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VOLUME 100, ISSUE 11 919 530 7116/CAMPUSECHO@NCCU.EDU WWW.CAMPUSECHO.COM

Campus

Sports

Opinions

Photo Feature

Wanna park near the caf? Pull out your debit card cuz it’ll cost you 200 clams

NCCU alumnus LeVelle Moton plans to put basketball in motion

Here she goes again: Now Britney Rooks is griping about fire alarms in Eagle Landing

Dancers Brang It on like popping corn.

And Mitchell Webson

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Campus Echo Morial to speak to grads Urban League prez, May 16

Black males struggle at HBCUs National six-year graduation rate at 29 percent

BY CARLTON KOONCE ECHO STAFF REPORTER

Recent studies concerning black student graduation rates have alarms ringing across the education sector.

In 83 federally designated four-year historically

black colleges and universities, only 37 percent of students receive a degree within six years, according to a recent Associated Press study.

This is in comparison to a national overall six-year college graduation rate of 56 percent.

Another alarming statis-

tic: only 29 percent of black males at HBCUs complete a bachelor’s degree within six years.

This statistic raises questions about the viability of HBCUs in America today.

The most recent data at the University of North Carolina’s Web site reports that the graduation rate in

2007 for all N.C. Central University students — males and females — was 49 percent.

Females at NCCU graduated at a rate of 56 percent in six years, while males graduated at a rate of 34 percent.

At N.C. A&T, an HBCU in Greensboro, the overall six-

year graduation rate in 2007 was 48 percent, with a male graduation rate similar to NCCU’s, at 35 percent.

Elizabeth City State University, which has made an effort to identify struggling students, has a sixyear male graduation rate

n See MALES Page 2

BY MARK SCOTT ECHO STAFF REPORTER

Marc H. Morial, the president and executive officer of the National Urban League will deliver N.C. Central University’s commencement address.

Morial is a New Orleans native and is the son of political figMARC ure Ernest MORIAL Morial.

He attended the University of Pennsylvania for undergraduate studies and a JD from Georgetown.

He has been involved for several years in public service. During the 1990s, Morial was a state senator in Louisiana, and mayor of New Orleans.

Since 2002, he has been the head of the National Urban League while continuing to work in the community.

As president of The National Urban League, Morial says he is committed to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.

Morial also writes a weekly column titled “To Be Equal,” which is syndicated to more than 400 newspapers in the U.S. In an April 1 column, Morial paid tribute to historian John Hope Franklin, who died March 25.

“John Hope Franklin was a once-in-a-lifetime gift to America, and indeed, to our world,” Morial wrote, citing Franklin’s work with Thurgood Marshall on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

In a more recent column, Morial lauded President Obama’s emergence as a world leader.

NCCU’s 113th commencement exercises will take place 9 a.m. on May 16 at O’Kelly-Riddick Stadium.

EPA: fossil fuel harmful

BY RENEE SCHOOF MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS (MCT)

Federal judge Allyson K. Duncan, U.S. Chief Justice John H. Roberts and former N.C. Chief Justice Henry E. Frye looks on as they preside over the moot court competition inside the mock court room at the NCCU School of Law. ROBERT LAWSON/Office of Public Relations

A Supreme test at NCCU

BY GEOFFREY COOPER / ECHO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF fter more than six weeks of case studying, teeth-clenching questions did not faze him. He critiques and planning, Dominique Williams knew to stay relaxed and keep his ground. was finally ready for his day in court.

“All I thought about was the hard work put into As the third-year student at N.C. Central this week after week,” said Williams.

University School of Law argued his case before a Williams, along with five other finalists, participanel of renowned judges, the butterflies and pated in the final round of a moot court competiArrington to restore his ability to During the arguments, issues tion

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April 14 at N.C. Central University School of Law. Working in two teams of three, the finalists, Williams, Robert Dodson, Kahlida Lloyd, John Stuart, LaTanya Harris, and Matthew Reeder, argued a hypothetical case: whether it was unconstitutional for the U.S. government to give anti-psychotic medication to criminal defendant Jeremy

stand trial for threatening a federal judge.

The case noted Sell v. United States, in which the U.S. government could obtain a court order to use anti-psychotic medication against a defendant’s will in order to make the defendant able to stand trial.

The facts have to meet a four-part test.

were raised regarding the application and evaluation of the Sell factors that have not yet been addressed by the Supreme Court.

Presiding over the competition was U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

This marked the first time in the school’s 69-year history that a U.S.

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WASHINGTON — Capping years of work by U.S. government scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday declared that the heating of Earth's climate from fossil fuel use threatens human health and the environment.

The decision paves the way for the EPA to order the nation's first mandatory reductions of global warming emissions.

Congress is working on legislation that also would require emissions reductions. President Barack Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said they would prefer using a new law, rather than EPA rules, to make the reductions and spur renewable energy.

The EPA’s announcement on Friday, however, serves notice that if Congress doesn't take action, the EPA will.

The EPA had no choice but to make a declaration on whether the science is clear that global warming poses risks.

The Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that greenhouse gas emissions were pollutants under the Clean Air Act and ordered the EPA to determine whether they harmed health and welfare or whether the science was too uncertain to make a judgment.

The EPA’s response on

n See EPA Page 9

Symposium honors women Achievements in liberal arts celebrated at NCCU

BY DENIQUE PROUT ECHO STAFF REPORTER

She was an outspoken, thoughtful and loving civil rights worker with an enchanting smile.

Her dedication as a teacher and civil rights activist is well known.

Joycelyn D. McKissick, who died in 2005, will be honored by her youngest sister, Charmaine McKissickMelton, at the College of Liberal Arts’ Annual Symposium.

This year’s event, taking place at the University Theater April 27-29, will focus on “Women's Contributions to the Humanities.”

Professors will give presentations on the roles of women in language, music and other aspects of the humanities.

The symposium is being celebrated with a series prints on the front windows of the Farrison-Newton Communication Building.

The prints, crafted by art

students, depict well-known women throughout history, including Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Mother Teresa, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison and others.

Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, associate professor in Modern Foreign Languages, organized the symposium series.

Claudia Becker, a German professor in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages, will talk about German poets and their experiences living in

the United States.

“Those voices are important because they capture a side of the American dream that has either not been expressed or listened to,” Becker said.

Spanish professor Reine Turcato will speak about how women can find their voices in a male-dominated society.

“It is through the use of language that women use in their writing that one can

n See SYMPOSIUM Page 2

Graduate student Danielle Richmond below image of Maya Angelou JORGE GONZALEZ/Echo Staff Photographer

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that is 11 percent higher than NCCU’s.

Meanwhile, the graduation rate for black students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is 76 percent.

The low graduation rate for black males has some students wondering: What’s the problem?

“One must understand the outside causes which hinder black men before they even reach college, if they ever do,” said Monet Phillips, a history senior.

This sentiment is shared by others at NCCU. “I don’t think it has to do with the college experience,” said Jonah Vincent, a jazz studies senior.

“It has everything to do with before you got here.

How prepared were you?”

Vincent enrolled at NCCU in 2004 and will be graduating in May. He said black male graduation rates have more to do with a negative home and neighborhood environment than the culture on an HBCU campus.

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“The drop-out rate among high school students,” said Phillips,“is higher among males than females.”

Vincent said that the “root” of the problem needs to be addressed.

“The public education system is a failure,” he said.

“Public schools should make it easier to learn.

“Black men are more than capable. It all starts earlier than college.”

Phillips said HBCUs can increase graduation rates by reaching out with mentors to black middle grade students and instilling the importance of education in them early.

“The program should be designed to not only mentor and tutor,” said Phillips, “but to also expose them to the HBCU experience.

