Editorials

Posted: Thursday, May 23, 2013 3:05 pm

Journal editorial board

As the U.S. grapples with problems associated with vaccines – in terms of cost and avail-ability – North Carolina is poised to provide a solution. Dr. Steven B. Mizel, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, is organizing the North Carolina Center for Vaccine Innovation, an initiative to bring new vaccines to market in a cost-conscious, efficient way. If his program is successful – and we predict it will be – it will turn a profit and will enhance our city’s standing as an innovative prime mover.

The program would be headquartered in Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, our research park, but take advantage of statewide academic researchers and educational facilities – such as those of UNC Chapel Hill, East Carolina University, Wake Forest University and Duke University – involved in   vaccine-related studies.

“The big holdup in vaccines is moving these vaccines from the laboratory to the clinic,” Mizel recently told the Journal’s Wesley Young. “It is fairly slow and expensive. For re-searchers who need help in making this happen, one of the goals is to create packages of attractively priced services that will help vaccines move through preclinical development.”

The project has found a champion in state Sen. Pete Brunstetter, who is co-chairman of the state Senate Appropriations/Base Budget Committee.

“Vaccine innovation is the new cutting-edge operation for medicine and pharmaceuti-cals,” Brunstetter told the Journal. He noted the overuse of antibiotics, which become less effective over time – another problem that can be solved with the use of vaccines.

As if that’s not enough, the project also promises to create new jobs – between 100 and 1,000 by Mizel’s estimate – by contracting with local companies to produce the vaccines. Mizel wants to raise about $20 million to get started; two million per year for the next two fiscal years has been earmarked in the state Senate’s proposed budget. He’s also seeking financial support from the governor’s office, the Golden LEAF Foundation and the private sector.

Vaccines are the trend of the future, and we’re well positioned to ride this future wave.

via Winston-Salem well-positioned for innovative vaccine trend – Winston-Salem Journal: Editorials.

Published: May 22, 2013 Updated 3 hours ago

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — As a UNC-Chapel Hill task force begins to rewrite the university’s policy on sexual misconduct and harassment, a national movement is gaining momentum to demand that universities be held accountable for their students’ safety.

On Wednesday, students from four universities held a news conference in New York to announce a new round of federal complaints against campuses under the Title IX gender discrimination law and the federal campus crime reporting law. The new complaints are against Dartmouth College, Swarthmore College, University of California-Berkeley and University of Southern California.

A UNC-CH student and an alumna of the university, who have become informal consultants to students at universities across the nation, were at the news conference wearing Tar Heel T-shirts. They were introduced by Gloria Allred, a well-known civil rights lawyer who has taken on cases involving women’s rights.

“We have hundreds of survivors coming together, filing these complaints. They’re all reaching out to us, and their stories are all the same,” Annie Clark, a 2011 UNC-CH graduate, said in a telephone interview after the news conference. “It’s not just, there’s a rape or a sexual assault. It’s the university’s response.”

In her prepared remarks, Clark, who called the national coalition the Title IX Network, said the movement has reached a critical mass that cannot be ignored.

“As a country, we need to have a conversation, and it should not take a group of mostly undergraduate students to hold our rapists, universities and the U.S. Department of Education accountable for their actions through federal legal action,” she said. “This past weekend, 1 in 4 women graduated with both the title of rape survivor and a degree, many of them graduating alongside their rapists.”

Clark is one of five women, including students and a former administrator, who filed a complaint in January against UNC-CH over its handling and reporting of sexual assaults. They alleged that the university mishandled complaints of sexual misconduct and improperly reported campus crimes, violating federal law. Federal officials are now investigating, and a university-appointed task force will spend the summer crafting recommendations for a new policy on sexual misconduct and harassment.

‘Different worlds’

That panel met Wednesday to hash out ideas for what it wants in a new policy to replace the current one, which critics say is legalistic and hard to decipher for students in crisis.

“I’m not going to say I’m glad to be here, because I wish we were way past this,” said Karen Booth, a task force member and professor of women’s and gender studies.

She described how she asks her students in class to describe what they do to protect themselves from sexual assault. The male students mostly say they’ve never thought about it, she said. The female students cite a long list of behaviors, including thinking about what they wear, how they hold their keys in their hands, where and what time of day they walk on campus.

“Women and men live in really different worlds, and this brings it home to them,” Booth said.

Dartmouth protests

At Wednesday’s event in New York, Dartmouth students talked about why they decided to file a complaint against the New Hampshire college.

In a telephone interview afterward, Lea Roth, a Dartmouth senior, said the complaint includes 37 testimonials about how the college has failed survivors of sexual violence.

“I think that Dartmouth needs to be honest with itself about the fact that something significant needs to change before it becomes the institution that it really can be and the institution that it advertises itself as,” Roth said.

Like UNC-CH, Dartmouth has seen protests in recent weeks about the issue of sexual assault.

Carol Folt, Dartmouth’s interim president, will become chancellor of UNC-CH on July 1, which means she will be responding to the issue of sexual assault on two campuses at the forefront of a growing movement.

Dartmouth released a statement saying it is not complacent about issues of sexual assault and discrimination.

“At Dartmouth we care deeply about the harm that sexual assault and discrimination cause to a campus community,” the statement said. “In recent years, we have implemented numerous new initiatives and are committed to finding effective ways to make lasting and positive change. Our efforts include prevention, education, increased accountability, increased staffing and resources, better coordination, and strengthening of guidelines.”

Stancill: 919-829-4559

via CHAPEL HILL: More campuses join UNC-CH in debate about sexual assault | Education | NewsObserver.com.

