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I 6The Daily Tar HeelFriday, March 30, 1984 Jeff Hiday. Edit. Jof.l Broadway, Manayno Miter Michael Toole, Editorial Page Editor FRANK BRUNI, Associate Blitor KELLY SlMMONS, University Editor KYLE MARSHALL, State and National Editor MELANIE WELLS, City Editor VANCE TREFETHEN, Business Editor STUART TONKINSON, News Editor Frank Kennedy, Sports Editor Jeff Grove, Am Editor ClNDY DUNLEVY, Features Editor CHARLES LeDFORD, Photography Editor JEFF NEUVILLE, Photography Editor Would Annette Funicello sell BUILDINGS on TV? i't t t Satla By JEFF GROVE 2i year o" editorial freedom The road to the grave A recent dispute before a Senate sub committee has pitted mountain folk against environmentalists over whether a road should be built to cemeteries deep in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Four decades ago, the federal government promised but never delivered a road to the cemeteries, which sit along the north shore of Fon tana Lake. Instead, the National Park Service has taken responsibility for transporting relatives to gravesites, using boats, Jeeps and allegedly even dump trucks. The relatives now deserve finan cial compensation for the inconvenience they have suffered; but their future con venience does not merit the carving of a road through one of North Carolina's few surviving wilderness areas. In 1943, the federal government evicted a number of rural families to accomodate an expansion of the national park. But a promised road to facilitate visits to the gravesites of deceased relatives was never built. Affected families have been waiting ever since. Swain County members of the North Shore Cemetery Association saw their hope for a road disappearing when Tennessee Sens. Howard Baker and Jim Sasser sponsored a bill to declare 467,000 acres of the park including the cemeteries an official wilderness area. No roads are allowed in wilderness areas. Sen. Jesse Helms is leading a fight to build a 20-mile gravel road. The mountain folk complain that Jeeps and dump trucks are inappropriate for mourners visiting the last resting places of fathers, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers. Trips to the gravesites also involve a ferry trip, and take a long time. But the building of a road to shorten and improve the journey would require bulldozers slashing through almost un touched forests and hills. Possibly costing tens of millions of dollars because of the rough terrain, the construction of a road would disrupt what Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander has called, "the most rugged and pristine part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park." A road also would open up access to destructive casual visitors. The relatives have cause for complaint. Not only was a promise broken, but in dignities have been inflicted on those at tempting to pay respects to their ancestors. A road, however, is not the answer because it would entail unaccep table environmental damage. Financial compensation and better National Park Service vehicles are needed, both to repay the families and preserve a rare wilderness. Saturday morning I woke to the clattering sounds of a construction site. Or, to be more accurate, the clattering sounds of a construction site woke me up. At 7:30 a.m. Since I live on South Campus a stone's throw from the location of the new Temple of Basketball, I've grown accustomed to greeting the dawn during the week to the tune of "Rosie the Riveter." But, for Pete's sake, on a Saturday. "Ah, well," I said to myself, "the alumni prob ably have the bucks to pay for overtime." Were the state not bound to offer jobs to the lowest bid der, Davis Library would have been finished in 1980. Such delays, however, are not the real danger of the lowest-bidder mentality. What really should have us quivering in our clogs is the generic building. They're everywhere these days. And just as with generic products in a grocery store, with their ominous black-and-white labels, you never can be sure of what you're getting for your money. Except, perhaps, consistency. Ever notice how so many buildings on campus resemble each other? Yes, even at UNC there are generic buildings. If Davis Library and the Art Studio Classroom Building were closer together, the resulting identity crisis might end with budding Picassos mistakenly painting away in smoky study lounges and eager study beavers wrongly gnawing oh their books in art galleries. Sometimes these genetic product manufacturers are tricky. For example, they built two copies of Greenlaw next to each other (safely away from the original), stood the windows on their sides and call ed the place Hamilton. But they can't fool me. Then, of course, there's the Carolina Union, the Student Stores and the Undergraduate Library. Together they look like one of those federal pro jects where the government comes in, torches all the vegetation in a 10-square-mile area and puts up 500 houses, all exactly alike. Talk about little boxes on the hillside .... What is even more humiliating is the fact that generic buildings are nothing new to UNC. They go all the way back to the beginning. If you don't believe me, just take a gander at Old East and Old West sometime. The crowning example of generic buildings at UNC, though, is the quartet of dorms on South Campus. You can only tell which one is Craige dur ing televised ACC basketball games. (It's the one where, from the second floor up, life goes on as if nothing were happening.) Whoever chooses architects and builders for campus buildings " obviously never went grocery shopping with his or her mother. Any smart homemaker will tell you that a jar of oozy brown slime, sporting a price tag of 34 cents and a white label with PEANUT BUTTER printed on it in