“Show the intellectual as well as the leisure side of college.”

According to an Associated Press analysis, some HBCUs — Howard University, for example — has graduation rates that exceed the national averages for both black and

white students.

Howard has a combined male and female graduation rate of 60 percent.

Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale universities have lower black enrollment rates than HBCUs, but top the list of graduation rates for blacks, with 96 percent and 94 percent, respectively.

At some HBCUs, the black male graduation rate is so abysmal that these schools bring down the national average male graduation rates at all HBCUs to 29 percent.

Texas Southern, Miles College in Alabama, and Edward Waters in Florida, for example, have six-year male graduation rates under 10 percent.

Besides identifying struggling students and making all resources available to them, Elizabeth City State University brings its faculty in to help retain and graduate black males.

That university asks its best professors teach introductory and developmental courses.

It convenes mandatory sessions to help students apply for financial aid correctly.

When a student drops out, the university follows up with a call to find out what the problem was, and tries to convince the student to return to school.

At Howard University, regular reports are prepared concerning male retention and graduation rates.

NCCU’s Dean of University College, Bernice Johnson, said the University recognizes the severity of its retention problem, and is working on initiatives to begin next fall.

Johnson said the University plans to create learning communities across the campus, one of which will focus on AfricanAmerican freshman males.

“My philosophy is that students can do the work,” said Johnson.

“Our job is to connect what we have to what the student needs, early on.”

SYMPOSIUM CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 see their voice screaming to be heard,” Turcato said. “[The symposium] is an excellent opportunity for all to hear what it is that women are saying.”

Blues singers Bessie Smith and Alberta Hunter will be the focus of Lenora Zenzalai Helm’s presentation.

Helm, a music professor, will sing Smith’s and Hunter’s music as well as one of her own songs.

“My program, ‘Well Behaved Women Don’t Make History,’ will feature excerpts about women in music whose business and entrepreneurial boldness and innovation paved the way for women in music decades later,” Helm said.

McKissick-Melton wanted to honor her sister’s role in fighting for equality for African Americans.

The oldest daughter of civil rights leader Floyd B. McKissick Sr., Jocelyn McKissick, at age 14, participated in the picketing of Royal Ice Cream in 1957, considered to be North Carolina’s first sit-in.

She was the first black female to attend and to graduate from Durham High School, her sister said.

She attended Spellman College before graduating from North Carolina College (now N. C. Central University), and received an M.A. in education from Harvard University in 1971.

As an educator, McKissick taught at several federal pris-

Joycelyn McKissick in the mid-1980s in Soul City, in Warren County, North Carolina.

Courtesy Charmaine McKissick-Melton

ons and was a teacher and counselor at Kittrell Job Corps and at Vance-Granville Community College.

McKissick was one of the few female student leaders of the American civil rights movement.

She spent three days in jail after protesting segregation at a Howard Johnson’s and participated in numer-

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ous sit-ins and demonstrations.

As a member of the Freedom Riders, she was beaten and jailed while protesting in Mississippi and Alabama.

Her injuries left her unable to have children, her sister said.

McKissick-Melton believes her sister’s injuries

were the cause of a double brain aneurysm in 1986.

She became her sister’s legal guardian before she died in 2005.

“She was brilliant, eccentric and an artist with lots of personal style,” McKissickMelton said about her sister in her symposium submission.

“She was an original.”

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The defense team reviews its brief: Robert Dodson, Kahlida Lloyd and Dominique Williams ROBERT LAWSON/Office of Public Relations

The judges really put me at ease. I appreciate them for making this fun.

DOMINIQUE WILLIAMS NCCU LAW STUDENT

chief justice has come to campus.

Roberts was accompanied by Allyson Duncan and Henry Frye.

Duncan is a former NCCU law professor and the first African-American judge to sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Frye is the first African-American appointed as N.C. Chief Justice.

Williams, who spoke for the defendant, said he wanted to keep the dialogue between himself and the judges conversational.

“The judges really put me at ease,” said Williams.

“I appreciate them for making this fun.”

Although the judges delivered quick rebuttals and stern questioning to the students’ arguments, in the end each judge gave the students marks of approval for their knowledge and composure.

“I’m a little disappointed they weren’t more nervous,” Roberts said jokingly to the audience and both teams after the proceedings.

Duncan said she was most impressed with the students’ confidence and wondered if she, along with her fellow judges, were intimidating enough.

“They were so self-possessed, confident and poised,” said Duncan.

“It is lovely to be back to see the quality of students being produced.”

After watching the students perform in court, Frye, a 1959 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law, said he wishes he’d had an experience similar to theirs.

“You don’t get many opportunities such as this,” Frye said. “It was clear they were ready.”

The competition started in January, when participants could side with either the U.S. government or the defendant.

Participants prepared a brief, which was examined by faculty, addressing all legal issues raised while attempting to make a sound argument.

In February, after oral arguments were held before faculty members and attorneys, four final-

ists were selected and paired into teams.

The teams prepared final case briefs and received training from attorneys on how to orate their arguments.

After grueling conferences with area lawyers and judges, second-year NCCU law student Kahlida Lloyd said prayer was her tool in the weeks leading up to the competition.

“We all prayed for no nervousness and prayed that we were prepared,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd said while she was dead center with the judges, most of her nervousness was channeled through her excitement, calling her experience “phenomenal.”

“Just the thought process of being able to represent our law school and this University was something we all felt was important,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd and opposing team member Matthew Reeder received the judges’ honor as the competition’s best speakers.

Reeder, who will graduate in December, attributed some of the group’s success to their recent visit to the U.S. Supreme Court Building to witness an actual Supreme Court argument.

He said this helped him get a feel for what his day in court would be like.

NCCU School of Law’s associate dean for academic affairs, David Green, said Roberts had a strong reputation for asking lawyers tough questions during trial.

“That’s typical,” said Green.

“All the judges’ questions were pretty tough, but the students anticipated that.”

Besides judging the mock trial, Roberts was also present April 13 to swear in 20 candidates, all alumni of NCCU School of Law, for admission to the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. In the end, all three judges advised the finalists to slow down when speaking, control the tempo of the argument and understand their cases better than anyone else.

recycle recycle recycle recycle recycle recycle recycle recycle Recycle office paper, plastics, glass and aluminum in the recycling blue bins now located across campus.

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Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Allsop strikes ‘Gold’ with scholarship Goldwater Scholarship recognized as most prestigious for science undergraduates

BY SADE THOMPSON ECHO STAFF WRITER

Stephen Allsop, biology junior and jazz studies minor, has been awarded the 2009-2010 Barry Goldwater Scholarship for mathematical and scientific excellence.

The award is considered the most prestigious award in the U.S. given to undergraduates in the sciences.

This year, 278 scholarships were awarded nationally to undergraduate sophomores and juniors in the fields of mathematics, science, engineering and computer disciplines.

“The prestige of the scholarship means I am put in a caliber of students that when I apply for MD and Ph.D. programs, it will put me ahead of my competition,” said Allsop, an NCCCU Chancellor’s Scholar.

Recipients for the Goldwater Scholarship were selected from a field of 1,097 national applicants.

“I am delighted Stephen won the

scholarship because no one at North Carolina Central ever had the opportunity to win,” said Antonio Baines, an NCCU assistant professor of biology.

The scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

Allsop, a native of Trinidad, Tobago by way of Brooklyn, was chosen out of 1,100 other students in the field of mathematics, science and engineering.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship was instituted in 1986 by the U.S. Congress in honor of former fiveterm Senator Barry M. Goldwater.

Goldwater represented Arizona for 30 years from 1953-1965 and from 1969-1987.

He was defeated as the Republican nominee for president in 1964 by Democrat Lyndon Johnson and died in 1998.