By Kristin Zachary

Thursday, May 23, 2013

As hurricane season approaches, emergency management officials said Wednesday they hope the Eastern Seaboard will not see a repeat of deadly and destructive Hurricane Sandy, but it is critical to plan for the worst.

Sandy crippled New York in late October. Streets, tunnels and subway lines were flooded; power outages were widespread; and fuel supply to the Northeast was disrupted, causing mass hysteria and panic.

The superstorm also affected nearly two dozen additional states, including North Carolina, as the storm surge dumped sand and water on N.C. 12 on the Outer Banks, buckling the islands’ only highway.

Coast Guard Commander Linda Sturgis, who oversees emergency prevention at the Port of New York, cautioned North Carolina officials during an annual hurricane workshop held on Wednesday at East Carolina University to “dust off” severe weather plans.

More than 200 people attended the daylong event, which took a look back at the “sobering storm” that killed more than 100 people and caused an estimated $71 billion in damages nationwide.

North Carolinians love their lighthouses, Sturgis said, and “it’s the same thing in New York,” where Old Orchard Lighthouse on Staten Island was leveled.

“To this day, we don’t know where that lighthouse went,” she said, showing before-and-after photos, “and I’m not joking. … We can’t find that lighthouse.”

Staten Island was hit hard by Sandy, and one neighborhood saw 10 deaths, according to the National Weather Service’s Gary Szatkowski, who said the storm was “a shock to the system.”

“I don’t know that there’s a good way to die,” he said, “but the scenario here — you’re cold, you’re wet, you’re scared, the water is rising, you’re probably crying out for help, and no one can hear, and no one is around to help you. That is a terrible way to die.”

The workshop hosted by ECU and the N.C. Division of Emergency Management focused on preparation for the June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season. The hope is to link agencies for the best result and prevent, as much as possible, the death and destruction the storms sometimes bring.

“When you talk about what you can do to prepare, you do the best you can,” Sturgis said, “but sometimes it’s just like, ‘Wow.’ So I think what the key is here is you need to have that relationship to address whatever you think never, ever would ever happen.”

The United States has been lucky the past seven hurricane seasons, Szatkowski said, as no Category 3 or higher storms have made landfall.

“It never hurts to be lucky, but it shouldn’t be part of the critical planning process,” he said.

Luck may have kept stronger storms at bay, but even small hurricanes can have a devastating effect, said Mike Sprayberry, director of the state’s division of emergency management, further emphasizing the importance of preparation.

“We have a little saying up at the state (Emergency Operations Center),” Sprayberry said. “It’s called, ‘Hope is not a course of action.’”

Contact Kristin Zachary at kzachary@reflector.com and 252-329-9566. Follow her on Twitter @kzacharygdr.

via The Daily Reflector.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A victim of a robbery attempt near ECU early Wednesday was able to fend off the two suspects, go to a store and call police.

William Daughtridge, 27, was walking in the area of Charles Boulevard and Boxelder Way about 2:05 a.m. when two men approached him and demanded money, according to a Greenville police report.

When Daughtridge refused, one of the suspects grabbed his arm, the report said.

Daughtridge punched the man in the face twice, then punched the second man in the face.

Both suspects ran away toward the Province apartment complex.

Nothing was taken from Daughtridge. The report indicated he had been walking from school to his home.

He reported the incident at 2:24 a.m. at the Sheetz gas station and convenience store at Charles Boulevard and East 10th Street.

The two suspects were described as black men, one wearing a red shirt and white hat, the other wearing a black shirt and black jeans, according to an ECU alert.

East Carolina University sent the alert email at 2:54 a.m., and a text message followed one minute later, making students and staff aware of the danger.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Greenville police at 329-4315 or Pitt-Greenville CrimeStoppers at 758-7777.

via The Daily Reflector.

By Nathan Summers

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Ruffin McNeill always refers to his football players as his sons, but when he comes back from a trip to Jamaica this weekend, the East Carolina head coach will have taken on a different kind of son — the kind with “in-law” at the end.

While the extended family of his Pirate football team is under the watchful eye of strength and conditioning coach Jeff Connors for the balance of the summer, the fourth-year ECU football coach is on his way to the Caribbean to watch his oldest daughter, Renata, tie the knot.

“It’s not too much of a vacation, but it’s my first wedding (for one of his children) so I’m a little nervous,” McNeill said of the trip, which he said will be a quick one that will have him back in his office by Monday.

Needless to say, McNeill didn’t make the courtship or the proposal easy on his daughter’s fiance.

“He’s a great guy, and he’s been through the ringer with me,” McNeill said. “He’s hung in there.”

Hanging in there included abiding by the coach’s insistence that the groom formally ask McNeill permission for his daughter’s hand. In fact, McNeill said that was the “only way” he would have allowed the wedding, which takes place on Saturday.

As the coach described it, his campaign of scare tactics against potential male suitors for his two daughters had a limited effect this time.

“I run them off and I’ve been trying to run them off,” said McNeill, who in addition to Renata, 32, also has a 23-year-old daughter named Olivia. “He came back and met me after I scared him. He’s a great guy and he loves Renata.”

Meanwhile, McNeill’s Pirates are a month removed from spring practice, and many of them are balancing summer classes with the rigors of the Connors offseason program.

Just having the players in the presence of Connors seems to be comforting enough for McNeill to enjoy his time away from them.

“Jeff is absolutely at the top of his profession, so I know they’re getting trained in a very intense and very professional manner,” said McNeill, whose team finished 8-5 last season. “The kids are already in summer school, and the (2013) recruits will join them for the second session in June, so the whole group should be up here by then.”