black block letters, is not necessarily a bet ter buy than a good ol' $1.49 jar of Skippy. Some penny-pinching shoppers will contend that all you get for paying Skippy's extra $1.15 is An nette Funicello hawking the stuff on TV, but don't you believe it. Annette Funicello sells Skippy because deep in her heart she knows that it's better than PEANUT BUTTER, and she wants to share this piece of wisdom with consumers. That's why we're even starting to see a few com peting ads for generic products. "Buy PEANUT BUTTER," a generic voice admonishes on TV. "Only 34 cents a jar at Food Mart." Right. It's the same with generic buildings. Somewhere there must be a huge store where prospective building buyers shop for bargains. I have a vision of several university, municipal, state and federal officials pushing carts up and down the aisles of the gourmet section. I even can hear the conversation they carry on. "Oh, Fran, look chemistry labs are on sale this week at $14.9 million," Carla says. . "Yeah," Fran muses, "but look over there. The plain ones. BUILDINGS are regularly priced at 34" cents." That sounds pretty good to Ernie, a bachelor and, by coincidence, an assistant administrator at UNC, so he grabs six boxes, dumps them into this cart and gleefully heads for the check-out line, not having heard Carla reply knowingly to Fran, o;m, I Wtf I if II J jjt-f-l " """"" " zitrzz W .4' fi I IS ffffM - rta . m...f mniiis-,giasar:mim. ill M.I" ' rill ! ' -('rkSMrl 1 "F ill SZA 9.4 kJLu.. -K -k-V-v-- I OTHZane Saunders. Generic dorms puzzle even those who carefully study campus maps. "Maybe so, but would Annette Funicello sell BUILDINGS on TV?" on TV?" Someday I'll prove my theory. Now I spend my weekends exploring the swamps off N.C. Highway 54 east of Chapel Hill looking for the dump. Somewhere out there, there has to be one a dump where I'll find a pile of discarded boxes. These boxes will be large hundreds of thousands of cubic feet in volume. Each one will be white, and each one will have one side emblazoned with black block letters that will say: BUILDING. 1 Of course, I realize that UNC will probably never stop buying these generic buildings. But I won't really trust them until a former Mouseketeer starts advertising them on TV. Jeff Grove, a graduate student in English educa tion from Jacksonville, Ha., who is arts editor of The Daily Tar Heel, lives in either Craige or Ehr inghaus. He can V be sure; they look so much alike. Pick up a phone give us a call LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Former treasurer defends actions This year's political races may turn out to be more contests of cleanliness than anything else. Everyone, it seems from Meese to Mondale has been the target of mudslinging. The Democrats, especial ly, have had little trouble lately digging up dirt (to them Meese has been but the big gest of gold nuggets uncovered) and throwing lots of mud. However, as any wise playground kid knows, the more mud you throw, the more likely you are to get splattered. Just this week the Democrats released a new television commercial describing the Reagan administration as one that "wor ships greed," with "more scandal-tainted officials than we've seen since Richard Nixon and Watergate." That may be true. Dozens of Reagan officials have come under investigation for various degrees of impropriety, and some like Richard Allen, Rita Lavelle and Paul Thayer eventually relinquished their federal posi tions. But those instances don't give the Democrats carte blanche to smear the Reagan administration. For example, it is entirely inappropriate to use Meese's name in a Democratic TV ad, as the party has done. Even a prominent Democratic Senator, Joseph Biden, has raised objec tions to the commercial: "Calling people sleazebags is not my style." The announcement of the new ads coin cided with similar attacks on the ad ministration from two of the three candi dates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Gary Hart says the admini stration has been "one of the worst in this nation' stiistory" in the area of ethical conduct, and Walter Mondale plays up the "sleaze factor" in Reagan's administra tion, sniping at "big shots playing games with the law." Both, of course, are aware of skeletons in their own, Democratic closet: charges against Carter administration Budget Director Bert Lance, for example, who eventually resigned even though cleared on all counts and the preponderance of Democratic congressmen and politicians implicated by Abscam. But Mondale and Hart, of course, are also aware of Reagan's present, firm grasp on the voters, if polls are any true indication. They realize that neither of them would have an easy time beating Reagan in November. Unless . . . unless the presi dent's most cherished attribute his per ceived trustworthiness is seriously tainted. With that thought in mind, the new ad is understandable. But it's still unacceptable. To the editor: I would like to attempt to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the Campus- Governing "Council's financial picture and the editorial, "A matter of convenience" (DTH, March 27). To begin, the two figures tossed around are not contradictory. On March 13 the CGC had $5,728 in cash. Because they had yet to receive approximately $10,000 in student fees, in addition to a $10,000 loan that would soon be returned, they had over $25,000 left to allocate if they chose to do so. Student fees ar rive intermittently throughout the year and it would be unusual if a cash figure was the same as the figure from which the CGC allocated. The numbers are not in opposition, just different. Next, the DTH implied the CGC had illegally fallen below a $40,000 constitutional, limit. First, it must be noted that this restriction is found in the Treasury Laws