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NC State University News Clips for Aug. 30-Sept. 2, 2003

Compiled by North Carolina State University’s News Services, a part of the Public Affairs Office. Listed below are the current news clips. Click on the headline of interest to be taken to the full text. Click on “Return to Headline List” at the bottom of each clip or use the scrollbar to be taken back to this location.

CURRENT PRESS RELEASES

IN-STATE CLIPS

Tobacco trade-off offered
Regulation pitted against farm cash

NATIONAL & REGIONAL CLIPS

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Tobacco trade-off offered

Sept. 2, 2003
The News & Observer
By James Rosen, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

WASHINGTON -- Tobacco-state senators are offering a legislative bargain: They're willing to abandon their opposition to federal regulation of cigarette manufacturing in exchange for a multibillion-dollar buyout of leaf farmers.

Depending on its final form, the buyout would end or overhaul a Depression-era tobacco program designed to boost prices by limiting production through a system of quotas, which serve as government licenses to grow tobacco.

The complicated deal, which Congress could take up soon after reconvening this week, would pump as much as $5 billion into North Carolina, by far the nation's leading tobacco producer.

Most of that money would go to rural eastern counties where flue-cured tobacco, one of the two major types used in cigarettes, is produced. The other type, burley tobacco, is grown mostly in Kentucky and Tennessee. Small quantities also are raised in Western North Carolina.

A buyout would bring relief to farmers who have seen quotas slashed and sales plummet in recent years because of foreign competition and decreased smoking.

The legislative proposal would expose the cigarette manufacturers to close regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"It is either now or never," Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a North Carolina Republican, said on the Senate floor before Congress left for its summer recess. "Many livelihoods hang in the balance, and with it the future of rural communities in North Carolina and other tobacco-producing states."

Despite Dole's urgency, the buyout faces significant obstacles, including divisions within the North Carolina congressional delegation, differences among the tobacco companies and antitobacco sentiment in Congress.

Nearly all lawmakers seem to agree that the cost of the buyout should be borne by cigarette manufacturers. Congress approved a $1.3 billion government buyout for peanut growers last year, but prospects for a comparable deal for tobacco appear remote.

"Tobacco is a known human carcinogen, and peanuts, generally speaking, are quality food," said Ed Rall, a Farm Service Agency economist in Washington. "One's a food, and one's a drug that kills you. I guess that would be part of the difference."

Dole and her North Carolina colleague, Democrat John Edwards, are co-sponsoring a $13 billion buyout bill that would give the state's 80,000 tobacco quota owners $8 a pound of leaf while providing its 18,000 leaf growers $4 a pound. The measure would abolish price controls, restrict production to traditional leaf areas and provide development grants to tobacco communities.

Alternative proposal

In the House, Democratic Reps. Bob Etheridge (a former tobacco farmer who still owns a small quota), and David Price are backing a more generous deal, worth about $19 billion. Their bill would pay at the same $8 and $4 poundage rates, but total payments would be higher because they would be based on 1998 quota levels; production has fallen more than 40 percent since then.

The legislation, authored by Republican Rep. Ernest Fletcher of Kentucky, offers an additional $2 a pound to farmers who stop growing tobacco -- an incentive that Etheridge believes would help persuade more than half of Tar Heel growers to quit.

The bill would continue key aspects of the existing program, including a minimum support price and a guaranteed market. It would replace quotas with licenses that could not be transferred to anyone except direct descendants.

Three other buyout proposals are circulating in the House, drawing support from various members from North Carolina.

Most quota owners don't actually grow tobacco, and many farmers don't own quotas. Sixty percent of the leaf grown in North Carolina is grown under leased quotas, often paid for with bank loans that have saddled some farmers with huge debt.

"This is not something that is just some government pork barrel," said Ernie Averett, an eighth-generation tobacco farmer in Oxford. "This is a desperate time. If this buyout does not take place, many growers will leave the business, and their life savings -- their equipment, all their investment -- will be wiped out."

Buyout payoff

Averett grows 90 acres of tobacco -- half of what he did five years ago -- split evenly between leased quota and owned quota. While a buyout could bring him $1.6 million or more, Averett said he might net $100,000 after paying off taxes, $700,000 in loans and other outstanding bills.

"I would have very little money left, but at least I could begin growing on a level playing field," Averett said. "I could sell my tobacco cheaper and compete on the world market, I believe."

The price of tobacco is expected to drop steeply after a buyout; Blake Brown, an agriculture professor at N.C. State University, projects a decrease of 50 cents a pound from the present price of $1.90. Averett believes he would still come out ahead. He would no longer have to lease quota, which this year is costing him about $50,000.

Averett realizes that outside the tobacco belt, many people might question whether leaf growers deserve a buyout, but he believes they are entitled to one.

"We have played by the rules and participated in this system as we found it," Averett said. "It worked great as long as we were the big boys on the block and we didn't have to compete with growers in other countries. But when foreign growers started selling at much lower prices, the system quickly became antiquated. It's not fair to leave us in the lurch."

For decades, cigarette manufacturers paid a premium for superior U.S. tobacco, but in recent years, growers in Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere have narrowed the quality gap.

Three decades ago, American tobacco made up nearly half of all leaf in cigarettes around the globe; now the U.S. share is 7 percent.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and author of the Senate buyout measure, says regulation of tobacco by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is a necessary trade-off to gain congressional support for a buyout.

"This is truly a key moment in the history of tobacco," McConnell said as he introduced the bill July 30.

McConnell's bill doesn't itself impose FDA regulation. Instead, it would be paired on the Senate floor.

McConnell, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, is portraying the buyout-FDA regulation package practically as a done deal, noting its support by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and most senators from the other eight main tobacco states.

But the package faces significant hurdles. Beyond the near-unanimity of the tobacco-state senators looms a series of divisive issues.

Political jousting

Philip Morris, by far the largest manufacturer, is the only cigarette company that supports FDA regulation and the only one supporting a proposal that manufacturers pay for the buyout.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. are quarreling with Philip Morris over the buyout's financing and FDA regulation. RJR also is sniping at Dole because of her support for FDA regulation and the plan to have manufacturers pay for the buyout.

Tommy Payne, RJR executive vice president for external relations, said last week that Dole's positions are at odds with what she said in her 2002 campaign, when she opposed tax increases and FDA regulation of tobacco.

The Senate buyout bill, he said, would cost RJR $575 million in the first year and $3 billion over six years -- more than its projected profits. If the company raises the price of cigarettes in response, Payne said, that will amount to a government-imposed tax increase on smokers.

"At least in spirit, it is directly opposite of what she said during her campaign," Payne said.

Brian Nick, a Dole aide, said Dole still opposes FDA regulation but will accept it as the price of gaining a buyout. And he said she does not view an assessment on the tobacco companies as a tax increase.

Despite broad agreement in Congress that the tobacco-support program is broken, there remains a chance that no agreement will be reached on a remedy. For leaf growers already hurt by foreign competition and falling demand, that would be a tough blow, NCSU's Brown said.

"It doesn't look like things are going to improve substantially for the farmers," he said, "and not getting a buyout would only make things worse."

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Tobacco Deal Could Drastically Change Industry

Sept. 2, 2003
WRAL.com
By staff report
 © Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A tobacco deal pending in Congress would end or overhaul a Depression-era program and pump as much as $5 billion into North Carolina, by far the nation's leading tobacco producer.

The legislative proposal also would expose cigarette manufacturers to close regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Under the deal, tobacco-state senators would abandon their opposition to the FDA regulation in exchange for a multibillion-dollar buyout of leaf farmers. Depending on its final form, the buyout would boost prices by limiting production through a system of quotas, which serve as government licenses to grow tobacco.

Most of the money would go to rural eastern counties where flue-cured tobacco, one of the two major types used in cigarettes, is produced. The other type, burley tobacco, is grown mostly in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Small quantities also are raised in Western North Carolina. A buyout would bring relief to farmers who have seen quotas slashed and sales plummet in recent years because of foreign competition and decreased smoking.

Congress could take up the proposal soon after reconvening this week.

"It is either now or never," Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a North Carolina Republican, said on the Senate floor before Congress left for its summer recess. "Many livelihoods hang in the balance, and with it the future of rural communities in North Carolina and other tobacco-producing states."