After conditioning is complete, players will move on to voluntary mid-summer workouts without coaches and then dive headlong into preseason camp in August.

That means a new season is already imminent in terms of training and preparation.

“The key now is the core leaders of the group stepping up,” McNeill said. “This is a group that has great team chemistry. They’re not working for themselves, but working for each other and not being selfish.”

Contact Nathan Summers at nsummers@reflector.com or 252-329-9595.

via The Daily Reflector.

East Carolina’s Joran Vliegen, left, and Colin Roller compete during a match earlier this season. (ECU Media Relations)

By Tony Castleberry

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Making it to an NCAA championship tournament has to be a thrill for any collegiate student-athlete. Being the first from your school to qualify for the NCAAs probably creates an added level of excitement.

Keeping those emotions in check will be crucial for East Carolina’s Colin Roller and Joran Vliegen, the first-ever Pirate doubles team to reach the NCAA tournament. Roller and Vliegen received an automatic bid into the field of 32 pairs and will begin play today against Georgia Tech’s Vikram Hundal and Juan Spir.

ECU coach Shawn Heinchon said his players deserve to be happy about playing in the national tournament, but should not become overwhelmed with the spectacle of it all.

“Far and away, this is the biggest thing that’s happened (individually) at East Carolina, not only in my time, but obviously in the history of the program,” Heinchon said in a phone interview from Urbana, Ill., where the NCAAs are being hosted by the University of Illinois. “Once you get an opportunity to do it, you can get more comfortable being in that realm and a lot of times, that growth, in and of itself, can make you better, just feeling like that’s something that can be done.

“In some ways you’re in a scenario where you don’t have a lot to lose, but in some ways that can actually cause you to perform badly. … The guys greatly value the opportunity to be here. Our biggest challenge from a mental standpoint is to not be getting too excited when we go play. There’s a reason we’re here.”

Vliegen, a 6-foot-3 native of Belgium, and Roller, a 6-4 Land O’Lakes, Fla., product, enter the NCAAs as the 15th seed and are the only Conference USA representatives.

The Pirate duo went 17-0 this season and they will need to continue their stellar play if they want to extend their championship stay since it is a single-elimination tournament.

“The key for us will be getting through that first day,” Heinchon said. “Our tennis and our talent is good enough to have us win some matches out here. How many, if any? I think time will tell. … If we can come out under control and allow ourselves to be as good as we were all spring, the sky’s the limit.

“We’re not talking about losing, but if we do lose (today), it’s all over. All right, here’s your NCAA towel, jump back on the airplane and go home.”

The doubles final is scheduled for Monday.

Contact Tony Castleberry at tcastleberry@reflector.com, 252-329-9591 or follow @tcastleberrygdr on Twitter.

via The Daily Reflector.

Letters to the Editor

Published: May 21, 2013

Gun fantasies

The current debate about guns in public places could use a little critical thinking. The idea that a “good guy” with a gun can shoot a “bad guy” in a restaurant, bar or school without hitting innocent people is a myth perpetuated by the gun lobby.

Data reported by the New York City Police Department showed that their officers hit their targets on average 18 percent of the time during a gun fight. For every five shots, four bullets missed the intended target. In an attempt to take down a shooter near the Empire State Building last year, nine bystanders were wounded by police.

Another myth promoted by the NRA is that a gun in the home will somehow make you safer. However, as noted in Scientific American (May 2013) “data show that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self defense.”

Unfortunately, our national and state GOP representatives apparently have been taken in by this “a gun will keep you safe” fantasy.

Stephen Norton, Ph.D.

Cary

via Stephen Norton: Gun fantasies | Letters to the Editor | NewsObserver.com.

Published: May 22, 2013

Letters to the Editor

Moeser’s mouth

Regarding the May 21 article (“Ex-chancellor Moeser criticizes coverage of UNC scandal”: Someone needs to remind James Moeser that UNC’s ivory tower collapsed under its own weight nearly three years ago, media or no media.

“The Carolina Way” has indeed devolved into a laughingstock catch phrase during that same time span. Perhaps if Moeser spent less time tuning his organ and more time investigating the details that Holden Thorp routinely missed, Moeser would develop a deeper understanding of the entire situation and wisely keep his mouth shut.

Jon Gibson, Raleigh

via Jon Gibson: Moeser doesn’t get it | Letters to the Editor | NewsObserver.com.

Editorial

Published: May 18, 2013

State employees knew they might be in for a rough time with the election of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Republicans have never been friendly to protections for ordinary working people, public or private, and indeed, when the governor made his State of the State address he referred to having an intolerance for “seat warmers’ among public employees.

Not surprisingly, many took it personally, as indeed they should have. State employees have gone without decent salary increases or other perks for years, and most work hard, in many cases for less money than they could get for comparable jobs in private business.

But as Republicans in the General Assembly have shown, they love to put up a target and take turns at practice, the most notable example being Sen. Phil Berger, president pro-tem of the upper chamber, who made public school teachers his personal target of choice by proposing to end teacher tenure.

Now, through a bill in the state House, Gov. McCrory would get his wish, or wishes, about state employees.

Grievance changes

Civil service protections against firings and demotions would be curbed in a House bill, with grievance procedures changed for about 90,000 state workers. Instead of having their appeals of firing and demotions heard by an administrative law judge, they’d be going before a “hearing officer” who would be named by political appointees of the governor. Currently, when a case is contested, those administrative law judges in the Office of Administrative Hearings hold hearings that are similar to judicial proceedings, with discovery, submission of evidence, lawyers, etc.

