News-Record.com

The News & Record lost a member of its family this week.

Mr. Otha Burnett died Sunday at age 82.

He had been a security guard for the News & Record until he fell ill in October.

If you’ve come by the paper in recent years, you already know that our security guards do more than mind the entrances and keep an eye out for suspicious characters.

They also deal with the public as much as any of us and are typically the folks who greet you in the lobby and make sure you find what you’re looking for.

Mr. Burnett (I always called him that out of respect) was particularly good at this and treated everyone with kindness and professionalism.

He seemed to be good friends with everyone, from Publisher Robin Saul on down.

His passions included sports and his church, Shiloh Baptist, where he was devoted member and where I recall seeing him from time to time when I visited.

He especially liked to talk baseball — but he had strong opinions about everything else, too.

He had his finger on the pulse of the community and I almost always learned things after conversations with him.

He also got around.

I recall running into him at an A&T homecoming concert, absolutely dapper from head to toe in a double-breasted suit and spit-shined shoes.

“Not being one to sit around,” his obituary in today’s News & Record says, he lived a full and fruitful life well past his “retirement” from Cone Mills and Gilbarco.

We were lucky to have had him here.

We’ll miss you, Mr. Burnett.

Dell is laying off more workers.

The new reductions in the computer maker's workforce have come only weeks after the previous ones.

As in the first case, Dell won't say how many, responding to reporters' questions in game-show fashion..

"You can say it is manufacturing and related jobs," Venancio Figueroa III, a Dell spokesman said. "Beyond that, we are not going to provide specifics."

Is it bigger than a bread box?

This, of course, means no one can tell if the company is fulfilling the conditions of local and state incentives for its Forsyth plant.

The company keeps kicking sand in the faces and local and state governments. And they keep responding like 98-pound weaklings.

Update: Winston-Salen Mayor Allen Joines has called for Dell to release the layoff figures.

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Time-Warner Cable's plan to meter and cap broadband use in Greensboro seems like an odd business decision. At best.

It certainly has stirred a tsunami of outrage in comments to Joe Killian's news story. And it could stir a migration to other providers.

One thing the cable company has definitely accomplished. It has found the perfect way to make everybody mad

This week's column.

“We was robbed.”

A number of college sports stars justifiably could make this statement, bad grammar and all.
They are heralded, especially this time of year, as “student-athletes.”

But exactly what are they learning?

And why can so can few of them speak in coherent sentences?

For all the excitement March Madness can bring, it also brings the sound of too many young college basketball players mangling the English language in tortuous post-game interviews.
One with a player from Chattanooga, the champ of UNCG’s league, the Southern Conference, offered this reaction to this year’s NCAA pairings: “When we seen that we got UConn, I mean, we was happy to be up there on the board. Coming here, we believed we can be one of the teams in history, to make history and beat UConn. It’s all about believing in the system, believing in yourself. When you toss up that ball, anybody can win. Ain’t just ’cause they UConn it’s a lock. It’s a basketball game. Both teams we got to play, they just like us.”

The quote came up in a listserv for sports writers. The issue: Should you correct the grammar in such quotes when including them in a published article?

The bigger issue, of course, is why you’d have to consider changing it in the first place. College students should have better command of the language than that.

Of course, manglers of the King’s English are not consigned merely to the college basketball court. Or the football field.

But colleges and universities make significant money off the labors of these students. According to a recently released Forbes magazine ranking of the top-grossing college basketball programs in the nation, “amateur” athletics is big business. For instance, UNC-Chapel Hill placed No. 1 in the nation, worth nearly $25 million in 2008, including $16.4 million in operating income.

With all that money rolling around and these teams representing, after all, institutions of higher learning, something is fundamentally wrong when a “student-athlete” speaks so poorly.

So what? some may counter. These students are hardly typical and will earn their livings on the strength of their jump shots, not their oratorical skills.

That would be a logical argument, if it were true. But the vast majority of these athletes won’t make professional rosters. Less than 1 percent of the Division I football players go on to NFL careers. And only 1 percent of the 3,900 Division I basketball players even qualify as pro prospects.