Since 1986 the foundation has awarded 5,801 scholarships worth approximately $56 million dollars.

Allsop is the oldest of three children. His father is a naturopathic doctor and his mother is a high school special education teacher.

He said he has always had a passion for science and remembers watching the National Geographic Channel before he was old enough to attend elementary school.

“The more I learned, the more I became engaged,” he said.

After graduating, Allsop plans to do cancer research and surgical oncology.

He said he wants to develop ways to “treat cancer in a tumor- specific, minimally toxic manner.”

Allsop wants to advise his peers to challenge themselves.

“We have to raise our expectation of ourselves,” he said.

“Often, I hear many people say, ‘I just want to pass,’ and that bothers me because it demonstrates an expectancy of mediocrity that perpetuates the way other institutions views us as an HBCU.”

Steven Allsop in the Mary Townes Science Complex RODDRICK HOWELL/Echo Staff Photographer

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Easy, but not free

Art bonds neighbors

Private lot owner tows, charges $200

Hillside drama, music alumni flourish at NCCU

BY DAVID FITTS ECHO STAFF REPORTER

Students will get towed from the private parking lot at the corner of Merrick and Lawson streets.

CARLTON KOONCE/Echo Staff Photographer

BY ADRIANNE FOWLKES ECHO STAFF REPORTER

Though the commercial parking lot at the corner of Lawson and Merrick streets is conveniently located across from the newly renovated Pearson Cafeteria, it is not free.

Any student who thinks it’s free is in for a headache.

Students who park there should prepare to fork over $200 to the owner, Jimmie Young, for towing and storage.

“I honestly thought it was for students,” said mass communication sophomore Lea Randolph.

“I never noticed it [the parking lot] before.”

Despite the sign at the entrance of the lot informing people that the lot is private, many students make the mistake of parking there.

“I came from the cafeteria looking for my car, and it was gone,” said family and consumer science sophomore Curtisha Sellars.

“I was livid.”

Sellars was not the only student to suffer the steep towing and storage fee at Action Towing.

“I saw the towing sign, but I only stepped away to the convenience store for

like 10 minutes,” said business management junior Danielle Copeland.

Copeland said she returned to her Ford Explorer while it was getting towed, but she still had to redeem it at the towing lot.

Young’s lot is mostly used by faculty and staff, who pay $30-$40 per month for an assigned parking space.

Since the cafeteria opened, faculty are starting to see more students park in their assigned places.

“It’s only happened to me once, but that only happened since the cafeteria opened,” said Charmaine McKissick-Melton, associate professor of English and mass communication.

Faculty and staff use Young’s commercial lot because they have difficulty getting assigned campus parking.

Michele Ware, associate professor of English, used Young’s lot for two years while waiting for her assigned parking space in the Farrison-Newton Communications Building parking lot.

She pays $250 a year for the University-owned space.

“I waited on the waiting list for seven years before getting a spot behind the

Communications building,” said Ware.

She said that Young’s lot was close, convenient and safe.

Ware said that before she began using the lot, she used to park “way down Dupree Street.”

“Sometimes I left after dark, and I didn’t feel safe at all,” she said.

Before becoming a dirt parking lot, the 601 E. Lawson Street location was home to an abandoned house with a long history of housing code violations.

The Durham Department of Housing issued a demolition order in December 1999 after a 1998 fire.

Young bought the property in 1998 from James and Carolyn Walker for $42,000.

He then demolished the house and opened the private lot in 2005.

It was the first private lot serving NCCU. Sellars said that she will steer clear of the lot from now on.

“I definitely know not to chance parking there because they will tow your car in a heartbeat,” she said.

“There’s nothing like seeing your car one minute, and not seeing it the next.”

The family relationship between N.C. Central University and Hillside High School goes back to the days when the two schools were known respectively as the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua, and James A. Whitted High School.

Whitted, a former principal of Hillside, established the school in 1887.

In 1909, James Shepard established what is known today as NCCU. Since then, both schools have been working to improve both city and each other.

NCCU students and faculty work with Hillside students through mentoring programs and other projects designed to help students achieve.

Perhaps the most enduring bond has been formed through the performing arts.

Right now, 12 Hillside graduates are in NCCU’s band program and two are in the theatre program.

“We share a number of students who choose to be in the band, as well as on the stage,” said Karen Dacons-Brock, associate professor of theatre at NCCU. Dacons-Brock said that NCCU thrives on the cooperative relationship between the arts programs of the two schools.

“Both programs allow some flexibility when schedules overlap,” she said.

“Students who have participated in both programs appear to be satisfied with both.”

Xavier Cason, director of bands at Hillside, is a 1984 NCCU alumnus. He was a drum major during his senior year, earning a B.A. in music education.

Cason was band director at NCCU for eight years, before he went to Hillside in 1997.

“Hillside and Central borrow a lot from each other, as well as Hornets who become Eagles, which I am happy to see,” said Cason.

Another NCCU graduate, Wendell Tabb, is director of theatre at Hillside.

Tabb said his students also benefit from the connection between NCCU and Hillside.

“Many of our high school students are given opportunities to perform on the NCCU stage, and many of the NCCU students work with our students in theatre management, lighting, and set building and designs,” said Tabb.

Tiffany Agerston, theatre education freshman and a 2008 Hillside graduate, performed in numerous plays throughout her four years there.

She performed in her first college play, “Home,” in October.

Agerston said her Hillside credentials have helped her form bonds at NCCU. “I notice when people ask me where I went to high school and I respond with Hillside, they say they know what I’m talking about,” she said.

Tabb said he’s glad to have a fellow Hillside grad on board.

“Tiffany is an amazing performer,” Tabb said.

“If she applies the training she received at Hillside with the knowledge and training she will receive from the NCCU theatre faculty, I am sure she will con-

tinue to grow as a professional artist.”

Roy Ector, drum junior and a 2006 Hillside graduate, was a drum major during his senior year at Hillside.

“I feel blessed and proud,” Ector said.

“Being a drum major at Hillside High was like a dream to me.

“So when I was appointed to that position, it was an honor because of the legacy and tradition that it has.”

However, Ector said that the band also can pose challenges.

“You have to eat and sleep band 24 hours, seven days a week, and it’s going to be hard at times, but it pays off,” he said.

Cason said he is happy when he hears that one of his students has decided to go to NCCU. “It’s good to see someone take the path that I took, and I hope that I have influenced them in the same way,” said Cason.

Tabb echoed those sentiments.

“When my drama students decide to attend NCCU, that really touches my heart,” he said.

Former Hillside High students mass communication junior James Hines and music industry freshman Tiffany Agerston.

CARLTON KOONCE/Echo Staff Photographer

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Check is in the mail 255 nonrefundable deposts to be refunded

BY BETHANY SNEED ECHO STAFF WRITER

If all goes as planned, 255 students will receive housing deposit refunds in early May. Residential life has made an exception to their $150 nonrefundable deposit policy for rising juniors and seniors who paid their deposits before January 23.

“Central made a good decision on returning housing deposits to students they were unable to accommodate,” said nursing junior Osrielle McKoy. Jennifer Wilder, N.C. Central University director of Residential Life, made the decision on March 19 to refund housing deposits to those students who met the payment deadline, but did

not receive a room assignment.

“The housing situation is unfortunate, but at least the deposits are being refunded,” said mass communications junior Dorian Newton.

Wilder’s letter contained a form to be filled out and returned to Residential Life on or before March 31 in order to obtain a deposit refund.

If eligible students fail to turn in the form on time, they will not receive their housing deposit refund.

The check request for refunds will be turned into the Comptroller Office tomorrow.

The checks will then be mailed to the students’ permanent address on record in Banner.