But under proposed changes, the Office of Administrative Hearings would just review a ruling of the hearing officer.

And no one seems clear as to what exactly the proposed law would allow in terms of employees being able to have a lawyer present for the hearing. Neal Alexander, McCrory’s state personnel director, says the hearing officers would be career employees who wouldn’t be influenced by politics. And he says the hearings would be closed to the public.

State employees would be right to be suspicious of these ideas.

Beware reform

Alexander, appointed personnel director by McCrory, supports the legislation and says it’s an attempt to modernize and streamline the grievance process.

Anytime streamlining is involved, it’s unlikely that means that grievances will get more scrutiny. They’ll get less. And while officials say the streamlining also will mean that some employees hired on probation will achieve career status more quickly, the tradeoff of shortcuts in the grievance process isn’t worth it.

Another factor which makes the timing of this “streamlining” suspicious is that it follows a pattern seen in several other states where Republicans have curbed civil service protections for public employees.

The recession and need to downsize bureaucracies are always cited as reasons for the changes, but it’s more likely that politics is in play. And a curious twist in this maneuver is that it would expand the number of employees exempt from the protections of the State Personnel Act to 1,500. The number already was increased by the GOP-run General Assembly from 400 to 1,000. Those individuals won’t be protected from firings because they will essentially be classified as political appointees.

But another way of looking at it is that Gov. McCrory will have many more political appointments at his disposal.

The true test

The best way to measure whether any part of a personnel system is in need of overhaul is to answer this question: How is the current system working?

Julian Mann III, the director of the Office of Administrative Hearings and chief administrative law judge, answers that one affirmatively. He said his office hears 13,000 cases a year. Just 200 of them have to do with personnel issues. And in most of those, he said, the judges try to settle the cases to the satisfaction of those involved before they ever get the stage of a full hearing.

That seems fairly streamlined already.

via Chipping away at state workers’ job security | Editorials | NewsObserver.com.

By Kristin Zachary

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

An ECU student killed on Monday in an Arlington Boulevard wreck had written to a professor on Friday that she was happy and excited about her future.

One of 19 accounting students asked to introduce themselves in a one-page biography, Elizabeth Griffiths began: “The most important thing to know is that I am such a happy, energetic and passionate person.”

The 20-year-old’s assignment was submitted just three days before her vehicle was struck nearly head-on by a hydroplaning pickup truck, requiring rescue personnel to extricate her from the mangled car.

Griffiths and her classmates started intermediate accounting last week with Cal Christian, an associate professor who requests each student share a little about themselves in a one-page introduction.

Christian said he began reading the statements when he received them on Friday and was responding to each student. On Monday, he had about five left.

“She was the very next person when I got notice of what happened,” Christian said. “It was a rough day.”

He shared Griffiths’ biography with The Daily Reflector on Tuesday so people could know the bright spirit of a woman “too young to be gone.”

Griffiths was eastbound on Arlington Boulevard during a period of steady rain about 1:30 p.m. on Monday when a westbound Ford F-250 hydroplaned in standing water and its driver lost control near Red Banks Road.

The truck, driven by 17-year-old Mitchell Wilkerson of Grimesland, veered into Griffiths’ lane and crashed into her Honda Accord nearly head-on. The left side of the car was smashed in from the headlights past the driver door. Police said debris from the crash was spread over a wide area, covering all five lanes of the road.

Police said Wilkerson exited the truck and attempted to help Griffiths. Greenville Fire-Rescue personnel worked to extricate her and rush her to Vidant Medical Center, where she later was pronounced dead.

The teenage driver was transported to Vidant with serious injuries, but police said his condition was not life-threatening. Officials reported rain and speed appear to be factors in the crash.

Police said Monday no further information about the crash would be released until an investigation was complete. There was no word on charges Monday afternoon.

Griffiths of Raleigh was a 2010 graduate of Garner Magnet High School, according to a school publication. She enrolled at ECU in 2010 and was an accounting major in the College of Business, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Five days into her summer class, Griffiths already had made an impression.

“While I have had a lot of students that I have gotten to know really well, in just five days, Elizabeth has left her mark on me,” Christian said. “I will definitely be more intentional in each class I teach and will make sure that every student understands the impact they can have on each other and their community.”

He read Griffiths’ biography on Tuesday to her 18 classmates.

“What’s amazing at 20 is, the world is in front of them,” Christian said.

So many young people take life for granted or fail to understand the importance of hard work, but not Griffiths, Christian said.

“I am happy with my decision to be in the College of Business,” Griffiths wrote, closing her one-page biography, “I feel like this was the right move for me to make. I joined Alpha Kappa Psi, the business fraternity, and have met a lot of amazing people who mean the world to me.

“I am excited to see where this takes me in life,” she said, “I’m sure it’ll be someplace wonderful.”

Christian’s voice caught as he read those last words.

Most important now, he said, is that Griffiths be remembered for her “contagious, vivacious and excited” personality and her hope for all those around her to be just as happy.

Contact Kristin Zachary at kzachary@reflector.com and 252-329-9566. Follow her on Twitter @kzacharygdr.

via The Daily Reflector.

Jay Clark

Photo by Jay Clark, ECU News ServicesAmong the Brody School of Medicine’s Class of 2013 is Mike Weeks, who embarked upon his third career following graduation. Nearly 70 students completed their medical degrees at ECU this year.

ECU notes

Sunday, May 19, 2013

After seven years in his previous career, Mike Weeks was looking for more of a challenge. Considering that he had worked both as an accountant and a social worker, Weeks would have to find something particularly challenging.

