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(11/13/09 5:28am)
A formal partnership between the UNC system and U.S. Army Special Operations Command made so much sense to both parties that it seemed silly to delay it.Only a year after Special Operations Command first approached the UNC system, the two institutions signed an agreement that established the partnership.“This is an event that I personally thought would take much longer to pass,” said Lt. Gen. John Mulholland Jr., commanding general of Special Operations Command,, who brought the idea to the UNC-system after observing a class at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School on military logistics. “Our staff and leaders have slashed through things.”The two have worked together for years, but the system’s administration will now direct Special Operations Command to the campuses with the resources to help them the most.As the state with the fourth-largest military population, meeting the needs of the military means meeting the needs of the state — the mandate of UNC Tomorrow, UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said.The UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and Special Operations Command partnership, which provides civilian training to combat medics, was continually held up by speakers as an example of the idea’s potential.“We have only scratched the surface of what is possible,” Bowles said.The partnership will come at no additional cost to central administration, and Special Operations Command will reimburse schools for expenditures on classes, programs and resources.A top priority is collaborating on language instruction. Through the command’s program, soldiers only learn basic comprehension, not the technical competence that comes with an academic course, Mulholland said.“Generals come and go, and chancellors and presidents and boards come and go,” said board Chairwoman Hannah Gage.“This process and relationship will continue. You have the stability so this can become larger.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(11/12/09 7:20am)
The UNC system and the U.S. Army will launch a new chapter in their already-extensive collaboration today.The two institutions will centralize the interaction between the military and the academic communities when UNC-system President Erskine Bowles and Lt. Gen. John Mulholland Jr., commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, sign an agreement before today’s Board of Governors meeting.The top three priorities for collaboration are language instruction, particularly for in-demand Asian languages, research and programs that foster negotiation, communication and leadership skills.The command has collaborated with individual campuses for years, but it will now come first to the system’s central administration so administrators can point them to the campuses and programs that best meet their needs, said Kimrey Rhinehardt, UNC-system vice president for federal relations and the system’s point person on the partnership.“It’s my job to go out and say, ‘We’re really good at this discipline at this campus,’” Rhinehardt said. “It’s enabling them to have a better understanding of where our strength and expertise lie.” The command is likely to turn to UNC-Chapel Hill for research and language instruction, she said.One collaborative project already exists between the UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill and the command’s combat medic training program.“We bring to bear all the best that the army and special forces has to offer to teach combat medics,” said Sgt. 1st Class Eric Hendrix of the command’s public affairs.Meanwhile, combat medics benefit from the School of Medicine’s ability to provide civilian training and experience, Rhinehardt said.Plans are underway for the medical school to take on instructors from the command’s medic program to work alongside UNC doctors and to count battlefield experience for course credit to fast-track combat medics’ transition to civilian medicine, she said.General administration will back out after subpartnerships between schools and the command are cemented, Rhinehardt said.No new positions have been created. Rhinehardt will serve as the point person for the system, and Mulholland will be her counterpart. Schools and the command will be responsible for covering any costs that arise from collaborative projects.Retired Gen. James Lindsay first thought of the idea many years ago, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed it to the backburner, Hendrix said.Mulholland, who assumed command in November 2008, put it back on the agenda and arranged meetings with Bowles and the Board of Governors.“Gen. Mulholland saw it as something that was of top importance. He didn’t want to wait anymore,” Hendrix said.“We have a home school now — a school that we can call USASOC’s home.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(11/09/09 4:46am)
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a sweeping health care bill Saturday night that passed 220-215 in a move that many have deemed historical. McClatchy Newspapers reports that 83 percent of eligible Americans have health insurance now. If this bill is signed into law, 96 percent are expected to be insured by 2019.
