Seen on the side of Starlight Cafй located in downtown Greenville is the new public art that was put together by N.C. artist Jan-Ru Wan and local textile manufacturer Parrot Canvas Co. (Aileen Devlin/ The Daily Reflector)

By Michael Abramowitz

Thursday, May 16, 2013

A Taiwanese artist and former East Carolina University professor discovered a strong sense of community during her stay in Greenville, prompting her gift to the city, officials said at a Wednesday ceremony unveiling her artwork.

A three-dimensional textile mural, called “Home” by artist Jan-Ru Wan, was showcased on a wall at the corner of South Evans and Fifth streets prior to a gathering of city officials and shoppers at the opening of the Uptown Umbrella Market at Five Points Plaza.

The work is the result of a partnership between the artist and local textile manufacturer Parrott Canvas Co. It was unveiled by the Public Art Collaborative’s Art-Force program co-directors, Janet Kagan and Jean Greer.

The nonprofit Art-Force organization, based in Chapel Hill, works to stimulate economic development by bringing together artists and designers with entrepreneurs, small businesses, educational institutions and local agencies to boost artistic design and production.

By matching artists with small manufacturers across the state, Art-Force aims to reaffirm a community’s connection to place, Kagan and Greer said.

“Art-Force believes communities can use artists’ imaginations to retool manufacturing and assist communities in an economic transformation,” Kagan told the audience.

“The purpose of the Greenville alliance is just that — to develop new products for Parrott Canvas with the imagination of artist Jan-Ru Wan, bolster the company’s workforce and, ultimately, stimulate the town’s overall vitality,” she said.

Greer said “Home” is the artist’s depiction of the flowing Tar River, spotted with homes, industries and other local features.

“The artist was on the ECU faculty for four years and got to know the city very well,” Greer said. “The idea of her piece is that whatever happens in a city — the clouds change and the people change — you still have a place called home.”

The artwork was created for the city as part of a grant awarded by ArtPlace America to the PAC Art-Force Program.

The project allied Wan with Parrott Canvas to design new products and demonstrate their partnership in a public context.

“All the credit goes to the artist for the whole creation,” company President Mickey Parrot said.

“We also worked with Jan-ru to get an artist’s take on some of the products we make and will eventually be marketing,” he said.

The team’s products — a collection of pieces, including cross-body bags and a set of baskets — will be on display in the windows of the Pitt County Arts Council at Emerge at 404 S. Evans St. and will be available for sale at Parrott Canvas.

In creating the mural, Wan chose to use the same materials — lightweight indoor/outdoor fabrics — that are featured in her designs for the manufacturer.

“Home” will stay for two years at its present location before being transported to another location in the city for display, Greer said.

Contact Michael Abramowitz at mabramowitz@reflector.com or 252-329-9571.

via The Daily Reflector.

Jonathan Gibby for NBC News

Steve Heiss stands with fellow graduates before participating in commencement ceremonies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on May 11, 2013.

Allison Linn NBC News

May 15, 2013 6 hours ago

The members of the class of 2013 entered college under the gloom of the Great Recession, came of age in an era of economic uncertainty and are graduating into a job market still scarred by high unemployment.

It’s a situation that many graduating seniors say has had a profound effect on their lives, influencing everything from where they went to college to what they now plan to do with the rest of their lives.

“Basically, I feel like it’s always been in the back of my mind,” said Alison Ritrosky, 21.

She’ll be graduating from the University of New Hampshire in Durham this month with a degree in teaching, and she plans to go straight into a graduate program. The extra education will push her student loan debt up to around $65,000, but she thinks it’s the only way to ensure a good, well-paying job.

“Personally, I feel like I have no option,” she said.

Many graduating seniors say the recession and recovery has been a reality check, teaching them that the economy can falter and jobs aren’t guaranteed even if you have a college degree.

“Moving forward, I guess I’m not as innocent as maybe other college graduates have been in the past,” said Steve Heiss, 22, who graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with degrees in accounting and business administration last weekend.

When Heiss entered college in 2009, seniors were having job offers rescinded. A stock ticker mounted in the school’s atrium seemed often to be ominously in the red.

He chose an accounting major in part because it seemed like the one field where companies were still hiring. The plan paid off, and he secured a job with a major consulting company last November. He starts in late summer.

After watching older students go through the turmoil of the recession, Heiss said he doesn’t take for granted that he will have a way to pay off approximately $30,000 in student loan debt.

“I’ll say this: I’ve never felt more grateful to have a job,” he said.

The good news for the college class of 2013 is that the job market seems to be gradually improving. Students like Heiss report that more recruiters have returned to campus, and the national unemployment rate is ticking back down.

The bad news for young workers is that competition remains extremely tough. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 13.1 percent in April, far higher than the overall unemployment rate of 7.5 percent.

Experts say a college degree should at least give the class of 2013 an edge over peers who didn’t go to college. A Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of government data through 2011 found that 21- to 24-year-olds with a college degree saw smaller drops in employment and wages than their peers with less education.

But even when some college seniors land a job, it’s not their dream gig.

Courtesy Elizabeth Phan

Elizabeth Phan is grateful to have a job but would like to find a career-track position.

Elizabeth Phan knows how fortunate she is to have a well-paying sales job with an upscale retailer. But Phan, 22, would be happy to be earning half of what she does now if she could snag a career-track job in the financial industry.

Even when she applies for entry-level positions, Phan said she finds herself competing against people who are much more experienced but also are desperate for work.