The buyout faces significant obstacles, including divisions within the North Carolina congressional delegation, differences among the tobacco companies and antitobacco sentiment in Congress.

Philip Morris USA has thrown its support behind a deal.

But it has also drawn the opposition of three competitors - R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., all with corporate offices in North Carolina.

Nearly all lawmakers seem to agree that the cost of the buyout should be borne by cigarette manufacturers. Congress approved a $1.3 billion government buyout for peanut growers last year, but prospects for a comparable deal for tobacco appear remote.

"Tobacco is a known human carcinogen, and peanuts, generally speaking, are quality food," said Ed Rall, a Farm Service Agency economist in Washington. "One's a food, and one's a drug that kills you. I guess that would be part of the difference."

Dole and her North Carolina colleague, Democrat John Edwards, are co-sponsoring a $13 billion buyout bill that would give the state's 80,000 tobacco quota owners $8 a pound of leaf while providing its 18,000 leaf growers $4 a pound. The measure would abolish price controls, restrict production to traditional leaf areas and provide development grants to tobacco communities.

In the House, Reps. Bob Etheridge (a former tobacco farmer who still owns a small quota), and David Price are backing a more generous deal, worth about $19 billion. Their bill would pay at the same $8 and $4 poundage rates, but total payments would be higher because they would be based on 1998 quota levels; production has fallen more than 40 percent since then.

The legislation, authored by Republican Rep. Ernest Fletcher of Kentucky, offers an additional $2 a pound to farmers who stop growing tobacco - an incentive that Etheridge believes would help persuade more than half of Tar Heel growers to quit.

The bill would continue key aspects of the existing program, including a minimum support price and a guaranteed market. It would replace quotas with licenses that could not be transferred to anyone except direct descendants.

Three other buyout proposals are circulating in the House, drawing support from various members from North Carolina. Most quota owners don't actually grow tobacco, and many farmers don't own quotas. Sixty percent of the leaf grown in North Carolina is grown under leased quotas, often paid for with bank loans that have saddled some farmers with huge debt.

"This is not something that is just some government pork barrel," said Ernie Averett, an eighth-generation tobacco farmer in Oxford. "This is a desperate time. If this buyout does not take place, many growers will leave the business, and their life savings -- their equipment, all their investment -- will be wiped out."

The price of tobacco is expected to drop steeply after a buyout; Blake Brown, an agriculture professor at N.C. State University, projects a decrease of 50 cents a pound from the present price of $1.90.

Averett believes he would still come out ahead. He would no longer have to lease quota, which this year is costing him about $50,000.

Averett realizes that outside the tobacco belt, many people might question whether leaf growers deserve a buyout, but he believes they are entitled to one.

"We have played by the rules and participated in this system as we found it," Averett said. "It worked great as long as we were the big boys on the block and we didn't have to compete with growers in other countries.

"But when foreign growers started selling at much lower prices, the system quickly became antiquated. It's not fair to leave us in the lurch."

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Venture turns to can of worms

Aug. 31, 2003
The News & Observer
By Kristin Collins, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

The worms arrived in January, 250 pounds of red wigglers, and Steve Coe felt sure they were his ticket off the used car lot where he had worked all his adult life.

The company he bought them from, B&B Worm Farms in Oklahoma, promised him that the worms would multiply faster than he could build boxes for them and that he would soon be making as much as $80,000 a year selling them. All he had to do was toss a little manure in his worm boxes every week, sprinkle the muck with water, sit back and watch the checks roll in.

Six months later, Coe, 39, has more than 4,000 pounds of worms, so many that it takes him nine stomach-turning hours every week to cover them with manure. And each time his pitchfork sinks into his 20-ton pile of cow dung, his dreams of getting rich off worms seem a little less real.

Coe, who lives in Dobson, a small Surry County town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of more than 2,400 people from 43 states who were taken in by what investigators say was a pyramid worm scheme that went bankrupt. Now, he finds himself one of a new community of about 30 North Carolina worm farmers seeking a way to salvage their investments.

"If worse comes to worst, I'll put these things in plastic cups and go to the coast and let people buy 'em for bait," Coe said, sighing. "I'll sit there till they're gone."

Coe has good reason to be determined. He has spent nearly $45,000 on these manure-munching creatures.

He once thought the worms were working for him. Now he realizes it's the other way around.

A dream collapses

In worm farming, also known as vermiculture, there are no tractors or green fields, no farmhouses nestled under towering oaks.

A worm farm is, in most cases, a bunch of stacked plywood boxes. Each is filled with worms and manure for them to eat. The worms feed until the manure is gone and in its place are "worm castings," the industry term for dung.

The side benefit is that worm castings are far drier and less smelly than cow or hog manure, and can be used as organic fertilizer.

The farmer's job is to keep the worms from getting too hot or too cold, to keep their beds moist and to give them plenty of manure. If he does it right, they will multiply in spades and consume ever more manure.

B&B convinced its farmers that this process was the ticket to financial independence. The company said it had an unlimited worm market. Red wigglers, the same slimy creatures found in gardens, could manage waste at hog and poultry farms and eat garbage in landfills. Not only could worm farmers get rich, B&B told them, they could save the Earth.

"All you do is feed 'em and keep 'em watered and get these boxes built," Coe said, recalling the sales pitch."Keep 'em warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I thought, 'I can do that.' "

B&B charged would-be growers between $5,000 and $60,000 for a contract. The price rose during the 2 1/2 years the company operated. B&B promised to buy every worm its contractors could grow.

Coe had a friend growing B&B worms who was bringing in more than $60,000 a year. The more he grew the more he made.

The used-car business that Coe's family has run for decades was struggling. All those zero-percent interest and no-money-down offers on new cars had made used ones almost impossible to sell. Three years ago, he sold more than 150 cars. This year, he has sold about 20.

So last November, with visions of beach vacations dancing in his head, Coe bought a $20,000 five-year contract with B&B. The company told him it would pay $8.25 a pound for his worms. He spent $4,000 on a small tractor-loader for moving manure and $17,000 for a 1,900-square-foot heated and cooled barn. He spent $800 on plywood to build his first 40 worm boxes.

He planned to let them multiply until summer, then sell his first batch for about $10,000.

It was April, and Coe was eating dinner with his wife and two sons when the phone rang. It was his friend and fellow worm farmer, calling to tell him that B&B had filed for bankruptcy.

"I thought I was going to die," Coe said.

He had yet to sell a single worm.

Life's savings at risk

B&B's farmers soon discovered that the company never really found a market to sell worms, except other worm farmers. The company is in bankruptcy, the state of Oklahoma has filed a civil lawsuit against it, and several state attorneys general have cease-and-desist orders against it.

It turned out that worms are of little or no value at landfills, because they tend to die in the crush of inorganic material.

They can manage cow and hog manure, but unless a farmer can find a way to sell the castings, he is left with just another form of waste. No one has figured out how to sell castings on a large scale.

Suddenly, people such as Coe found themselves in a precarious position: Figure out how to sell vast amounts of worm castings or lose their life's savings.

Francis Monahan, a builder from the Henderson County town of Horse Shoe , gave up swiftly.

Worm farming had already turned out to be a lot tougher than he bargained for. His worms kept escaping from their boxes. He found himself staying up all night, going to the garage every hour to scrape worms off the floor and return them to the manure before they dried up and died.

When he heard in April that he was going to have to start searching for his own market, he gave them all away to a friend .

"I was tired of fooling with them," said Monahan, 55.

As a builder, Monahan could swallow his $18,000 loss. But other farmers had emptied retirement plans, college funds and savings accounts.

Letters bring hope

When Rhonda Sherman , a researcher at N.C. State University, put on a seminar in Tarboro earlier this month called "Raising Worms and Producing Castings for Profit," more than 100 people packed in. Nearly half were former B&B farmers.

They sat in a dark auditorium looking at slides and listening to lectures about the best pH and moisture levels for worm bedding, types of boxes and beds and worm harvesters and ideal nitrogen levels in worm dung. Then came the part about worm markets. In short: Very few people are buying castings, despite their proven value as a fertilizer, and even fewer are buying worms.

The room was silent.

Afterward, most of the farmers refused to talk to a reporter.

One man, a chicken plant supervisor from central North Carolina who invested $40,000 in worms, said, "I don't want people to know how stupid I am."