(10/12/09 4:34am)
The UNC-system Board of Governors concluded its October meeting Friday with a stern admonishment to be better prepared to make tangible progress on a controversial administrative issue at its November meeting.The board’s personnel and tenure committee intended to recommend changes to the UNC system’s “retreat rights” policy this month but deferred any action until the next meeting, citing a need for more information.The policy governs the length of leave time and amount of compensation that administrators “retreating” to faculty positions receive when they resign.The selections of several new chancellors in the coming months make it imperative that a draft policy for chancellors and presidents is approved at the next meeting, said Gladys Robinson, personnel and tenure committee chairwoman.The earliest the full board can vote on the policy is January because there is no December meeting.UNC-system Vice President for Academic Affairs Alan Mabe and Board Chairwoman Hannah Gage will craft the draft policy in the next couple weeks and e-mail it to the full board to look over before the next meeting.Robinson told the board to read carefully the draft and UNC-system President Erskine Bowles’ recommended changes, which were released last month, and respond immediately.Bowles has recommended scaling back retreat rights by limiting leave time to six months and greatly reducing the amount of the salary offered.“I think that is a bit too generous and more than market,” he said of the current policy.The current policy for chancellors and presidents grants one year of leave time at the full administrative salary and a drop to 60 percent of that salary when the administrator becomes a faculty member.The question is how long leave time should be and how much the former administrator should be compensated during leave time and after he rejoins the faculty, Bowles said.Although the system’s General Administration and Board of Governors are placing great importance on the issue of retreat rights, it is more symbolic than anything else, Gage said.“We want all of our policies to be relevant and filtered through where we are in time,” she said, implying that policies should fit with the economic constraints the system faces.By the numbers, retreat rights are not a tremendous issue. Since Bowles arrived in 2006, the system has only spent $8 million on costs associated with retreat rights, Bowles said.“The university is a big operation and the total cost of leave is less than two-hundredths of a percent,” he said. Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(10/09/09 4:22am)
The UNC-system Board of Governors has deferred all decisions on a controversial administrative policy for another month, citing a lack of adequate information despite several months of discussion on the topic.The board’s personnel and tenure committee intended Thursday to recommend changes to the retreat rights policy, but decided they needed to see an actual policy first.They also requested that they see comparative data on salaries and compensation and benefits packages for administrators at public and private peer universities.“They don’t want to do it in isolation,” said Chairwoman Hannah Gage after the meeting.The key issues in retreat rights policy are limits on paid leave — compensated time off for administrators before they return to teach — and the salaries the former administrators receive when they rejoin the faculty ranks.The system’s policy is generous in comparison with most public universities and lacks necessary accountability and specificity, UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said in a memorandum released last week.The board has already spent two months discussing the generalities of the issue, which first came to light in summer 2009, and Gage expected to discuss concrete policy changes at Thursday’s committee meeting.However, some board members still seemed confused about the basics of the policy.Prior to the meeting, they were given several explanatory documents, including one outlining Bowles’ recommended changes to the retreat rights policy. One of the complaints was that the information was not specific enough. “It was a starting point,” Gage said after the meeting. “We’ve drifted beyond that.”What they need, several board members said, is enough data to accurately gauge whether scaling back retreat rights, as Bowles recommended, would allow the UNC system to remain competitive.Bowles recommended shortening the length of paid leave and decreasing the amount of administrative salary retained by retreating faculty.Many chancellors and other senior administrators argue that retreat rights need to remain close to their current level because they compensate for a less competitive benefits package when recruiting.The other key concern Thursday was that Bowles’ recommendations didn’t differentiate enough between chancellors and presidents and other senior administrators. The former need greater retreat rights than the latter, several board members said.Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(10/08/09 4:22am)
