Graduate student runs for school board to prove residency
Brian Bower is running for a seat in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board—but he doesn’t want to win.
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Brian Bower is running for a seat in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board—but he doesn’t want to win.
Fifty years ago, a scared 12-year-old black boy entered the doors of Chapel Hill Junior High School for the first time.
Carrboro government officials hope to have a new town manager by the end of the year.
Carrboro residents might have a new cafe to hang out in.
Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story referred to Kevin Wolff as former mayor. He has run for mayor three times, but never won. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
Sitting in traffic for hours is one thing Laney Dale doesn’t miss about living in Los Angeles.
Orange County residents can continue to read their favorite books at the Chapel Hill Public Library — for now.
Augustus Cho can break a concrete block in half with the side of his palm.
With a wooden needle in each hand, Beth Gregory pulled out her iPad to check on her progress.
With a $2.3 million gap in the town’s transit system budget, some riders could be left without a way home.
After cooking for 12 hours and serving barbecue samples for another five, Jeff Whitney looked forward to going home, taking a nap and eating a salad.
For Kristen Powers, real change came with the installation of a light switch.
With rising summer air conditioning bills in sight, more than 100 Chapel Hill residents are aiming to make their homes more energy efficient.
Students can now access the hairstyles and favorite quotations of the students who preceded them with the click of a mouse.University Libraries posted yearbooks from 1890 to 1966 online in February, offering the UNC community a resource to reflect on student life from more than a century ago.The digitization of the Hellenian and Yackety Yack yearbooks kicked off a string of projects conducted by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center to provide online access to photographic collections, scrapbooks and pictures of museum artifacts.“We started with yearbooks because they are very popular and there has not been an effort to digitize yearbooks,” said Nicholas Graham, program coordinator of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.“Yearbooks are an important part of telling the story of our state’s history. It’s a wonderful look at the changing student life and culture over the years.” The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, which is housed at the Wilson Special Collections Library, digitized the yearbooks as part of a statewide effort that includes universities such as Appalachian State University and Elon University along with museums and public libraries.“Our goal is to help places, especially smaller places that don’t have the resources that a large research library like UNC’s, might have,” Graham said.UNC Libraries has worked with digitizing materials since 1996, when it launched a pilot project called Documenting the American South. The project included a Web site where six slave narratives were published.In December 2007, the Carolina Digital Library and Archives was established with the purpose of building digital collections that would be available to everybody. Rita Van Duinen, project management librarian for the Carolina Digital Library and Archives, said the program started with one Scribe scanner and now has three.A Scribe scanner can digitize 3,000 pages per day, and materials are available 48 hours later on the Internet Archive, an online library that compiles information from around the world, to download for free.So far, 5,000 volumes from University libraries have been scanned with the Scribe scanners. Graham said copyright law is frequently the main challenge in the digitization process. Anything published before 1923 can be digitized because the copyright has expired. But permission from the copyright holder is required to digitize materials from after that year. Graham said copyright law, along with the sheer amount of materials, have prevented the library from digitizing all its books.“I think it is unlikely because of copyright,” he said, regarding the possibility of digitizing all materials in UNC Libraries. “But again, the work we are doing now would have seemed impossible 10 years ago.”Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
Dating is like looking for a job, economics professor Ralph Byrns says. The money you think you should earn is like the girl you want to date. If you’re expecting too much, then you already limit the possibilities. “The higher the standard you set, the less likely you are going to find somebody to have a relationship with,” Byrns said.
