A sampling of editorials from NC newspapers
From Winston-Salem Journal, Aug. 5
NC food bank low on funds and needs more support
The fact that the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina recently ran out of food for the first time in its 28-year-history is one more shock that the recession has dealt. But this is one blow that shouldn't leave anyone feeling powerless. Respond by donating food or money to Second Harvest.
The food bank's misfortune was heralded by increasingly bleak figures. Each of the 18 counties that the food bank serves has more than 10 percent unemployment. In May, news broke that all 14 counties in the Triad and Northwest North Carolina had at least a double-digit increase in individuals receiving food and nutrition assistance from December 2007 through April 2009. In Forsyth County, the number of households receiving food assistance increased by about 25 percent.
More and more people, many for the first time, are turning for help to the agencies to which Second Harvest supplies food. "People are just flat running out of money," said Tommy Cole, the director of Sunnyside Ministry of the Moravian Church.
The recent bare shelves at the food bank were a simple case of demand exceeding supply, the executive director of Second Harvest, Clyde Fitzgerald, told the Winston-Salem Journal's Mary Giunca.
And the problem isn't going away, even though donations to the food bank are up 15 percent, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust just gave it $150,000 to use in Forsyth County, and it will get $2.4 million worth of food this year both through economic stimulus money and a federal farm bill passed last year. Fitzgerald said that there could be a 6-million-pound shortage of food in Second Harvest's 18-county service area unless it develops new sources of supply.
Second Harvest's partner agencies have served 250,000 people already this year, compared with 150,000 in all of last year. "This is not the kind of thing were we say, 'Gee, this is Tuesday, and the crisis is over,'" Fitzgerald said.
Complicating matters are the legislature's delay in agreeing on a budget, which has held up financial allocations to food banks, and the traditional summer drop-off in food drives.
Community support for Second Harvest is crucial. Donations have flowed in since the Winston-Salem Journal published an article recently about the food bank's crunch.
But more help is needed.
"People respond when they believe a real problem exists," Fitzgerald said.
A real problem definitely exists, and it will only grow before the recession recedes.
Most of us are feeling the downturn in one way or another, but many of us can spare some food or money for Second Harvest.
The food bank has never needed help more.
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From Asheville Citizen-Times, Aug. 5
Barker and PETA could have better aim on how to help NC bears' treatment
Anyone who's lived in Western North Carolina for long — or knows anything about the region — knows how offensive it is to locals, Cherokee or otherwise, to have people from other areas parachute in and tell us how we should be doing things.
The implication that we are backward up here in these hills is insulting and guaranteed to raise a wall of resistance to any idea proffered in such a manner. Given their history, it's especially infuriating to the Cherokee to be portrayed as "uncivilized" or "barbaric," as Bob Barker and PETA suggested in their recent protest of the way bears are held in captivity on Cherokee lands.
But apparently no one got the word to Barker or PETA, making their protest a rude affront that would have been better directed elsewhere, even though they are right on the issue.
It is cruel and inhumane to confine bears in concrete pens. It should be stopped and there's no sugarcoating that.
Even those who lack sufficient empathy to feel compassion for intelligent animals — trapped in concrete pens lacking stimulation or anything that resembles a normal life — should recognize the need to end the practice. An increasing number of people find such treatment of animals distressing and will have a bad feeling about anywhere it occurs. Places that depend on tourism want people to leave with a good feeling that will make them want to return and bring their friends.
That said, Barker and PETA would do better to focus their condemnation where it belongs.
They could start with U.S. Rep. Bill Young of Florida. Barker traveled to Cherokee after Young, who is a friend, called him about the bear zoos. Young's family visited Cherokee last summer on a vacation, and Rep. Young's wife, Beverly Young, said she was outraged when she saw bears kept in concrete pits.
Barker contacted PETA about the bear pits and found the organization was already investigating.
The three privately owned roadside zoos on Cherokee lands that hold bears in captivity are inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which makes sure they comply with the federal Animal Welfare Act.
All the Animal Welfare Act requires is that the animals be kept in a safe structure, that animal waste be removed and that the animals be provided with adequate water and food. Federal inspectors make unannounced visits once a year to make sure the zoos are in compliance.