The practice of administrators “retreating” to faculty positions while retaining a large salary has been a higher education norm for decades, but the time of blithe acceptance is over.Known as retreat rights, the UNC-system policies governing the practice will be under close scrutiny today and Friday, when the Board of Governors meets in Chapel Hill.The key issues in retreat rights policy are limits on paid leave — compensated time off for administrators before they return to teach — and the salaries the former administrators receive when they rejoin the faculty ranks.The system’s policy on both counts is more generous than at most public universities and lacks adequate accountability and specificity, UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said in a memorandum released last week. The issue came to the forefront in August when The (Raleigh) News & Observer uncovered deals made for N.C. State University administrators, who later resigned.The Board of Governors held broad discussions on the topic at its last two meetings, but this time members will delve into policy changes based on Bowles’ recommendations made in the same memorandum, said board chairwoman Hannah Gage.The board has no intention of eliminating retreat rights, only of scaling back the benefits. Board members believe chancellors when they say that retreat rights are critical for hiring high-quality administrators, Gage said.In the end, paid leaves will probably be shorter and the salaries more modest. A mechanism will be put in place for greater oversight of what former administrators do during their paid leave, she said.There also will have to be greater consistency across the system, she said.But some UNC-Chapel Hill officials expressed concern that scaling back retreat rights could be harmful to recruiting efforts. The state’s benefits system is not competitive with the benefits that peer universities offer and retreat rights have traditionally been a way to balance that out, said Nelson Schwab, a former UNC-CH Board of Trustees member who led the search for Chancellor James Moeser’s replacement in 2008.“It did become an important factor because there were certain elements of the compensation package that weren’t up to snuff,” he said. “The administrative leave thing was one element that could be added to make us more competitive.”Ronald Strauss, UNC-CH executive associate provost, said the paid leave element of retreat rights is especially crucial for the individual and the University.“Some people have looked as it as some form of reward or even vacation. It is not,” he said. “It’s that time they need for retooling.”The paid leave time is intended to be used for research, publishing and other academic activities that will prepare a faculty member for reentering academia.“(Without paid leave) many people wouldn’t even consider administrative roles. They would say, ‘Why should I? Why would I take that risk?’” he said. “You might not get the best, and we want the best.”
(09/21/09 4:53am)
After years of focusing on enrollment growth, UNC-system leaders now say that educational quality has not kept pace.To bring the two into alignment, universities’ state funding will soon be tied not only to enrollment growth, but also to freshman retention and six-year graduation rates.In the last several years, the emphasis has been on increasing student populations to counter concern that the UNC system was underserving the state, said Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the UNC-system Board of Governors.Tying funding from the N.C. General Assembly to enrollment growth prompted rapid expansion on many campuses, Gage said.But the number of students who dropped out, flunked out or took extra time to graduate also increased.There needs to be a stronger correlation between financial investment in universities and degree attainment, Gage said.“The incentives work. We’re just moving the carrot,” Gage said.Under the current model, students aren’t getting the education they need to compete, UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said Friday. The system doesn’t just want to “pass students along,” he said.Schools have accepted students who were unprepared for four-year universities and became stretched too thin to help students who were prepared, he said.“We’re focusing on results. That’s the shift,” Gage said. “We may have done too well. We may have taken students who aren’t ready.”To raise retention and graduation rates, schools might need to actually slow their enrollment growth for a couple years, Bowles said.UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University reflect six-year graduation rates well above the 67.1 percent national average of their peers.UNC-CH had an 85.6 percent graduation rate in 2002, the last year for which the UNC-system provided data. N.C. State University’s rate was 71.5 percent. Systemwide, the average was 58.8 percent.But several other UNC-system schools reflect rates well below the average rates of their peer universities.Universities have raised admissions standards and are being encouraged to direct unprepared students toward spending two years at a community college first, where they might be better-served, Bowles said.If that happens, universities will be better able to devote time to the students already enrolled who meet admissions requirements, Bowles said.The shift will put a bigger burden on the community colleges, but the UNC system will fight for them in the state legislature, he said.“We are working as one now,” he said. “This is a significant policy shift here.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(09/18/09 3:36pm)
The state’s higher education leaders said Friday that years of rapid enrollment need to slow down to help schools better deal with the growth.
