So I'm not buying that at all." What most are willing to buy is that the Tar Heel team that dropped a two-point decision to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinals last Saturday was not the same team that won 21 straight games and all 14 regular-season conference contests. The difference? Two hands, for the most part. Barnett turns to her right and points at two pictures of the company hanging on the wall of her office. "That's us," she says. "We were in volved in an experiment a pilot pro gram where the Department of Defense sent the Shakespeare and Moliere that we were playing to the com bat zone in Korea. And we also went to Japan." The "experiment" worked so well that the group was asked to return to Korea the following year. Eventually, the government program that sends young college entertainers overseas grew out of this "experiment." . "But now they don't go to the combat zone." After her Korea war days, Barnett worked as a script girl for a Chicago NBC station that originated network broad casts. She says that she also met quite a few celebrities during her job there. "We saw a lot of famous people com ing through," she says. "And Eddie Ar nold used to come in and sit on my desk and sing once in a while," she adds with a slight trace of a chuckle." "I didn't think of them as names. I thought of how good they were to work with or what fun they were backstage," she says. Barnett's job as a script girl consisted of gathering information for the weather and news reports, making sure the props were ready, checking the timing of the shows, and just making sure everything was in order. She left her job in Chicago after a year, and in 1957 went to New York to try to be a script girl there. She was, however, un successful. "One of the reasons why 1 couldn't get a job like that when I went to New York was because it was assumed that it was the next step to becoming a director," she says. "And whereas we had women direc tors in Chicago, they did not have them on the east coast. Now they wouldn't dare do such a thing." See BARNETT on page 3 , ' V North Carolina plays its first game of the 1984 NCAA Tournament in Charlotte Saturday against Temple, a 65-63 winner Thursday night against St. John's. And the Tar Heels will match each of their two losses in 29 games with an injured starter. Point guard Kenny Smith started his first two games last weekend since frac turing his left wrist Jan. 29. Center Brad PaughCTty, wha strajned a ndon in his ngnt nana m practice Marcn 7, sat out UNC's first-round win over Clemson and fouled out against Duke with only 19 UNC's Michael Jordan slam dunks junior guard will lead UNC against :.v:iK7.:.V.'4 S.vjy.-::- - s $ 1 u 1 if 1 tj , .. A i :-.-.v.v.x w ft S V- mm J . A v ' - axt." 4 ' i y: 11 .' - '; -.- ! v ' -J u - f ... . J - J , , I 4 - '; minutes playing time the next day. "I don't lik6 looking out there and see ing two guys with bandages on their hands," Smith said. "As far as injuries go, if you know ahead of time you can plan accordingly. . But I think we'll be healthy on Saturday." Dean Smith said North Carolina will g with seven starters, so to speak, in ".the :t. NCAAsl Steve Hale, who wowed people' See PREVIEW on page 6 DmCharies Lfdford during the ACC tournament. The Temple Saturday. lawy The Associated Press RALEIGH Gov. Jim Hunt refused Thursday to halt the scheduled 2 a.m. Friday execution of James W. Hutchins, . who was sentenced to death for the slay ings of three law officers almost five years ago'. . '.- , ' , Hutchins' execution would be the 15th since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. It would be the third execution in the nation by lethal injection. The last occurred Wednesday when James David Atitry was executed in .Texas.'. . ' ; : While Hunt prepared Thursday to an nounce his decision to let the execution proceed, Hutchins visited with his wife, Geneva, at Central Prison in Raleigh. His wife left the prison around 4:30 p.m. Prison spokeswoman Patty McQuillan Thursday night said Hutchins would be allowed a private "contact" meeting with his wife from 9 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in a small room at the prison. She said two or three guards would view the private meeting through a win dow. '".A McQuillan said Hutchins would strip to his undershirts and socks before being taken to a preparation room about 1 a.m. She said intravenous needles would be in serted into his arms and a saline solution would drip into his veins from about 1:30 a.m. until 2 a.m., when he would be taken to the death chamber on a gurney. When the execution occurs, three tech nicians standing behind a curtain press plungers, none knowing who will ad minister the lethaj drug, she said.. 45-minutew Marchers protest death penalty By WAYNE THOMPSON ' Staff Writer RALEIGH Capital punishment op ponents gathered here Thursday night to demonstrate against what one protester called an "ineffective strategy" for deal ing with violent crime today's 2 a.m. execution of convicted killer James W. Hutchins. After protesters held a silent vigil at the Church of the Good Shepherd on McDowell Street, about 65 of them started the 45-minute march to Central Prison. Two protesters held a sign reading "We walk for life." Tony Clarke-Sayer, head of North