unc.edu/news

National Coverage

Colleges sweat the calculus of acceptances
The Associated Press
Another year of record-breaking competition for slots at elite colleges is over. Now it's time for the colleges to sweat. Continuing a long-term trend, the acceptance rate at many of the country's most selective colleges inched down this year to ever-more-agonizing levels for students and parents. ...Duke and UNC Chapel Hill are among the others reporting a marked uptick in selectivity.

In North Carolina, Really Outsider Art (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The New York Times
“We mentally ill can be a shy bunch — aside from bipolar mania, we generally keep to ourselves,” the filmmaker Philip Brubaker says to a big laugh as he introduces his latest documentary, “Brushes With Life: The Journey of Art,” to a packed house. We are at the Brushes With Life Gallery, which is housed in the University of North Carolina’s neurosciences hospital and has one requirement for the artists it showcases: each has a mental illness (something that, as Mr. Brubaker notes, “is seldom an asset”).

Academic March Madness (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The Los Angeles Times
...If Sweet 16 victories were based on the graduation rates tracked by the federal government -- the percentage of scholarship players who enrolled from 1997 to 2000 and graduated within six years -- who would come out on top? The results are not the Final Four matchups happening in San Antonio. In fact, only one of the top seeds -- the University of North Carolina, with a 60% graduation rate -- would make this academic Final Four.

Regional Coverage

As tree grows, Carson's memory will live on
The Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia)
The overcup oak, Quercus lyrata, is what arborists call a three-generation tree. It will stand strong 100 years from now. That's a comfort to the Clarke Central graduates who gathered in the rain Saturday to ensure that the memory of their classmate Eve Carson will carry on into the next century.

Research looks at costs, resources for educating immigrants in Carolinas
The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.)
Are illegal immigrants' children draining educational resources? Much depends on individuals' attitudes toward educating all children and the best allocation of tax dollars. ...A study by the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flager Business School found that immigrants - both legal and illegal - are dramatically changing the state's demographic landscape, including its schools.

State and Local Coverage

Study weighs neglect on child behavior
The Chapel Hill Herald
Children who are neglected before their second birthday display higher levels of aggressive behavior between ages 4 and 8, according to a UNC study, published today in the journal Pediatrics. ..."The lack of attention devoted to the problem of neglect -- the so-called 'neglect of neglect' -- is a long-standing concern in the child welfare field," said study co-author Jon Hussey, research assistant professor of maternal and child health in the UNC School of Public Health and a fellow at the Carolina Population Center.
UNC News Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/health-and-medicine/early-neglect-predicts-
aggressive-behavior-in-children.html

Conference confronts sex trafficking
The Associated Press
Thousands of women and children are transported into the Southeast each year as part of a sex-trafficking trade that remains hidden from authorities whose role it is to stop it, government and agency advocates say. ...Hundreds of academics, social workers, bureaucrats, lawyers and law-enforcement officials gathered for a conference at UNC Chapel Hill Thursday and Friday.
Related Link:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1026062.html
UNC Media Advisory:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/humanities-and-social-sciences/media-invited-for-coverage-
training-at-unc-conference-on-sex-trafficking-this-week.html

Bad economic news depresses readers (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
...Jeepers, can't The N&O find anything positive to say about the U.S. economy? That's a question editors hear increasingly as the economy slips into ... whoops, performs less well. ...Chris Roush, a professor of business journalism at UNC, said the media wouldn't be doing their job if they tried to sugarcoat the economic news. "I don't look at the news as being negative," he said. "I look at it as the news that I need to make proper personal financial decisions."

World turns, so must South
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
This is the South, where a tragic, haunted history pervades the air as surely as the pungent smell of pine. So it's not surprising that we must return to that almighty past to understand what's preventing the region from excelling in the 21st-century's global economy. ..."The headlines report the jobs we've lost to global competition," said Jesse L. White Jr., director of UNC's Office of Economic and Business Development.