He found it at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.

After four years of medical school, Weeks, 46, graduated again on May 10, this time ready to specialize in psychiatry. He earned his previous two degrees — his bachelor’s in accounting and his master’s in social work — from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“It’s been a really good journey,” Weeks said.

Sibling rivalry played a role in sparking Weeks’ interest in returning to school for a third degree. He said he had always been jealous of his sister — a doctor — and her knowledge of the basic mechanisms of how people get sick and get better.

After a few years in social work, Weeks realized he was looking for more of a challenge in his career. He wanted to know more about the science behind his field and why some people can overcome their addictions while others continue to relapse. Weeks said that professionals believe that is linked to brain chemistry, and he was fascinated by that and wanted to be part of a field in which major breakthroughs in psychiatry might someday allow professionals to target illnesses with specific medications.

Weeks said social work serves as a good foundation for medicine, because in both fields, the professional has to start with where their patient is. But nothing could have prepared him for his first semester, which Weeks said was the most challenging semester of the medical program.

Weeks likened that difficult first semester to drinking from a garden hose: there is so much coming at everyone at once that they do not know what to do with it all. Students must spend their nights memorizing that day’s material, because tomorrow will bring an entirely new set of information.

Weeks said there is no amount of reading ahead that can prepare someone for it, and none of the students seemed to get an advantage from their previous educational experience.

“I came in from an accounting background and a social work background, and there were other kids who came from biochemistry backgrounds,” Weeks said. “It didn’t seem to matter.”

Weeks did not do well on his first couple of tests, and he worried that he might be asked to leave the program. He was able to turn the semester around after he realized that it was far more helpful to summarize everything being taught into simpler forms of information instead of trying to memorize every single thing that was taught that day.

“It’s not for the faint of heart, but I think most people can do it,” Weeks said. “You just have to be ready.”

Even though he did not have the same energy as some of his younger classmates, Weeks had certain advantages over his class in that he already had gone through some of life’s important milestones. His finances were in order, and he proposed to his girlfriend, Elisabeth Bridgewater, at the end of that harrowing first semester. The two were married in June 2011.

“In that respect, there [was] a lot less stress on me as an older student,” he said.

The couple plans to relocate to Seattle. Asked how she might respond if her husband said he would like to try for another career, Bridgewater quickly answered.

“No,” she said, and both she and Weeks laughed. “We have three careers to choose from. Let’s pick one.”

Graduates reach educational milestone despite deployments

Final exams and presentations do not do much to raise the blood pressure of physical therapy graduate Michelle “Shelley” Spencer. But there is nothing like being deployed twice to Iraq to put things in perspective.

Spencer, a Pamlico County native, was first deployed in 2005 after finishing her undergraduate degree. She spent 13 months leading a platoon assigned to convoy security with the U.S. Army in southern Iraq and Baghdad. She was part of the military police unit that relocated Abu Ghraib inmates when the prison was closed.

Upon her return to the states, she enrolled at ECU in 2008 but her studies were interrupted again after two years.

Spencer, promoted to captain, withdrew from school to plan training events for more than 200 troops and prepare for deployment. Then it was back to Iraq in 2011 for seven months, this time leading three platoons spread across three different Army bases.

She graduated on May 10 with a doctorate in physical therapy from the College of Allied Health Sciences — a rigorous three-year degree program that includes 32 hours of clinical training. Surprisingly, she is not alone in successfully juggling military service and school.

“There are so many kids out there who are doing this,” Spencer said. “And they’re younger than me. Sometimes it’s deployment, sometimes it’s training.”

In fact, another student who graduated from ECU this month, Demetrius “D.J.” Baskerville, left school twice following orders from the U.S. Army.

Baskerville earned his bachelor’s degree in special education from the College of Education. He was deployed to Iraq for 11 months in 2007 as a motor transport operator and again in 2011, this time to Kuwait.

“College was only supposed to take three years,” he said. “It has taken seven. But you improvise, adapt and overcome.”

It’s not always easy to adapt, however, when it comes to returning to campus after spending months overseas in a war zone. When Baskerville returned from his tour of duty in Iraq, the peers he had come to ECU with were about to graduate.

“You kind of feel like everyone’s forgotten about you,” Baskerville said. “Nobody understands your story.”

“Most of us are hyper-alert, or we are for a certain amount of time,” Spencer added. “What becomes your norm over there, is not the norm here.”

The support of family and friends helped both graduates through that transition, they said. And Spencer and Baskerville agreed the faculty in their programs went to great lengths to keep them on track and on top of their coursework.

Dr. Steve Duncan, assistant vice chancellor for Administration, Finance and Military Programs, said he’s proud of the way faculty members have risen to the challenge of supporting students who are reservists and veterans. It’s not uncommon, he said, to provide the work for these students in advance or to continue their education from a distance whenever possible.

“One percent of the people protect 99 percent of us,” Duncan said. “We do as much as we can for that one percent.”

To further these efforts, ECU recently established an office for Student Veteran Services within Student Affairs’ Office of Student Transitions to support students returning from military service.

“Everyone is part of a national defense answer,” Duncan said. “When you step up to help (student veterans), you are part of that answer.

via The Daily Reflector.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

I think I may have made a really bad mistake. I was very impressed with N.C. Rep. Brian Brown when I met him as he campaigned for office. He seemed like a good future for citizens of this state. And I voted for him. And now I see that he attached his name to a bill that will make guns more available on college campuses.

