8 The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, January 16, 1986
5ttj? iatlg
95r vear q" editorial freedom
Arne Rickert and
Editor
Catherine Cowan
Anjetta McQueen
Janet Olson
Jami White
Associate Editor
Production Editor
University Editor
News Editor
JlLL GERBER State and National Editor
Larry Childress
No SACrificial Rams
Read our lips:
Dumb, dumB, D- DOctrCl
U-M-B. . .
No matter how OpiPllOn
you spell it, the
parking situation that Carolina basket
ball tans are going to encounter for the
first time Saturday afternoon is, as our
copy of Webster's says, "slow-witted. "
A total of 656 parking spaces sur
round the much-vaunted Student Activ
ities Center. But 21,426 fans will be
"parking" themselves inside the building
come tip-off time Saturday. Lots at the
UNC medical complex will be open to
fans as will other lots that are
scattered here and about on South
Campus but some Duke fans might
be better off walking from Durham than
taking a chance on finding a parking
spot within a half-mile of the SAC.
You'd think that with all the talk
about dollars and cents, someone could
have stopped for a moment to think
about people and cars. Chapel Hill
zoning laws require at least one parking
space per every four occupants of a
building, only spaces within 2,500 feet
of the building being counted. But even
Editorialists' columns-
Posters worth
History having a tendency to repeat,
candidates for campus elections are once
again finding their posters removed from
the walls of classroom buildings.
There, is both an official and an
unofficial explanation for this practice.
The official is a 1980 memo from the
UNC Physical Plant that directs house
keeping staff to remove any posters not
affixed to bulletin boards, on the
grounds that the adhesives damage the
surfaces.
The unofficial reason is that many
deans and professors dislike the posters.
Either they claim that the posters present
classroom distractions, or, having taught
in a particular room for so long, they
have become possessive and dislike wall
art not of their own choosing.
Neither justification holds water. In
the case of causing damage to walls, the
elections laws contain two provisions
aimed against that. Posters must come
down within four days of elections, so
they should not remain up long enough
to cause damage. Failure to remove
them is a campaign violation and
punishable by fine.
In the event that posters do cause
damage, the candidate is liable for the
cost of repairs and also may be fined.
Failure to pay either fine is an Honor
Code offense and grounds for disqual
ification from election or removal from
office.
As for the other argument, well,
perhaps the University should remember
its much ballyhooed encouragement of
Collarful memories
"He wears such beautiful shirts," my
girlfriend says when someone asks her
to describe me.
Part of this undoubtedly traces back
to the scene in The Great Gatsby, a book
she admires, when Gatsby displays his
shirts for Daisy "shirts with stripes
and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple
green and lavender and faint orange,
with monograms of Indian blue."
There's something about shirts; some
thing of ourselves, something of our
past, something of our dreams. One
critic even described Gatsby's shirts as
"sacramental," as communicating con
crete signs of his inner vision. Shirts tell
us much about the man. Here are some
shirts and some stories.
Yellow, blue and white Oxford cloths.
These last remains of 12 years of
uniform-dress Catholic education refuse
to be pressed again after years under my
mother's iron.
A blue, patterned Indian shirt bought
in one of those cheesy shops at Daytona
Beach when 1 was still young enough
to drink beer illegally with friends. A
friend named Beth wore it to a Hawaiian
party last spring, and I haven't seen it
since.
A short-sleeve yellow with blue polka
dots that 1 bought in a vintage clothing
store in Atlanta and once wore to
ar
David Schmidt
Editor
Lor etta Grantham
Lorry Williams
Lee Roberts
Elizabeth Ellen
City Editor
Business Editor
Sports Editor
Arts Editor
MARYMELDA HALL Features Editor
Photography Editor
with the horrific honeycomb of distant
lots prepared to accept cars this Satur
day, the number of spaces available will
only be 4,500, far less than the zoning
standard. Something doesn't add up.
Gordon Rutherford, director of the
UNC planning office, said that the high
ratio of on-campus students expected to
attend SAC events allowed his office to
modify the zoning restrictions. But he
declined to comment further on why his
office's original plans which called
for several hundred more accessible
spaces had been scrapped. He did
say that having a "sea of asphalt" was
unacceptable for this campus. But we
humbly submit that three or four
hundred cobblestone spaces could have
been added without detracting from the
. . . urn, er, "beauty" of South Campus.
At any rate, no one knows how bad
Saturday's parking problem will be. But
the "wait-and-see" attitude that has
come to typify campus planning in
recent years makes us wish that some
thing had been done to forestall what
is bound to be a mess that is, unless
you paid your $10,000 for a guaranteed
Rams Club spot.
the pest
a well-rounded education and support
of student self-governance. There is
much more to the college experience
than is to be found in a lecture hall,
and the inconvenience of having posters
on classroom walls one month out of
the year is a small sacrifice for the
benefits of student government.