New seasons offer local links
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Three announcements for the coming arts season arrived in a wave that could knock the average arts patron over. Big names on the Carolina Performing Arts roster.
Related Link:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2766/story/1027164.html
UNC News Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/arts/carolina-performing-arts-announces-
2008-2009-season---det.html

Greensboro student wins UNC-Duke scholarship
The News & Record (Greensboro)
A Greensboro Day School senior is one of 53 winners of a Robertson Scholarship to attend both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke. The only local recipient is John Spencer Kuzmier of Greensboro. He will matriculate at UNC-Chapel Hill.
UNC News Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/campus-and-community/unc-chapel-hill-
duke-announce-winners-of-robertson-scholarship.html

Environment, arts flow through charter on Haw
The Chapel Hill Herald
Renderings of the Haw River line the entry. Black-and-white photographs hang from the ceiling. A rendition of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is large on the wall. But it's not an art gallery; it's a high school. ...(Marcia) Huth often works with Carolina Navigators, a UNC student group that focuses on global education, and its faculty counterpart, Carolina Speakers, the university's speaker's bureau. Hawbridge works closely with the philosophy department at UNC as well. Faculty members were part of a series of environmental ethics lectures. The Institute for the Environment at UNC has also been an important resource.

Why UNC does not want to use water bars to control erosion (Opinion-Editorial Column)
The Chapel Hill News
Since the column headlined "Young scientists learn lessons in bureaucracy" appeared in the March 30 edition of The Chapel Hill News, staff members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have gotten questions from people wanting to know why the university won't allow the Sediment Rangers of Smith Middle School to implement their plan to install water bars in the Duke Power corridor west of nearby Seawell School.

Nature Boy's fans cheer a ring master
The Fayetteville Observer
...If you grew up in the South before satellite dishes and the visual smorgasbord of cable, you remember Saturday afternoon TV. After cartoons went off, your choice was fishing shows, preaching or wrestling. ...According to UNC-Chapel Hill professor and Southern folklore expert Bill Ferris, the roots of wrestling tap deeply into the Southern subconscious. “It goes all the way back to our frontier culture,” Ferris said. “Think of it as a version of horse racing or cockfighting. The violence of the matches in the enclosed arenas, people packed in — it was like a carnival. It’s easy to get caught up in that environment.

Series examines immigration questions
The Chapel Hill News
The Chapel Hill Institute for Cultural and Language Education and the UNC Institute for Study of the Americas launch a four-part community series on immigration today titled "Addressing the Hard Questions."

UNC scientist is lecture topic
The Chapel Hill Herald
"From Tobacco Farm to Botany Laboratory," a look at the late UNC scientist Alma Leonora Holland Beers, is the title of a free lecture at the North Carolina Botanical Garden at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The presenter, Bill Burk, is lead biology librarian for the University of North Carolina Library.

UNC program encourages careers in health care (Letter to the Editor)
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
...The North Carolina Health Careers Access Program, located on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, has worked for more than 35 years to empower minority and educationally/economically disadvantaged students, giving them the opportunity to recognize the possibility of a future in health care. ...Organizations like NC-HCAP are needed now more than ever to ensure that the future of health care really can be affordable, accessible and reliable for all Americans. (Caroline Herion, Chapel Hill)
UNC News Release:
http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/science-and-technology/new-unc-program-fast-tracks-
science-students-to-produce-more-teachers.html

Parents to get info on alcohol
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
Matthew Sullivan will present information for parents about adolescent risk behaviors with alcohol and drugs from 7 to 8:30 p.m., April 15 at Kenan Auditorium, Durham Academy Upper School, 3601 Ridge Road. ...As a law enforcement officer, he has served as a public safety officer, a narcotics investigator, a community police officer, a crime prevention officer and a DARE officer. He has been coordinator of substance abuse programs at UNC, and is an adjunct faculty member at the UNC School of Social Work.

Issues and Trends

System in shambles (Editorial)
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
From the beginning, when vague details about the courts' handling of suspects in the Eve Carson murder case began surfacing, the worry was about how broken the system really was. Articles last week in The News & Observer, about the findings of an investigation by the Division of Community Corrections and about how the courts had dealt with one of the suspects, show that matters are worse than could have been imagined.
Related Link:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1026995.html

Sigh of relief at WSU (Editorial)
The Seattle Times (Washington)
Washington State University is fortunate its president of less than a year fended off an overture by his beloved alma mater. Elson Floyd reassured WSU regents late last year that he would not be a candidate for the new chancellor of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Levine gives up medical practice
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
After a week of allegations that he fondled patients in his care years ago, Dr. Melvin Levine quit practicing pediatrics Friday by pulling his medical license from active status.
Levine, 68, had been the director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at UNC-Chapel Hill. He retired from full-time work in 2006 but continued to see patients twice a month.

Pittsboro-Chapel Hill bus route pushed
The Herald-Sun (Durham)
For the past 10 years, Kathleen Dulaney has been the main driver of a van pool that shuttles residents of northern Chatham County back and forth to jobs in Chapel Hill. Dulaney works at the university and said that parking near UNC Hospitals is getting harder to find as construction spreads.