“We anticipate it will be approximately two weeks before students receive their checks, as they have to be processed and approved in the Comptroller’s office before the checks can be issued,” said Wilder last week.

Residential Life has worked with the Office of Financial Aid and University Police to ease the difficulties students are facing with housing with a series of educational sessions.

On March 3, Residential Life held a housing fair.

There is also an off campus housing list on NCCU ‘s website and a list of off campus residences in the Residential Life office in the Student Affairs Complex.

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Actually, the world DOES need another lawyer.

Beyond NCCU

Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Fruit flies earn no respect ... except among scientists Flies and humans share many genes that control similar biological functions B Y R OBERT S. B OYD MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS (MCT)

WASHINGTON — That annoying kitchen pest, the fruit fly, occupies an honored place in science and medicine, despite slurs from politicians such as Sen. John McCain and his 2008 sidekick, Sarah Palin.

Scientists have been studying these dinky insects for more than a century, but they say that they’re still turning up valuable new information in more than 1,000 laboratories all over the world.

Fruit fly research is contributing to biomedical advances against autism, birth defects, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer and a host of other maladies.

It also sheds light on the intricate process by which a single fertilized cell develops into an adult human being.

Four Nobel prizes have been awarded for work on Drosophila, the scientific name for the fruit fly. It means “dew-lover” in Greek.

“The humble fruit fly has been a workhorse for biologists for almost a century,” said Scott Hawley, a cancer genetics expert at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo. “No other organism has contributed more to our understanding of evolutionary and population biology than Drosophila.”

Scientists prize fruit flies as ideal model organisms for study because they’re cheap, easy to raise and can produce 200 offspring in a life cycle of only 10 days.

Unlike houseflies, they

carry no diseases. They can, however, damage fruit crops, such as California’s olive groves, a behavior that brought them a dash of ill repute in last year’s election.

To protect his state’s olive growers, Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., inserted a $742,764 “earmark” in the last congressional appropriations bill to research ways to control the pests.

Some of the money is to be spent in France, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a research station.

Palin, then the Republican vice presidential candidate, snatched at this item.

She scoffed at “dollars that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. ... I kid you not.”

In the Senate last month, McCain again singled out fruit fly research in his condemnation of budget earmarks.

Despite such jibes, modern science is deeply indebted to the fruit fly.

“These studies established our understanding of the basic principles of genetics,” said Carl Thummel, a fly researcher at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City.

Fly research revealed “the nature of the gene, how genes are linked to one another along the chromosome and how chromosomes can recombine with one another.”

Despite their enormous differences, flies and humans descended from a distant common ancestor and share many genes that

control similar biological functions.

“Seventy percent of human and Drosophila genes are conserved, meaning the genes resemble each other in structure and still carry out a related or identical function,” said Allan Spradling, a biologist at the Carnegie Institute of Washington in Baltimore.

“It is much easier to understand gene function in Drosophila than in humans.”

“The same tool kit establishes body plans in flies and humans,” said Terry Orr-Weaver, a Drosophila expert at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

“The same genes build the fly eye and the human eye.”

A few of the many recent achievements in fruit fly research: • Rolf Bodmer at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, Calif., identified genes in Drosophila that cause heart rhythm defects in eight out of every 1,000 babies born each year.

• Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered a Drosophila protein called neurexin that’s a risk factor for autism.

• Researchers at the Langone Medical Center in New York discovered an enzyme connected to Barth syndrome, a sometimesfatal childhood heart disease.

“A hundred years working with this organism and we are really now just hitting our stride,” Hawley said.

“There is so much more to come.”

“Seventy percent of human and Drosophila genes are c onserved, meaning the genes resemble each other in structure and still carry out a related or identical function.”

ALLAN SPRADLING BIOLOGIST, CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF WASHINGTON IN BALTIMORE

These humble fruit flies, clinging to a matchstick, may be kitchenpests, but they contribute enormously to biological and medical science.

NEW SOUTH WALES DEPARTMENTOF PRIMARY INDUSTRIES/MCT

Beyond NCCU

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Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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15 years after apartheid, S. Africa at a crossroads Polls show that a plurality thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction

BY SHASHANK BENGALI MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPES

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – It's easy to look around this proud, polyglot city and think that the favorite slogan of the new South Africa — a “Rainbow Nation” of races striving together for prosperity —is becoming a reality.

Blacks and whites mingle in buzzing bars and restaurants, in state-of-the-art business parks and shopping malls, and in tree-lined suburbs that recall Southern California more than southern Africa. A blossoming black middle class fills the boardrooms and back offices

of a diverse economy that’s the engine and envy of the continent.

In the 15 years since Nelson Mandela won the first democratic elections here, finally closing the book on four decades of white apartheid rule, a lot has gone right with South Africa. Yet days before a new election, a deep malaise has taken hold, a creeping fear that the next decade and a half won’t be as good as the first was.

For months, the news pages have been dominated by stories about political corruption, intimidation and back-room dealing at the

The Church of the Abiding Savior, Lutheran introduces Rhonda Royal Hatton as the new Lutheran Campus Outreach Minister to NCCU. ABIDING SAVIOR CARES ABOUT YOU AND THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY. IT IS A PLACE WHERE WE ARE A PEOPLE OF GRACE, GROWING IN FAITH, MAKING GOD'S LOVE KNOWN.

Contact Rhonda Royal Hatton by e-mail at rhondahatton@gmail.com or by cell phone 919.698.3648 Church of the Abiding Savior, Lutheran Rev. Gordon Myers, Pastor 1625 S. Alston Avenue Durham, NC 919.682.7497

highest levels of the African National Congress, the party that led the fight against apartheid and has controlled the government ever since.

The man who figures to become president after the April 22 elections, Jacob Zuma, had a long-running bribery case against him suddenly dropped this month on legal technicalities that many suspect were the result of political pressure.

In low-income black townships, residents complain that while the leaders of the liberation struggle are getting rich running the new South Africa, they’re still spinning their wheels in the old one — a place of deprivation where electricity, clean water, affordable homes and decent schools remain out of reach.

Among the still-prosperous white minority, worries about crime and corruption are driving many young, educated people overseas, leaving the country short of doctors engineers and other skilled professionals.

Since capturing the world’s imagination in 1994, this country has seen itself as exceptional, an African oasis.

Now, for the first time, polls show that a plurality of people thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction.

“People thought this was not Africa,” said Simanga Khumalo, a professor of religion who grew up in the black township of Soweto in the 1970s, when it was a cauldron of anti-apartheid resistance.

“People looked at our economy and businesses, and we look like an advanced society. But this is Africa. We are no different. Our leaders also love power.”

In many ways, class barriers have replaced the old racial divisions. Despite robust economic growth under former President Thabo Mbeki, unemployment has risen to 38 percent from 32 percent in 1994.

The number of jobless has doubled. Despite one of the largest welfare systems in the world, more than half of blacks live below the poverty line, compared with about 10 percent of the rest of the country.

The “black diamonds” — the fast-growing black middle class — comprises 6 percent of the country but more than a quarter of its buying power. Grants and government loans have helped many launch new businesses, while affirmative action has dramatically diversified once lily-white corporate ranks.

A loan helped Ndumi

Thoko Modise, who marched in the 1976 student uprising in Soweto, South Africa, armed with stones and a metal trash-can lid, is pictured in the dining room of Wandie's, her family-owned restaurant in Soweto. The former black township has transformed into a middle-class city in the 15 years since apartheid in South Africa ended.

SHASHANK BENGALI/MCT

Medupe, armed only with a business plan, start a consulting firm in 2007. Now she has 20 employees, offices in a tree-lined business park and clients spread across a range of government departments.