Rep. Brown, have you lost your mind? Did you not think about the consequences of that idea? I am a retired federal agent, a Vietnam War veteran with three years combat experience, and an attorney here in Pitt County. I have been a member of the National Rifle Association longer than you have been alive.

I believe in the right to bear arms, but on college campuses? Do you not know that most of those young people are for the first time in their lives finding themselves in an unsupervised environment, making stupid mistakes and learning from those mistakes in a safe environment where they don’t destroy their futures and those of others. Are you proposing to allow these kids to have easier access to firearms on campus? Do you really not trust law enforcement to be much more able to handle issues in which children might be more inclined to grab a gun and shoot someone?

Most college students have absolutely no experience with violence, firearms and making right decisions. Are you going to add firearms to that environment?

Yes, I made a really bad mistake. But I won’t make it again. I will support your opponent in the next election and pray that individual has the maturity and wisdom not to place our children in harm’s way. Rep. Brown, have you lost your mind?

FREDERIC WHITEHURST,

J.D., Ph.D.

Bethel

via The Daily Reflector.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

A victim of an attempted robbery near ECU early Wednesday was able to fend off two suspects, a campus alert said. No one was injured and nothing was taken.

The incident was reported at 2:24 a.m. at the Sheetz gas station and convenience store, off of Charles Boulevard and East 10th Street.

Two suspects are described as black men, one wearing a red shirt and white hat, the other wearing a black shirt and black jeans, according to the alert. They last were seen headed on foot toward the Province apartment complex.

East Carolina University sent an alert email at 2:54 a.m., and a text message followed one minute later, making students and staff aware of the danger. Further information about the incident was not immediately available.

Students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged by the university not to walk alone at night, to be aware of their surroundings at all times and to report suspicious activity.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Greenville police at 252-329-4315 or Pitt-Greenville CrimeStoppers at 252-758-7777.

via The Daily Reflector.

Published: May 19, 2013

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — Holden Thorp seems to be enjoying his farewell tour.

He played keyboard with a student band at Cat’s Cradle, the Carrboro rock club. He was given lifetime delegate status by the university’s employee association. He came up with a David Letterman-style top 10 list for his successor, Carol Folt, in which he offered this advice: “Eat at the K&W at least once a semester. Get the fried okra.”

Another tip to Folt was to watch “Friday Night Lights,” a TV drama that revolves around a football team. “As soon as possible,” he advised her.

Thorp is winding down his time as chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, the university where he arrived as a freshman in 1982 after applying to only one school.

It wasn’t supposed to end this soon for the talented chemist and entrepreneur who rapidly ascended from professor to department chairman to dean and, in 2008, chancellor – at the tender age of 43.

In a recent interview, Thorp said he wished he had watched “Friday Night Lights” five years ago. An education about athletics would’ve come in handy.

After being consumed for more than two years with an athletic scandal that led to the revelation of a major academic scandal, Thorp is giving up his beloved Carolina. He is resigning at the end of June to become provost – second-in-command – at Washington University in St. Louis.

Last month, he convened a panel of experts to come up with better ways to balance academics and athletics at the university. And at a recent faculty meeting, Thorp told professors he wouldn’t weigh in on the debate about a Thursday night football game this fall in Chapel Hill.

“There’s probably something from Shakespeare or classical Greek that describes what I’ve done by doing this panel and then leaving,” he said with a laugh. “It’s sort of like Obi-Wan Kenobi dying at the end of Star Wars and leaving Luke Skywalker to fight the rebellion by himself.”

Some critics, too

Thorp may be leaving the battlefield to others, but he’s also not afraid to lob a few grenades as he departs. He created a stir last month when he said college presidents have pressing demands and therefore should leave sports to athletic directors.

That was sacrilege to college athletics reformers who have said the only way to assure integrity is to have college presidents in charge.

Hodding Carter III, a UNC professor of leadership and public policy and former Knight Foundation president, said Thorp knows as well as anyone that big-time college sports can take a leader down fast. “This booger is not an 800-pound gorilla; it is a Godzilla and if you don’t shoot the bastard right away, it will eat you alive,” he said.

But, he said, Thorp’s proposal is way off base. “You really have got to get control of it, but you don’t get control of it by letting the guy who raised Godzilla become the person who now is supposed to supervise Godzilla, and that’s what the athletic directors are, and the conference guys.”

Thorp knows his suggestion was, to say the least, provocative.

“Bill Friday’s ghost and Hodding Carter and all those people are ready to kill me,” he said, mentioning the late UNC president and current faculty member, both of whom worked on reforms for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “They don’t admit that their presidential control idea didn’t work.”

It didn’t work in the case of Thorp, who said he took the job with no inkling about the athletics minefield ahead. Early in his tenure, he was worried about student safety after the murder of student body president Eve Carson and the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

During his five years on the job, he would wrestle successfully with state budget cuts, town politics and issues for the university’s lowest-paid workers. He repeatedly mentions what he says are the central indicators of the university’s health: UNC-CH has climbed from 16th to ninth nationally in federal research dollars, and undergraduate applications for admission jumped 43 percent. At the same time, private giving has been steady, even during a recession.

Still, Thorp was dogged by scandals, some with seeds planted before he took over as chancellor. The trouble came in waves: improper benefits for football players, academic misconduct involving a tutor, academic fraud in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. The revelations came as a shock to the Tar Heel faithful, who liked to think they did things the right way, “the Carolina Way.”

He fired football coach Butch Davis, prompting anger from some fans and derision from others who said the action came too late.