(09/17/09 4:32am)
Implementing a $171 million budget cut and eliminating administrative jobs by the hundreds has upended the UNC system’s priorities for the year.Past priorities such as enrollment growth and research opportunities have been pushed aside by a staggering budget shortfall and public controversies.“We’ve ended a decade of enormous prosperity,” said Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the Board of Governors, the UNC-system policy-making body.“Everything has come to a screeching halt. We’re examining every part of the way we do business.”Almost all other plans and priorities have to be put on the back burner in order to focus on budget cuts and administrative issues, which will dominate the agenda at the Board of Governors’ monthly meeting today and Friday.“It has eclipsed everything, but we are still working on a very specific action plan,” Gage said. “We’ve got a lot of things going on, but they’re not getting the attention.”‘A pretty excruciating time’There will be a session today exclusively for UNC-system President Erskine Bowles to report on campuses’ progress implementing a 10 percent cut.Chancellors were initially told to cut vertically, such as dissolving one particular institute, rather than across the board, which would involve eliminating one particular position in every department and lead to mediocrity, Gage said.But after The (Raleigh) News & Observer revealed that administrative growth was eclipsing many other things on campuses, the directive changed.“We had not fully understood the kind of administrative growth that had gone on during the past five or six years until one of the news outlets brought it to our attention in a less-than-flattering series of stories,” Gage said.Chancellors were then told to focus 75 to 85 percent of the cuts on administration.“It’s been a pretty excruciating time for chancellors. … We’re talking about numbers and percentages that are part of a legislative mandate,” Gage said. “On a micro level, chancellors are talking about people’s lives.”‘Our policy itself was weak’Public scrutiny also forced a shift in the board’s plans for the year when it became clear that at some schools, administrators were receiving unusually large benefits.Last month the board discussed chancellors’ benefits, and this month it will discuss benefits for remaining senior administrators.The system policy on benefits may be too generous and have too many gray areas, Gage said.“It will be scaled back somewhat so that it reflects a new mindset about operating a public university in an era of limits,” Gage said.“We found that some of the most extravagant arrangements on campuses had never even made it to their Board of Trustees for approval,” Gage said. “That sent up a red flag, and we began to look more closely … and realize that our policy itself was weak.”State can’t support growthEnrollment growth, which largely dictated UNC-system policy the past several years, is taking a backseat. In the next 18 months, the focus will shift to improving graduation rates and degree attainment.The UNC system will instead promote distance learning and community college as alternatives to a four-year university. Too often, students enroll at universities without being prepared to finish on time, Gage said.“What we’ll be doing is putting on the brakes for campuses that have been growing rapidly without showing improved graduation rates,” she said.At a time when resources are limited, the state legislature is eager to see every penny it spends to show dividends.“The legislature is having difficulty sustaining our growth,” Gage said. “We’re not certain they will continue to let us grow at the same rate. There may not be the resources.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(09/16/09 3:11am)
Jacquelyn Gist is a career counselor with University Career Services who often counsels students who are considering less traditional post-graduation options.
What are the most common reasons you hear for taking time off?
Many don’t know yet what they want to do or want to have an adventure while they are free of obligations. Some want to add to their “marketable experience.” Others want to make a lasting contribution to the community and the world. Sometimes students are just burnt out because they’ve been in school since they were five and they’ve worked or interned almost every summer of their college years.
What are the most common things for people to do?
Most students choose an organized program, such as Teach for America. However, some find employment on their own doing things as unusual as working on a dude ranch, teaching at a school in the Palestinian territories or working as a ranger in a national park. Many people are looking to do a career, even if it’s short-term, that they love. UCS considers this its job — to help people discover career options they love. Sometimes people look at time off as a chance to explore nontraditional career areas.
What is your advice for students considering taking time off?