and not in the Constitution. Second, the line in question is in the context of Article XIII of the Treasury Laws which is applicable to investment actions. My interpretation, not unlike other of ficers before me, is that since Student Government has not made any in vestments they are not in violation. Third, regardless of my interpreta tion, the Treasury Laws give the CGC complete powers of exemption. The 65th Session was informed they were beneath $40,000. Making an inform ed decision to allocate below the limit is in essence an exemption. The DTH blamed the present low level of funds to be allocated on my so-called "slipshod accounting pro cedures." However it is most impor tant to know that the Student Body Treasurer does not allocate funds. My job is to inform the CGC of their position, which was done. Aware of their financial position, they obvious ly felt the funding requests from groups warranted depleting the reserves to the present level. My philosphy as student body treasurer has been to allow organiza tions funded by Student Government to spend their allocations as easily as possible within the confines of the Treasury Laws. Only then do students receive the benefits of the fees they pay. The Treasury Laws give a student body treasurer a fair amount of discretion and flexibility. I believe this was intended to allow a student body treasurer to prevent groups' financial plans from being thwarted by technicalities. With this philosophy, I have acted within the Treasury Laws in decisions I have made this past year. As is true with any major officer, I have made mistakes throughout my tenure as student body treasurer. I am willing to accept responsibility for those errors. But it is unfair to blame me either for the low level of CGC funding or for using the discretion granted to me by the Treasury Laws in assisting organizations. W. Burke Mewborne Student Body Treasurer '83-'84 OiicMgtheax-grinckr Who writes the headlines? "Pro-(DTH, To the editor: Although the article, abortionists hold workshops' March 26), goes on to explain that the National Abortion Rights Action League is pro-choice, the headline is misleading. By using the words "pro abortionists," you imply that NARAL advocates abortion categorically, which is not the case. Since its inception, NARAL has sup ported the right of all women to choose abortion, or not to choose abortion. Your headline has misrepresented the position of the League, and provides fuel for the kind of fire which the anti-choice groups are so fond of kindling. Mari H. O'Brien University Garden Apts. To the editor: Over the years, I have had little respect or tolerance for the DTH, and the column by Jennifer Keller ("Fanaticism, unhealthy and offen sive" DTH, March 16) has reinforced my feelings about the shoddiness of their "journalism." The column did not identify the event spoken about, but I assume it was referring to the International Women's Day program on March 15. In addition to not identifying the pro gram it did not give one concrete quote, nor full description of any one of seven speakers. I was there the en tire time and well over a hundred peo ple stopped and listened for the ma jority of the program. As a man, I did not feel attacked, nor were there raving man-haters making speeches. I think that from the lack of con crete information in the article, it is obvious that Keller did not stay and observe the entire program. Rather her article indicated she had an ax to grind based on preconceived notions and prejudices. She should open her mind and enter the debate with facts and information, not slander and in nuendo. Ken Kaye Chapel Hill DTH editorials this week 'Monday: The wave of skepticism about Hart's "new ideas" is in part unfounded, but it is re assuring to see the senator bombarded, as his op ponents have been, by the press and the media. Although the UNC basketball team lost in the NCAA playoffs, the players are still winners. Fans should be proud of a team that has a 28-3 record. Tuesday: The CGC may be contending with some unnecessarily cumbersome regulations, but it should first have taken the proper steps to change problem laws instead of exempting themselves from them. Even if favoring school prayer will garner popular support, politicians should not jeopar dize the religious tolerance crucial to the creation "of the United States. Wednesday: White House counselor Edwin Meesq stands accused of unethical, if not necessarily il-J legal, conduct in his own financial dealings, in hisl alleged use of influence to secure jobs for friends,! and in his activities in the 1980 campaign. Public trust in Meese is dissolving and the Senate judiciary committee should not approve his appointment to the position of Attorney General. Because of a lack of money, the CGC does not have the choice of being fiscally liberal, and it will be difficult for student programs to receive fund ing. Thursday: Randolph County school officials avoided the possible conflict over evolution and creation by dropping a play they heard was con troversial, but they received more attention with the cancellation than if they had simply shown it. Students should take advantage of the Yackety Yack, one of the best yearbooks in the country, and invest in nostalgia. World and Nation "It's a whole state of yuppies. Low unemployment, high tech business, suburbanites, commuters. It's a state designed for Hart." ABC News polling chief Jeff Alderman describing Con necticut, where Sen. Gary Hart Tuesday scored a deci sive Democratic presidential primary victory over former Vice President Walter Mon dale, who still leads in the nomination race. All eyes now look toward New York and the 285 delegates up for grabs there on April 3. "Everything is in complete disorder." Roberto Vieres, a Christian