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Raleigh, North Carolina
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State’s largest union invites UNC athletes to join association Katherine Kehoe News Editor
MATT KUBOTA/TECHNICIAN
The above graph shows the location and frequency of bike theft on main campus during the last three-and-a-half years.
3.5 years, 440 bikes POLICE RECORDS REVEAL TRENDS IN TIME AND LOCATION OF BIKE THEFT Staff Report
A total of 440 bikes has been stolen at N.C. State since January 2011. Through bike theft is the most common type of crime on campus, at times seeming like
it is an inevitable fact of college life, data from Campus Police indicates knowledge of certain trends can help students avoid situations in which bike theft is more likely to occur. More bikes have been stolen next to
Bragaw, Sullivan, Wood and Avent Ferry Residence Halls and next to D.H. Hill than anywhere else on campus. In the past three years, 20 bikes have been
BIKE continued page 3
The State Employee’s Association of North Carolina’s Board of Governors unanimously voted to allow UNC-System athletes who are playing on scholarship to join the association earlier this month. The ruling will allow SEANC to treat athletes playing for scholarship at a North Carolina state school as state employees, but the potential effects the decision will have on N.C. State Athletics remains unclear. The rights of college athletes has been a long-time controversial topic of discussion, but recently gained more media attention when the National Labor Relations Board granted the Northwestern University football team the right to unionize in March. Topics such as compensating athletes beyond their scholarships, giving athletes the rights to their own names sold on memorabilia and profitable TV rights contracts are among those currently being debated in the national spotlight. SEANC made the decision to allow scholarship athletes to join after the NLRB decision regarding Northwest-
ern University scholarship football players, according to SEANC Communications Director Toni Davis. “If student scholarship athletes wanted to be represented by a union or an association, we wanted them to know that SEANC was ready to invite them into our association with open arms,” Davis said. N.C. State Director of Athletics Debbie Yow declined to comment on the effect the decision may have on athletes at the University. “We currently do not understand any of the potential advantages to our student athletes joining the Union,” Yow said in an email. “For that reason, I have nothing definitive to say at this point other than we will continue to do all we can to support our student athletes and that will never change.” SEANC is an association of state employees with about 55,000 members in every agency around the state. “After folks begin to join, the way our association works, we are a membershipdriven association so what we lobby for comes from the priorities that our members describe,” Davis said. Though no UNC-System Athletes have joined at this
UNION continued page 2
Female speakers notably absent throughout commencement history Karima Boukary Correspondent
COURTESY OF NCSU SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER
Maya Angelou speaks to graduates at the 1990 spring commencement. Angelou died Wednesday.
Maya Angelou dies, leaves NCSU legacy Staff Report
Maya Angelou, the internationally acclaimed author and civil rights activist as well as N.C. State’s first female commencement speaker, died Wednesday morning in her Winston-Salem home. Angelou spoke to N.C. State’s spring 1990 graduation class, stressing the importance of maintaining courage throughout life’s challenges to the class of more than 3,000 students. “Without courage, you can practice no other virtue with consistency,” Angelou said, the Technician reported. “You can’t be consistently kind or true, or fair or loving without courage. Without courage, we can strive for nothing great.” During the speech, An-
gelou also reminded students of the importance of perseverance within their educations as well as throughout life in the face of adversity. “You are beginning to realize the importance of the long hours you have spent reading and rereading, memorizing and rememorizing, solving and resolving,” Angelou said. “You will understand why you sacrificed parties and fiestas and weekends at the beach. You will understand how important you are to us.” Angelou emphasized the symbolic importance of a graduation ceremony and compared the process of acquiring an education to a long, upward climb.
Of the 63 commencement speakers N.C. State has hosted in the past 50 years, only five, or less than 8 percent, have been women, according to N.C. State Registration & Records. Female students currently compose 44.4 percent of the student population. Sixty years ago, females accounted for only 1.2 percent. Although the University opened its doors in 1887, the first full-time female student arrived 34 years later in 1921. Commencement speakers serve as a reflection of the
WOMEN continued page 2
CAIDE WOOTEN/TECHNICIAN
David S. Ferriero, archivist of the United States, addresses the graduating class of 2014 May 10 in PNC Arena. Ferriero was one of two honorary degree recipients at the ceremony.
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