A huge batch of new letters to the editor over the weekend make it clear ...

1. that some people are not very happy about the Easter Egg hunt at NewBridge Bank Park. They are outraged not only over what they see as a flawed format and inadequate preparation, but a lack of courtesy from other adults at the event.
2. that the Warnersville community-Greensboro College impasse still stokes passions and charges of racism. After more than a year the issue is not settled. That’s disappointing.
I still believe the college’s presence there is a good thing.
3. that the police department’s bomb range upsets some neighbors.
4. that people may be royally upset about Time-Warner’s new metered broadbrand pricing, but they are not writing letters about it. They are burning up the blogs, however.

I am about as far from an expert on modern-day piracy as they come.

But given the seizure this week of a U.S. container ship by Somali pirates -- resistance by the crew and the abduction of their captain as hostage -- I wonder if the best deterrent might be armed crews on naval ships disguised as cargo vessels.

That way the pirates could never be certain with whom they're toying.

Just an idea from a guy whose major experience on the high seas has been Caribbean cruises.

It is disappointing that some members of the Warnersville community have been so venomous in their opposition to Greensboro College’s sports facility there.

This is not as if someone is building an oil refinery or a hazardous waste facility.

We’re talking baseball and soccer, folks.

We’re also talking about a college that has made numerous good-faith overtures, including scholarships for neighborhood youth.

I sometimes wonder of the opponents have so relished being against the sports park that they even want a positive outcome.

Their words are so mean, almost hateful.

And if anyone cares to question how I’d feel if such a facility were placed in my neighborhood, they are welcome to ask. There already is one.

Greensboro Day School’s baseball park adjoins my development, The Harbor.

This week's column.

Age, they say, is only a state of mind.

But it’s also a state of body as well ... of eyesight and hearing and reflexes.

That’s why a bill in the General Assembly would have required more frequent testing of older drivers for license renewals.

The bill, sponsored by Ric Killian, a Charlotte Republican, also would have mandated more frequent road tests for drivers older than 85.

It was a perfectly fair and reasonable approach.

So, logically, it went nowhere.

A state House committee did to the poor bill the equivalent of ripping out its engine and stripping all four tires.

They eliminated from the bill the road test requirement for drivers older than 85.
And they erased the three-year renewal cycles for drivers older than 75.

“It takes away everything the bill was supposed to do,” Killian said last week in helpless frustration.

The bill sputtered and died Wednesday as a crowd of seething seniors looked on.
Under the current state law, drivers 18 and older but younger than 54 must renew their licenses every eight years.

This is particularly germane to me, as I will turn 54 (which is the new 44, by the way) in 12 days. At that point I will have to renew my license every five years instead of eight.
I don’t consider that age discrimination. I consider it common sense.

In a “60 Minutes” report on Sunday night, an opponent of tighter gun laws said, with a straight face, that college students ought to be able to carry concealed firearms on campus.

He was referencing the horrific shootings two years ago at Virginia Tech, and seemed fully convinced that the solution was for everyone on campus to be packing heat.

I have taught college students at one place or another for the better part of 24 years. And I love ’em dearly.

But with all due respect, I shuddered at the thought.

I considered the problems with binge drinking and depression among college students.

I also pictured the same students who were leaping through fires at my alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill, the other day armed with deadly weapons.

It was not a comforting vision.

For some lawmakers in Texas, it apparently is.

A bill there would allow those licensed to carry concealed weapons to bring them onto college campuses. They say it would help prevent bloody shootings such as those at Virginia Tech, where 32 were fatally shot, and Northern Illinois University, where five were killed and 18 were wounded.

We have had our issues in Greensboro and throughout North Carolina with crime on and near college campuses.

It is a serious problem that requires serious solutions.

Among all of the solutions broached, thankfully not one involves arming students and faculty.

Cal Thomas's topic for a column scheduled to run Friday in the News & Record:

"Conservatives have a point when they criticize President Obama and his fellow Democrats for not calling the mission in Iraq a "success" or a "victory." But if they are right about that -- and they are -- they cannot now withhold praise from President Obama for the flawless rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from the hands of terrorists masquerading as pirates."