But as the day ended, all hope was not lost.

Letters were arriving in the mailboxes of former B&B farmers telling them of a new cooperative dubbed Vermicycle Organics. The newly incorporated company plans to grow worms on hog farms, where the worms can feed on waste that would otherwise go into lagoons. Then, the company will bag the castings and sell them to gardeners.

One of the company's investors and leaders is Danny Cockerham from the Yadkin County town of Boonville , who quit his job fixing machinery at R.J. Reynolds after 32 years to start a B&B worm farm. He has 12,000 pounds of worms in 400 boxes.

Cockerham says he has seen the value of worm castings firsthand. When he was growing for B&B, he sold them to golf courses with dying grass. With a little dose of worm waste, the grass was green and healthy in three days.

Mike Williams , an N.C. State University researcher leading the state's search for ways to handle hog waste, agreed that worms are an efficient and environmentally friendly way to get rid of manure. He did pilot projects and found that the worms could eat vast amounts and produce high- quality fertilizer. He just couldn't figure out how to sell it.

If Vermicycle Organics can convince the public that worm dung is better than Miracle-Gro , then worms might solve the state's hog waste problem, Williams said. But he wonders whether buyers will warm to such a product.

"The social issues are much more challenging than the technical issues," Williams said.

Cockerham said a few hog farmers have already agreed to allow the company to set up worm operations . He wouldn't say who is paying to set up the farms, which can cost as much as $90,000 to get started.

"I'm sure enough that I've been offered two or three good jobs and I didn't take them," said Cockerham, 53. "This thing will work."

Coe got his letter last week. For $300, he could join a list of worm growers the company would buy from when it sets up a new hog farm. The company made no guarantees, but Coe had few options. He sent his check, and Cockerham told him the company might need worms in September.

For now, Coe still grows worms for no pay. His savings accounts are empty, he is $20,000 in debt, and his credit card bills are overdue.

Every other week, a truck dumps 20 tons of cow manure outside his barn. He picks up his pitchfork, dumping manure into 248 boxes, one by one.

"They eat like it's going out of style," he says. "They just thrive in that stuff. The smell -- my wife can't take it. It doesn't bother me too much."

But he admits that sometimes, at the end of a long day of feeding the worms, he gets so angry that he flings the pitchfork across the yard.

Staff writer Kristin Collins can be reached at 829-4881.

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Investors find selling worms not as rich as expected

Aug. 31, 2003
The Wilmington Star-News
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.

About 30 North Carolina investors hoping to make money by farming worms got stuck in what authorities say was a pyramid scheme run by an Oklahoma company.

Steve Coe, 39, of Dobson, thought his investment of nearly $45,000 on the manure-munching creatures would be his ticket off the Surry County used car lot where he had worked all his adult life.

His 250 pounds of red wigglers arrived in January from B&B Worm Farms in Oklahoma, which had promised him that he would soon be making as much as $80,000 a year selling the rapidly multiplying worms.

B&B convinced its farmers it had an unlimited worm market. Red wigglers, the same slimy creatures found in gardens, could manage waste at hog and poultry farms and eat garbage in landfills.

Instead, Coe is one of more than 2,400 people from 43 states who appear to have been taken in.

The company is in bankruptcy, the state of Oklahoma has filed a civil lawsuit against it, and several state attorneys general have cease-and-desist orders against it.

Coe has more than 4,000 pounds of worms, so many that it takes him nine hours every week to cover them with manure.

"If worse comes to worst, I'll put these things in plastic cups and go to the coast and let people buy 'em for bait," Coe sighed. "I'll sit there till they're gone."

A worm farm is, in most cases, a bunch of stacked plywood boxes. Each is filled with worms and cow or hog manure for them to eat. The worms feed until the manure is gone and in its place is their dung, which is drier and less smelly than manure and can be used as organic fertilizer.

It turned out that worms are of little or no value at landfills, because they tend to die in the crush of inorganic material. They can manage cow and hog manure, but unless a farmer can find a way to sell the dung, or castings, he is left with just another form of waste.

Mike Williams, a North Carolina State University researcher leading the state's search for ways to handle hog waste, has experimented with worms as an efficient and environmentally friendly way to get rid of manure. He said he just never found willing buyers.

"The social issues are much more challenging than the technical issues," Williams said.

Into the worm world stepped a new North Carolina company called Vermicycle Organics. It plans to grow worms on hog farms, where the worms can feed on waste that would otherwise go into lagoons. The company will bag the castings and sell them to gardeners.

One of the company's investors is Danny Cockerham from the Yadkin County town of Boonville, who also started a B&B worm farm and now has 12,000 pounds of worms in 400 boxes.

Cockerham said he has seen the value of worm castings firsthand. When he was growing for B&B, he sold them to golf courses with dying grass. The grass turned green and healthy in three days.

A few hog farmers have already agreed to allow the company to set up worm operations, Cockerham said. He wouldn't say who is paying to set up the farms, which can cost as much as $90,000 to get started.

"I'm sure enough that I've been offered two or three good jobs and I didn't take them," said Cockerham, 53. "This thing will work."

Coe got a letter from Vermicycle Organics offering former B&B worm farmers a spot on a list of growers the company would buy from when it sets up a new hog farm. The company made no guarantees, but Coe had few options. He sent his $300 check. Cockerham told him the company might need worms in September.

Coe's savings accounts are empty, he is $20,000 in debt, and his credit card bills are overdue. Every other week, a truck dumps 20 tons of cow manure outside his barn. He picks up his pitchfork, dumping manure into 248 boxes, one by one.

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Now in its 10th year, Mountain State Fair clings to tradition

Aug. 31, 2003
The Asheville Citizen-Times
By Jennifer Brevorka, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Asheville Citizen-Times.

FLETCHER - When the gates at the 10th annual N.C. Mountain State Fair open Friday, Theron Maybin and his wife will be at the grounds entering their peppers and green beans in contests, hoping for a blue ribbon.

"I thoroughly enjoy showing off the fruits of our labor," Maybin said. "I just like good competition. I think it's good in all phases of business."

A summertime staple for this Henderson County farming family, Maybin said he savors the educational portion of the fair highlighting mountain culture, history and farming.

Maybin is not alone, as thousands of people come to the fair because of its family atmosphere and farming bent. While technology and trends alter the face of street fairs, carnivals and festivals, with an emphasis placed on faster rides, hipper bands and foreign food, the Mountain State Fair is attracting families by holding on to the traditions of the past.

"The fair is going to stay centered on agriculture," said Bill Edmondson, manager of the fair. "You can go to a carnival or festival any day of the week. The fair is where people come together and show off their cooking, crafts, what they've grown."

How the fair got started

The state agriculture department promised a continued emphasis on farming and mountain culture when it opened the second state-run fair shortly after questions arose about the former, and locally produced, Western North Carolina Fair.

Buncombe County commissioners requested an audit of the WNC fair in February 1993. Commissioners had donated about $80,000 of taxpayer money to the group since fiscal year 1990. The fair began in 1989.

The county's audit found the fair's board of directors exercised minimal control over the fair's finances and fair officials failed to balance the organization's checkbook. By August 1993, 11 of the 13 directors on the fair's board had resigned amidst squabbling over the group's finances.

"The audit revealed a change of leadership was needed," said Gene Rainey, former chair of the county commissioners, who voted for the audit. "I think the state saw that the county fair had the possibility of being a success, and we had the infrastructure of the fair in place."

In 1994, when the state announced it would open a mountain fair the same weekend as the former Western North Carolina fair, the remaining members of the Buncombe County fair group sued the state for $14 million in damages and an injunction to prevent future state fairs in WNC. In 1998, a federal judge sided with the state, dismissing the lawsuit.

After the Mountain State Fair's first year, even those who had once supported the county-run fair, said the transition was good.

"The state was willing to step in and the fair took off. It went on to greater things," Rainey said. "There's still a great interest in a fair that highlights our agricultural roots. Obviously our population is no longer heavily rural, but there are urban people who want to get to know the country culture."

And with the state's continued emphasis on agriculture this year, favorites such as the "mooternity ward," pecan recipe and produce competitions will return to the 10th annual fair.

It is family-oriented activities such as petting zoos and animal observations that bring Desiree Daley back to the fair year after year. The mother of a 6-month-old child said she likes to walk the fair grounds with her husband while people watching.