Medupe grew up in a small eastern village and went to college on loans. Now she and her husband live in a gated home in a quiet suburb.

Their two children, 13 and 5, “live in a different world.”

But she only has to look at the children’s private schools, where three-quarters of their classmates are white, to be reminded that not everyone is thriving in the new South Africa.

“From our point of view, the Rainbow Nation exists,” Medupe said, invoking, as people here often do, the term coined by Nobel Prizewinning Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe the dream of an integrated South Africa.

“For someone at the bottom of the ladder ... things haven’t changed much from the apartheid years.”

Still, polls predict a comfortable ANC victory in a field that includes several smaller parties, although it likely will fall short of the 70 percent it won in 2004.

Speaking last month at a business breakfast, Zuma acknowledged the inequities but said the country remained “fiercely protective” of the party. “Support for the ANC among South Africans is as big and as enthusiastic as ever,” he said.

For those who fear for South Africa, Zuma is the

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AT PEDU 4510 NCCU

great bogeyman. The 67-yearold head of the ANC has polarized the nation like no politician before him.

Supporters think the former liberation fighter is a strong leader in the mold of a Zulu tribal patriarch (which he is, reportedly keeping four wives) and the corruption case against him, which dated to a multibillion-dollar arms deal in the 1990s, was plotted by his political enemies.

To critics, he’s an unschooled rabble-rouser with troubling views on women’s rights, the rule of law and AIDS. In 2006, during a trial in which he was acquitted of raping a woman he knew to be HIV-positive, he cast himself in the role of a traditional Zulu male, for whom it was required to have sex with a woman if she came before him wearing a skirt.

A former ANC parliamentarian, Andrew Feinstein, who resigned in 2001 over the party’s failure to probe the arms deal, thinks the dismissal of the Zuma bribery case has irreversibly damaged South Africa’s democratic credentials and could scare off foreign investors.

“All of these things make me very alarmed about the rule of law in the country,” Feinstein said.

“If the nature of South African democracy is that big bosses can get away with anything, people feel there is no real equality before the law.”

There’s more and more hand-wringing among South African whites.

In rural areas, farmers are

troubled by high crime rates and a lack of government support. In cities, resentment at affirmative-action policies and the attraction of betterpaying jobs abroad have lured thousands of professionals in their late 20s and early 30s to places such as Australia and Great Britain.

The fears run so high that one of the best-selling local books last year was called “Don’t Panic!” — a plea to South Africans to stay and help build their nation.

It began as an e-mail to employees from Alan KnottCraig, head of an Internet firm that circulated to South Africans around the globe and eventually became a book.

In an interview, KnottCraig said that crime and political instability are constant concerns. But the global economic slowdown has forced many young South Africans to rethink moving abroad, and he noted that Zuma has pledged to reduce crime, which affects South Africans of all races.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty. Jacob Zuma has quite a bad reputation,” he said.

But, ever the optimist, he quickly added: “I personally feel we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

“Anyone with a brain must be very happy with our political situation. Our presidents leave office peacefully — they don’t stay for 20 years, or change the constitution or get the army to protect them.

It’s a true democracy. The big thing we have lacked since Mandela is true leadership.”

Learn a beautiful language: ASL. Three credit hour courses offered this summer and next fall at NCCU. Also, look for this new listing: American Sign Language for Beginners II. For more information contact Dr. Kaky McPeak at kmcpeak@nccu.edu

United Christian Campus Ministry 525 Nelson Street, NCCU Campus

For more information or to get involved in Campus Ministries contact us at 530-5263 or e-mail us at mpage@nccu.edu

Michael D. Page Campus Minister

Join Christian Student Fellowship

Career Choices Jobless at Graduation?

Don t panic.

1 Contact your career center to explore career options.

2 Take an internship or volunteer in the short term.

3 Consider temporary work that may lead to full-time.

4 Network with friends, relatives, parents of friends, etc.

5 Maintain a positive attitude!

University Career Services William Jones Bldg, Lower Level Phone: 919-530-6337 Email: nccucareerservices@nccu.edu

Beyond NCCU

Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Is modern life hastening human evolution?

WASHINGTON — We’re not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.

In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.

Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.

Nowadays, the idea that “human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists,” said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.

“Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,” Sussman said in an email message.

The still-controversial concept of “ongoing evolution” was much discussed recently at the annual

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EPA CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generationsa.”

“Human volution did not stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa.”

BY R OBERT S. B OYD MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS (MCT)

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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY APRIL 17, 2009 ENDANGERMENT FINDING

HENRY HARPENDING ANTHROPOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago.

It’s also the topic of a new book, “The 10,000 Year Explosion,” by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

“For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago,” Harpending said.

“Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued.”

In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend that “human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. ... The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history.”

Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes.

Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations.

If they’re particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.

“Any gene variant that increases your chance of

having children early and often should be favored,” Cochran said in an e-mail message.

This is the process of “natural selection,” which Charles Darwin proposed 150 years ago and is still the heart of modern evolutionary theory.

For example, a tiny change in a gene for skin color played a major role in the evolution of pale skin in humans who migrated from Africa to northern Europe, while people who remained in Africa kept their dark skin. That dark skin protected Africans from the tropical sun’s dangerous ultraviolet rays; northerners’ lighter skin allowed sunlight to produce more vitamin D, important for bone growth.

Another set of gene variants produced a different shade of light skin in Asia.

“Asians and Europeans are both bleached Africans, but they evolved different bleaches,” Harpending said.

Despite modern medical and technological advances, the pressures that lead to evolution by natural selection have continued.

The massive AIDS epidemic that’s raging in southern Africa, for example, is “almost certainly” causing gene variants that protect against HIV, the

virus that causes AIDS, to accumulate in the African population, Harpending said.

When he was asked how many genes currently are evolving, Harpending replied: “A lot. Several hundred at least, maybe over a thousand.”

Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of WisconsinMadison, said, “Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold.”

A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world’s population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties.

“Today, beneficial mutation must be happening far more than ever before, since there are more than 6 billion of us,” Cochran said.

The changes are so rapid that “we could, in the very near future, compare the genes of old people and young people” to detect newly evolving genes, Cochran said.

Skeletons from a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago also might provide evidence of genetic change.

“Human evolution didn’t stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa,” Harpending said. “It never stopped.”

Friday was that the scientific evidence required action to reduce risks.

U.S. and international climate scientists agree that observed changes in the atmosphere, oceans and ice show the world is warming because of human actions, and that the trend carries risks of irreversible climate disruption that could persist for centuries.

Scientists have charted an increase in Earth’s average temperature in recent decades, as the amount of these gases in the atmosphere has grown to levels higher than any time in human history.

The EPA’s statement, a proposed “endangerment finding,” was based on peer-reviewed scientific analysis of the effects of an accumulation of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations.

“Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low-carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation,” Jackson said.

“This pollution problem has a solution — one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

MAKE YOUR RESERVATION

TIMELINE 1999 – Environmental and renewable energy groups filed a legal petition requesting that the Clinton administration EPA regulate greenhouse gas emission from cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act. 2003 – The Bush administration denied the petition. It said that it lacked authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases to fight climate change, and that even if it did have the authority it chose not to do so. Environmental groups sued over the denial.

April 2007 – The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did have authority to regulate the emissions under the law.

It said the EPA had to determine whether greenhouse gases endangered health and welfare or whether the science was too uncertain to know.

December 2007 – The Bush administration prepared a proposal for finding that the emissions endangered the environment, but didn’t release it.

July 2008 – The Bush administration called for further comments on potential regulations of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. April 17, 2009 – The EPA issued the “endangerment finding.” It said the emissions endanger both health and the environment. Such a finding requires the EPA to take action to prevent that harm.

