NOVEMBER 11, 2015
NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY
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Features . . . . . . . . .
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Beyond . . . . . . . . . .
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A&E . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Opinions . . . . . . . . .
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VOL 107, ISSUE 1
Opinions
Sports
Amanda Holmes says your name doesn’t define your character
Photo Feature
Nadal explores the meaning of fútbol in Latin America
Quality of student art stuns community
Page 19
Page17
Page 10-11
Campus Echo Spellings to head UNC system
BY JANE STANCILL THE NEWS & OBSERVER (TNS)
CHAPEL HILL — Margaret Spellings, a former U.S. education secretary with a career in policy and politics, was elected president of the University of North Carolina system Friday. The vote by the UNC Board of Governors was unanimous.
Spellings, 57, a longtime policy adviser to former President George W. Bush, was the frontrunner for the job of overseeing the state’s public university system with 17 campuses and 222,000 students. She will succeed Tom Ross, 65, who is due to step down early next year at the board’s request.
Spellings will start the job March 1. She was a given a five-year contract with $775,000 annual salary, a retirement plan, performance bonus, relocation expenses, a car allowance and the president’s residence. Two board members — Thom Goolsby and Marty Kotis — voted against the
terms of her contract. Speaking after the vote, Spellings said she couldn’t wait to move to North Carolina. She praised the state motto — Esse quam videri, which means “To be rather than to seem.” “I love it because it issues all of us a personal challenge,” she said.
NCCU’s ULTIMATE HOMECOMING
“We are in challenging times for higher education,” Spellings said. “While there are no easy answers or an obvious roadmap for the way ahead, the opportunity is clear — to firmly establish the University of North Carolina as the finest university system in the country.
n See SPELLINGS Page 13
Big raises at the top 12 UNC chancellors get 7% - 19% raises BY SHAKIRA WARREN ECHO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Winners Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority showcase their talent in the Homecoming Step Show. KEYANDRA COTTON/Echo staff photographer
STORY BY KEYANDRA COTTON
H Ebola expert
omecoming is a cherished dents welcome them back to their alma tradition at N.C. Central mater. Some are saying that the 2015 University. Alumni liter- homecoming lived up to its billing as ally “come home” and stun See HOMECOMING Page 10-11
recalls crisis
Bhadelia spent 6 months aiding Ebola victims BY SHAKIRA WARREN ECHO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
When West Africa was struck with an Ebola epidemic in the summer of 2014, infectious disease expert Dr. Nahid Bhadelia put her life on the line helping victims in Sierra Leone – for six months. Nearly 17 million people die annually from infectious diseases,
according to the World Health Organization. At least 30 new diseases have emerged in the last 20 years, threatening the health of millions of people, the WHO said in a press release. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes Ebola as a rare and deadly disease caused by infection
n See EBOLA Page 2
Dr. Bhadelia talks with a student about her presentation. BRUCE DEPYSSLER/Echo Adviser
N.C. Central University Chancellor Debra Saunders-White, along with 11 other University of North Carolina system chancellors, just got a hefty raise. The UNC system’s Board of Governors – 32 individuals appointed by the N.C. Senate – voted in a closed meeting on Oct. 30 to raise the salaries of the 12 chancellors. Saunders-White’s raise of 16 percent boosted her annual salary by $50,000 to $330,000. N.C. State University Chancellor Randy Woodson received a 13 percent raise of $70,000. This brings his salary to $590,000. Western Carolina University's David Belcher received a 19 percent raise of $63,500. His new salary is $387,500. Lou Bissette Jr., interim chair of the Board of Governors, told WNCN that UNC’s chancellors “are really the backbone of the system. We expect to have the very best system of higher education in the country, and in order to do that, you have to have the very best individuals running those campuses.” But the raises come in the wake of a decadelong series of severe budget cuts to all UNC universities. NCCU alone has undergone $60 million in budget cuts in the last decade, resulting in faculty and staff layoffs, program eliminations, tuition increases and decreased funding in departments. In response to the 2013 budget cuts of $135 million to all UNC universities, then-NCCU SGA president Reggie McCrimmon told the Campus Echo that the cuts “will hinder our ability to recruit highly talented students into NCCU.” Then-SGA vice president Carmelo Montalvo
n See RAISES Page 2
Faith leads to victory BY SHAKIRA WARREN ECHO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
After being diagnosed in November 2014 with Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberans, a rare and sometimes fatal skin cancer, N.C. Central University graduate student Dominique Hardy kept her faith and didn’t let her DFSP diagnosis discourage her. “I’m privileged to be here,” said Hardy. Now, having beat the odds of the cancer, Hardy is pursuing a public adminstration master’s degree with plans of becoming a dual law student. Hardy was born and raised in Dublin, Ga. where she earned a degree in liberal studies from Armstrong Atlantic State University. At AASU she was president of the campus branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The cancer first appeared when Hardy was
9 years old, but remained undiagnosed for 15 years. “When I was a little girl, there was a spot on my back that appeared as the size of a pinhead,” said Hardy. “As I grew it began to grow.” Hardy said the spot eventually began to look like a sunken hole, which prompted her mother to take her to the doctor. “At nine years old, the doctor told me I had lupus,” said Hardy, referring to the first of several misdiagnoses. Lupus is an inflammatory disease caused when the immune system attacks its own tissues. There are 200,000 to 3 million lupus cases in the United States each year. Hardy returned to the doctor a year later. “All the blood work came back and the doctors told me it [the lupus diagnosis] was a false positive,” said Hardy. Hardy would live uneventfully with the myste-
n See HARDY Page 3
Chancellor Debra Saunders-White at her installation on April 4, 2014. Echo file photo
Editors Note We’ve made some changes at the Campus Echo. Print editions – as a compilation of the semester’s top online stories – will appear only toward the end of each semester. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. We now publish 1-2 stories every weekday. Stay connected with us on Twitter @campusecho, on Facebook, or online at campusecho.com.