April 8, 2004

Carolina in the News

Here is a sampling of links and notes about Carolina
people and programs cited recently in the media:

National Coverage

Same old tune: Blame downloads: Bright spots seen in wired world, but CD sales drop 7.6 percent
Boston Herald
Industry executives blamed illegal file-sharing and competition from other forms of entertainment yesterday for a 7.6 percent worldwide drop in music sales last year and a 6 percent slide in the United States....Oberholzer-Gee, co-author of a report released last week with a University of North Carolina professor, said he studied sales of 680 albums in the fall of 2002 and found no statistical link to spikes in downloading songs from those discs and drops in sales.

State & Local Coverage

UNC frats lax about fire safety
The News & Observer
Fraternity houses at UNC-Chapel Hill should be among the safest anywhere.

UNC to get advice on Carolina North
The Herald Sun
Copies of a set of guidelines the Town Council says it will use in reviewing UNC's plans for the Carolina North campus went out Wednesday to university officials.

Heels release Curry
The News & Observer
Former Eastern Alamance High School basketball star JamesOn Curry won't serve any jail time after pleading guilty Monday to two felony counts of sale and delivery of marijuana to an undercover officer....But he also won't be playing basketball at the University of North Carolina.

Group wants to restrict lobbyists
The News & Observer
A special advisory council of state legislators, lobbyists and open government advocates agreed Wednesday to push for reforms that would make it harder for legislators to accept gifts, meals and other perks from special interests...Some of those undisclosed "goodwill" perks included a lobbyist's paying for some expenses for the Senate Democrats' caucus at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro in December 2002, and ACC basketball tournament tickets provided by UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.

Lobbying law's ineffectual on its own terms (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
The Town Council's drive for some sort of lobbyist-registration law is undergoing mission creep. What started with a call to monitor contacts between UNC and town officials is becoming, in the words of Councilwoman Sally Greene, an effort to ensure "the public disclosure of the work of moneyed interests in local politics."

Employees request $2K pay raises
The Daily Tar Heel
Members of the UNC-Chapel Hill Employee Forum unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday that petitions the N.C. General Assembly for $2,000 salary increases for all state employees.

Timely donation (Editorial)
The Daily Tar Heel
When most people turn their thoughts to the Morehead Scholars Program, they think about having tuition, room, board, books and laptop computer paid in full; traversing the globe for high-profile internships; and being set in life for the immediate future.

Back to the future
The Daily Tar Heel
The fine arts always have been stuck on the fringe of society. Be it poetry, dance, theater, music or mixed media masterpieces, the arts traditionally have been, at best, an entertaining endeavor -- at worst, ignored outright...."It is a major responsibility of a university like this to be a cultural center for the larger community," Chancellor James Moeser said.

Issues and Trends

Ex-Princeton Chief Urges Admissions Edge for Poorer Students
The New York Times
Pressing to broaden the diversity of elite higher education, William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton, called on top colleges and universities yesterday to admit more low-income students by giving them preferences like those granted to minorities, recruited athletes and the children of alumni.

Note: If you have any questions about Carolina in the News, please call Russell Campbell at News Services, (919) 962-2091, russell_campbell@unc.edu, or Mike McFarland in University Communications, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu

Note: Web links on this page are time-sensitive, so stories might not be available after the day they first appeared.