“I have been looking for a while and it is getting quite frustrating, but I know I’m not the only one so that’s helping,” she said.

Phan will graduate this month from the Fashion Institute of Technology, part of the State University of New York, with a degree in international trade and marketing.

She started her college career in 2008 at a much pricier private school, but the financial crisis made her question whether the approximately $40,000 cost was worth it.

She left that school, moved to New York City, started at community college and eventually earned her degree at FIT. She’d like to get a master’s degree, but she doesn’t want the student loan debt.

“I refuse to take it on,” she said.

Simeon Bochev also might have taken a different college path if it weren’t for the recession.

When the housing market was hot, Bochev’s mother had invested in a vacation property in Colorado, figuring that she’d use the profits for his college education. Instead, the housing bust wiped out much of the home’s value just as Bochev was due to start school.

At the time, Bochev was deciding between University of Texas at Austin and George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy Simeon Bochev

Simeon Bochev took a different path because of the recession, but he’s not unhappy about it.

The stark difference in costs made it easy to decide to go to Austin to study engineering. But even with lower tuition costs, it was a struggle. He worked as a resident assistant and took paid internships. To help, his mother lived paycheck to paycheck.

Bochev, who immigrated with his parents to the United States from Bulgaria when he was just a baby, said his lifelong dream is to be the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria. He figures that if he had gone to George Washington, he would have done political internships and ended up with a government or think tank job.

Instead, he got a bachelor’s degree in engineering and then took on $18,500 in student loan debt to finance a yearlong graduate program in finance. He’ll graduate this month and has accepted a job with a major consulting firm.

Bochev also has committed to starting his Master’s in Business Administration at Harvard in 2017. He said he hopes the MBA will provide a transition into public policy, putting him back on track to that ambassador job he had set his sights on.

“I don’t think I gave up the dream,” he said. “I just took a longer way around to it.”

via Innocence lost: Class of 2013 comes of age in a weak economy – NBC News.com.

By Kristin Zachary

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Police are investigating the possibility a video was recorded in an East Carolina University locker room by a Peeping Tom who filmed players undressing last year after a Carolina Mudcats game.

LaDarryl Strong, 33, posed as a janitor and sneaked into a visitors’ locker room at Five County Stadium after a game between the Mudcats and the Wilmington (Del.) Blue Rocks on April 10, 2012.

Officials with the Zebulon Police Department said Strong, 169 Snow Hill St., Ayden, filmed players undressing. He was arrested in the stadium parking lot, and officers recovered eight videos, a small camera, 15 grams of marijuana and paraphernalia from his vehicle.

At the time of his arrest, Strong was employed with Lenoir County School System as a technology assistant in a Kinston school.

Investigators searched his Ayden home and seized 20 computers and other media devices. Strong was charged with felony secret peeping, first-degree trespass, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The Zebulon chief said at that time he expected officers to find other crimes on the recovered videos and called the incident a “very bold” crime that a first-time offender would not attempt.

Strong was convicted March 8 in Wake County of a misdemeanor count of secretly peeping and was sentenced to 36 months probation, state records show.

ECU was notified that one of the videos recovered from Strong’s home might have been filmed in an ECU locker room, Lt. Chris Sutton said Tuesday.

Information about when the notification was received was not immediately available, he said, but the investigation is in an early stage.

Sutton said his department already has contacted the District Attorney’s Office and will work in collaboration if it determines a crime has occurred.

“This is probably going to be an investigation that will take a little longer,” he said.

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

via The Daily Reflector.

Published: May 14, 2013

By Jane Stancill — jstancill@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — A task force will begin to review UNC-Chapel Hill’s policy on sexual assault cases Wednesday – four months after several women filed a federal complaint against the university and more than a year after campus leaders with expertise in sexual violence expressed concerns about the university’s policies and procedures.

At its first meeting on Wednesday, the 21-member panel of administrators, faculty, staff and students will hear from a nationally recognized consultant on sexual misconduct who has spent months meeting with groups on campus. The consultant, former Philadelphia sex crimes prosecutor Gina Smith, was hired by UNC-CH for $160,000 for eight months of work, a university spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Smith will give an overview on federal expectations for sexual assault policies and tell the panel about suggestions she’s heard from a variety of people at the university.

Then the panel will get to work, meeting weekly during the summer to come up with recommendations for a revised policy, said Christi Hurt, chairwoman of the task force and interim Title IX coordinator, who is on leave from her position as director of the Carolina Women’s Center.

“The development of this task force acknowledges that we always have miles to go before we sleep,” said Hurt, who worked for a decade on a statewide sexual assault coalition in the state of Washington. “The university is willing to put resources and energy behind making sure that we are taking steps in the right direction to make it a safe campus for everyone.”

She said the panel will be open to fresh ideas as it works to come up with revisions. Hurt will blog weekly about proposals; an online suggestion box will collect public input.

“We’re trying really hard to make this a process that people can engage with and help tell us their interests and concerns as we go,” Hurt said, “so that we are flexible about how we move forward.”

The appointment of a broad-based review panel follows widespread media attention about UNC-CH’s handling of sexual assault cases. In January, five women – students, a former student and a former administrator – filed a federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the university mishandled sexual assault cases and violated the students’ rights under the federal Title IX gender equity law.

A federal investigation of UNC-CH is underway, and across the nation, other campuses are fighting similar battles after similar complaints.