Candidates waste much effort and
money in putting up posters that
immediately come down. Of course,
nothing says they cannot come up with
campaign methods other than plastering
their mugs all over campus. But neither
can it be denied that posters are the most
effective way of raising student con
sciousness. That consciousness is vital
if the elections and, by extension,
Student Government are to have any
validity.
Elections Board Chairman Bruce
Lillie will meet with Provost Samuel
Williamson next week to discuss solu
tions to this problem. There is no reason
that students, faculty and the housekeep
ing staff cannot come to terms on this
issue, for campaign posters are destruc
tive to neither the physical or academic
environment; they are at worst an
endurable nuisance.
After years of complaints from can
didates and Student Government offi
cials, it is high time that the University
administration took the lead in arrang
ing those terms.
EDWIN FOUNTAIN
Springfest, convincing my date that I
must be pretty cool.
A once bright yellow, long-sleeve
Hawaiian Tropic shirt bought in St.
Petersburg Spring Break of my senior
year of high school. We were visiting
10 girls staying in someone's grandmoth
er's house (where I learned how to eat
spaghetti), and after a day of sunglasses,
my red-haired friend passed out in the
Howard Johnson's restaurant while
waiting for a takeout cheeseburger
sunstroke.
A Chaps green cotton plaid which is
the last shirt my mother bought for me
that I liked. She's nearly stopped trying.
A black-striped shirt I bought at a
thrift shop for a dollar to go dance at
a Jason and the (Nashville) Scorchers
concert at a cheap bar on a backstreet
in Marietta, Ga. It's still a good dance
shirt because of the long, floppy sleeves.
Two bright blue-ish plaid flannel
shirts from Britches, Christmas '84
a vintage year for Britches flannels.
A lightweight yellow short-sleeve
cotton I stole from my girlfriend, who
had bought it from a fellow on the street
at Cooper Square near St. Mark's Place
in Greenwich Village.
And every shirt tells a story, don't it.
LOUIS CORRIGAN
Mid East Beat: A call for retaliation?
By ADAM LEFSTEIN
This is the first in a series of columns by Adam
Lefstein on the Middle East.
It is human nature to try to strike back at
that which hurts us. Thus it is no surprise that
the immediate American reaction to the Dec.
27 terrorist attacks on the Rome and Vienna
airports was to want to retaliate. This emotional
response may make us feel better, it may help
to avenge the deaths of the 19 who fell to the
terrorists' bullets, but it is unwise.
The first problem with retaliation is the lack
of an object for our anger, a target for our
aircraft. The Reagan administration blames
Libyan leader Muammar Quaddafi as instigator
of the atrocities. This is a very convenient excuse
for Reagan to strike at the man whom he
considers to be "the most dangerous man in the
world." The facts, however, show this blame to
be somewhat misdirected.
The eight men who committed the attacks are
members of Abu Nidal's Fatah Revolutionary
Council. According to Austrian Interior Minister
Karl Blech, who is involved in the investigation,
the men were trained in Palestinian camps in
the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
From there they went to Damascus and split
into two groups, one group flying to Belgrade,
The weekness of metric
To the editors:
I got home from class today and
felt like writing an editorial for the
DTH and imagine my dismay when
I turned to the back page and found
the only articles of late concerned
vandalism and euthanasia, two
topics for too lofty my limited
mental capacities. I was hoping
maybe we'd be talking about Cap
tain Crunch again. So, I was ready
to forget the whole thing when I
remembered that there was some
thing I had wanted to speak out
about. The subject to which I am
referring is the "metric week." The
metric week is long overdue and I
am surprised no other college
student has thought about it. It.
works like its name implies, that is,
every week would have ten days.
"What is the advantage of a ten day
week?" you might ask. Well, you
see, in a metric week we keep the
same number of weekdays, there
fore gain an extra number of
weekend days, the new week would
consist of Monday, Tuesday, Wed
nesday, Thursday, Friday, Satur
day, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday,
and Sunday. Each year would
consist of 36.5 metric weeks. I know
what you are saying: "But what
about that half of a week at the end
IMP!
E-ibuie
'CU. WE THOUGHT
r -fe j W; i N i!i m
Conservatives distort Robinson's image
By MARGUERITE ARNOLD
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the latest
editorial that Allen Taylor has spewed forth.
When I first became aware of Taylor last
semester, I was amazed that anyone could be
that naive. At least he has consistency.
The article questioned not only Robinson's
right to speak at UNC, but the appropriateness
of his speech in honoring Martin Luther King.
