OLD GOLD&BLACK W A K E
F O R E S T
U N I V E R S I T Y
T H U R S D AY, A P R I L 2 3 , 2 0 0 9
VOL. 92, NO. 29
“Covers the campus like the magnolias”
Biden to speak at commencement
Outside the Bubble...
By Katie Phillips | Staff writer
Student held without bail in Craigslist killing Phillip Markoff, a 22-year-old medical student, is being held without bail for possibly killing a woman he may have met through a Craigslist online ad. A not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf. Semiautomatic firearms were found in Markoff’s home and he has also been charged in connection with a robbery that took place four days earlier. The victim was 26-year-old Julissa Brisman, who sustained blunt head trauma and was shot three times at close range.
Man who killed family was in severe debt
Last fall when Joe Biden was here during the presidential campaign, he indicated that he would like to return to the university, and returning he is. The university has announced the commencement speaker for the graduation ceremony of 2009: Vice President Joe Biden. The university celebrates a long standing tradition of inviting distinguished speakers to commencement ceremonies. For the 2009 ceremonies, Biden was among several individuals who were suggested by faculty, staff and students as a possible candidate for commencement speaker. In the last 10 years, the
university has hosted an array of speakers. Past speakers include two journalists, U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain, past Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former first lady Barbara Bush, and alumnus and internationally acclaimed golf player Arnold Palmer. Biden was born in Scranton, Penn., as the eldest of four children. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1965, Biden attended law school at Syracuse University. After attaining his law degree, he moved back to the Wilmington area and began his own law
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Joe Biden, current U.S. vice president and former senator, will be this year’s commencement speaker.
Blending Beads & Business
Christopher Wood, 34, shot his wife and three children to death before killing himself April 17. Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins revealed that Wood was $460 thousand in debt. The family has also been unsuccessful in selling their Florida home. Wood left suicide notes to his wife, each of his children, one to his mother, father, and sister, and one that was not addressed to anyone in particular, but was more apologetic.
By CeCe Brooks | Contributing editor
What do you get when you combine Pro Humanitate with artistic ability and a strong work ethic? Ali Carroll: a Kemper Fellow in entrepreneurship and university graduate who is currently part of the Fifth Year Institute, an “intensive incubator program” offered by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts (OELA). Carroll started a jewelry company called Adia Beading that helps women in a small Kenyan village earn a living by selling the jewelry they make in the U.S. She first visited the country on a trip with her family. Her parents had expressed interest in retiring there, but they had never been so they went on what could be called an “educational vacation.” “My parents wanted us to be exposed to that kind of poverty and see what that might prompt us to do,” Carroll, a studio art and communication double major, said of the experience. “When you see something like that you have a responsibility to respond to that, in some way.” Even while she was still
Iraq ambassador confirmed by Senate Veteran diplomat Christopher Hill was confirmed by the Senate on April 21 as the ambassador to Iraq. The Iraq embassy is the largest U.S. embassy in the world. Hill was the lead U.S. negotiator in the nowstalled North Korean disarmament talks. He replaces Ryan Cooker.
Ship hijacking suspect charged with piracy Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, a suspect in the hijacking of the U.S. flagged Maersk Alabama, has been charged with piracy. Piracy carries a minimum life sentence. He has also been charged with conspiracy to seize a ship by force, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking and two firearm charges. Muse acted as the leader of the pirates who allegedly took over the Maersk Alabama.
Obama invites Middle East leaders to Washington President Barack Obama has invited several key regional leaders to Washington in an effort to achieve peace in the Middle East. These consultations will take place in the coming weeks. Obama wishes to speak separately with the Egyptian president, Israeli prime minister and Palestinian authority president. Leaders of Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., have not been invited.
on the trip, she started thinking about what she could do. When she went to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, she found some women selling handmade beads and she found her way. “The vibrancy of their colors was unparalleled with any precious stones I’d ever seen, and my artistic eye was immediately attracted to the beads,” she says in an article she wrote for Wake Forest Magazine about her experience. “I began mentally arranging the beads into jewelry designs.” Carroll spent $250 buying about 500 beads. “In my free time (working) at camp I started messing around with the beads,” she said. “I went to a craft store and bought some tools and bindings and started copying the jewelry from my jewelry box.” She didn’t originally intend to sell her pieces, but friends asking to buy some prompted her to sell the jewelry she made from the rest of the beads. In the first week of selling the jewelry, she made $1,500, which she donated to a non-profit in Kenya. This was the end of it for Carroll, but only for a little while. After traveling back to Africa on a Pro Humanitate grant to study microfinance, she began to think she could make this into a real business. “Seeing the success of microfinance made me think that I could do something more to help these women.” Along with her best friend from her hometown of Nashville , Eleanor Campbell, she came up with the idea to have women make the beads and then make them into jewelry, which would give the women employment and Carroll and Campbell more inventory to work with.