Say what you will about Matt Brown -- and many people do.

But he knows how to run a coliseum.

The arena's run on big concert acts contiinues to defy industry trends.

The arena's latest catch: Beyonce on June 27.

My, how times have changed.

Thursday night, Brenda Jones Fox became county manager again, with Commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston's full support.

Sixteen years ago Brenda Jones was ousted as county manager.

Among her chief critics was Alston, who said she had been handpicked by Republicans for the job. Alston also questioned her qualifications.

Here is a News & Record story from January 1993:

With Brenda Jones' demotion, Guilford County has lost two county managers by two boards of commissioners in nearly two years.

Harrelson said Friday that he later ruled out an evaluation because of concerns over Jones' performance.

Then again, maybe things haven't changed all that much after all.

News & Record alum Stephen A. Smith and ESPN are parting ways.

Smith says goodbye on his blog. But not much else.

Typically, fewer people know or care these days who the newest Miss USA is.

And in the scheme of things of things, that's understandable.

The economy is teetering, pirates are at large and even before that so-called "reality" TV had stolen most of whatever allure remained from these old-fashioned, bathing-suits-and-heels affairs.

This year there are two reasons folks around here may be paying more attention:

-- Miss North Carolina, Kristen Dalton, won.
-- Part of the reason she may have won was a prickly question about gay marriage posed to the runner-up, Miss California, by a judge, Perez Hilton, who is openly gay:

Miss California, Carrie Prejean's, answer: "I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman ... that's how I was raised."

That's hardly a mean answer, nor is it any different from how a lot of people feel.

Of course, I disagree, especially with people who equate gay marriage with an attack on heterosexual marriage. I have always found the arguments that gay marriage somehow threatens the sanctity of heterosexual marriage illogical and, well, just plain dumb.

I'm not aware of even one heterosexual divorce or out-of-wedlock birth that is attributable to gays having the opportunity to marry.

But people are entitled to her beliefs and Prejean gave a presumably honest answer on how she feels. Why penalize her for saying essentially the same thing Barack Obama said about gay marriage while on the campaign trail?

Meanwhile, the man behind the pageant, Donald Trump, seems as pleased with the firestorm as Hilton, who is reveling in the publicity.

Somebody's paying attention now.

Part of the obvious message from city employees to Greensboro City Council members: Butt out.

That sentiment surfaced in an employee survey that found that only 28 percent of employees agreed with the statement that the council cared about "the needs and problems" of staff.

In open-ended responses, employees said they wanted the council to stop sniping at each other. They also said wanted the council to stop micromanaging city staff and let them do their jobs.

The council pointed a critical finger at former Manager Mitch Johnson when it relieved him of those duties earlier this year.

Now it finds itself as part of the problem, too.

The employees have echoed what business leaders and others have been saying: that the council is overstepping into the day-to-day management of city staff, which is supposed to be the manager's job.

They'd do well to take that criticism to heart and stick to setting policy.

The next crucial assessment of their performance will come soon enough -- when voters have their say.

My prediction, for what it's worth, on the forthcoming annouuncements today from Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson of UNC and Stephen Curry of Davidson: They're all gone.

For Ellington and Lawson, their stock is as high as it's going to be. They've won a national championship.

For Curry, competing in the so-so Southern Conference seems to be getting old. I saw him play against UNCG this year and he didn't seem to be having much fun.

Of course, I could be wrong.

For a second straight week UNC-Chapel Hill hosted a controversial speaker.

Last week it was former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken foe of legal immigration.

It did not end well.

This week it was another former congressman, Virgil Goode, who opposes multi-culturalism, mass immigration and affirmative action.

It ended better.

Tancredo had not been allowed to speak at all, heckled and jeered from the start. Protesters even unfurled a banner in front of Tancredo, blocking the audience's view.

A window was broken. Campus police ultimately had to resort to pepper spray.

This time Goode was allowed to deliver his entire 20-minute speech.

A half-dozen protesters who attempted to disrupt him were arrested. A UNC official, Assistant Vice Chancellor Winston Crisp, earlier had given the audience fair warning: Do not to interrupt Goode's address.