Keeping possessions safe on campus is a major concern for students.In 2008 there were 337 property crimes, a reduction from the 446 that occurred in 2006 and the 448 in 2007.Residence halls have not been a safe haven, with 26 larcenies or burglaries occurring in 2009. Stolen items ranged from money and purses to earrings and electronics. Randy Young, spokesman for the UNC Department of Public Safety, and Rick Bradley, assistant director of housing, offered tips on protecting yourself from theft.How can students keep items safe in their dorms?Bradley: “If it’s somebody that they don’t know, they shouldn’t let let him in. Residence halls doors are closed 24/7, but this is only effective if students refrain from opening the door to strangers.”Young identified “piggybacking,” which happens when someone allows another person to pass through a secure door, as one of the biggest problems regarding safety.How can students secure rooms? Young: “They should shut and lock their door when they use the bathroom or visit friends.” Young added that it only takes a moment for someone to come inside and take something.“Value resides in small packages, which creates an opportunity for those who are looking to rob.” How frequent are incidents?Bradley: “With 32 residence halls and three apartment communities, we’ve had probably less than 10 incidents this semester.”Bradley said he believes the thieves are typically from within the community instead of an outsider. “When a door is open and there is a wallet or a phone, it is an easy grab”, he said.Are rooms particularly vulnerable to theft?Young: “There were about 300 robberies on campus last year, but a large percentage of those were in open areas.”He added that students often leave cell phones and laptops unattended or forget books and bags. Theft is a lot more common in libraries, the SRC and Student Stores, he said.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
Before ground has even been broken at Carolina North, the town is already trying to figure out how residents would like to move between main campus and the new satellite research campus. Residents gave their answer at a forum Tuesday. They want to bike safely and conveniently. The town of Chapel Hill hosted a meeting in University Square to get input on a bike path’s location and how to create it.Carolina North will be a satellite research campus and mixed-use development to be built about two miles from campus off of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Construction is not slated to begin on the campus for several years.Most of the meeting’s roughly 40 attendants were Chapel Hill or Carrboro residents who said they bike to get around and are interested in seeing more local bike pathways.Many identified safety as their chief concern. Some suggested lighting the path, installing blue light emergency stations and keeping town or University police nearby.“The planning of Carolina North has been beautiful,” said Bill Bishop, a graduate student at UNC. “The path should make the finished product beautiful and should be safe enough so that people will use it.”He also said Carolina North will have a great economic impact, so it’s important that there are many different ways to commute. Others had topographic concerns.“If it is too steep, people won’t use it,” said Chapel Hill resident Will Raymond.Each of the proposed routes runs parallel to railroad tracks, which would provide a direct and flat way to get from main campus to Carolina North.One of the proposed paths starts on West Cameron Avenue, continues via Limstead Park to Lloyd Street and goes parallel to the railroad. Then it reaches Estes Drive and ends in Seawell School Road.“This connection will become the centerpiece of other bike paths that will join other sections of the town,” said Douglas MacLean, a UNC faculty member. “It is important to think big and not to be hampered by the upsets.”The public opinions on the path will be presented to Chapel Hill Town Council on Jan. 11.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu
Since beginning high school in Cary, Krista Stepney has worked with homeless children and tutored elementary and middle school students.Now a senior, she hopes to continue her efforts to help children at five afterschool centers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro as the University’s Homecoming queen. Her project, Education Toolbox for Kids, seeks to donate items that fulfill four of children’s needs: education, recreation, health and well-being.The program also seeks to build relationships between students from UNC and children in need by setting up play days once a week where students can interact with the kids.“I don’t want to drop off a bunch of goods,” Stepney said. “I want to actually go into the centers and let them know that Carolina students care about them.”In each of these meetings, students will address a topic related to one of the needs and will donate the collected items.Stepney said that at the end of the month, the afterschool education centers will have received tools to help them supply the children with the four needs.Education Toolbox will receive donations from organizations around campus and from students at events, she said.Funding could also be provided through the money she would receive toward the project as the Homecoming queen.These funds, Stepney said, would be used for donations and for hosting events on campus to help support Education Toolbox.Education Toolbox grew from Stepney’s love for children and her volunteer work over the past several years.“I want to show kids that they have a teacher, that they matter,” she said.She said she wants to prevent recent budget cuts from hurting education.Stepney also said she wants to give back to the UNC community.“I found my friends here,” she said. “Essentially I found my family here.”Along with her volunteering, Stepney has responsibilities with several organizations on campus, her roles ranging from Miss Black Student Movement to president of the Theta Pi chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.Stepney said she hopes to add Homecoming queen to those responsibilities.“To be able to represent my peers and the students at Carolina would be a truly awesome achievement for me,” she said, adding that she hopes students will vote with her project in mind.“I don’t just want them to vote for Krista Stepney. I want them to vote for these afterschool centers,” she said. “I want them to vote for these children and essentially to vote for Education Toolbox. I am just an avenue to the project.”
As the daughter of a woman who has dedicated her life to introducing performing arts to underprivileged youth, Homecoming queen candidate Rea Davis had an obvious choice for her public service project.Davis’ project, titled Academic Performance, focuses on pairing academic enrichment programs with cultural and performing arts for inner-city youth, providing performing arts training to students who otherwise would not be able to afford it.“My mother is a journalist, and she also owns a nonprofit cultural performing arts school in Charlotte,” she said.“I kind of followed her foot steps in my career choice.”Davis said her involvement in dance and modeling boosted her self-esteem as a young girl in Charlotte, and she hopes the arts will do the same for other children.“I am head over heels over cultural performing arts,” she said. “I feel like cultural performing arts foster diversity, and they allow self-expression.”Under Davis’ plan, members of UNC performing arts organizations such as Kamikaze and Concept of Colors will volunteer at a school in the Triangle once a week for two hours. She said one hour will be dedicated to the performing arts and the other will focus on academic tutoring. The children will be able to choose which performing art they want to make their focuses.The students would not only have an outlet for self expression, but they would also be included in the spring performances of some of the UNC organizations involved.Beyond the public service component, Davis said she is running for Homecoming queen out of her love for UNC.“I love Carolina, Carolina Blue, Carolina college magic,” she said.She said she views the position of Homecoming queen as an ambassador for the University and as an opportunity to better execute her project.