‘Different conversation’

Andrea Pino, a rising senior at UNC-CH and one of the federal complainants, said the new task force is a validation of students’ concerns about UNC-CH’s policy, which she said is legalistic, complex and overly focused on compliance.

She said students had complained about UNC-CH’s policies last year but got nowhere with the university.

“It was very much, you know, ‘we’re in compliance, your concerns are being heard,’ but nothing was being done,” said Pino, who has talked publicly about being raped last year. “And then when we filed the complaint, it became a whole different conversation.”

In late 2011, a staff committee focused on education around sexual assault and relationship violence wrote to Chancellor Holden Thorp offering help with a revision of the university’s policy, required under federal guidelines issued in the spring of that year. The letter expressed concern about the policy and a lack of training for people who hear sexual assault case proceedings.

“As an institution, we should not simply adjust current policy to comply with the minimum standards set forth by Title IX,” said the letter, signed by 15 staffers. “Rather, we should create policy and procedures that will serve our students well. We want a policy that will help survivors get the help and support they need and that will hold perpetrators appropriately accountable.”

One of the signers, Melinda Manning, an assistant dean of students, eventually left the university and signed on to the federal complaint.

The policy was ultimately revised in August of last year. University spokeswoman Karen Moon said student affairs administrators, with “many other members of the campus community,” worked to strengthen the campus process for responding to allegations of sexual assault. Several new staff positions were created.

“University officials believe the current revised policy reflects a commitment to a fair, respectful process that complies with federal guidelines and is fair and supportive of the students involved,” Moon said in a statement. “However, the campus conversations that have taken place throughout the past academic year, including those led by Gina Smith last semester, have provided additional feedback for the new task force starting its work this week to consider.”

A whole new look

So now the policy will get a thorough look by the 21-member panel that includes some of the same people who offered their expertise more than a year ago.

Pino said she’s hopeful because the task force includes counselors, professors and academic advisers who encounter students – and rape survivors – daily.

“It just shows you how different things are now,” she said in talking about the makeup of the group. “By filing a complaint we created a conversation that never would’ve happened.”

Members of the UNC-Chapel Hill task force

• Christi Hurt (chair), interim Title IX coordinator and currently on leave as director, Carolina Women’s Center

• K.E. Akin, graduate student

• Kiran Bhardwaj, Graduate and Professional Student Federation president

• Sarah-Kathryn Bryan, undergraduate student

• Alice Dawson, senior assistant dean, Academic Advising Program, College of Arts and Sciences

• Jayne Grandes, investigator, Equal Opportunity/ADA Office

• George Hare, deputy chief, Department of Public Safety

• Robert Joyce, Charles Edwin Hinsdale, professor of public law and government, School of Government, and chairman, Student Grievance Committee

• Christy Lambden, student body president

• Rebecca Macy, L. Richardson Preyer Distinguished Chair for Strengthening Families, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor, School of Social Work

• Sandra Martin, professor of maternal and child health and associate dean for research, Gillings School of Global Public Health

• Laurie Mesibov, ombuds, University Ombuds Office, and professor of public law and government, School of Government

• Allen O’Barr, director, Counseling and Wellness Services

• Terri Phoenix, director, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Center

• Robert Pleasants, interpersonal violence prevention coordinator, Campus Health Services

• Kelli Raker, rape prevention coordinator, Dean of Students Office, Student Affairs

• Ew Quimbaya-Winship, deputy Title IX coordinator/student complaint coordinator, Student Affairs

• Desiree Rieckenberg, senior associate dean of students, Dean of Students Office, Student Affairs

• Kara Simmons, associate university counsel

• Anna Sturkey, undergraduate student attorney general, Student Government’s representative, Committee on Student Conduct, and a member of the Sexual Assault Policy Response Team

• Amy Tiemann, community member and a Chapel Hill author and educator focused on issues of parenting, child safety, politics and culture

• Ann Penn (ex officio), director, Equal Opportunity / ADA Office

• Winston Crisp (ex officio), vice chancellor for student affairs

Stancill: 919-829-4559

via CHAPEL HILL: Review of UNC-CH’s sex assault policy begins Wednesday | Education | NewsObserver.com.

Chicago

May 14, 2013

(CBS) Northern Illinois University announced Tuesday it has kicked off a national search for the position of associate vice president and director of athletics.

A search firm will be utilized to expedite the search process, which the university expects will attract high-caliber candidates from across the country.

“After extensive consultation with President-Designate Baker and conversations with NCAA and BCS leaders, we’ve become convinced that it is time to launch a national search for a leader for our intercollegiate athletics program,” said President John G. Peters in a statement. “Northern Illinois University enjoys a great reputation nationally.”

Former athletics director Jeff Compher left the school in March to take the same position with East Carolina University.

via NIU Kicks Off National Search For New AD « CBS Chicago.

Columbus, Indiana

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

May 14, 2013

DEKALB, Illinois — Northern Illinois University has started a national search for a new athletic director.

East Carolina University said in March that it hired Jeff Compher from NIU to be its athletic director. Compher spent five years at Northern Illinois. The DeKalb school said Tuesday that it will use a search firm and hopes to attract “high-caliber” candidates from across the country to replace Compher.

Doug Baker will become NIU’s president in July. He will oversee the search process and choose the next athletic director.

NIU’s football team earned a Bowl Championship Series spot last season, appearing in the Orange Bowl against Florida State. The school also is building an 87,000-square-foot indoor practice facility.

via Northern Illinois University starting national search for new athletic director.