Start thinking about your options very early and research them well. Sit down with a counselor and talk about what your long-term plans are and how your options fit in with those plans. There’s a good chance your parents are going to go, “You’re what?” The more you’ve thought things through, the better your experience will be and the more your friends and family will support you.
(09/11/09 3:46am)
The UNC system recently made health insurance mandatory for all students and is preparing to release a draft of its statewide insurance plan — steps that some public universities took years ago.In a sign that bodes well for the UNC system, many of those schools are pleased with the results. One school has seen the popularity of its campus insurance plan skyrocket.The University of California system made health insurance mandatory in 2001, allowing individual campuses to craft their own insurance plans to offer to students.“University of California is a very large system. It needed to ensure that those students who are away from home will access care if they need it,” said Elaine Grimmesey, insurance coordinator for UC-Santa Barbara.Students with insurance are more likely to access care, making it less likely that they’ll need to drop out later because of a more severe illness that is more costly to treat, she said.“If you’re 19 or 20, you’re not going to go to a doctor if it costs money.”If students already have insurance, often through a parent, they can opt out of the campus plan by filing a waiver. The number submitted has steadily decreased since 2001, Grimmesey said.In fall 2008, the last time the university collected data, about 5,800 waivers were approved while almost 13,000 undergraduates were on the plan. The number of waivers is down from 9,000 in 2001.To encourage participation in the plan, the annual cost of the university plan, $982.35, is built into every financial aid package.UNC’s plan is projected to cost between $549 and $679.The larger the potential number of people buying the plan, the lower a premium a school is able to negotiate, said Scott Otte, chief financial officer at Florida State University’s Thagard Student Health Center.FSU has mandatory insurance and offers three university plans that all cost less than $1,300. “Anybody off the street looking to do that would not have any luck,” Otte said. “One of the advantages of the mandatory situations is it gives us bargaining power.”At the University of Maryland at College Park, health insurance is mandatory beginning with this year’s freshmen. University Health Center Director Sacared Bodison cited the same reasons as most universities — students are going untreated because they either can’t afford care or are not willing to pay for it.“So many schools require it and most students are covered,” she said. “We make no recommendations. All we do is ask that they are covered.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(09/10/09 4:33am)
Two N.C. probation officials who were demoted following a 2008 review of the probation system were reinstated to their former positions with back pay.Cheryl Morris, a Durham County chief probation and parole officer, and Cindy Faison, who held the same position in Wake County, settled with the N.C. Department of Correction in May and June 2009, court documents show.The settlements returned them to their former positions, Morris in Durham County and Faison in Johnston County.The demotions stemmed from a spring 2008 review of the probation system and subsequent disciplinary hearings. The shooting deaths of former UNC Student Body President Eve Carson and Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato in 2008 prompted the review.Lawrence Alvin Lovette, charged with both deaths, and Demario James Atwater, charged with Carson’s, were both already on probation.The internal review revealed inadequate supervision of the two men and their probation officers.The two woman are now allowed to return to supervisory roles in the department, but none are currently available. Positions are expected to open up in the next few months. The settlement included a reinstatement of their former salaries as well as back pay from the time of their demotions in summer 2008 to the time of the settlement last spring. Their disciplinary records also will be expunged.