"Bele Chere is too crowded and hot," Daley said. "People get a bit wild there. At the fair, it's more a family-type atmosphere where you can relax and walk around."

After a deficit of $35,000 in 2002, when attendance dipped to 158,910, about 27,000 fewer people than coordinators had projected, organizers recognized the fair must make some changes.

"We spent too much money on certain items," Edmondson said. "It takes about $1.1 million to put on the fair and we really pumped money into the entertainment budget last year to try to boost attendance. It didn't work, so now, we're adapting."

The fair operates from an enterprise fund. Organizers spent $109,250 on arena entertainment in 2002 and will spend about $42,500 this year, said Jim Knight, public information officer for the fair.

This year, instead of pushing classic rockers, a battle of the bands and legendary musicians, organizers hope gospel singing competitions, classic country stars such as John Anderson, contemporary Christian artists such as Avalon and monster trucks will lure crowds to the McGough Arena.

New controversy brings new challenges

Adaptation is something fair organizers are familiar with, since the government agency that oversees the state fair, the N.C. Department of Agriculture, came under scrutiny earlier this year.

After the June resignation and indictment of former Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, the department came under scrutiny for state fair contracts awarded.

In addition, Phipps' campaign contributor James H. "Jimmy" Drew III, 58, was indicted for lying to investigators probing Phipps' campaign and of lying under oath during a lawsuit over a fair contract, according to court documents.

In August, an administrative law court ruled the contract awarded to Carolina Cable Lift, a firm owned by Drew, to build a $1.2 million chairlift at the Mountain State Fair was unfairly awarded. The chairlift, which debuted at the 2002 fair, was dismantled and removed earlier this month.

For Mountain State Fair attendees, the disappearing chairlift may be the only tangible ramification from the indictments, said Andrew Taylor, an associate professor of political science at N.C. State University.

"What I think has happened is once she (Phipps) resigned, the controversy became a private issue for her," Taylor said. "The ramifications for her is that she might spend time in jail if convicted. And certainly when it comes time to renegotiate contracts you can bet your life the (agriculture) commissioner is going to be heavily involved and make sure the process is squeaky clean."

The process for choosing vendors has already changed, said Knight.

"It's a little cleaner, a little more simplistic," Knight said. "But we anticipate that by doing it this way we will increase the revenue we have at the state fair."

Additional changes in the Mountain State Fair's future may include new buildings, increased use of farming technology in educational displays and a push for bigger attendance. The future, however, will remain firmly grounded in agriculture.

"People want to know the heritage of their ancestors," Edmondson said. "And while we gear our lives to change, there is this interest in history and the past. And this fair, with the emphasis on mountain crafts, clogging, bluegrass and farming still holds the past as something special and a part of our lives."

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For textile worker, the pursuit of new training is daunting task

Sept. 1, 2003
The Charlotte Observer
By Rick Rothacker, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Charlotte Observer.

The streetlights had just flickered off and the first hint of humidity was seeping into the air when Johnny Queen walked out of a Mount Holly textile plant at the end of an eight-hour graveyard shift.

The 57-year-old was sweaty, dirty and starved for sleep. But at 7 a.m., his day was just beginning. The fall session at Gaston College was starting this August morning, and his first class, basic wiring, would begin in an hour.

For more than six months, Queen has wrestled with a grueling schedule of work and community college. He is barely passing, but is on track to graduate next year. Never confident in his smarts, he is surprised he has made it this far.

"I think I'm taking in about half of everything," he says of his classes.

As the nation today marks Labor Day, the holiday that celebrates the American worker, manufacturing jobs continue to disappear across the Carolinas. That means a growing number of workers are going back to school to be retrained. Like Queen and some of the thousands laid off this summer at Pillowtex Corp., many are middle-age and have high school degrees or less. They face a particularly difficult time returning to the classroom.

Leaving work, Queen trudged slowly across the parking lot to the blue Chevrolet Lumina his mother left him when she died last spring. He retrieved a black notebook from the trunk to check his schedule before making the 30-minute drive to school.

At age 16 and in ninth grade, he tore up a failing report card and joined his parents working in a Gastonia mill. He wanted to buy a car and was able to save up the down payment on a 1964 Ford Galaxy.

He met Judy Hall cruising Franklin Boulevard, the city's main drag, and married her in 1965. Her father helped him land a better job at a J.P. Stevens & Co. mill in Stanley, a small Gaston County town northwest of Charlotte.

Queen spent the next 36 years in production jobs at the yarn-making plant. He and Judy raised three children in a nearby mill village before upgrading to a brick ranch a few miles away.

He could barely read before earning his high school equivalency degree 15 years ago, at age 42.

In 1999 the mill shut down, one of many textile closings to hit the county. That began a turbulent journey for Queen, who would shift between six jobs in the next five years as plants closed or downsized.

Now employed at American & Efird Inc., he started community college in January.

"I was always lucky that I went from one job to the next," he says. "Next time I might not be so lucky."

Wave of retraining

The collapse of Pillowtex has unleashed the latest wave of workers seeking retraining. In July, the Kannapolis textile giant wiped out 6,450 of its 7,650 jobs, including 4,800 in the Carolinas -- the largest mass layoff in N.C. history.Some will retrain as nurses, office assistants and truck drivers. Others will take jobs right away, often for less pay.

Older workers may be less likely to seek retraining, said Michael Walden, an North Carolina State University economist.

"Retraining is an investment. The younger ones have more years to look at the payback," he said. "If I'm in my 50s, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to sit in a classroom. I'm probably going to work only 10 more years."

Dislocated workers seeking training typically turn to local Workforce Investment Act programs, which use federal money to pay for GED classes, community college tuition, job-search help and other assistance.

In North Carolina, the number of dislocated workers enrolled in the program increased to 11,266 in fiscal 2002 from 9,071 the previous year. In South Carolina, the number rose to 6,180 from 5,045. In both states, just over 85 percent found jobs soon after they left the program, according to the latest data.

On average, the laid-off Pillowtex workers are 46.3 years old and have been with the company more than 13 years. More than a third have less than a high school education, according to a recent survey. About 95 percent said they were interested in retraining, the survey found.

"People are realizing they need to get training and upgrade their skills," said David Hollars, director of the Centralina Workforce Development Board, which oversees training programs in Cabarrus and neighboring counties.

`I was terrified'

Back in Gaston County, Queen has followed the news about Pillowtex and can relate to those who will pursue retraining.

"I was terrified," he says. "I'm still terrified. It will be like that for them. Some will get so aggravated they will quit."

Queen first considered retraining in 2001, when he was laid off briefly from American & Efird. But Gaston County's Workforce Investment Act program didn't have enough money to send him to school at the time.

He was later rehired, but got a chance to go back to school last year when Gaston County got a grant from the U.S. Labor Department to help retrain workers.

It wasn't an easy decision. . He started work on his GED in the late '60s and spent two decades finishing it. He now reads and writes pretty well, but he says he still has trouble with spelling.

Before he enrolled at Gaston College, Queen made a couple of trips to talk to teachers and administrators. He told them about his reading problems, and one instructor suggested the industrial maintenance program. It was more hands on, less bookwork, he was advised.

"I think I just got myself into something I don't know how to get out of," he told his wife.

Two lives

Since January, Queen has lived the life of textile worker by night, student by day.He typically gets up at 9 p.m., two hours before his shift starts. He sleeps in a separate bedroom so he won't wake his wife, who is on medical leave from another American & Efird plant after two knee-joint replacement surgeries. She blames years of bending and crouching in textile mills for her ailments.

As he dresses for work, Queen flips through his textbooks and tries to shake the sleepiness that now seems to perpetually dampen his senses. At the mill, he studies some more during breaks.

Queen says he is motivated by the challenge of overcoming the many obstacles he has faced in life. Reading problems. A head injury suffered in elementary school that he feels slowed him mentally. A loving but perfectionist mother he says he never managed to fully impress.

He also doesn't want to let down his family, teachers and case managers. "There are a lot of people involved," Queen says in a soft, scratchy voice. "I don't want to disappoint everyone."

Sometimes when he gets to school, he's so exhausted he falls asleep in his car in the school parking lot. A fellow student once rapped on his window to rouse him.