Outside, in a popular gathering area called The Pit, a small group of more sensible protesters held signs.

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp rightly apologized for the way it had handled Tancredo's speech. Those who were loudest and rudest held sway that night.

On Wednesday night, the university made the best of a fortuitous do-over.

Some argue that only certain views should be protected by the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

That's dangerous thinking.

Who decides which views are allowed free speech and which ones are not?

The better course was the one taken Wednesday night.

City Councilman Mike Barber, who has announced he won’t run for re-election in District 4, may have bigger goals in mind.

It would not surprise me in the least if he runs for mayor.

Barber has made no secret of his desire to be mayor, so the question has not been so much whether as when he'll make the move.

When might be right now.

Barber certainly seems to be positioning himself.

In this week's council session, he openly challenged how Mayor Yvonne Johnson was running the meeting.

Barber would face a steep challenge if he takes on Johnson, who is running for re-election.

But it is always a plus to have contested races for mayor.

This one would be interesting and very telling in what it .says about the direction of the city.

This week's column.

Armed and studious?

Some Americans dream of a day when firearms could be as commonplace on campus as backpacks, textbooks and Saturday night keggers.

Consider Philip Van Cleave, who pictures a world in which college students are able to carry concealed firearms on campus.

Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, believes deadly shootings such as the ones two years ago at Virginia Tech could have been prevented if only everyone on campus had packed heat. Or nearly everyone.

Armed students, Van Cleave said, could have taken out Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior who killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself.

“If just one student 21 or older had a permit and had been armed that day,” Van Cleave said wistfully to Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” on April 12.

“Arming all those young people …? ,” Stahl asked, incredulously.

“Wonder who’s fighting in Iraq for us right now,” Van Cleave fired back.

Van Cleave’s notion turns out to be a lot more than wishful thinking. A bill in Texas would allow concealed weapons on college campuses. Supporters say the bill would help prevent deadly shootings such as those at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, where five were killed and 18 were wounded on Valentine’s Day 2008.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Joe Driver, a Republican from Garland, Texas, sees the legislation as enhancing safety rather than threatening it.

But he doesn’t want just anybody lockin’ and loadin’ on the Quad. Only students 21 and older would be allowed to carry.

That typically would mean juniors, seniors, graduate students and faculty. (Don’t you feel safer already?)

The old post office on East Market Street is almost much gone now, pounded into a pile of gray dust and rubble by demolition cranes.

What comes next isn’t clear.

The 15-acre site (11.8 acres of which are developable) is owned by a national church, the House of Prayer for all People, whose local sanctuary is a next-door neighbor on Dudley Street.
The East Market Street Development Corp. hired a consultant and convened several meetings in 2007 to provide some ideas for the best use of the site, which the church did say it wanted to devote to something that would benefit the community.

They came up with an “urban village” that could include a hotel, a produce market and housing for college students.

The consultant also suggested an outdoor “commons” area for public gatherings, a day care center, and a new home for the church’s popular restaurant, which is known for its down-home menu. The restaurant currently is located in the church’s basement.

East Market Street Development Corp. President Mac Sims says student housing seems less of a prospect now than in 2007.

“I just think we’re overbuilt in student housing,” Sims said Monday. Sims pointed to all of the apartments built in the area in recent years.

That still leaves lots of room for other neat stuff.

The church, which makes few public pronouncements, has said little about its plans. But the demolition opens up all kinds of possibilities.

And it bears testament to the church’s deep pockets.

The demolition is no small expense in itself and was one deterrent to the group considering the site for what is now New Bridge Bank Park.

Meanwhile, the nearby Hayes-Taylor Y wants to sell its current location and relocate.

The Y has few options in its current cramped site and wants to sell that location to N.C. A&T.
While East Market Street probably would lose the Y as an attraction, it needs a bigger piece of land where it can expand to meet members’ expectations and to keep membership levels healthy.

“The biggest complaint I hear is that parking is atrocious,” Sims said.