Democratic voting official, describing the scene Sunday in El Salvador as Sal vadorans went to the polls to cast votes for president. The long-awaited democra tic elections were marred by confusion over election rules, shortages of ballots and ballot boxes, and guer rilla attempts to stop voting in some areas. "Tomorrow the issue will be this rat-a-tat-tat. The fact is, the reason why they're having this kinship strug gle is there's such a similarity in policies. " Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson in terjecting in an argument between his opponents Wal ter Mondale and Gary Hart during a nationally televised debate Wednesday. Ex- MVkVrt,iVAVAVAVAWtViVAVAWtWW.VAWiV.V.W. eek In Review. changes between Hart and Mondale have been growing sharper in the past week. State "Our opposition is spreading this unture rumor because they know I am the frontrunner with the voters. " John Ingram, insurance commissioner and Demo cratic gubernatorial candi date, on speculation that he may drop out of the race for governor after the May ' primary and seek re-election for commissioner as an un affiliated candidate. Recent polls show only 6 percent to 10 percent of N.C. voters say they would vote for In gram. ' 'This is a disaster if there ever was one. I lived through Hurricane Hazel passed over my farm in Wilson County. But that was nothing like this." Gov. Jim Hunt during a tour of the destruction left by tornadoes that hit eastern North Carolina Wednes day. The tornadoes struck 16 counties, killing at least 50 people and injuring at least 571. Campus "I've never dealt with anydne so difficult and uncooperative as the people from SAFO. I can't believe these five women from SAFO were delaying something as important as STV for almost a month, and I think something should be done about it. " John Wilson, co-chairman of Student Television, blaming the Student Acti vities Fund Office for many of the delays in STV's ac quisition of the $22,000 loan granted for the organization , on Feb. 22. STV received that loan last Friday after a special session of the Cam pus Governing Council met and approved the STV Constitution .- "Once in prominence, do some thing with it. " U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., in the 1984 Frank Porter Graham lecture on Excellence, delivered Mon day night in the art building at the induction of 26 new members into the Order of the Golden Fleece. "This year, more than any other, people will really see what it means not to have a fee increase. " Student Body President Paul Parker on the alloca tion of student activity fees for the 1984-85 fiscal year. The Campus Governing Council Finance Committee began quantitative hearings on the allocation process Wednesday night. Sports "The quickest way to be labeled a bad coach is to get to the Final Four and not win it at all. " Houston basketball coach Guy Lewis, whose team plays Virginia Saturday in the NCAA semifinals, in re sponse to critics who say that he can't win the big one. Lewis' teams have been to the Final Four four times but never won the championship. Etc. "You 've got a duty to die and get out of the way. Let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life. " Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm in a remark directed at terminally ill patients during a speech Tuesday to the Colorado Health Law yers Association. Lamm caught flak a month ago for saying that one woman in eight under the age 45 in Las Vegas was a prostitute. "They are easy to get, they are sit ting right on people's faces. " Capt. John McLees, police spokesman, explaining why expensive eyeglass frames imported from West Ger many are causing the city of Philadelphia so many crime problems. Thus far, the im ported frames have been linked to three killings and many muggings. Compiled by The Daily Tar Heel editorial staff. Opinions from Washington Post Sunday: Various committees in both houses of Congress have been considering the deficit pro blem and the need for cuts in the federal budget. The House Democratic plan, which calls for slower growth in defense spending and an even tual tax increase, may be the most ambitious and realistic, but it still rcpiesents limited progress on the issue. Monday: The strange lull in the political con test between former Vice President Walter Mon dale and Senator Gary Hart, largely the result of , neither candidate being the clear front runner in the race, tends to bring out the worst in each can didate. The candidate best able to shy away from political overkill attacks and project a good nature will likely triumph. Tuesday: The recent elections in El Salvador, held in the midst of guerrilla opposition, were ad mirable, but they will not ease the republic's travail. Congress, by voting the emergency aid re quested by the Salvadoran government, should help make more room for the conciliatory forces faintly at work. Wednesday: Congress needs to carefully ad dress the issue of how far our society is prepared to go in requiring compensation for people expos ed in the past to toxic substances. A line, based on the percentage risk of exposure, needs to be drawn somewhere. Thursday: The United States and the Soviet Union should try to reach an agreement on lesser points even if they can not make a breakthrough on the big-ticket arms control issues. The Soviets have asked Washington to, ratify two treaties that were negotiated in the mid-1970s. The treaties, which limited the size of underground nuclear tests and other limited "peaceful nuclear explo sions," are reasonable and may help get things going between the two nations. .
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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March 30, 1984, edition 1
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