On this morning's drive, traffic is stacked up in the left-turn lane that leads into the Gaston College campus. Queen suspects that layoffs around the county have increased enrollment this semester. Indeed, about 5,000 students have signed up for classes this fall, about 500 more than last fall and a school record, officials said.

In the parking lot, Queen runs into classmate Logan Stowe. After being laid off from two textile plants and a pharmaceutical company, the 48-year-old is back in school even though he has a business degree from Belmont Abbey College. "I want to brush up on my computer skills," he says.

Their first instructor is Ron Cooke, who teaches basic wiring. The class consists of 10 men, some recent high school graduates, others laid-off workers eyeing new careers.

Queen, still in the stained jeans, T-shirt and boots he wore to work, isn't afraid to speak up in class. When Cooke asks the class what keeps electrons spinning around an atom's nucleus, Queen says "centrifugal force."

The correct answer is magnetism, but Cooke lets him down easy.

"You have the right answer," he says. "I asked the wrong question."

As class goes on, Queen slips off his glasses and tries to squeeze sleep from his eyes. Terms like "Ohm's Law" and "valance electrons" are spilling out of his instructor, but he barely fills a page of a fresh legal pad with notes.

Last quarter, Queen got C's in all four of his classes, giving him an overall grade-point average of 3.08 out of 4.0. To help with his studies, he's thinking about buying a cheap tape recorder to tape class. He also might try flashcards for studying.

"Johnny is doing OK," Cooke says after class. "He's passing. Most people realize the situation Johnny is in and try to help him."

Between classes, Queen visits a vending machine for a Diet Pepsi. He will drink only half the bottle because he doesn't want the caffeine to keep him up when he's trying to sleep later this afternoon.

After his next class -- blueprint reading -- is unexpectedly canceled, it's time to go home. "Thank God for small blessings," he mutters.

He climbs into the Lumina, part of its dashboard curled from the heat. This is the time of day that scares him. The heavy, moist air combines with exhaustion to turn him into "zombie mode."

"How'd you like to know I'm driving behind you?" he says.

Tough schedule

Class and work leave little time for home life.

When his wife had knee surgery, Queen wasn't able spend much time at the hospital. One of his sons mows the lawn. Even his Chihuahua, Girlfriend, misses him.

His wife says his schedule has been hard on her as well. "I try to get him something to eat and do what I can around the house with my leg," she says.

Still, Judy, 58, gives him pep talks when he feels like quitting, reminding him how far he has come. Neither of his parents earned high school degrees, and only one of his three siblings did.

"He doesn't have a lot of confidence in himself," says Judy, who has thick purple scars scribbled on both knees.

To earn his diploma, Queen may need at least two more classes in math, a tough subject for him. His program typically takes a year, but he will probably finish next spring or summer after an extra session or two. His grant money runs out in July 2004.

Queen sometimes struggles with the administrative chores of registering for classes and getting vouchers to pay for his books, but mostly it's gone smoothly. At his age, he says, he sometimes finds it difficult having his life run by teachers and administrators.

"You have to swallow your pride and do what you're told," he says. "It's depressing sometimes the control they have over your life."

If he's successful, Queen isn't sure where his diploma will lead.

He dreams of owning a pottery studio. While studying for his GED, he took some art classes and discovered his creative side. He now has a potter's wheel, a couple of kilns and various sculptures he's made scattered in his back yard. He's sold a few pieces at local festivals.

But he knows his hobby isn't a practical career choice. He has no money to start a business and knows it would take more time to develop his skills. There also isn't much demand for artwork in a community where workers are more worried about holding onto their jobs and paying bills.

Meanwhile, Queen hopes the industrial maintenance program will help him in his current job or someday lead to a position in a machine shop or a field such as air-conditioning repair.

No matter what happens, he's glad he has made the effort.

"Even if I totally fail, I've learned a lot," he says. "I don't think it's a total waste."

As he drives home, icy blasts from the air conditioning keep him awake a little longer. He pulls into his grass-and-gravel driveway at about 1:30 p.m. -- more than 15 hours after he left for work.

He gathers his notebook and texts and lumbers to the front door. As he turns the key, he calls out to his dog and disappears inside. He'll take a quick bath to wash away the sweat and grime, then try to fall asleep on his bed or a sheet-covered couch in the living room.

He'll be up again at 9.

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Crunch felt on campus

Aug. 30, 2003
The News & Observer
By Barbara Barrett and Jane Stancill, staff writers
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

Don't think you're going to breeze into an open Spanish class at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Count on fewer books in the library at N.C. Central University.

And if you're a science major at N.C. State University, forget about that popular elective in geophysics.

As much as Gov. Mike Easley said he wanted to protect the classroom in this year's budget cuts, that's just not going to happen at state universities. This is the third year in a row that schools have had to cut budgets to deal with North Carolina's fiscal crisis.

It's true that cuts in education have been less severe than in other state agencies, and universities here haven't faced the same turmoil as many of those nationwide.

But since 2001, the 16 universities in the UNC system have suffered $151 million in permanent cuts and $235 million in one-time cuts and spending restrictions. About 900 positions have been eliminated during the period, including 94 faculty positions.

"These cuts we've experienced over the last three years are cuts to the base budget," said NCCU Chancellor James Ammons Jr. "That money does not come back. We're concerned about that."

At campuses across the state, the cuts are wide. Housekeepers are emptying trash and cleaning classrooms less often . Equipment purchases are on hold. Labs are quieter as research technicians go unhired.

And, increasingly this year, the classrooms are being hit. Some sessions have been cut back or canceled. Faculty jobs are left open, and adjunct instructors are being dismissed. There are fewer teaching assistants, fewer handouts in class, fewer hours to speak one-on-one with professors.

'It's just hard'

Wes Gray, a history major at NCSU, was looking forward this fall to a class on medieval history taught by a popular professor. He was shut out during registration but figured that if he showed up on the first day of class, the professor would let him in.

Half a dozen other students felt the same way, and there wasn't a chair available for a one of them. Gray saw the crush and left without even asking.

"It's just hard to sign up for class now," said Gray, a 21-year-old junior.

And once the students get in, faculty have to deal with more and more of them. Willem Koole , a lecturer in NCSU's accounting department, used to lecture, advise and grade papers for about 100 students a semester among several class sections.

That number jumped to 250 students in the spring and to 270 this fall because of a shuffle in his class schedule. He has had to add office hours to handle everyone.

"I can't give as much time to each student," Koole said. "It's more work. I'm not complaining, but it's more work."

University leaders say the cuts come at the worst possible time because enrollments are increasing to serve a larger population of high school graduates in North Carolina.

But some university officials acknowledge that new enrollment growth money from the General Assembly during the past few years has lessened the pain of the budget knife.

For example, UNC-CH cut $24 million from its budget this year but got nearly $11 million in new money to handle more students.

"There's no question some of this was offset by enrollment growth money, which really saved our bacon," said Dick Soloway, acting dean of UNC-CH's College of Arts and Sciences.

Charles Leffler, the acting finance chief at NCSU, doesn't agree. The $2.1 million in new money for enrollment growth that NCSU received is meant to handle the increase in students, he said, not make up for $14 million in budget cuts.

At NCCU, which is preoccupied with a serious mold problem that has shut down buildings and sent students to live in hotels, Ammons said he's doing everything he can to protect what little repair money he has.

"I'm hoping we don't have to put off more repairs and maintenance," he said. "It's a tough time for us."

Still, he said, some state universities outside North Carolina saw larger budget reductions.

The UNC system's permanent and one-time cuts for this year were less than 4 percent of the total budget.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, about half of the states cut university spending for this school year, and the average cut was 5 percent. Lawmakers in Colorado chopped 26 percent from the higher education budget, while public colleges in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin were cut by about 10 percent.

"Compared to what happened nationwide," Ammons said, "we came out OK."

Coping with the crunch

UNC-CH has tried to keep small classes small, Soloway said, and actually shrunk its beginning language classes to 20 students or fewer.

The university is trying to keep up with a crush of students who want Spanish classes. UNC-CH hired 14 new instructors in Romance languages -- 10 in Spanish. Still, about 100 students were unable to get into introductory Spanish this fall ; they should find open seats in the spring.

Most campuses have dealt with the cuts by not filling open jobs.

NCCU has cut $1.8 million from its budget mainly by not hiring for 30 job vacancies. It has trimmed purchases of books, journals and equipment, and has cut travel for faculty.