The “Rethinking Admissions” conference was held on campus last week on April 15 and 16. During the two day event, participants considered an array of admissions and aid-related concepts. They included the university’s elimination of the SAT as an application requirement, Tuft’s experiment with essay questions as predictors of success in college and the validity of consumer magazine rating reports. Discussions included leading researchers from Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, Ohio State, Princeton, Texas, Virginia, Yale and other universities. In her opening remarks, Provost Jill
Tiefenthaler stated, “I hope that his conference sparks further discussion and leads to admissions standards that reflect the same rigor and creativity that we expect from our great students.” One particularly stimulating panel featured representatives from Duke, Harvard and Spelman College. Sally Donahue, director of financial aid and senior admissions officer at Harvard, specifically addressed the complexities of factoring socioeconomic status into admissions. Both the statistics and anecdotes Donahue presented gave emphasis to the challenge and obscurity inherent in her profession. “One applicant was a nineteen year-
old homeless student from Los Angeles,” Donahue said. “She was captain of her cross country team and track team. She was a tutor and a mentor, and she was active in many school groups, even though she had moved schools repeatedly.” Despite a dynamic profile and poignant story, the student was a controversial choice. “Her SAT scores were in the 500s and 600s. We had to grapple with, ‘is her acceptance a favor, justice or disservice?’” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel Golden delivered a similarly stirring keynote address. Titled “Slumdog Ivy Leaguer,” the speech
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exposed the degree of discrimination present in college admissions. Athleticism, money and legacy status were just a few of the advantages Golden noted. “As I documented in my book, The Price of Admission, more applicants receive special consideration under the ‘preferences of privilege’ than under affirmative action,” Golden said. “There’s something about these admissions perks for the rich that violates our basic notions of what America stands for – fairness, equal opportunity, upward mobility –
Months of effort from the university’s fledgling Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) Chapter drew 1,300 attendees from the university and the surrounding community to Wait Chapel on April 20 to hear Congressman Ron Paul of Texas address the university. Sophomore Jared Fuller, president and founder of the university’s YAL chapter and North Carolina Chairman for national YAL, said that the drive to bring Paul to campus arose from a desire to portray the chapter as a unified front. “We decided that we really need an item of cohesive action; something to put all our efforts into, to shoot for the stars,” Fuller said. “(Paul)’s the biggest figure in the liberty scene. (His presence on campus) was very gratifying to say the least.” Paul presented a broad overview of his libertarian platform, which emphasizes the importance of personal liberty and accountability and limited government. He touched on topics ranging from his proposal to end the Federal Reserve (the topic of his upcoming book End the Fed to be released in September) to his feelings on the draft. “You know what I call a draft? I call it slavery!” he said. Paul is credited by many for having predicted the economic collapse well before the housing bubble burst last fall, and the state of the economy dominated his speech. A strong proponent of the gold standard, Paul considers the actions taken by Congress and the Federal Reserve – namely manufacturing more and more currency and pouring money into the economy in the wake of the economic decline – wrong on three counts; economically, constitutionally and morally. “(The U.S.) got into trouble because we spent too much, borrowed too much money and printed too much money. So what do we do to solve it? We spend more money, borrow more money, etc.,” Paul said. “We wanted change and ‘Change’ came. Well, it was supposed to anyway.” Paul was also critical of the nation’s foreign policy strategies. He claimed that foreign policy practices of late have “taught us something that was very dangerous. Be aggressive in our foreign policy. We need to get out of the business of telling other countries how to live and bring our troops home from around the world,” Paul said. The solution to many of these problems, Paul says, is returning power to the people in the form of local government and ensuring that legislation promotes liberty. Paul pointed to the infamous War on Drugs as a key example of the government playing “nanny” when Americans should retain their ability to make informed decisions. “Like many programs in Washington, (the War on Drugs) is based on the assumption that you don’t know what is best for yourself. It has led to a severe crisis in civil liberties,” Paul said. Though some consider it an oversimplification, Paul suggested that the only question that
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Universities discuss college admissions future By Haowei Tong | Photo editor
Ron Paul’s visit rallies libertarians
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Opinion | A6 Why Biden? Columnist expresses concern with recent decision to bring Biden to campus for commencement