By IAN URBINA

Published: May 11, 2013

THE actor James Franco at U.C.L.A. John M. McHugh, the former Army secretary, at the State University of New York at Oswego. The commentator Ben Stein at the University of Vermont. All are notable figures who were invited to participate in college graduations in recent years, only to withdraw or be disinvited in the face of campus protests.

Commencement season has arrived, and with it a perennial debate over free speech on campus. So far this year, students on at least 10 campuses have protested speakers invited to commencement events. Robert B. Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, withdrew last month as a commencement speaker at Swarthmore College — his alma mater — after students mounted a campaign on Facebook calling him an “architect of the Iraq war” and a “war criminal” because of his support of the 2003 invasion. Benjamin Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon and conservative icon, dropped out as a commencement speaker last month at Johns Hopkins University after students protested comments he’d made lumping together homosexuality, pedophilia and bestiality.

Earlier this month, President Obama was the subject of a controversy at Morehouse College, where he is slated to give this year’s commencement speech. Morehouse also invited a Philadelphia pastor, the Rev. Kevin Johnson, to speak the day before Mr. Obama. But after the minister wrote a column in The Philadelphia Tribune criticizing Mr. Obama for failing to appoint African-Americans to cabinet positions, the university told Mr. Johnson — in a move that alumni later criticized — that they wanted to provide a broad spectrum of views so he would not be the sole speaker at that event. Mr. Johnson publicly withdrew as a speaker.

Even though most free-speech advocacy groups do not compile data on such protests, “It does appear that ‘disinvitation season’ incidents have accelerated in recent years, with this year inspiring an uptick of these episodes,” said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

In the era of Facebook and flash mobs, university administrators appear to be more skittish, knowing how quickly ideas — be they good, bad or just plain unruly — can go viral.

“It’s difficult for an institution to identify speakers who don’t raise the ire of some group but can still provide a thought-provoking commencement speech,” said Rae Goldsmith, a vice president at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, an educational association. Some commentators regard student protests against invited speakers as another indicator of the divisiveness of American culture and part of a larger trend of politically correct “orthodoxies” on campuses. Universities are meant to be bastions of open-mindedness and free speech, they say, but are more prone to censoring disagreeable ideas or drowning them out — a practice some have labeled “the heckler’s veto.”

“By giving in to protesters, colleges are denying the majority of students their right to hear controversial opinions and drawing their own conclusions about those opinions,” said Bob Beckel, a Democratic strategist and commentator, in a recent USA Today online debate.

But other free-speech advocates contend that these protests actually represent an increase in free speech and that students should be able to influence campus decisions. The aim of such protests, these advocates say, is not usually to prevent controversial speakers from presenting their ideas but to encourage them to take the microphone at a time other than commencement day.

“This isn’t about tolerance or intolerance,” Mark Schwartz, a Swarthmore alumnus, told the campus newspaper about the successful protests against Mr. Zoellick’s appearance on campus, where he was to receive an honorary degree. “It’s about whether or not you honor somebody within the highest ideals of Swarthmore’s Quaker tradition.”

The protests take various forms. In 2002, Syracuse students held up their wallets during the commencement speech by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. The wallets were meant to recall Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 41 times by policemen in 1999 after he reached for his identification. The conservative commentator Ann Coulter canceled an appearance at the University of Ottawa in 2010 after about 2,000 students, angered by her comments about Muslims, crowded the entrance to the hall at which she was scheduled to speak.

Some schools have tried to insulate themselves by avoiding civic leaders and politicians, and turning instead to pop culture icons like Kermit the Frog, Dolly Parton and Stephen Colbert for commencement addresses. (But even this does not always work: Mr. Franco’s invitation from U.C.L.A. was protested for its lack of gravitas.)

Other universities have reserved the guest speakership for campus figures, like popular professors or university chancellors. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, more than 70 universities have tried to corral protesters into “free speech zones” — designated places where rallies are permitted but are often removed from main events or in fenced-off areas.

Still, the protests show no signs of ebbing. Cuts to education and welfare spending by Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania spurred an online campaign against his scheduled commencement appearance at Millersville University in central Pennsylvania. And in April, Skidmore College students stormed a faculty meeting to protest an invitation to Cynthia Carroll, the former chief executive of the mining company Anglo American, citing her company’s environmental and human rights record.

“It’s my commencement,” one student told faculty members. “Not hers. Not yours.”

via The Challenge of Choosing a Commencement Speaker – NYTimes.com.

Local police say they have uncovered more than 100 crimes reported on the Elizabeth City State University campus dating to 2007 that were never investigated.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., that the crimes include 18 sexual assaults reported but not investigated.

Elizabeth City police Capt. John Young says police have solved 40 of the 126 cases.

About two weeks ago, the city police began sending off-duty patrol officers to help with campus security around the clock.

Campus Police Chief Sam Beamon resigned Friday in the wake of a sexual assault case at Butler Hall last month. He had been chief for 10 years.

Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

via Police: 126 Reported ECSU Crimes Not Investigated.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

A home-schooled high school student mentored by East Carolina University faculty is one of eight North Carolina students to compete in the International Science and Engineering Fair.

Alina Suedbeck will present her research on the pores of different caterpillar species at Intel ISEF, the world’s largest international pre-college science competition. The event is being held this week in Phoenix, Ariz. Suedbeck is the first from the state’s northeastern region to be accepted into the ISEF.

Her research began when she applied for the inaugural biodiversity scholarship from the ECU Center for Biodiversity, open to Pitt County high school students conducting research on local plant and animal diversity. Participating students were matched with faculty mentors to assist them in project planning.