UNC-CH's arts and sciences college will conduct 30 fewer searches for professors to fill expected retirements. That could lead to a crunch next year when enrollment rises again and the teaching force will be decreased to about 675 -- the level of five years ago.

But Soloway thinks students still can graduate in four years, despite fewer course offerings.

"Students have available the courses they need to graduate, but not necessarily every course they want when they want it," he said.

Students' progress is a big concern for NCSU Provost James Oblinger, especially amid a universitywide effort to improve graduation rates. Over the summer, Oblinger monitored class registration and released emergency dollars to open some new sections.

"I'm very concerned that as this accumulates, we're going to see a longer time on campus prior to graduation," he said.

Even now, students are losing some courses and even entire programs. At NCSU, the geophysics program has been abolished. There aren't enough teaching assistants to grade mathematics homework, and the library expects to buy thousands fewer books than expected.

But there may, at least, be some teaching opportunities in the budget woes. Koole, the lecturer in accounting at NCSU, now has a perfect example to show his students the reality imposed by black-and-white rows of numbers.

"I talk to students about how budgets affect everybody, and they say, 'How do budgets affect everybody?'

"I tell them, 'One person it affects is you,' " he said.

Staff writer Barbara Barrett can be reached at 829-4870.

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Cuts on Campus

Aug. 30, 2003
The News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

The state budget forced major cutbacks to the 16-campus university system. Each university had to take 3.06 percent in permanent cuts and 0.77 percent in one-time reductions for the year.

Here are some of the budget cuts at Triangle campuses.

N.C. CENTRAL UNIVERSITY:

$1.8 MILLION IN REDUCTIONS

* 30 staff and faculty positions will go unfilled.

Cuts have been made to:

* Faculty travel and development.

* Purchases of books and journals.

* Equipment purchases.

N.C. STATE UNIVERSITY:

$14 MILLION IN REDUCTIONS

* About 70 class sections next spring have been eliminated, resulting in the loss of 2,300 seats, in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

* All student-assisted homework grading in mathematics has been canceled, worth $50,000.

* Three courses offered to students in first-year college have been canceled, worth $10,000.

* The library's collections budget has been reduced by 3,700 new titles and the cancellation of 550 journals, worth $512,000.

* Eight positions have been abolished and 10 hires have been delayed in the Industrial Extension Service.

* The geophysics program in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences has been eliminated, worth $60,000.

UNC-CHAPEL HILL:

$24 MILLION IN REDUCTIONS

* The College of Arts and Sciences won't recruit for 30 open faculty positions .

* Trash cans from offices will be emptied three times a week instead of daily. Classrooms will be cleaned thoroughly once a month instead of once a week.

* The Institute of Nutrition has been eliminated -- a cut worth $200,000.

* Two academic departments -- operations research and statistics -- have been combined to save administrative costs.

* An Office of Continuing Education in Health Sciences has been closed, worth $150,000.

* An information technology training center has been closed, worth $100,000.

* Heels for Health, an employee fitness program, and Arts Carolina, an arts program, have been eliminated.

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Residents sound off on trash trial run

Sept. 2, 2003
The News & Observer
By J. Andrew Curliss, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

RALEIGH -- The messages are polite, angry, friendly, inquisitive, uncertain, overflowing with praise and blunt with criticism. They arrive at the city's solid waste department by e-mail, U.S. mail and over the phone, and they've filled up more than 10 pages of notes, with more arriving every day.

For residential guinea pigs in eight Raleigh neighborhoods, the reality of switching how their trash is collected is too much to keep quiet about.

In all, about 7,300 households are three weeks into a six-month trial run of collecting trash, yard waste and recyclables differently: once a week at the curbside and all on the same day.

That's a big change from years of getting twice-a-week trash collection from the back yard, with recycling collection every other week on yet a different day for some.

At City Hall, top administrators hope the tryout goes well because they want to expand the curbside program across the city, saying it will help them keep garbage fees from going higher.

Gerald Latta, the city's solid waste director, said the test is going just as he expected -- problems in some areas but success in most.

"I'd say that 95 percent of the people get it and have done a great job with it," he said. "But that other [5 percent], it's going to take some work. It's going to take some time and some effort. We're getting plenty of feedback, that's for sure."

As expected, most troublesome are areas around N.C. State University, where city-supplied beige roll-out trash bins often remain in front of apartments and duplexes all week. They overflow with loose garbage. Some are tipped over. Others hang open.

Residents have complained about them as eyesores.

"We're working on it," Latta said. "It's not something we don't know about, I can assure you of that."

Officials are distributing fliers that beg residents to return carts to the side or rear of their homes. It has a large headline: "Please! Please! Please!"

Latta has received all of the messages, some of which include the good and the bad in the same paragraph, such as this from a woman who lives on Sunrise Avenue in southwest Raleigh:

"[T]he City of Raleigh workers who collect our trash and recycling are the NICEST, hardest working, and [most] conscientious workers we've ever met! Please tell me to whom I should voice my concerns about pile up of trash and increasing pest problems?"

Some residents have complained that fees are going up while service is less frequent. Others worry about odors.

But just as frequent are messages such as the one from Kathy Croft of Deanwood Drive in North Raleigh sent to the City Council:

"I was copied on a note one of my neighbors sent to you on her dissatisfaction with the pilot trash program," she wrote. "I wanted you to know that I don't share all of her concerns about the new trash program. ... I don't feel that most of the neighborhood is against the pilot trash program."

City Manager Russell Allen, who has advocated the switch, distilled the first few weeks of the program into a memo for council members, who will receive it at their meeting today .

"The first three weeks have been a big success with no surprises," he wrote. "The citizenry has been very cooperative and this is greatly appreciated."

Staff writer J. Andrew Curliss can be reached at 829-4840.

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Footnotes: NCSU division gets overhaul

Sept. 1, 2003
The News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

N.C. State University's division of multidisciplinary studies is going through a shakeup that has some faculty concerned about the future of the program.

About 300 undergraduates and graduate students study for four bachelor's degrees and one master's degree in the division, which is housed in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. It also offers minors in areas such as Africana and women's studies.

Beginning in July, the division will no longer exist. Its 14 faculty members likely will be farmed out to other disciplines, such as sociology or political science. The programs will be overseen by a new director housed in Dean Linda Brady's office.

Brady initiated the change and set up a task force to make recommendations. She said she thinks the changes will strengthen the interdisciplinary programs by tying them more closely with all the college's departments. None of the majors will be affected, she said.

The current division chief echoed that.

"All of these programs will continue," said David Greene, head of the division and a professor of multidisciplinary studies. "We're going to try to make it a good thing."

But others are concerned. Chuck Korte, who sat on the task force and opposed the recommendations, is skeptical.

"I think that some individual programs aren't going to flourish without a department behind them," he said. "I hope it works."

The college also is hiring a new director of international programs to oversee study abroad programs and international studies. Brady said the hire represents a net addition and a new emphasis on international studies. But Brady, an expert in international negotiations, denied that she was focusing on a pet program to the detriment of multidisciplinary studies.

"I've tried to bend over backwards not to do that," she said.

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People: N.C. State University

Sept. 1, 2003
The News & Observer
By staff report
 © Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

Veena Misra, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering program Sept. 18 to 20 in Irvine, Calif. The program brings together 83 of the nation's top young engineers for discussions on topics including environmental engineering, nanotechnology, counterterrorism technologies and biomolecular computing.

Lois G. Britt of Mount Olive recently received the 2003 Volunteer Service Award from the National Agricultural Alumni and Development Association Inc. The award recognizes her long service to the university and its College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Britt continues to support the college as a volunteer, following a 34-year career as an agent and county director with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Services.

Angelitha L. Daniel of Pittsburgh has been appointed assistant director of minority programs for the College of Engineering. Daniel, who served as recruiter for the minority engineering program at the University of Pittsburgh for five years, received her bachelor of science degree in materials science and engineering from f Pittsburgh in 1998.

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College honor codes get new prominence

Sept. 1, 2003
The News & Observer
By Vicki Cheng, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

By the time this year's crop of college freshmen had graduated from high school, officials at Enron had shredded accounting documents and we had learned that reporter Jayson Blair had plagiarized quotes in The New York Times.