Layers of investigations were launched, by the NCAA, the State Bureau of Investigation, a Board of Governors panel, a review by former Gov. Jim Martin and more recently, the university’s accrediting body.

Lessons in PR

There were other problems, too. The university’s top fundraiser resigned after spending university money on trips with his girlfriend, the mother of a former UNC basketball star, in some cases to see her sons play. Thorp had approved an arrangement where the office of the fundraiser, Matt Kupec, was paying for Tami Hansbrough’s job, even though she was working in a different department. Thorp announced his resignation soon after the news broke.

This year, several women filed a federal complaint accusing the university of mishandling sexual assault cases. That has led to campus protests, the hiring of a consultant and two federal investigations.

Too often, Thorp said, he found himself in front of microphones trying to explain the problems and pledging to fix them.

Looking back, he said he would have done some things differently when it came to public communication and crisis management.

“But it’s always easy to see those things at the end,” he said. “It’s really hard when you’re going through it. It’s real easy to look at somebody else’s crisis and know what to do. It’s a whole different deal when you have a big bureaucratic organization, trying to make quick decisions and getting people on board.”

The academic scandal in the African studies department was perhaps the most embarrassing blow, with no-show classes, poorly supervised independent study courses and unauthorized grade changes. Martin’s probe found more than 200 irregular courses going back to the mid-1990s.

The blame was pinned on a former department chairman, Julius Nyang’oro and a manager, Debbie Crowder, who had close personal ties to the athletics department. Neither works at the university now.

One good result, Thorp said, is that a myth has been deconstructed.

“It was a failure of lots of people over a lot of years to detect it,” he said of the academic scandal. “I think that was fueled by this notion that these kinds of things didn’t happen here.”

Still, though, he resists the notion that the African studies scandal originated with athletics.

“I don’t think we have any evidence to suggest that this whole scheme was devised specifically for athletes,” he said. “But I don’t want to be the slightest bit defensive about the fact that student-athletes certainly took advantage of it and they had lots of ways to know about it.

“The personal relationships that Debbie Crowder had were very conspicuous ways in which they would have (known about it). Does that make it an athletic scandal or an academic scandal? I don’t know.”

The intense public interest surely revolved around athletics. If no athletes had been enrolled in the fake classes, he asserted, no one would have taken much notice.

“And that part is sad,” he said, “because it would have been just as bad a thing.”

Support from students, staff

Thorp said the panel he appointed will come out with recommendations sometime this fall. Meanwhile, dozens of policies and procedures are in place on both the academic and athletic sides of the university to prevent a recurrence.

There have been numerous personnel changes, too, and Thorp said he has faith in Bubba Cunningham, the athletic director, and Larry Fedora, the football coach.

“We didn’t have an elegant way of getting there, but it’s all pretty good now,” he said. “I’m proud of all that, and it was an honor to do it, but I’m ready to take a break.”

When Thorp decided in September to step down, he said he had done a lot of thinking about whether he was the right kind of leader for that moment in the university’s history. In July, he had been to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, where he learned about his strengths and weaknesses.

Thorp said those who chose him to be chancellor obviously couldn’t have foreseen that the young leader would have to deal with an athletics meltdown. They had no way of knowing “that we were going to need somebody who had a full tank of gas for going on TV and talking to the media and dealing with a crisis.”

He really didn’t want to be a politician or a public figure. He was more focused on the internal workings of the university.

When public scrutiny and criticism were at a fever pitch last fall, faculty, staff and students were at rallies begging Thorp to stay. In the central quad, they rolled out long scrolls, where they wrote messages of praise.

James Holman, on the housekeeping staff, sent a letter thanking Thorp for working to solve the staff’s long-standing issues and working conditions. Thorp was credited with raising minimum salaries and starting a community garden for workers.

“It has been decades since the university has had a chancellor with the gift of being able to listen and to hear, as well as the determination to act,” Holman wrote.

Working the inside

Thorp said he hopes history will judge him as someone who did his best to take care of the people in the university community.

“There’s a lot of commentary about whether I should have done things differently when it comes to taking care of the outside,” he said. “But I know how to take care of the inside of a university.”

Many say Thorp did well at building good relationships with faculty, employees and students, keeping an open door to people.

“On those people and caring issues, he really gave more time than most chancellors,” said Dan Gitterman, a professor of public policy. At the same time, Gitterman said, Thorp did not have an adequate support system of senior advisers who could help with some of the big issues that became overwhelming – athletics and the recent investigation into the university’s handling of sexual assault cases.

“Those are things you need people right in your office who can help give you advice on,” Gitterman said. “Those are big, big operations and he was home alone.”

In St. Louis, where Thorp jokes the winters are colder and the summers are hotter, he won’t have to deal with big-time athletics and its pitfalls at the NCAA Division III school.

As provost, he will oversee the academic enterprise, while his new boss, Chancellor Mark Wrighton, will be in the spotlight. Thorp said he looks forward to putting more emphasis on graduate students at WashU, a respected research university that has built strong undergraduate programs.

At 48, he has time to settle into the second-in-command role. He said he had two other job opportunities, but he won’t discuss them.

Though he had announced his intention to stay on the chemistry faculty at UNC-CH, it seemed a good time to make a change, he said. Both of the Thorp children are leaving home in the fall – daughter Emma to a boarding school in Virginia, and son John to UNC-CH.

So Thorp won’t be away from Chapel Hill for long. He’ll be back in late summer as a Carolina parent when his son goes through freshman orientation.

In the Midwest, he and his wife, Patti – known as an exuberant basketball fan – will root for the Bears. And, Thorp said, they might squeeze in a road trip or two to catch another team.