(09/01/09 4:23am)
About 900 administrative jobs are being eliminated as the UNC system cuts non-academic costs, said UNC-system President Erskine Bowles on Monday, following a meeting with university chancellors.Seventy-five to 85 percent of the cuts to the system’s $2.7 billion budget will be in administrative costs and almost all of that is in jobs.The system has to cut more than $127 million from what it received last year for continuing operations, which includes personnel costs.Money previously spent on administration will be redirected to the universities’ academic cores — areas related to classroom instruction, academic support, student services and research.Many people who are losing their jobs have already been told, he said.“Most of our costs are people,” Bowles said. “We’ve been all over this. This is not something that’s new.”Some of those jobs might have already been eliminated by campuses in anticipation of budget cuts issued by the N.C. General Assembly in August, said Joni Worthington, UNC-system vice president for communications.The announcement comes after an Aug. 17 article in The (Raleigh) News & Observer that pointed out that administrative costs have been escalating at a significantly higher rate than faculty and staff costs.In reaction to the article, Bowles sent a strongly worded letter to all the UNC-system chancellors rebuking them for not operating more efficiently.“We have discussed the need to pare administrative costs REPEATEDLY at our chancellors’ meetings, and we have made it crystal clear that any further delay in reducing senior and middle management positions would jeopardize our credibility and standing with the General Assembly and the taxpayers of North Carolina,” Bowles stated in the letter (emphasis his).The N&O article found that administrative growth, at 28 percent during the past five years, significantly outpaced faculty and teaching positions, at 24 percent, and student enrollment, at 14 percent.On Monday, Bowles told reporters that efficiency has been a top priority since he took office in 2006. He said he cut $32 million in administrative costs his first year with the system and $48 million his second year.“(The N&O) pointed out that there’s more to do,” Bowles said.“In some cases we failed — and not for lack of effort. … The buck stops here. This is my fault.”However, despite criticizing chancellors in the letter for not following his directive to pare administrative costs, he is still allowing chancellors to determine where the cuts need to be made on their individual campuses.“The president has confidence in his chancellors,” said N.C. Central University Chancellor Charlie Nelms on Monday, following the meeting. “We will rise to the occasion.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(08/31/09 4:56pm)
About 900 administrative jobs will be eliminated in the process of cutting administrative costs across the UNC System, said UNC-system President Erskine Bowles on Monday, following a meeting with university chancellors.
(08/31/09 4:25am)
A strongly worded letter from UNC-system President Erskine Bowles chastising university chancellors for their administrative expansion was made public Friday.The letter was sent in reaction to an article printed in The (Raleigh) News & Observer on Aug. 17 that reported extensive administrative expansion at many UNC-system schools in the last few years.“The coverage in today’s News & Observer on administrative growth within the University is an absolute embarrassment — and we brought it all on ourselves,” Bowles stated in the letter.In the article Bowles alludes to, the N&O reported that across the UNC system, the number of administrative positions grew 28 percent in the last five years — a faster rate than the growth of faculty and teaching positions, 24 percent, and student enrollment, 14 percent.In the letter, Bowles chastised the chancellors for ignoring his repeated calls for more efficient operations and administrative cuts.“We have discussed the need to pare administrative costs REPEATEDLY at our chancellors’ meetings, and we have made it crystal clear that any further delay in reducing senior and middle management positions would jeopardize our credibility and standing with the General Assembly and the taxpayers of North Carolina,” he stated in the letter (emphasis his).Efficiency consultants from Bain & Company, hired by UNC-Chapel Hill last academic year, released a report this summer that showed UNC-CH is administration-heavy and its operations are decentralized.Bowles is meeting with the UNC-system chancellors today in a private meeting.Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(08/26/09 4:47am)