The gall of that question still rankles. Robinson
is fighting for human rights now just as surely
as King did in the sixties.
I think that what Taylor finds so questionable
about Robinson is that he is a member of
Trans Africa, which is probably just as left wing
as Taylor is to the right. Who says opposites
attract? TransAfrica is concerned with the
freedom of the South African people, as surely
Taylor must be; however, what they propose to
do is far more indicative of what the South
African people want than what Taylor proposes.
The people themselves have called for complete
divestment and sanctions against the South
African government.
It is people like Taylor who tend to confuse
the issue by completely disregarding facts which
don't agree with what they believe in. The result
is a policy like constructive engagement which
only hurts the blacks. Taylor himself believes
that constructive engagement should be stopped
to send more companies to South Africa.
In this instance what is happening is that not
only are people like Taylor blatantly ignoring
facts, but are doing so for capitalistic gain.
Constructive engagement is a rationalizaton,
coupled too often with the argument that through
it, the United States is helping the South African
blacks (about one percent are employed by
American companies) while at the same time
stoping the Communist threat. Besides, if we
weren't there exploiting cheap labor, some other
country would be. Makes me proud to be
American, let me tell you.
To further show how Taylor ignores facts, let
me reiterate the list of the people and groups
that TransAfrica has invited to speak that Taylor
has shown dislike of. Perhaps an alternative view
of these people and organizations would show
why Taylor favors such an unsavory opinion of
these people.
Maurice Bishop. Oh dear. Grenada. If 1 were
in Taylor's shoes, I wouldn't want that country
mentioned too loudly. We are still finding out
how much Reagan's "rescue plan" turned out
to be ?nafu.
Ron Dellums gun sales. This is another
prime example of Taylor ignoring the facts. The
Yugoslavia anu then travelling by train to Rome,
the other Budapest, Hungary and then to Vienna.
The only apparent connection between the
terrorists and Libya is that three of the terrorists
carried passports which Libyan officials had
confiscated from expelled Tunisian workers.
So it would appear that the blame lies
primarily with Abu Nidal, then with Syria, and
finally with Libya. Abu Nidal is too elusive a
target. Syria is considered vital to the Middle
East peace process. Therefore, the United States
vents its anger at Libya.
Retaliating against Libya also has its problems.
Were the United States to risk striking at Libya
militarily, innocent people might be killed, the
1500 Americans presently in Libya would
become prime hostage targets, and we might be
forced into an unnecessary confrontation with
the Soviet Union.
It is on account of these risks that Reagan
has opted to retaliate with international
economic sanctions against Libya. With the
complete support of Western Europe interna
tional sanctions might work; however, without
this support they are useless if not counter
productive. For the United States, whose total
trade witrh Libya is worth only 229 million
dollars a year, it is easy to sever economic
relations; for our European allies, who import
6.4 billion dollars of Libyan oil each year, it is
much more costly. Thus. Europe has chosen not
reader'forum
of each year?" Simple. The final
week of each year would start on
a Saturday and end on a Sunday.
For those of you who are real astute
(i.e., grad students) you will notice
that when we couple this week with
the previous week we get ten
weekend days in a row. I know there
are other advantages to backing up
my argument for the metric week,
but because I am a Republican, I
often have trouble supporting my
arguments with anything substan
tial. Thank you.
Dave Shaw
Ehringhaus
MAYBE... nevermind.:
The South Africans will
get help from whatever
quarter they can. They
want to be free, to live
and work, and do not
want to be satellite of
any country.
United States is not only the primary gunrunning
nation in the world (but we can still hold our
noses in the air over Khadafy's tactics), but is
also a nation with a severe problem with gun
control internally, caused by the lenient, or
perhaps nonexistent is more apt, gun control
laws. But if one goes on Taylor's surmise, one
can assume that if you ignore the problem it
will go away, or, as in the case of guns, one
can ignore it until you get shot in the back.
Everyone has the right to shoot their own man,
even here, right? You might also add John
Hinkley, Don Johnson and Sylvester Stallone.
SWAPO, ANC and Oliver i umbo. These are
organizations (Oliver Tambo is the president of
ANC) which are fighting for the end of apartheid.
The ANC in particular was founded as a peaceful
group in 1912, and for years tried to deal with
the South African government in a reasonable
non-violent way. I might also add that Ghandi
tried to do the same thing in South Africa and
it didn't work. What are they supposed to do?
Keep trying and hopefully Botha will wake up
one morning on the right side of the bed for
once? Yeah right, my granny wears combat
boots. Are we supposed to believe that the South
Africans should just continue their peace marches
and act as target practice for the police? It sounds
logical to me.