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• English as Second Language (ESL) • Reading

To l l F r e e 8 6 6 - 9 5 7 - 2 7 11

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Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Photos by Mitchell Webson / Story by Siegfried Leyh

NCCU alum Thomas Robinson (center), one of four founders of NCCU’s dance team, Underground Legendz, gets the crowd hype as he attempts to pass off his “energy ball” to other dance contestants.

Phuong Nguyen holding a one-hand stand in the solo male category.

Salah traveled from Paris,France to the United States for the first time ever to perform and judge the dance competition, “Brang It”.

he “Brang It” dance battle rolled through N.C. Central University McLendon-McDougald Gymnasium on Saturday, April 18.

The event was being filmed for a TV pilot featuring dancers from small-town America.

The sun came down, the lights came up and the music started to rumble.

The judges ran out to the middle of the floor and posed everyone.

“I was very excited to see a different type of performance. It had my attention to where I was in a state of shock,” said Martha Butler,

T

history junior.

“Everything was put together well and it look like a story line, clean, like it was start from a Hollywood studio set,” she said.

McLendon-McDougald Gymnasium was set up to capture the feel of an eyecatching arena Cameras were set to record action from all angles.

“It looked like a movie,” said Dominique Holiday, physical education senior.

“It really looks better than ABDC, where the judges get involved with the show,” Holiday said.

Judges included Roland “Ro Ro” Tabor, international

b-boy/breakdancer Jacob “Krazy Kujo” Lyons, popping and locking artist Salah from France and street dancer Prozak, aka John Gillette.

Host Prozak started the show with the solo males.

Then came solo females, solo youth, and the big event: dance crew and step team.

Dancers came from area middle and high schools and colleges from as far away as Chicago and New Jersey.

There was a live musical performance, with Brandon Broadway Robinson and Dev Dixon doing the songs they made famous.

A highlight was Salah’s signature performance.

Salah is a star on the French version of “So You Think You Can Dance.”

He creates his performances out of his dreams.

The audience reacted with “oooos” and “aaahhs.”

“How did he do that?” they asked.

After head-to-head battles, the winners were Ashsia from Wakefield High School as female solo, Josh, aka Skatz, from Southern High School as male solo, Little Rockstar from Neal Junior High as youth solo, and Underground Legendz from NCCU as dance crew.

On Sunday the Brang It

n See DANCE Page 11

Brandon “No Cents” McCerrimmon from Southern High School posing in a B-Boy stance.

A&E

Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Stand-up guy Banner encourages students to step up and lead

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Quality Matters

Day 26 Forever in a Day Bad Boy Records

out of on the 2 5 black hand side Rhythm & Blues has given us some amazing male music groups.

These groups have given us classic albums.

When one thinks of Day 26, does classic come to mind? How about gimmick? ’Cause gimmick works for me.

The group’s latest album, “Forever in a Day,” is typical predictable Diddy.

I guess this is the perk of being reality show stars on Bad Boy, bigname producers and songwriters.

The album features producers like Bryan Cox, Jermaine Dupri, Jazze Pha, and T-Pain.

Tank and Ne-Yo are just two of the artists who helped with songwriting for the album.

Willie and Qwanell are the only members of Day 26 who participated in the songwriting process.

Dang, there are five of you — can you give us

New Edition Boyz II Men Jodeci Jagged Edge 112 something original?

One of the best tracks on the album is “Perfectly Blind,” which fits the feel of the group and was co-written by Q’s boo Dawn.

Songs like “Bipolar” and “Girlfriend” sound awkward and messy — they don’t mix well with the group.

It’s understandable to want to try new things. Let’s just make sure they work first.

The rest of the album is basically all the same song.

This album doesn’t stand out against the classic R&B dudes we know and love.

This is just another one of Diddy’s money-makers.

Wait for the album to be on imeem — it’s not a must to take home.

Besides, all your other cd’s will want to move out.

This whole Day 26, Danity Kane thing is unreal to me. Honestly, is it real?

Should we take them seriously as artists?

Can we honestly say they deserve the fame and attention over artists who worked their way to the top?

A true artist is one of a kind. If Diddy can replace you at his own will, then you could be anyone who can keep up with his image.

— Joanna Hernandez

Wale from DC to NC Hip Hop is a genre of music that is considered to be ever-evolving. What started with two turntables in the park would turn into a boulder with massive velocity, colliding with every Josh P. other genre of music in Leak its way.

Contrary to popular belief, hip hop did not have the same origin story in every area.

Meet Wale, a 24-year-old D.C./Maryland native and newcomer to this age of hip hop.

He broke into the mainstream with his fusion of his regional love of Go-Go music with hip hop. “We didn’t have turntables,” said Wale during his set.

“Instead we had musicians.”

It wouldn’t be historically incorrect to say that go-go music, which derived from funk, would later aid in the birthing of hip hop in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

Although known locally, his name would begin to travel in 2006 due to the success of his song “Dig Dug” and his first mix tape, “Paint a Picture.”

In 2007, he would join forces with Grammy-Awardwinning producer Mark

Ronson, who is responsible for the success and sound of Amy Winehouse’s “Fade to Black.” Ronson would ink Wale to a production deal with his Allido Records imprint.

“W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.,” his rendition of electronic duo Justice’s hit song “D.A.N.C.E.,” would garner him more national attention from a wide span of music listeners.

Clothing sponsorships would come from LRG and 10Deep and the mix tapes would follow until he would announce to fans that he was closing a major distribution deal with Interscope Records.

In preparation for the release of his first album, “Attention Deficit,” Wale is on an eponymous nationwide promotional tour. J. Cole, a North Carolina native and Roc Nation signee, and Colin Munroe also perform on the tour.

Last week during the tour’s stop at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, Wale brought out N. C. Central’s own Patrick “9th Wonder” Douthit to announce that he would be working with 9th Wonder for his upcoming major release.

Wale’s highly anticipated “Back to the Feature” mix tape will feature full production from 9th Wonder.

More information on Wale’s visit www.elitaste.com.

Rapper and hip hop activist David Banner, right, surprised students in the Hip Hop in Context course on last Thursday.

RAY TYLER/Echo Staff Photographer

B Y E RICA M C R AE ECHO STAFF WRITER

Students were truly caught off guard last Thursday when rapper David Banner walked into their Hip Hop in Context class.

Banner is a rap artist and producer who has made an impact on the hip hop community because of his ability to reach out to his audiences motivationally, spiritually and sincerely.

He helps his listeners understand the importance of appreciating where they come from and where they are going.

“In our quest to chase the American dream, we have forgotten our opportunities at leadership,” Banner said.

He used Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as examples of great leaders who made a few mistakes on their journeys to success.

“Yes, Malcolm was a pimp, yes, Martin was a womanizer, but that didn’t affect their ability to lead,” Banner said.

“You can’t let your mistakes stop you from becoming a leader.”

The hip hop activist stressed the importance of utilizing your strengths, talents, and weaknesses to prepare yourself for future situations.

“Take your mistakes and learn from them — you never know when you have to use your utility belt,” he said.

Mass communication sophomore Alesha Russell said, “I really appreciate Banner for coming to speak to our class because most hip hop artists wouldn’t have; and to know that his advice and words of wisdom was genuine means a lot to me.”

Banner pointed out his personal values and positive accomplishments, which he said the media

rarely acknowledges.

Banner was SGA president at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, graduating with a 3.99 GPA. He also holds a masters degree in education from the University of Maryland and was lauded by the National Black Caucus of State Legislatures for his relief work after Hurricane Katrina.

Psychology senior Marcus Waters said, “David Banner has always been a stand-up guy.