Given the tremendous state budget shortfall that had to be closed, the UNC-system budget and finance committee was pretty happy when it saw the final 2009-11 budget.Enrollment growth, need-based financial aid and faculty recruitment and retention fund all received the full or almost full amount that the Board of Governors requested in November 2008.But their top priority, campus safety, was excluded entirely. Money to keep faculty salaries competitive with the UNC system’s peers and funding to improve accountability and performance measures also were left off.In a fiscal year fraught with no-win situations, Board of Governors members, who craft policy for the UNC system, still considered the final result a victory.“We have no room to complain,” said John Davis, the board’s budget and finance committee chairman.“They’ve got to make very difficult decisions that don’t make anybody happy. Maybe your job is to make everybody equally unhappy.”In November 2008, the board requested about $3 billion in funding for the UNC system for 2009-10.By the time the N.C. General Assembly began reviewing the request months later, the fiscal situation had worsened drastically, changing the nature of budget discussions, said Rob Nelson, UNC-system vice president for finance.“The world had changed so much,” he said.The final allotment — $2.7 billion — is a 5.9 percent reduction of that request. Including the federal stimulus money, the UNC-system allocation totaled $2.84 billion.“More money could have been allotted, but it’s a matter of moving money around,” Davis said.“It’s a very, very difficult decision. Do you spend money on mental health? Do you spend it on classroom instruction? Do you spend it on economic development?”Because campus safety initiatives received enough money in past years, this year’s exclusion shouldn’t be devastating, Nelson said. The system already has most of the money it needs for police officers, mental health counselors, training, identifying threats, emergency response and equipment — the key elements of improvement to campus safety.Still, unexpected events could present a problem, Davis acknowledged.“Are we pleased that there wasn’t money there? No. Does it worry me? Yes.”However, the funding for enrollment growth was a particular relief. The state’s rapidly growing population makes it crucial that the universities continue to expand their enrollment if they are to continue meeting the state’s needs, Davis said.“If we are going to as a state continue to move forward and continue to have progress, we’ve got to have an educated population,” he said. Last year’s drastic budget cuts were good practice for managing this year’s reductions, Nelson said.However, another year or two of severe cuts could have long-term consequences.“If we manage ourselves, we can make it through the fiscal year,” he said.“Without economic recovery, we’ll be facing more cuts and more holdbacks. … I think the deeper we go the more difficult it’s going to be to protect our quality.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(08/25/09 4:35am)
On Aug. 7, Gov. Bev Perdue approved the N.C. 2009-11 budget. The final budget totaled $19 billion and included deep cuts in order to close a $4.6 billion budget gap. Below is an overview of the cuts:Public education
(08/25/09 1:21am)
Through new legislation and an allotment in the state budget, the N.C. General Assembly laid the groundwork this summer for mending the state’s probation system.The next step, at least until the legislature resumes in May, is to implement the changes and spend the money as mandated. “I see no reason that it won’t go forward. There aren’t a lot of other things to be done,” said Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee, chairman of the appropriations on justice and public safety committee. “I think that the reform is in place and now it’s just a matter of implementation and carrying out the reform.”Almost $1.4 million was allotted in the budget for adding 18 positions. These people will be the immediate supervisors of the probation officers handling cases.In addition, legislation was passed to permit probation officers to have access to probationers’ juvenile records, to allow police officers to search probationers without a search warrant and to allow probationers to be transferred to lesser supervision levels if they are deemed a lesser threat. The reforms stem from suggestions in recent state and federal audits that revealed an overtaxed system that failed to provide adequate supervision of probationers. The audits were prompted by the 2008 killings of former UNC Student Body President Eve Carson and Duke University graduate student Abhijit Mahato — the suspects charged with their deaths were both already on probation. Although the Department of Correction did receive some cuts — among them the elimination of 14 judicial district offices, whose work will be picked up by the remaining offices — they now have some of the tools to make necessary changes, said Keith Acree, Department of Correction public affairs director.“We’re certainly happy with what we got. We did actually get new resources when most agencies didn’t get anything,” he said.The budget allotment and new legislation will require significant reorganization within the department, Acree said. Meanwhile, the probation system is shifting its approach to classifying offenders, relying more on their “true risk” rather than their criminal conviction for determining their supervision level, he said.“The reforms that we made — I think they very well address (problems) that probation was having,” Snow said. “I can’t think of a lot of things that we didn’t do.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(08/23/09 7:29pm)