Suedbeck was paired with Dr. Tom Fink, and also received statistical advice from Dr. Tim Christensen. Both men are professors in the department of biology and work in the ECU Center for Biodiversity.

The students presented their work at ECU’s annual Earth Day Expo on April 18. Suedbeck won the scholarship competition, which comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

She won first place in the N.C. Northeast Regional Science and Engineering Fair at ECU and won third place in her division at the state competition of the N.C. Student Academy of Sciences on March 15 at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham. In addition, she won first place in her division at the state Science and Engineering Fair on March 16 at Meredith College in Raleigh. That qualified her for the international competition in Phoenix this month. In addition, she has been offered a $10,000 scholarship to Meredith College.

Alina is the daughter of Dorothy and John Suedbeck.

via The Daily Reflector.

Published: May 12, 2013

By Martha Quillin — mquillin@newsobserver.com

CHAPEL HILL — Archaeologist Patricia McAnany was knee-deep in an excavation trench in Belize in 1995 when she uncovered a disturbing truth: Anthropologists, government officials, artifact collectors and the tourism industry all had profited from more than a century of exploring ancient Maya settlements, while indigenous Maya people had been almost completely left out.

“We were working in a Yucatec community,” in southeastern Mexico, recalled McAnany, the Kenan Eminent Professor of Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill. “And these 4th- and 5th-graders from the local schools came to visit. I was standing at the edge of the pit, and a little girl asked me, ‘Why did all the Maya have to die?’ ”

McAnany didn’t know where to start. The Maya empire – with art and architecture often compared to that of the ancient Greeks – had mysteriously collapsed during the 8th and 9th centuries. They had abandoned their cities. They had been conquered by Spain.

Nearly 20 years later, McAnany will have money – and time – to write about the work she and others have been doing in Maya communities.

Last month, McAnany was named a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, an honor that comes with a grant to support six to 12 months of “research and artistic creation.”

“For the Maya people,” McAnany said, “they haven’t heard the story and they haven’t seen the artifacts.”

Still, their people had survived, and 5 to 7 million of them live today in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and rural Mexico, speaking a collection of Maya languages. But in many places, McAnany said, the Maya are regarded as second-class citizens.

Many don’t know that theories of what might have brought down their ancestors’ empire have captivated generations of anthropologists, or that pieces of their pottery, dug from the ground and taken to other countries, are exhibited at world-class museums or auctioned for exorbitant prices on the internet.

McAnany is helping them to hear the story now, through classwork in their schools, puppet shows, community mapping projects and other activities.

Accepting a challenge

In 2005, a benefactor frustrated at seeing one Maya relic after another sold to the highest bidder told McAnany that he would pay if she could teach Maya people about their history so they would help protect it.

It would mean a sharp turn from her career path as a field archaeologist. But McAnany knew this was a rare offer. It’s relatively easy to find funding for excavations that end with relic collections and articles in obscure scholarly journals.

“It’s much harder to get money for work that benefits the indigenous people,” she said. “Since I had the offer, I felt obligated to take it.”

McAnany will use her recently awarded Guggenheim fellowship to work on a book tentatively titled, “Heritage Without Irony: Transcultural Dialogue at a Busy Intersection.”

The irony referred to in the title is the fact that the Maya people have benefitted less than anyone connected to their heritage. The busy intersection is all the activity focused on the Maya story and its physical artifacts: researchers; museum curators; tourists and tourism workers; the government, which collects fees from foreign anthropologists; looters, who make money off the illegal removal and sale of relics; reproducers, who copy relics and try to sell them as authentic Maya artifacts; and the Maya themselves, who McAnany says have begun to take pride in their past.

“This is pioneering work she’s done,” said Paul Leslie, professor and chair of anthropology at UNC, who helped to recruit McAnany from Boston University in 2005.

“In the field of Maya archaeology, she is one of the most distinguished archaeologists anywhere in the world,” Leslie said. “But on top of doing the straightforward work of trying to figure out just what happened in the past, she has also been engaged in getting local Maya communities involved in the work and understanding of their heritage. That’s been unusual in archaeology.”

Born and raised in St. Louis, Mo., McAnany didn’t get interested in archaeology until she was in college at the University of Alaska and spent a year in Honolulu through a program with the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She got involved in a project where she helped document and map archaeological finds.

“I liked the hiking, the physicality of archaeological work,” she said. “I liked that sense of trying to figure out the mysteries of the past. I liked that we were adding something new to existing knowledge. I was hooked.”

McAnany (pronounced MAC-uh-nay-nee) got her undergraduate degree from Alaska, then a master’s and a doctorate from the University of New Mexico before going to work as a professor and researcher at BU.

Her arrival at UNC added to the university’s reputation as a center for Maya studies. The school is home to the Institute for the Study of the Americas, which has a half-dozen faculty members specializing in Maya language and culture and now is the base for InHerit and its nonprofit partner, the Alliance for Heritage Conservation, both outgrowths of McAnany’s original work with Maya people.

Sarah Rowe, program director for InHerit and the Alliance, who shares an Alumni Building office suite with McAnany, said her favorite of Inherit’s projects at the moment are both in Guatemala. One involves incorporating Maya elements such as hieroglyphics into local schools’ curricula to teach math and other subjects. Another is a Geographic Information Systems program communities can use to create heritage maps, marking the locations of historic sites or the workshops of traditional potters and weavers.