An ex-Marine takes issue with my views on allowing guns on campus:

Mr. Johnson--I traveled through your city this past weekend and I read your article entitled, "Here's a novel solution to campus violence: Give everyone guns". I would like to respond to that. While I enjoyed most of your newspaper, and I found it more informative than the one I subscribe to, and I found your liberal, uninformed comments, very sadly stated.

Please allow me to tell you about myself. I am a typical American that grew up in a small Midwest town that had the opportunity to fight for my country during time of war. Since I had graduated from college, I was offered the opportunity to be an Officer in the Marine Corps. I was assigned the responsibility to make decisions, on a daily basis, as to whether people lived or died. If I did my job correctly, those that died were the bad guys and those that lived were my fellow Marines. I spent my entire time in combat with that objective in mine. My point in saying this is to insure you that I took my responsibilities seriously. When I returned home, I went back to college and got a Master's Degree. I went to many of those exciting college functions, but at no time did I attempt to utilize the skills that I acquired in combat, while I was celebrating some fun function. I had the discipline and knowledge not to even think about it. I am trying to understand why you would feel that I would act in a different way? If I can have the responsibility to save and take lives, then I think I can handle a cell phone, as you described. I am saddened and I must assume, that you do not have the same confidence in yourself.

You talked about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. That individual was not a combat veteran. Your comparison is flawed. You also made the comment that in the military, that a troop was under "strict supervision in a highly disciplined environment". You implied that all combat veterans only did what they were immediately told to do. Not true! Most veterans in combat, do what they were "TRAINED" to do, instinctively, without being told to do it! Good people would die if your case was the norm! You sir, probably have never been in combat, therefore, have no idea what you are talking about.

You again have no idea how easy it is to get a weapon. The laws that are in place today do absolutely nothing to stop an individual from getting a weapon if that person wants one. Making more laws serve no purpose. The bad guys will always ignore the laws and the good guys will normally follow them. Unfortunately, with the way you think, it will only make us more vulurnable.

Now, take the time to do some research. Go to www.google.com, and go to advanced search, and type in "1983 gun law, Kennesaw, GA" and educate yourself on what happens when the bad guys know that someone is packing a gun. They will go to where people like you live, that do not believe in carrying guns! Guess what happens then?

Mr. John Johnson (sic), I hope you take the time to educate yourself beyond your liberal beliefs.

Semper Fi

Jim Vinyard
Capt. USMC
Vietnam Veteran

In the most recent campus shooting, at Hampton University in Virginia on early Sunday morning, a former student shot a pizza delivery driver and a dorm monitor before shooting himself.

Some question how well the school handled the incident.

The dorm director sounded the building’s fire alarm after confronting and being shot by the gunman. Did that ensure a safe evacuation, some say, or expose students who thought they were fleeing from a fire into the gunman’s path? That’s debatable, but the monitor at least deserves some praise for doing what he could while he was himself wounded.

Less defensible is the school’s failure to send out a campuswide alert until nearly two hours later.

Wrote Michael Paul Williams in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“University spokeswoman Yuri Rodgers Milligan said Hampton officials sent e-mails and text messages to students at 2:50 a.m. Faculty and staff were notified 10 minutes later.

“HU’s police chief delayed the alert ‘because there was no immediate threat to students, or to the campus community . . . and the scene had been secured,’ Milligan said.

“But could police have been absolutely sure? One of the lessons we should have learned from Virginia Tech was to assume nothing.

“On April 16, 2007, Tech police initially thought they were dealing with a double-homicide after two students were found dead in a dorm.

‘They did not take sufficient action to deal with what might happen if the initial lead proved erroneous,’ stated a report by the panel that investigated the Tech massacre.

" ‘The police reported to the university emergency policy group that the “person of interest” probably was no longer on campus.”

“The panel’s report also noted that senior Tech administrators failed to issue an all-campus notification until almost two hours after the initial shootings.”

For the entire commentary, click here.

The incident points out the pressing need for all schools to have a well-conceived and well-communicated plan on how to deal with such emergencies.

Kudos especially to UNCG, for staging a full-fledged drill in 2008 with local law enforcement on a mock shooting.