“Most people lecture at us and not to us, but Banner’s connection was real.

“He related and understood where we came from and didn’t sugar-coat his message.”

Banner ended by urging students to stay focused and to take responsibility in their universities, jobs, and communities to become better leaders for future generations.

DANCE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

Rock Steady Crew from Southern High School compete in the crew battle on Saturday.

MITCHELL WEBSON/Echo Staff Photographer

Workshop at Hillside High School was the hightlight of the weekend.

Participants received intense training from the judges, beginning with Prozak’s crash course in street dance.

“I got my start posting my video freestyles on BoogieZone.com and asking anyone for critiques on anything,” said Prozak. . Prozak is originally from Mobile, Alabama, but reside now in Denver, Colorado.

Serious dancers travel to take his intense class, but because of the

“Brang It” tour, it was possible to be here in Durham.

“This whole event made a big impact on everyone, making them aware of what they have to give to the world.”

Ater his training session Kujo showed B-Boy/Breaking, Salah, showed his methods of warming exercise and popping, and Ro Ro taught a choreographed routine in which nine dancers were given the opportunity to be in a music video filmed at Digital Circus in Raleigh.

This was the first time ever

Salah has taught in the United States.

“The competition and workshop was the greatest thing that I ever experience,” said Noel Bailey criminal justice junior.

Baily said she has been to four fourth, but “Brang It” gave her the opportunity to feel like a family member with the instructors.

“You can be afraid,” she said.

“But you have to go out there and show your heart and that is what a lot of new fellow family members would say too.”

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Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

Classifieds please recycle

Home Screening for Bacterial Vaginosis to Prevent STDs The BRAVO Study Nationwide research study with approved medication to see if more frequent testing and treatment for bacterial vaginosis, a vaginal infection that is not an STD, will help to reduce the chances of women getting gonorrhea and chlamydia.

After the initial visit, swabs are collected at home and mailed, every 2 months for a year.

DUKE CONTINUING STUDIES

Qualifications: female, ages 18-25, no vaginal symptoms at time of first visit, and other criteria.

Testing & treatment at no cost, compensation will be provided.

Paralegal Program Summer Intensive Program begins May 26th • Earn a paralegal certificate in 6-weeks • Curriculum provides skill-based training • Convenient daytime classes • NC State Bar Qualified program • Instructors all licensed attorneys • Associate’s or bachelor’s degree required

FREE INFORMATION SESSION: Tuesday, April 14 @ 6:30pm Erwin Square Mill Building, Bay C, Durham, NC

For more information, or to register: www.learnmore.duke.edu/paralegal or call 919.684.6259 1-866-EDU-DUKE

Campus Echo Online www.campusecho.com

Please call: UNC Clinical Research Staff in DURHAM: Karen Lau, FNP: (919) 560-7849 or Sara Sousa, FNP: (919) 560-7850

Be Your Own Boss Make your own schedule. Make money on your own time. Become an Independent Avon Representative. Sale online. For a little more than the price of a lipstick, you can start your own business. Avon is the world’s largest direct seller of beauty products.

Contact me today, with Avon, you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself.

To buy or begin selling Avon products contact Julie Mitchell Home office: (336) 364-1881 Cell: (336) 583-5319 Email: juliemitchell29@yahoo.com www.youravon.com/jmitchell4188

NCCU WRITING STUDIO You wouldn’t wait until the night before to practice for the big game ...

Walk-ins welcome, appointments prefered Monday & Thursday from 10 am - 5 pm Wednesday 10 am - 6 pm Friday 10 am - 2 pm Room 339 ~ Farrison-Newton Communications Building 530-7554 ~ writingstudio@nccu.edu Director Dr. Karen Keaton Jackson

So why wait until the last minute to start your paper?

Sports

Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

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Moton the right man for the job NCCU TAGS LEVELLE MOTON AS BASKETBALL’S NEXT HEAD COACH BY

AARON SAUNDERS

ECHO SPORTS REPORTER

After N.C. Central University fired former head basketball coach of five years Henry Dickerson, the search for a viable candidate was on.

Many applied but only one man survived: NCCU alumnus LeVelle Moton, who was announced as the 17th men’s basketball coach on March 25.

Moton attended NCCU from 1992-1996. He was named to the ALL-CIAA first team his junior and senior years and amassed 1,714 points.

Upon graduation in 1996, Moton played professional basketball for four years in Indonesia and Israel.

In 2004, he was inducted into NCCU’s athletic hall of fame .

Moton started his coaching career in 2001 as head coach at West Millbrook Middle School, where he stayed until 2004.

Moton then became head coach at Sanderson High School in Raleigh, a position he held until he was hired as assistant basketball coach at NCCU in 2007.

Moton, NCCU’s 3rd all time leading scorer, is ecstatic about his new job.

He described last month as one he would never forget.

“It’s an incredible feeling and I am still at a loss for words. I am just happy that God blessed me with a great chance,” he said.

Moton said he is honored to coach at his alma mater.

“It’s not about me,” he said. “The biggest accomplishment to me is to be a

NCCU basketball coach Levelle Moton chats with Bryan Ayala in 2008.

Echo File Photo

part of something greater than myself, and to be a part of this great coaching chain.”

According to Moton NCCU coaching has a great history.

“John McClendon coached here and he learned the game from the creator of basketball, Dr. James Naismith,” he said.

Moton came from what some would be considered a hopeless road. Growing up in the Lane Street

“I believe that adversity introduces a man to himself.”

LEVELLE MOTON NCCU HEAD BASKETBALL COACH

Projects in Raleigh, Moton plans to draw from his past to help return prominence to the basketball program.

“I believe that adversity introduces a man to himself,” Moton said.

He said living in those negative situations gave him the drive to succeed.

“I am no savior. I don’t walk on water.

“Hard work, dedication, discipline and recruiting is what it will take to get the

program back on track.”

One thing that will help on that journey is recruits.

NCCU has already landed one: C.J. Wilkerson, a 64 wing man from Clinton Junior College who was first-team all-region.

Moton described him as “a very talented and good kid.”

The Eagles struggled last year to find scoring from the inside and at times seemed to be overmatched by other teams’

depth.

The lone bright spot from last season’s abysmal record was freshman guard Jamar Briscoe, the Eagle’ leading scorer and go -to man at all times .

As for the Eagles’ schedule next year, Moton says that nothing is concrete.

“We don’t know for sure who we will be playing, but we are working diligently to finish the schedule. “We want to add five or six more games to complete it.”

Track team speeds to P.A.

EAGLELAND

Track team to compete in prestigous Penn Relays

T-shirts sweats polo shirts decals license tags tote bags license frames baseball caps buttons mugs caps car flags pens pencils pennants pom poms bags ceramic eagles towels NCCU framed print, and much more.

BY

AARON SAUNDERS

ECHO SPORTS REPORTER

When one thinks of the track and field in America, two meets come to mind: the Olympics and the historic Penn Relays.

Penn Relays started more than 100 years ago and has seen many great athletes participate from high schools, colleges and the professional ranks.

This Thursday, N.C Central University will travel to Pennsylvania to compete in the annual event in which the athletes compete against the best track and field athletes the United States has to offer.

The lineage of Penn

Relays is classic and historic. The greatest of runners have run here from Jesse Owens to Maurice Green.

Head track coach Mike Lawson enjoys the atmosphere of this landmark event.

Lawson, who ran for St. Augustine’s College from 1977-1981, describes the feeling of 55,000 screaming fans looking down at him on the track as very exciting and nerve-wracking.

“For me the Penn Relays feels like going to the Olympics,” Lawson said.

“There is just that electric buzz that you get from being there.”

Traditionally, NCCU has been a force to be reckoned

with when it comes to track and field.