“I can’t wait to go to Louisville and South Bend and watch the Tar Heels play. That’ll be great.”

Stancill: 919-829-4559

via CHAPEL HILL: UNC’s Holden Thorp steps out of the spotlight | Education | NewsObserver.com.

Published: May 20, 2013 Updated 15 hours ago

By Dan Kane — dkane@newsobserver.com

In an interview with a local magazine published last week, former UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser complained that media coverage of an academic scandal that involved many UNC athletes was more about taking down championship banners than getting at what went wrong.

“I’m really angry about [the media],” Moeser told the Chapel Hill Magazine, a lifestyle publication. “I think they target people, and they take pleasure in bringing people down. I think their real goal here was to remove banners from the Smith Center.”

The remarks were part of a short article in which Moeser defended “The Carolina Way.” That’s the title of a book written by revered men’s basketball coach Dean Smith, who retired in 1997, in which he offers his lessons for achieving success through hard work and strong ethics. It’s become a motto for the university, and it has taken a beating amid the academic and athletic scandals at the university over the past three years.

Those scandals include an NCAA investigation into the football team that found improper financial benefits for top players and improper academic and financial help from a tutor, and an academic fraud scandal that involves more than 200 lecture-style classes that never met and were heavily populated by athletes.

UNC’s football team has never won a national championship, but its men’s basketball team, which plays in the Smith Center, won two championships during the roughly 14 years of no-show classes within the African and Afro-American studies department. Records show men’s basketball players were enrolled in the classes, including two that had one basketball player as the sole enrollee.

The university has not given a full accounting of football and men’s basketball enrollments in all the classes, but has insisted it was not an athletic scandal because nonathletes were enrolled and received the same good-to-excellent grades.

“I think [the media] has really put a target on the university,” Moeser told the magazine, “and they’ve treated The Carolina Way in a very cynical fashion, trashing it, really, and indicating The Carolina Way was always just a fiction, a façade we put in front of misbehavior. I really resent that. I think The Carolina Way is genuine, I think it’s real.”

Moeser, who was chancellor from 2000 to 2008, could not be reached for comment.

John Drescher, executive editor of The News & Observer and a UNC-CH alumnus, disputed Moeser’s take on the media coverage.

“We weren’t trying to get anybody,” Drescher said, “but we were trying to get to the bottom of what happened at UNC. Most of our readers understood that and appreciate the digging we did.”

Moeser’s comments drew national attention when they were picked up by Deadspin, an irreverent online sports publication best known for exposing Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s fictious girlfriend. But the magazine criticized Moeser for “shooting the messenger.”

Closer to home, John Robinson, the former editor of The (Greensboro) News & Record, wrote in his blog, “Media disrupted,” that Moeser doesn’t understand the media’s job in an open society.

“What actually has happened is that the N&O discovered some rot in the internal workings at UNC in athletics and academia and, like an infection in the body, you have to keep going after it to get rid of it all,” Robinson wrote. “That’s what the N&O has done and is still doing.”

Some faculty at the university said Moeser’s remarks were misguided. Michael Hunt, a history professor emeritus, said Moeser may be reacting to the criticism leveled by rival fans.

“He may be reflecting the embattled feeling that the administrators are feeling,” Hunt said. “The problem is they are dragging this out, and I don’t think anybody is saying — I haven’t heard a word saying — ‘Oh, the N&O’s persecuting Chapel Hill.’ Nobody is saying that except for the people who are trying to keep the lid on.”

Kane: : 919-829-4861

via Ex-chancellor Moeser criticizes coverage of UNC scandal | UNC scandal | NewsObserver.com.

Published: May 21, 2013

James Moeser, the chancellor emeritus and a professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a master at playing the organ, but now he has taken up percussion with an instrument usually preferred by losing politicians.

Instead of striking drums or cymbals, he’s banging on the media. His tune is that old favorite of the beleaguered: “They’re out to get us.”

Moeser, who led UNC-CH from 2000 to 2008, told Chapel Hill Magazine last week, “I’m really angry [about the media]. I think they target people and take pleasure in bringing people down. I think their real goal here was to remove banners from the Smith Center.”

Moeser’s wrong, obviously. If the media were any good at targeting people, they would have targeted him. His successor, Holden Thorp, took over before the scandals broke and ended up taking the heat (and the fall) for problems that festered under his predecessor. Moeser was the one who fired the likeable but underperforming alum John Bunting as football coach and decided instead to take the football program big time with the 2006 hiring of Butch Davis, a former coach at the University of Miami and of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.

Davis brought in an assistant coach who ran afoul of the NCAA for linking players to agents. That brought more scrutiny that uncovered sham classes in the African studies department favored by the university’s football and basketball players. Smoke is still billowing from this situation. The Orange County district attorney is soon to report on any criminal wrongdoing, and the Secretary of State’s investigators are looking into payments to athletes.

UNC’s reputation for academic quality and aboveboard athletics has taken a hard hit. The damage has been made far worse by the failure of university leaders to admit problems and search relentlessly for where the trouble began and where it spread.

But what is Moeser angry about? Not about what happened or how it has been handled. He’s angry about what got reported. He thinks reporting that seeks to find the extent of the problems is a mean-spirited effort to strip a proud university of its greatest athletic laurels, the banners from its national men’s basketball titles.

No, it’s an attempt to do what universities also should do: Seek the truth. We appreciate Moeser’s freedom to play his own tune, but he’s hit the wrong note.

via Moeser is wrong to blame media for UNC scandals | Editorials | NewsObserver.com.