Carolinians Against the Death Penalty, said the purpose of the march was to bear witness to the group's conviction that the death penalty was wrong. "It's wrong, unjust and ineffective strategy for dealing with violent crime," he said. "It's our belief that through Edmisten, N.C.'s 'top cop, ' aims for state's highest office By WAYNE THOMPSON Staff Writer Sixth in a series on candidates for governor RALEIGH North Carolina At torney General : Ruf us Edmisten's head was bowed low, his voice soft as he sought to reassure a woman whose elderly husband had not returned for several hours from a fishing trip. "Mrs. Stilley, I'll say a little prayer for you myself," he said. "I'm going to hope for the best." Hanging up the phone, he turned and said "there's probably not much hope," and continued with the in terview. "He probably fell out of the boat in the rough seas and drowned. He called a sheriff he knew on the coast and asked him to help search for the man. Such a call is typical of the day-to-day chores of the position Edmisten has held since 1974, he said. "I get calls sometimes from 10, 20 people a day, just ordinary people, asking for help. That's what makes the job challenging." , But Edmisten's biggest challenge of his political career may be just ahead the May 8 Democratic primary. According to the latest Carolina Poll taken by the UNC School of Journalism, Edmisten and former Charlotte Mayor Eddie Knox are in a dead heat in the government race. Of the 587 North Carolina Democrats who said they planned to vote in the May primary, 20 percent favored Edmisten, and 20 percent favored Knox. The two are seven percentage points above the nearest Democratic challengers, D.M. "Lauch" Faircloth and Jimmy Green. "Not one of those is better able to han dle the job than I am," Edmisten. "As the state's top cop for 10 years, I've worked in all branches of state govern ment, from the governor's office to the legislature. , "In my humble opinion, that .qualifies me as the best candidate for' governor," he said as he picked up his pipe, lit it and ers' pleas She said Hutchins was reading a news paper about 8 p.m. and had received 14 letters Thursday, including one from his son Jamie. She said Hutchins continued to refuse food through the evening and had not ac cepted an offer from warden Nathan Rice for paper or a tape recorder to make a final statement. Two witnesses and an alternate arrived at the prison shortly after 7 p.m. Capt. Ray Dixon and Chief Jailer Luke Rober son of the Rutherford County Sheriffs Department were to witness the execu tion. Sgt. Herbert Scruggs of the sheriff's department is an alternate. -' Scruggs, on his way into the prison, said he thought the lethal injection method chosen by Hutchins was "the easy way." "He should die the way our men did," Scruggs said. , ' The last execution in the state was Oct. 27, 1961, when Theodore Boykin died in the gas chamber for the rape and murder of a Duplin County housewife. Hutchins selected as his execution method a lethal injection of drugs sodium thiopental to induce a deep sleep and the paralytic drug procuronium bromide to cause death; Hutchins was sentenced to die in September 1979 for the shooting deaths of Rutherford County Sheriffs Deputy Owen Messersmith and state Highway Patrol trooper Robert L. "Pete" Peter son. He was also sentenced to life in , prison for the death of Deputy Roy Huskey. ' . witnessing with this march tonight we can raise the public consciousness on this issue About 11 p.m.r Hutchins' attorney, Joseph Cheshire V, said he was despon dent over his client's fate. "He's a very strong man," Cheshire said. "He's at peace with his God. And he's probably stronger than most of the rest of us.." Cheshire also said he felt Gov. Jim Hunt's refusal Thursday to commute Hutchins' sentence was not done because of any political reasons. During the march to Central. Prison, Patrick O'Neill of Greensville carried a sign that read, "Jim Hunt is not God." "I find it hard to believe that Jim Hunt was uncognizant of the political issue in volved with the death penalty," he said. Recent public opinion polls show that a majority of North Carolinians favor the death penalty. See PROTESTS on page 2 IT . Ruf us Edmisten leaned back in his chair. "I think the most important problem facing the state in the next decade is the lack of a basic education for North Carolina," he said. "Almost one-sixth of the adult population are functional il literates. "To begin bringing back dignity to our schools and reaping the talent and poten tial of our students, 1 have called for rais ing starting teacher salaries to $20,000," he said. Money to fund the raises, he add ed, could come from the state budget surplus and improvements in the state's tax collection ability. While paternalistic on education, a query about his stand on crime causes Edmisten to lean forward in his chair. "I'm somewhat of a fanatic about drug pushers," he said of his creation of the state's first drug squad within the State Bureau of Investigation. See EDMISTEN on page 3 I

Page Text

This is the computer-generated OCR text representation of this newspaper page. It may be empty, if no text could be automatically recognized. This data is also available in Plain Text and XML formats.

Return to page view