In 1972, two Eagles relay teams won their respective races.

The sprint medley relay team was enshrined on the Penn Relay Wall of Fame in 1995; ten years later, the 880yard relay team was enshrined.

NCCU has also had individuals selected to the Wall of Fame such as Larry Black and Lee Calhoun.

Black, an Olympic gold and silver medalist and Calhoun, a two-time 120 Yard NCAA champion, are considered two of NCCU’s greatest runners.

Under Head Coach Mike Lawson, NCCU has been

competitive in the relays.

Last year, NCCU won the 4x100 collegiate relays.

NCCU senior Will Scott also took home the triple jump for the collegiate division.

“This year, we won’t be able to defend our 4x100 crown due to some injuries that we had during the season, but we expect our 4x200 men’s team to be good,” said Lawson.

“Our girls have a really good chance of doing well, we just have to bring our best game.”

The meet will start this Thursday morning. The Eagles will look to bring home the title Penn Relays Champions of America.

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Opinions

14 N

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Campus Echo WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009

IVER SITY

Alarming days and nights magine you’re lying in bed. It’s two o’clock in the morning and you’re having the best night’s sleep you could imagine. Your room is quiet, dark, peaceful.

Suddenly, there’s a faint shrieking in the distance. It’s growing louder ... now it’s right in your ears.

A piercing alarm is going off.

T h e Britney building is Rooks b e i n g evacuated.

You are forced to wake up, throw on your hoodie and run outside in the middle of the night.

The fire alarm has been set off repeatedly in the Eagle Landing Residence Hall this semester, and it’s very disturbing.

There have been fire drills at all hours of the

I

night and sometimes during daylight hours as well.

I’ve been forced to leave my room and stand in the designated waiting area numerous times and in all kinds of weather.

I’ve had to stand in my pajamas in the rain, snow, and wind due to these false alarms.

To make matters worse, it was announced a couple of times that someone had pulled the alarm as a prank.

This isn’t funny. It’s childish and annoying.

People have class in the morning.

They don’t have time to keep waking up in the middle of the night just to stand outside for 20 to 30 minutes at a time for nothing.

There’s never a good time for me to get comfortable in my room because I keep expecting the alarm to go off.

I’m scared to take a

There’s never a good time to really get comfortable ... this disturbance cannot continue. The unnecessary fire alarms have got to stop!

shower in my own bathroom because I fear I’m going to have run outside covered in soap and a towel in order to get out of the building within the designated four minutes.

I did not sign up for this.

Fire drills and alarms are supposed to teach safety, but at the rate they go off in Eagle Landing, no one would take a real fire seriously if ever there was one.

One or two drills per semester are acceptable — we have them at least twice a week.

Some students have

been fined because their floors’ alarms have been pulled.

A thousand-dollar fine is split among the residents of the floor on which the alarm was pulled and charged to their accounts.

A police officer threatened to fine me for nearly entering the building after I was mistakenly told it was okay to go in.

But why should I be fined for wanting to go back to my own room?

I’m the one being interrupted.

When there’s no real fire, students can’t be

expected to keep jumping up for these phony alarms that occur at any random hour.

If anything, I should be receiving compensation or a partial refund for being disrupted repeatedly in a residence that I am shelling out $5,200.16 to stay in.

If we have cameras in the building, why aren’t they being utilized to catch the people responsible for pulling the alarm?

Maybe we need more surveillance, or someone to dust for fingerprints.

And if the other half of the problem is alarms going off due to triggers as small as a bag of popcorn burning in the microwave, then maybe the alarms are too sensitive.

Either way, this disturbance cannot continue.

The unnecessary fire alarms have got to stop!

drawing by Rashaun Rucker

Question:

As a graduating senior, what have you learned at NCCU?

“I’m from a predominantly white area and I have a lot of white friends, so I learned more about the black culture in general.”

Bye to you, NCCU

— Alvin Hendricks hether we know it or not, every student has come to this University to fulfill a purpose.

It’s funny; when I arrived at N . C .

Central University in fall 2005, I was oblivious to what mine Geoffrey was.

Cooper I knew I didn’t want to be one of those students who just went to class, the cafeteria, the dormitory.

I strived to be informed and conscious of what was going on around me.

Since my sophomore year, I have had the privilege to report and uncover news integral to students on this campus.

Many students may say the Campus Echo was informative as well as entertaining. Some

W

may harbor different opinions.

Either way, it’s fine with me.

Let’s be for real — we don’t get a five- or sixfigure salary.

Tenure, benefits and a raise aren’t figured in either.

But what I have been most humbled by is the opportunity to serve NCCU’s campus and the Durham community.

This required time, ambition and most importantly, love.

Amidst the frustrating days of production and stories facing deadline, I asked myself countless times, “Is this all worth it?”

Was it worth the long and restless nights camping out on the sofa, pondering how I was going to finish schoolwork and wake up on time for class?

Was it worth missing meetings and functions with my LBs, only to get

I’m not weeping because it’s over, but smiling because it happened.

grilled the next day?

Was it worth playing catch-up with friends because I didn’t have time to call them back?

Was it worth breaking dinner dates, promises, even missing my last Homecoming?

Some would say, “Hell no!”

Oddly enough, I beg to differ. When you love something, sometimes you have to sacrifice.

There’s no other way.

Many hold a special place in my heart.

To God: You are love.

You are my life. You are the reason.

To my family: You are my biggest cheerleaders.

I love you all for supporting and trusting me to

N ORTH C AROLINA C ENTRAL U NIVERSITY

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Letters & Editorials The Echo welcomes letters and editorials. Letters to the editor should be less than 350 words. Editorials should be about 575 words. Include contact information. The Echo reserves the right to edit contributions for clarity, vulgarity, typos and miscellaneous grammatical gaffs. Opinions published in the Echo do not necessarily reflect those of the Echo editorial staff.

E-mail: campusecho@nccu.edu Web address: www.campusecho.com Phone: 919 530 7116 Fax: 919 530 7991 Spring 2009 Publication dates: 1/21, 2/25, 3/25, 4/8, 4/22 © NCCU Campus Echo/All rights reserved The Denita Monique Smith Newsroom Room 348, Farrison-Newton Communications Bldg.

NCCU, Durham, NC 27707

make the right choices. I shall continue to make you proud.

DP: I can’t begin to thank you for all your guidance and patience with me during these last three years. I’m going to miss your crazy, random outbursts and robust sense of humor. Thank you for believing in me and my leadership.

To the Echo: Nas said it best: “The World Is Yours.” Continue to be revolutionary! Stand for quality! Stand for the students! Report and write for change, not for space.

Special recognition goes out to my favorite teachers in the English and Mass Comm

Campus Echo Online campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com campusecho.com

Department: Chambers, Kuwahara, Nowell, Carl, Mac, Rountree, Evans, Keaton-Jackson, Nessly, Paulin, Williams, Maynor, Ware, Forte, Soper, HarringtonAustin, Pearce and Fuller. I applaud you all for your daily sacrifices to raise the intellectual status of our student body.

To friends: Much love goes out to those who have held me together throughout the best and worst of times. You will never be forgotten.

To NCCU students: I did it for all of you. I am merely a servant.

Without all of you, my work and achievements mean absolutely nothing. Thank you.

So peace, two fingers, arrivederci, Assalam Alaikum. However you want to decipher it … I’m not weeping because it’s over, but smiling because it happened. One love.

“Myself. The maturation process, the people around me, the whole Eagle community have inspired a change in me and who I am as a woman. ” —Ashley Witherspoon

“You cuss folk out to get things done!

Also I’ve become more mature and focused. Central has taught me the world is not easy.

That life is not a beach chair.”

—Joseph Perkins