September 24, 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

Bush Widens His Lead Over Kerry Among Futures Markets Bettors
Bloomberg News Service
U.S. President George W. Bush has widened his lead over Democratic challenger John Kerry in online futures markets, matching trends in some voter and investor polls following the Republican convention three weeks ago....Political betting on financial markets outperforms polling as an elections predictor, according to a University of North Carolina study and figures from the Iowa Electronic Markets.

Instructor Harassed Student for Antigay Bias, and Chapel Hill Responded Properly, Report Says
The Chronicle of Higher Education
An instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill harassed and discriminated against a student when she sent an e-mail message criticizing him for his views on homosexuality, according to the U.S. Department of Education, which released the findings of a six-month investigation on Wednesday....In a report, the department's Office for Civil Rights praised the university for handling the matter "so quickly" and called its response "appropriate."

State & Local Coverage

UNC merits feds' praise for handling of incident (Editorial)
The Chapel Hill Herald
It never needed to be a federal case, but one has to admit that investigators in the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights did a pretty good job in separating truth from nonsense in the Elyse Crystall/Tim Mertes hate-speech squabble....Finally, the Office for Civil Rights report offers an implied rebuke to those who, like U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-3rd, suspect that the university doesn't care about protecting the rights of its students to dissent. It does, and everything that happened after Mertes took his concerns to Thompson shows that.

Covenant students hit stride
The Daily Tar Heel
When Renatta Craven was young, she hoped to attend UNC, though she never thought that dream would become reality....But Craven is now a month into her freshman year at the University -- and with the help of Carolina Covenant, she will graduate debt-free.

Study: Child abuse high in military
The News & Observer
The Pentagon needs to work harder to track and prevent child-abuse homicides, an advocacy group said Thursday as it released a study that suggests such deaths might be more common among military families....Children in military families in Cumberland and Onslow counties are more than twice as likely as other North Carolina children to be killed during abuse, according to the study, which was led by Marcia Herman-Giddens, an adjunct professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health.
Related link:

Abuse in Military Families
WUNC-FM

Child killings higher in military areas
The Associated Press (N.C.)
In December, Fort Bragg Army Sgt. Michael Green was sentenced to at least 14 years in prison for beating to death his gagged 5-year-old son while he was bound in a chair and then stuffing the boy into a closet....The two counties had 7 percent of the state's children but 15 percent of the child abuse homicides, said (Marcia) Herman-Giddens, who also is an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Broad given faculty post
The News & Observer
UNC President Molly Broad received a guaranteed five-year term as a professor in UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Government on Thursday, though it won't begin until she retires as leader of the University of North Carolina system.

UNC to raze West House
The News & Observer
Preservationists put up a dogged fight to try and persuade trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill to save West House, a small brick cottage that stands in the footprint of a planned Arts Common.

DOT withholds some records on ex-workers
The News & Observer
The state Department of Transportation and its legal experts say the public is not entitled to know what hours state employees work, what additional pay they receive or who hired them....David Lawrence, a UNC-Chapel Hill professor with the Institute of Government who is an expert on personnel law, said an employee's hours worked should be public record.

Contributing to a cause
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Mary M. Lwate, of South Africa, speaks with UNC women's basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell at Cresset Christian Academy in Durham, Thursday, Sept. 23.

Produced by News Services, Carolina in the News is an e-mail sampling of current news media coverage about Carolina people and programs, as well as issues and trends that affect the university. Stories usually will be online and available free for a limited time - often one to two weeks. Expiration dates before stories move to archives vary by media outlet. Some outlets require free user registration or a subscription.

Carolina in the News is also posted daily to the News Services Web page, http://www.unc.edu/newsserv/clipsindex.htm.

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