‘Imagine being denied your own history’

Walter E. Little, an associate professor of anthropology and director of the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies at the University at Albany State University of New York, has worked with McAnany on several articles and panels over the past decade or so.

He says the work she has done to teach Maya people about their own history is the payment of a debt long overdue.

“We’ve taken a lot of information from that region and haven’t done a lot to bring it back,” he said. “Can you imagine being denied your own history? That is essentially what has happened.

“Trish is part of this small and hopefully growing group of scholars who are dedicated to sharing what they’re learning with the people who live in the region. It can have very powerful, positive effects on their cultural and ethnic identities.”

McAnany, 60, is still negotiating how much time she’ll take off from teaching at UNC. Once she finishes her book about InHerit’s work – what the projects entail and why they’re important – she hopes to find a sponsor to publish it in Spanish, a second language for many Maya people.

She plans to write it in a readable style, she said, not like a dense academic tome, so it will appeal to the people she’s writing about.

Ultimately, she hopes InHerit programs could become models for others working in places where modern societies have roots in the archaeological past. That could help save history from being lost to looters or development.

“Every archaeological site cannot be saved,” she said. “But it doesn’t even occur to anyone to try to save a place unless it has some significance to them.”

Guggenheim fellowships

Established in 1925, Guggenheim fellowships are presented annually by the nonprofit John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to “men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”

Additional North Carolina winners of 2013 fellowships, along with their topics of study, are:

Kathleen Donohue, professor of biology, Duke University: How genetic pathways influence organismal responses to climate change.

Zhongjie Lin, associate professor of architecture and urban design, UNC-Charlotte: China’s emerging new-town movement.

Quillin: 919-829-8989

via CHAPEL HILL: UNC prof wins Guggenheim fellowship for work with Maya people | Education | NewsObserver.com.

Ben Garvin for The New York Times

After Amanda Wolfbauer was put on the waiting list at Hamilton College, she sent a letter and video testimonials to the school.

By ARIEL KAMINER

Published: May 11, 2013

When Amanda Wolfbauer, a high school senior, received the admissions verdict from Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., she posted on Twitter, “What does one do once they’re on a college waitlist? #frustrated #worsethanrejection.”

A few minutes later she had gone from dejected to dogged: “Well, @HamiltonAdmssn prepare to be dazzled, because I’m determined to get off that waitlist.”

Since then, Ms. Wolfbauer, of Carver, Minn., says she has written the admissions department to tell it “how much I want to go there and why Hamilton has been my No. 1 choice since the beginning of my college search”; she sent in “a lot of high school projects,” including one that won a statewide competition; and last weekend she started filming a video with friends — teachers to be added later — “basically telling them how awesome I am, talking about the positive qualities I have and why Hamilton should accept me.”

Does she ever worry it might be too much? “I more worry that I’m not doing enough,” she said.

Especially not while other students on waiting lists are bombarding their dream schools with baked goods, family photos, craft projects depicting campus landmarks and dossiers of testimonials from civic and religious leaders, to name just a few come-ons that admissions offices have seen over the past month.

For most applicants to selective colleges, the letters that arrived by April 1 brought an end to months of anxious wondering. But for some small fraction of those students, the tension is only now reaching its apex. They were assigned not to the relief of the yes pile, or the decisiveness of the no pile, but to the slender median of the maybe, with no idea how their application will be resolved, or even when.

The schools generally ask those students to send word of whether they wish to stay on the waiting list or want to be removed from consideration.

“We encourage wait-listed students who remain very interested in Columbia to send a brief letter affirming that interest and updating us on their senior year,” said Jessica Marinaccio, Columbia University’s dean of undergraduate admissions, “and discourage them from sending extra letters of recommendation or other supplementary materials.”

Given the high stakes and the opaque proceedings, however, some students just cannot hold back.

Admissions officers describe the dynamic in terms that sound like dating: hopeful students are trying to express their interest without coming off like a stalker, while colleges are trying to figure out whether the students are courting other institutions on the side.

“Last year, I had a girl who wrote to me every day,” recalled Monica Inzer, Hamilton’s dean of admissions. “She’d send me e-mails; she’d send me letters; she had alums write to me. We all knew that this girl wanted us more than anyone else.”

When a total of three spots in the freshman class opened up, that eager young woman was the first person Ms. Inzer called. “She said, ‘Eh, I’m going someplace else.’ ”

Another applicant eagerly informed Ann Fleming Brown, the director of admissions at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y., that the college was her first choice — or had become that when her true first choice, Bowdoin, rejected her. It is just one of the many ways, Ms. Brown and her colleagues at other schools say, that students on the waiting list have shot themselves in the foot in recent years.

They have insulted the college’s judgment or taste. They have disparaged classmates who already got in. They have threatened to go over the admissions officer’s head. Showing up and demanding an interview is inadvisable. Showing up with a camping tent, even more so.

And parents are often part of the problem. “There’s a mother who e-mails me every third day — they must have timers on these things,” Ms. Brown said. “There’s one parent who calls up and yells at me: ‘I can’t believe this happened! This is a horrible thing!’ And then he calls 10 minutes later and says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he calls and says, ‘I know you don’t like me. I’m being a complete pest.’ ”

To cut down on behavior like that, says David Borus, dean of admissions at Vassar College, “We are very explicit in the communications we send out about what’s going to help you and what’s not going to help you, and we make it pretty clear that if you do do some of this stuff, you’re just going to tick us off.”

What works? Generally, communications that are informed and mature.