Is the federal law adequate to protect animals from being treated inhumanely? No. Not if it allows such abuses as putting bears in concrete pits.
The law should be changed to ensure that captive animals have more humane living conditions.
But if you go to U.S. Rep. Young's Web site you won't find anything to suggest he's leading the fight to make it happen.
Yet it is Young and other members of Congress who hold the real power to improve the lives of captive animals by writing laws that protect them from living conditions that sadden any caring person. Meanwhile, even though the protest was hypocritical and insulting, as a sovereign nation that depends on bringing tourists to its gambling casino and other attractions, the tribe would serve its own best interests by adopting a more humane law than that put forth by the federal government.
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From The News & Observer of Raleigh, Aug. 4
NC schools and others should be tougher on anti-hazing policies
A lawsuit claiming that a 19-year-old sophomore at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory died as a result of a violent hazing will again bring to the forefront the old and occasionally deadly initiation "custom" most often associated with college fraternities.
As some sort of test of loyalty or toughness or just for strange, misguided fun, some fraternity pledges have long had to endure rituals involving drinking, or beatings, or other forced traumas to earn membership.
In response to deaths or injuries from hazings, most states, including North Carolina, have passed laws making hazing illegal. But on some campuses, and it remains to be seen whether Lenoir-Rhyne is one of them, hazings seem to have been sort of tolerated with a collective shrug of the shoulders.
In this case, a 19-year-old student from Tampa, Fla., was, the suit alleges, repeatedly knocked to the ground by his brothers-to-be in the Theta Chi fraternity. According to the lawsuit, Harrison Kowiak was standing in a pitch-black field and ordered to run to the end of it to find a rock with his name on it. It was the last event of the fraternity's "Hell Week" last fall. The suit says Kowiak died of head injuries inflicted during the ordeal.
"He was hit so hard he couldn't physically get up," said David Kirby, the Raleigh attorney representing Kowiak's family. The university declined to comment to The News & Observer. Meanwhile, the Catawba County district attorney has declined to press charges.
Both Lenoir-Rhyne and Theta Chi have anti-hazing policies. So do other universities.
Universities should long ago have been much tougher upon discovering hazing, taking stronger punitive steps to end the rituals once and for all. It should not take a young person's death, and there have been some from hazing, and a possible huge monetary loss in a lawsuit, to get the attention of the institutions of which fraternities are a part.
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From The Herald-Sun of Durham, Aug. 3
Gov. Beverly Perdue should be applauded on probation reform
What happened to North Carolina's probation system last year was similar to what happened to the nation's financial system.
A meltdown occurred, a failure so massive and public that it exposed fundamental flaws and made the need for reform obvious.
In the economy, the meltdown was the collapse of the housing market and the failure of respected financial firms.
In North Carolina's probation system, the meltdown was the Eve Carson murder, when it was found that both men charged in the slaying of UNC's student body president had fallen through the cracks of a probation system that was supposed to be keeping tabs on them.
Then there was the case of Patrick Burris, who had a long criminal history in North Carolina, who went on a killing spree in South Carolina. Burris was released two weeks earlier from the Lincoln County Jail despite the fact there was a new arrest warrant for him.
In her campaign, Gov. Beverly Perdue promised to reform the system, and she recently followed through. It was a pledge made a lot more difficult because the reform will cost more than $20 million through mid-2011 to hire new probation officers and improve recruitment and retention of officers.
And this is in a year when the nation's financial crisis is causing the state to make millions of dollars of painful cuts from its budget.
Still, the reform was desperately needed, as the events described above and a subsequent investigation showed. Today there are still more than 12,000 criminal defendants on parole who are unaccounted for, out of a pool of 110,000 offenders.
Both houses have approved a bill that, in addition to adding new officers, would allow probation officers access to juvenile records without a court order and allow warrantless searches as a regular condition of probation. Previously, lawmakers approved allowing low-risk probationers to go unsupervised, another way to lighten caseloads for officers.
The changes were clearly needed. We applaud Gov. Perdue and the General Assembly for their response. Now let's closely monitor the reforms to make sure the probation system continues to show improvement.
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