This brings me back to the appropriateness
of Robinson's address. Martin Luther King was
an advocate of peace. That's what Robinson also
wants, but America is not South Africa, although
there are a few similarities. You must remember
that by the time King spoke, the Civil War had
been over for a hundred years. Blacks here had
a few more rights. We are still feeling the
repercussions of our own racist tendencies,
though we still have such peace-loving groups
as the Klan and the Order. The government here
also gave in a little more quickly, and by the
to cooperate with our ill-fated sanctions, and
Qaddafi has not been weakened. Indeed, it
appears that our feeble attempts at retaliation
have strengthened him, bolstering his popular,
image as an active fighter against Western
imperialism in the Middle East.
The real problem with our search for a
response to the attacks is that it comes too late.
The pitiful actions of Italian Special Prosecutor
Domernico Sica are a perfect example of our
poor timing: Time reports this week that "after
sifting all the evidence, Sica was reportedly ready
at week's end to week an international arrest
warrant for Abu Nidal." Abu Nidal has been
speaking terror throughout the world for 12
years. Seeking a warrant is a good start, but
it is much too late.
We need to build up our security in preparation
for attacks. Eyewitnesses in Vienna reported that
the ineffective Austrian security reacted slowly
and that if it had not been for the two Israeli
security men working for El Al, "the slaughter
would have been much worse."
There is a war going on. The terrorists know
it, Israel knows it, and it is time for us to realize
it also. Vengeful retaliation won't stop the terror;
only improved security will.
Adam Lefstein . is a freshman Mid-Eastern
studies major from Chapel Hill who lived in Israel
for 1 12 years.
Bring back
our logo
to us
To the editors:
If any of you seniors have
noticed this year's senior class
logo, you have seen one of the
most decorative, creative, and
unique senior class logos in UNC
history. The qualities which
make this year's logo so special
are a reflection of the thought,
time and effort put into the logo's
development. That is why it is
just too bad that someone took
the banner from the Pit for his
own personal pleasure. The logo
symbolizes senior unity for some
3500 seniors on UNC's campus.
It is the only true identifying
feature which every senior can
take heart in and be proud of.
If one person captures all this
symbolism for his own selfish
enjoyment, then a major part of
UNC senior tradition is lost and
the efforts of those dedicated
seniors who developed the logo
are lost.
So please, please, if you are
the person who solely possesses
the Senior '86 logo banner,
return it to the Union informa
tion desk or to the Senior Class
office. You will be a better person
for it, and 3500 seniors, espe
cially Kenneth Whitted, would
greatly appreciate it!
Kenneth Whitted
Hinton James
1960's. the averaee American did not still have
thoughts of owning a slave. In South Africa as
of the present, the attitude is not as liberal as
the America of the sixties. We had our own share
of violence, and we also didn't have other
governments giving us incentives to carry on in
our racist ways. At least our geographic locations
nave the same point on the compass the south
of America and South Africa. Maybe we have
it all wrong it's not the policies of governments,
but rather the southern wind that blows which
is no good.
I fear that Taylor's view is consistent with a
trend among contemporary American policies
not only toward South Africa, but also countries
like Nicaragua. Americans have such a fear of
Communism that they would turn the issues of
these countries into purely political battles to be
fought over the conference table between the left
and the right, rather than keeping the focus on
human rights. The South Africans will get help
from whatever quarter they can. They want to
be free to live and work, and do not want to
be a satellite of any country. Freedom is freedom
free of constricting governments, be they
African, British, Russian or American.
Taylor, however, in keeping with "right wing
masters" seeks to scare people into agreeing with
the Republican government by using the
adjuctive Marxist at every turn. It has become
the new Republican four letter word. Its
advantages are multifold, including the fact that
it can be used to describe any policy that is even
vaguely left, and it can also be used in front
of children to scare them into behaving. In a
few years if the present trend continues, look
for the Republicans' own horror stories to be
told around the camp fire look out the Marxist
will get you.
I believe that Taylor's condemnataion ol
Robinson is completely unfounded. I would urge
Taylor to take a good look at the issue. 1 think
his views are merely the reflection of the times
I wonder what he would have said 20 years ago
when Martin King was alive. Would Taylor have
called him a Communist too? I think so. All
you have to do is look at the actions of good
ole American boys (Taylor's right wing masters),
one of whom didn't even want to have a Martin
Luther King memorial day in the first place, ami
the other who sits just a little too close to home,
whose pet name for blacks is Fred. 1 avlor keeps
good company. I hope though that it is just a
symptom of youthful thoughtlessness; I wouldn't
want to change my description of iavlor Irom
naive to racist.
Marguerite ArnttLI is a freshman anihrtnl
ngv major fntm lilt twins Koik.