“What most students will do is write, ‘I love you I love you I love you,’ ” said Michael Motto, a former assistant dean of admissions at Yale University who now works as a private educational consultant in New York. “While those notes are charming and flattering and warm, these are academic institutions.”

Letters that indicate a deep interest in the college’s scholarly offerings, he and others said, probably go further. (The cookies that a wait-listed applicant to Yale once sent in — spelling out Mr. Motto’s name and employer — did not do the trick. )

No matter what approach students take, there is no way to predict how many seats will become available before the fall semester begins. Right now, schools are counting up how many accepted students have decided to enroll. (Even that number is only a conditional answer, since those committed students could still get word that their first-choice school has plucked them off its waiting list, leaving an opening for a student on the second-choice school’s waiting list.)

Trinity College, in Hartford, Conn., which offers several hundred students a spot on its waiting list, eventually accepted around 30 of them last year. The year before, that number was zero. And the year before that, it was more than 100. At present, Hamilton, the school Ms. Wolfbauer has been trying to impress, does not anticipate taking anyone off the waiting list, though that could change as the months go on.

Given that uncertainty, Ms. Inzer says, “I encourage families to treat a wait list offer a little bit like a lottery ticket — if it comes through and you win, everything’s great, but you don’t plan on it.”

Inevitably, some families will ask about buying their way off the waiting list. At Ms. Inzer’s former employer, Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass., she said one parent went so far as to open a checkbook and ask, “What’s it going to take?”

According to Mr. Motto, at a time when top academic institutions now receive nine-figure donations, there is little point in even asking those questions.

“All parents say they know someone who’s made a contribution” that has turned a spot on the waiting list into a spot in the freshman class, he said. “Has it happened in some instances? I’m sure it has,” but, he added, “I think a lot of it is rumor.”

Which may be why some people turn to other sorts of currencies. During his time at Yale, Mr. Motto said, “Some parent called and offered to buy me two pizzas every week for a year if I admitted the person’s child.” (No one got off the waiting list that year.)

An entreaty that Ms. Brown received last month, from a father of a student on Union’s waiting list, may just top them all. “I was offered free rotator cuff surgery,” she said. “Or, alternately, carpal tunnel surgery. I said, Unfortunately I do not need either surgery. And he said, But you will.”

via On the Waiting List, Some College Applicants Try a Little Dazzle – NYTimes.com.

The Virginian-Pilot

© May 11, 2013

ELIZABETH CITY

The Elizabeth City State University Police Chief Sam Beamon resigned Friday following an incident on campus last month that sparked an investigation, according to a release from the school late Friday.

Beamon was placed on paid leave April 25 after a campus employee Anthony Butler was charged with assault and breaking and entering based on charges from a female student living on campus, according to court records. The State Bureau of Investigation is looking into obstruction of justice and witness intimidation by campus authorities.

Beamon has worked on the ECSU police force since 1985 and has been chief since 2003, managing 11 sworn officers. Retired Rocky Mount Police Chief John Manley will serve as ECSU’s interim chief. The Elizabeth City Police Department is assisting with campus security, said city manager Rich Olsen.

via Elizabeth City State police chief resigns | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com.

ECSU police chief resigns

Published : Friday, 10 May 2013, 8:48 PM EDT

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (WAVY) – Friday afternoon, Sam Beamon offered his resignation from his post as police chief of ECSU. He was already on administrative leave.

The State Bureau of Investigation is conducting an independent investigation into the allegations of obstruction of justice and witness intimidation at ECSU.

Officials have not confirmed the specific case that led to the investigation. However, an ECSU woman was sexually assaulted twice by her dorm leader on campus, and it wasn’t until city police stepped in that her alleged attacker, Anthony Butler, was arrested.

John Manley was already serving as interim police chief and will stay in that post for the time being. ECSU and the Elizabeth City Police Department paired up last week, adding city police officers to patrol the campus.

via ECSU police chief resigns | WAVY.com.

By Katherine Ayers

Friday, May 10, 2013

Use your social media accounts for good.
That’s the message Valeria Lovelace gave the graduates during East Carolina University’s 104th commencement this morning.

“Show respect for women, men and diversity of culture through language messages,” she said. “Use your network to show (high school students) how people like you can graduate.”

Lovelace addressed nearly 4,000 students who received their diplomas during the 9 a.m. ceremony. Officials said the event went off without a hitch. This was the first time all graduates sat on the field rather than in the stands.

Lovelace, the founder of educational research and production company Media Transformations, impressed upon the graduates that the messages young children see on their televisions count.

“Those messages are recorded on your hard drive for a lifetime,” she said. “TV messages can be retrieved later to either help or hurt you.”

Like Dora the Explorer, one of the characters Lovelace created, she asked the graduates for their help in being part of a positive change.

Sarah Morgan Hunter, earned her Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with a concentration in Management. She was one of five recipients of the Robert H. Wright Alumni Leadership Award, the highest honor an undergraduate can earn, and said she’s beginning a master’s of business administration at ECU in the summer.

“I knew I wanted to attend a state school and when I came to ECU I knew it was where I wanted to be,” said the Henderson, N.C., native. “I knew I was home.”

Will Garren, who earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering technology, said he’s apprehensive about the future because his internship ends in July and he doesn’t have a job lined up.

“I’m a little excited and a little sad,” he said. “Now it’s on to the real world – it’s sink or swim time.”

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.

via The Daily Reflector.