Such scandals are on the minds of campus administrators across the nation as they dust off old honor codes or write new ones.
Colleges are making existing codes tougher. They're asking students to blow the whistle on peers who cheat. And they're hoping that the ethics lessons learned now will guide their students' behavior well after college.

"They're our future," said Diane Waryold, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity, an international consortium of about 382 institutions that is based at Duke University. "They're going to be confronted with choices to take shortcuts, or issues of greed, like the people running the corporate world now. We're hoping they make the right decisions."

No hard numbers are available, but Waryold said she has noticed that more schools -- including Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill -- are trying to adopt an "honor code culture," in which students govern themselves.

"At many honor code schools, a faculty member would not proctor an exam," she said. "It's a culture in which there's no real need for policing. And it's really a wonderful culture to learn in."

Rob McDonald, chairman of Duke's Honor Council, said he hopes honor becomes a part of what defines a Duke student. This fall, students are bound by a new requirement to turn in their classmates if they see them cheating. At Duke's convocation ceremony last month, McDonald told freshmen under the solemn arches of Duke Chapel that real Duke students don't cheat.

"We want to graduate as completely authentic Duke students," said McDonald, a junior from Kobe, Japan, who said he grew up in a society where honor was of the utmost importance. "If you cheat in your time here at Duke ... you're not really a Duke student."

UNC-CH has had an honor code for more than a century, but the culture on campus isn't what it used to be. Recently, after a computer science professor reported 24 students for unauthorized collaboration, the code was overhauled. This year, UNC is holding its second "Honor and Integrity Week" Sept. 22-26.

"There's learning that one does that isn't just what you get out of a book," said Judith Wegner, professor of law and chairwoman of the faculty, who helped rewrite the code. Students hear about a lot of plagiarism in the news these days, she said.

"Some of the comments in studies from students are, 'You're dumb if you don't do this, because that's what everybody is expected to do,' " she said. "We need some voices saying that's not the case."

Still lots of cheating

The campuses are fighting an uphill battle. Don McCabe, professor of management at Rutgers University and a national expert on college cheating, said that in some surveys, up to 97 percent of high school students admitted to cheating in some form. By the time students get to college, those figures drop, but typically half or more of those surveyed say they cheat on written work, McCabe said.

Honor codes can help. Twice as many students say they cheat at schools without honor codes, compared to schools with honor codes, McCabe said. But an honor code culture can be tough to implement, especially on a big campus.

For example, McCabe said if N.C. State University -- which doesn't have an honor code tradition -- wanted to start one, it would take at least five years.

"It's going to take a lot of effort, because students and faculty aren't used to it," he said.

But the rewards can be great. Many students decide to enroll at Davidson College because they want to be part of the honor code culture, said Tom Shandley, vice president for student life.

During exam week, students schedule their own finals and take them with no professor present. There are typically only 12 to 15 cases of cheating a year on the campus, which has 1,700 students.

Shandley said a "nontoleration clause," which says students must report other students who cheat, is crucial to the code. Without it, a code falls apart quickly, he said.

Putting honor on view

Duke is trying to make its honor code more visible by asking freshmen to sign a pledge after convocation and by requesting that professors talk more about cheating and plagiarism.

Still, most freshmen who signed the pledge this fall weren't aware they were supposed to turn in their classmates. Many, like Kenny Larrey of Houston, didn't think it was a good idea. His high school honor code required students to turn each other in, he said.

"It didn't happen," he added. "People aren't going to turn in their friends."

McCabe, of Rutgers, said the great majority of students don't report their friends. Duke's McDonald added that, in reality, it's impossible to enforce that part of the code. But it might provide the opportunity for students to confront each other, he said.

McDonald thinks honor is important to his generation, which he said has an obsession with being "real."

"We listen to 'Baby, I'm Real,' by Jennifer Lopez," he said. "We watch reality TV shows. ... We're into the real world. I think that has particularly been catalyzed by events we've witnessed, like the Bill Clinton sex scandal and the Enron accounting. We're striving to be the generation the older generation wasn't."

Staff writer Vicki Cheng can be reached at 956-2415.

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Greeks go geek, for respect

Aug. 31, 2003
The News & Observer
By Jane Stancill and Anne Blythe, staff writers
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

The boarded-up fraternity houses at UNC-Chapel Hill tell the story -- a Greek system in decline, failing to attract students turned off by the lingering "Animal House" image and a heavy commitment of time and money.

ORDER IN THE FRAT
UNC-Chapel Hill's new code of conduct for fraternities, adopted by the student Interfraternity Council, emphasizes that it is each fraternity's responsibility "to create a comfortable and nourishing environment that fosters excellence, academic and otherwise."

The code prohibits hazing and requires anyone who witnesses violations to report them. It defines hazing with a number of examples, including:

* paddling, whipping, beating, branding or exposure to extreme physical duress;

* forced consumption of food, liquor, drugs or other substances;

* forced existence in unsanitary conditions;

* deprivation of sleep;

* summoning or "tapping" a pledge to come to the house at a moment's notice late at night or early in the morning;

* road trips on which pledges are abandoned and left to find their way back;

* intentionally creating a mess that the pledge is required to clean;

* verbal harassment such as yelling, screaming or using degrading names;

* calisthenics;

* assigning tasks such as theft, vandalism, harassment or any other illegal activity;

* not allowing pledges to eat, shower, shave or change clothes;

* any act that causes public embarrassment;

* any rule that places the pledge in a subservient role.

Two fraternities and two sororities have closed their doors in the past two years at Chapel Hill, unable to recruit enough members to keep the houses afloat financially. Reflecting a national trend, the number of young men who pledged to join UNC-CH fraternities declined from 257 in 1995 to 216 last year.

Alumni have worried about the survival of their beloved houses, and university trustees have received a barrage of complaints from parents about drinking, rowdy behavior and a recruitment period that seemed to take over freshman students' lives.

This fall, though, Greek supporters hope to revitalize the fraternity system in Chapel Hill with a revamped recruitment system -- known as "rush" -- and a new code of conduct.

"It was clear that if the fraternities at UNC didn't change and some of the systems didn't change, over time the fraternities would disappear," said Jim Gray, former chairman of UNC's Fraternity Alumni Advisers Committee.

Rush won't start until Wednesday, but already, signs show a renewed interest. As of last week, 330 young men had signed up for rush at the 21 traditional fraternities that own houses.

In past years, rush started the first day of each semester, with parties and activities running nonstop for 10 days. It was a grueling process. Students skipped classes and got behind in their schoolwork. Some didn't even bother to buy their books during the first two weeks of class.

"It was really intense, and nobody got any rest," said Wyatt Dickson, a UNC-CH senior from Wilmington, a Chi Psi member and president of the Interfraternity Council, a group that governs the fraternities.

Under the new rules -- drafted by a committee of students, faculty, trustees, alumni and parents -- rush starts about a week after the semester begins, and recruiting will occur generally from Thursday through Sunday for several successive weekends. The campus will have "blackout" days from Sunday night to Wednesday night so that students can concentrate on academics.

Though some view the changes as a crackdown, Dickson and others see it as a matter of survival.

"The reality is, all we want is for the bad behavior to stop," said Jay Anhorn, director of Greek affairs at the university. "We want people to have a good experience here. We don't want people to become so wrapped up in one organization that it detracts from their academic experience."

The waning of interest in Greek life is occurring nationwide. Students in the so-called Millennial Generation are involved in myriad activities, including community service, undergraduate research and study abroad. At UNC-CH, there are 550 student groups.

On a stifling afternoon during the first week of classes, representatives from a variety of clubs and organizations sat behind card tables in the Pit, a hub of the Chapel Hill campus.

The Black Student Movement, the John Edwards presidential campaign, a male a cappella group, a co-ed arts and literature fraternity, competitive rowers -- they were just a smattering of the extracurriculars available . Students picked up brochures and arranged get-togethers.

Some were critical of fraternities, describing them as exclusive, elitist drinking clubs.

"I just don't feel like I'm really the fraternity type," said Brian Hollingsworth, 19, a freshman from Raleigh. "Also, a lot of people I know who are in fraternities say it's a big time commitment."

Josh Rudow, a sophomore from Asheville, said he steered clear of fraternities because he wanted to broaden his horizons.