Pfc. Morris Walker, a 2008 UNC graduate who was in the U.S. Army, died Aug. 18 while on tour in Afghanistan.Walker died from wounds incurred when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Paktika Province.Walker, known to many of his friends as “Mo,” was an “experience,” said Sam Rosenthal, a UNC alumnus who graduated in 2009 and met Walker during his freshman year at UNC. Rosenthal is a former Daily Tar Heel sports columnist.Walker started out calling Rosenthal his son and acting as his mentor, but soon they were brothers, Rosenthal said.“If you got to spend time with Mo Walker, you remembered it,” Rosenthal said. “He had a charisma and a warmth that just rubbed off and also a pride and a sense about himself.“I had never met anybody with so much confidence and even borderline arrogance that never rubbed people the wrong way.”Walker was a part of many different social groups at UNC, which allowed him to touch the lives of many people, Rosenthal said.While at UNC, Walker joined Zeta Beta Tau and worked at Ram’s Head Recreation Center, where he spent much of his spare time working out and playing basketball.Walker also was a fixture at the bar “The Library,” where he knew many of the workers and regulars.“He kind of just moved through all circles very comfortably,” Rosenthal said. “He understood people in a way that not many can. Nobody was too different for Mo that he couldn’t connect with them.”Walker’s older sister, Sabina, referred to her brother as “Mr. Spotlight” in a conversation after his death, alluding to his tendency to be the center of attention, Rosenthal said.“That’s who he was. He was ‘Mr. Spotlight.’ … He had this spotlight on him, and when you were with him, you were in the spotlight too,” he said.Antwine Jackson, another of Walker’s close friends, recounted a night at UNC when Walker invited him to a ZBT party where Jackson knew no one.Walker stopped the whole party and presented Jackson to the room as part of his family, someone “as funny as him,” Jackson said.Walker often referred to Jackson as his big brother.“It was like, ‘I’m cool now. I have this street cred,’” Jackson said.He also remembered celebrating one of Walker’s birthdays at Goodfellas. Jackson told Walker he was done for the night.Walker began doing pull-ups inside the bar to prove that he was OK to continue partying, and so was Jackson.“He was showing ‘don’t take life too seriously,’” Jackson said. “That’s how he lived his life.”Walker was always the one trying to convince his friends to go out on nights they intended to stay in, said UNC 2009 alumna Catherine Kang.“No matter where he was or who he was with, he always knew how to have a good time,” she stated in an e-mail.Walker, who was born in Raleigh and raised in Fayetteville, enlisted in the army in August 2008 and was based at Fort Richardson in Alaska, Sabina Walker said. He deployed in April 2009.Walker took his enlistment very seriously, Jackson said. Speaking with him before his deployment, Jackson asked Walker if he was scared.“He just said, “Man, I’m just glad I get a chance to do something like this, to be a part of something great.’”Walker’s dedication was even more striking because it wasn’t always part of his plans, Rosenthal said.“He wasn’t all about ‘I want to go to war’. … Once he decided to go, he was very aware of what he was doing,” Rosenthal said.Walker was not your standard enlisted soldier, but he was still dedicated, Rosenthal said.“I told him how proud I was of him for that,” he said. “It was very tough on him, I think. He was wired differently than your common soldier because of his intelligence and all of the things he had seen in life.“For somebody built the way he was, to go and still do what he did — it was probably one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen anybody do.”Walker kept in close contact with many of his friends in the United States during his deployment.Rosenthal and Walker would talk via e-mail about once a week, and Walker even called from Afghanistan a few times.“The toughest thing is that he’s still very much with me,” Rosenthal said. “I can hear him. I can smell him. It doesn’t seem like he’s gone yet.”Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(08/29/08 4:00am)
The 2008 Democratic National Convention wrapped up Thursday night with Barack Obama's acceptance speech, and the N.C. delegation is on its way home.
In four days, the convention body finalized its party's platform, nominated a president and vice president and made every attempt to unify a party that endured a long and sometimes bitter primary race.
'Totally in alignment'
A nationwide concern was whether the party would be able to unify behind Barack Obama when so many Democrats had strongly supported Sen. Hillary Clinton's candidacy.