John Gill

By Katherine Ayers

Saturday, May 11, 2013

East Carolina University’s graduation went smoothly on Friday, but that was not without the help of a number of behind-the-scenes employees.

John Gill, assistant director of facility services, said people began working on Tuesday to prepare Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and Minges Coliseum for graduation.

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“We have a crew of about 25 grounds workers, eight moving services folks, four carpenters and two to three electricians,” Gill said.

“Plumbers came the week before to make sure all the bathrooms in the stadiums are working. People with the athletics department were handing out water to the graduates. Housekeeping staff helped hand out programs and made sure all facilities were clean.”

To begin the work, the athletic department grounds crew mowed the field on Tuesday. Gill said facility services employees began putting together the stages on Wednesday — one each on Bagwell Field in Dowdy-Ficklen and in Minges — which takes about two hours each, not including adding the plywood backdrop that is painted to look like Wright Auditorium.

Also on Wednesday, the chair rentals came in. This year ECU rented 2,000 chairs because all graduates would be sitting on the field rather than just the usual faculty, master’s and doctoral students.

Campus Landscape Artist Kevin Barnes figured out where best to place the chairs so as not to block anyone’s view of the ceremony.

On Thursday, the sound system was delivered and set up, chairs and 20 30-gallon plants were placed on the stages to hide the speakers.

On Friday morning, the crews were working up to about a half-hour before the ceremony to add finishing touches and then remained on standby in case any last-minute adjustments were needed.

Once the outside ceremony ended at 11 a.m., the crews reversed the set-up process. Gill said they were done by 2 p.m., with the exception of the confetti on the field which he said the athletic department’s grounds crew will mulch when they mow this weekend.

Gill, who has worked at ECU for 14 years, said he and his crews are “happy to do it.”

“This is the culmination of what the students came here to do,” Gill said. “It’s definitely worth it.”

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.

via The Daily Reflector.

Code Enforcement Officer A. J. Basile checks the safety of an electrical box on an abandoned home near ECU on Thursday afternoon. (Rhett Butler/The Daily Reflector)

“With the kids moving back home or moving out, we just kind of get a rush of furniture and stuff at the curb . . .”

A.J. Basile

code enforcement officer

By Jane Dail

Saturday, May 11, 2013

As thousands of college students pack up for the summer and leave town this weekend, Greenville officials said many have the tendency to leave something else: A mess.

This weekend is one the busiest of the year for moving, especially in the college area, Greenville Police Department Code Enforcement Officer A.J. Basile said. The exodus can pose safety hazards and eyesores.

Basile and Code Enforcement Officer Johnnie Butler patrolled areas in the Tar River university neighborhood on Thursday, spotting old furniture, rotting food and other refuse the roadsides.

Trash and unwanted items are supposed to be put out no more than 24 hours ahead of the scheduled garbage pickup day.

“With the kids moving back home or moving out, we just kind of get a rush of furniture and stuff at the curb, garbage, where they just kind of cleaned our their fridge,” Basile said. “If it goes unattended, you can imagine it gets kind of stinky pretty quick.”

Basile and Butler found an illegally dumped mattresses and a cabinet on the sidewalk of South Holly Street on Thursday after trash pickup had come and gone.

“Probably … they’re not going to be here when the next trash cycle comes, so they just put it out before they leave and hope for the best,” Butler said.

Sanitation will not pick up construction and demolition debris, Butler said, and tenants and property owners need to take that to the landfill.

Basile said most who violate codes are unaware of their responsibilities.

“It’s their first time living on their own,” he said. “A lot of times the last thing they’re thinking about is, ‘I need to make sure my garbage is out.’ … They mean well, they just don’t know. We just try to work with them as best we can.”

Basile and Butler also visited an abandoned home at the corner of South Holly and East Fourth streets, which posed problems in the neighborhood until windows were boarded up recently. Basile said neighbors complained homeless people would sleep inside. Others had different uses for it.

“The neighbor from across the street would say a lot of the kids going to and from downtown were using it as a urinal,” Basile said. “It was just a pit stop for people.”

Butler said keeping Greenville up to code not only improves aesthetics but keeps properties and neighbors safe.

“When you come into a neighborhood, you want the appearance to be presentable,” Basile said. It’s important to keeping lots mowed and neat to prevent “an infestation of ants, snakes, mice … or safety issues with noxious vegetation on properties.”

Basile said about half the violations in the university area are reported to them by neighbors and the other half are discovered during patrols.

“If we’re not proactive, it makes our job extremely difficult,” he said. “If we don’t kind of stay ahead, especially the public nuisance part of the job, we’ll find ourselves two steps forward, three steps back.”

Anyone found in violation has between 10 and 90 days after notification to bring the property into compliance.

Butler said having code enforcement officers patrolling in marked vehicles also puts extra eyes in the area and helps deter crime beyond property issues. If officers spot suspicious activity, they will radio it in to police.

Basile said a major obstacle in an area with a high turnover rate is tenants often do not know to seek help from code enforcement in dealing with property owners.

Though most landlords in the area keep their properties up to code, he said, enforcement officers can work as liaisons for tenants when problems arise.

Basile said students can even complain to the East Carolina University, which will point them in code enforcement’s direction.

“One of the hardest parts of this job for me is a lot of these kids who are out of state, they’re not near home, and they come here and they’re living in deplorable conditions,” he said. “They don’t know that they can call us and we can come and help them.”

Contact Jane Dail at jdail@reflector.com or 252-329-9585.

via The Daily Reflector.