"I just didn't want to limit the friends that I could have," he said. "A lot of people I know that joined fraternities hang out with their frat friends only. Frats are also expensive in a lot of ways. Clubs are free."

Others, though, find the Greek system offerings to their liking.

"I lived in the fraternity house for two years," said John Stubbs, a senior Chi Psi from Smithfield. "It has been a great experience living with 80 of our closest friends. The brotherhood is extremely important to all of us."

Part of UNC-CH's fraternity decline can be explained with simple math. There are 21 traditional fraternities and nine sororities, yet UNC-CH's student body is more than 60 percent female. The university has 16 other Greek groups that do not own houses .

Schools take action

Duke has cracked down on its fraternities by limiting parties and revoking housing privileges for those who violated rules. Duke freshmen now cannot participate in rush until the second semester. Still, nearly 35 percent of the undergraduate male students are members of the 35 Greek organizations, said Todd Adams, assistant dean of students.

Andre Vann, coordinator of Greek life at N.C. Central University, said he has not noticed a decline in the number of students joining the nine groups on the Durham campus. "Informationals," the term NCCU uses for rush presentations, typically draw between 500 and 600 students. Most groups, though, rarely have more than 25 members per semester.

At N.C. State University, where 1,700 to 1,800 students are members of the 42 Greek organizations, fraternity rush began during the first week of classes. The alcohol-free events are to end around Labor Day.

Despite the downplaying of the party atmosphere, some fraternities still battle the "Animal House" stereotype presented by the 1978 John Belushi movie.

"I think that image has been a turnoff for a certain segment of the population," said John Mountz, director of Greek life at NCSU. "Certainly N.C. State is like a number of other institutions, in that we've seen a number of peaks and valleys in the last 30 years. We saw a decline maybe three or four years ago. But our numbers have been pretty steady for the last few years."

At UNC-CH, the fraternities plan to do more marketing to emphasize the positive aspects of Greek life -- friendship, community service and, yes, academics.

"One thing we need to do is explain more what fraternities are about," Dickson said. "There's not a party every night and the guys get a lot of studying done."

Dickson thinks the Chapel Hill fraternities are moving away from their self-destructive habits. The university will benefit if the Greek system thrives, he said. After all, some of UNC-CH's biggest financial contributors are Greek alums.

"I don't think it's in the university's best interest to see fraternities go away forever," he said.

Staff writer Jane Stancill can be reached at 956-2464.

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N.C. State Student Returns To Class After Facing Major Test In Life

Aug. 29, 2003
WRAL.com
By Scott Mason, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 WRAL.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina State University student has just returned to class determined to succeed after beating her greatest challenge.

Shannon Doorhy has a dog named Shadrach. Like the biblical story he is named after, Doorhy has survived the fiery furnace.

"Well, I was having knee pains," she said. "They did an MRI and they found big white patches in my bones."

Those patches were signs of leukemia. Doorhy was a freshman at N.C. State University early last year when she got the diagnosis. She took chemotherapy and had severe side effects, but through it all, she finished her freshman year with a 4.0 grade-point average. Doorhy then completed the greatest test of all -- a bone marrow transplant.

"I wouldn't have lived without it. I wouldn't have survived," Doorhy said.

Doorhy said Shadrach has been a big help, saddled with a bag full of medications. Shannon takes more than 20 pills a day.

"He's helped me through greatly," she said.

Now a sophomore, Doorhy has already learned so much.

"Yeah, I have a lot of other stuff, though, that I want to learn," she said. "There's no limit to what I want to do and I'll do it."

Doorhy continues to check with her doctors and so far, her prognosis seems good. She also has come to know a man from Florida who was her bone marrow donor.

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Point of View: N.C. and jobs: Don't pick winners

Sept. 1, 2003
The News & Observer
By Thomas Grennes, correspondent
 © Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

Massive layoffs in the textile and furniture industries have had a devastating effect on workers and communities in North Carolina. As a result, several proposals have been made to use the power of state government to create jobs in the state.
However, globalization has reduced the power of national governments to influence economic conditions in their countries. State governments face even greater limitations on their power.

As one of the United States, North Carolina cannot restrict trade, investment or the migration of labor among the states or with foreign countries.

If a new job is created in the state, the new employee may be someone who has lived here all his life. However, it could be someone who just arrived from another state or country. When new professional hockey players were hired, most came from Canada and Europe. When new scientists were hired, many arrived from other states and from all over the world. Employees of poultry plants and roofing companies have migrated from Latin America.

The source of workers depends on the skill requirements of the job, but North Carolina is not a closed economy

Across the board

A common proposal is to have state government "buy new jobs" by offering incentives to firms in designated industries and locations. Under the Bill Lee Act, state officials have spent $200 million (1996-2001) to acquire jobs. However, a recent evaluation has concluded that nearly all of the workers (96 percent) hired by the firms receiving subsidies would have been hired in absence of the tax preferences. It appears that eliminating the program would save money for taxpayers with only a negligible effect on business investment and job creation.

A better use of the money would be to reduce corporate income taxes for all firms. This would increase the profitability of new projects for all firms, regardless of industry, location of the investment and whether the firm is currently located in the state. Expansion by IBM or Nortel here can be just as productive as the arrival of a new firm from another state or country. It would also relieve state officials from the difficult task of "picking winners."

An analysis by James Burnham of the recent "Irish economic miracle" has some relevance to North Carolina. Ireland has a smaller population than North Carolina, and it experimented with a government agency that first attempted to pick winners by granting lower tax rates to firms in favored industries. As a result of this experience, the lower corporate tax rates were gradually extended to all firms and industries. Lowering taxes across the board was found to contribute more to economic growth than selective subsidies.

A second proposal to create jobs is to use money from the tobacco settlement to train workers for the biotechnology industry. Forecasting the demand for specific skills is inherently difficult, and there is no guarantee that workers who complete training will find jobs in the industry. A common criticism of past government training programs is that they often trained workers for jobs that were not in sufficient demand. If the intent is to make workers more employable, why limit training to a particular industry? The expected payoff to the program would be greater if eligibility were extended to any skills workers chose to acquire. To increase the probability that skills acquired were truly in demand, it would be wise to include skills acquired on the job as well as those acquired in school.

Technical change in recent decades has been biased toward reducing the demand for unskilled workers. The increased "college premium," or pay earned by college graduates relative to high school graduates in the United States and Europe, reflects this technical bias. It explains why textile mill workers are losing jobs at the same time graduates of the N.C. State University College of Textiles are being well placed in the industry. The job skills are different, and employers recognize the difference.

Innovations in the textile industry permit the United States to continue to be one of the 10 largest textile exporters in the world. However, the textile products exported are not those using large amounts of unskilled labor.

New textile plants featuring modern technology have been built during the same period that older plants have closed. But the new jobs require different skills and they are not located in the same towns as plants that closed. Successful workers must be prepared to acquire new skills and to move to where workers are demanded. The huge migration to North Carolina in recent decades illustrates the importance of labor mobility.

Cover the basics

What can states do to promote better job opportunities? Citizens expect officials to protect property rights and enforce contracts. They can provide a favorable business climate by keeping corporate tax rates low for all firms, rather than those favored by people with political influence. They can provide high quality services relative to taxes paid. Education is a service that directly affects worker skills, productivity and earnings, and state governments have accepted responsibility for education.

A good general education provides the foundation necessary to acquire more specialized skills. The particular form of specialized education best for each worker is best chosen by workers and their prospective employers. Instead of having agencies of state government commit today to train workers for specific jobs in biotechnology or any other specialty, it would be wiser to support general education (including lifelong education) that would make workers more adaptable to future economic changes.

Thomas Grennes is professor of economics and professor of agricultural and resource economics at N.C. State University.

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Editorial: The road map trap

Sept. 2, 2003
The News & Observer
 © Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

"The Ballad of the Flim Flam Man," a humorous novel by the late Guy Owen, who taught creative writing at N.C. State University, depicts con games facilitated by the uncritical gullibility of victims.

I think of that dynamic when confronted with the willing suspension of disbelief of journalists and the general public toward the U.S.-dominated Road Map to Peace, purported to make Israelis safer without reversing the colonization of Palestinian land.

Peace organizations on both sides of the conflict -- who reject the trap of trying to preserve unjust advantage -- have offered the basic solutions for decades, and polls of Israelis and Palestinians al