by Grace Joyal
North Carolina is a leader in the Southeast with 40 licensed cheese makers across the state. Many are located in Orange County.
By Michael Tomsic
This week was not the first time that UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp has met President Obama. Thorp was part of a White House conference on college affordability in December. Chancellor Thorp spoke with Carolina Connection’s Michael Tomsic about what the president’s visit means for the university and about the challenges of this past school year.
By Kirsten Chang, Michael Tomsic and John Caison
President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to come to UNC in almost twenty years this week. He got a rock star’s welcome from the roughly eight thousand people who packed Carmichael Arena, where the president spoke about the growing cost of higher education.
Carolina Connection’s Michael Tomsic describes the scene on campus, and John Caison reports on the president’s challenge to get young people as excited for the 2012 election as they were back in 2008, when people younger than 30 turned out in near-record numbers nationwide, and exit polls showed 66 percent of them voted for then-Senator Obama.
By Michael Tomsic
An anti-bullying video the UNC athletic department posted on youtube this week has been averaging more than a thousand new views each day. It’s meant to encourage teenagers who are victims of bullying because they’re lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual, and the more than 30 UNC student-athletes in it have a simple message:
“I’m a Tar Heel, and I want to tell you it gets better,” Meghan Lyons says in the video. She’s a junior on the UNC field hockey team. She and Dave Lohse, the UNC associate athletic communications director who brought the idea to the athletic department, talked to Carolina Connection’s Michael Tomsic about the video. It was inspired by the national “It Gets Better Project.”
Here’s UNC’s video: UNC Athletics – It Gets Better
By Michael Tomsic
More football players suffered severe brain injuries last year than any year since the mid-1980s. That’s according to a recent report by UNC’s National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. It tracks the number and severity of brain injuries in football every year, and it’s never found more than it did last year, both among high school players and if you add up the numbers from youth football to the pros.
UNC Exercise and Sports Science professor Fred Mueller is the report’s lead author. He spoke with Carolina Connection’s Michael Tomsic about how serious the problem is and what can be done about it.
by John Caison
This fall, all new students at UNC will get a crash course in cheating. The university will require first-year and transfer students to go through a tutorial about plagiarism and other Honor Code violations, and then pass a quiz on what they learned. The Honor Court spent this whole school year constructing the new tutorial.
by Ashley Gunsteens
For the first time in almost twenty years, a sitting U.S. president is coming to UNC. President Barack Obama will visit Tuesday, when he’ll deliver a speech at Carmichael Arena about his efforts to keep interest rates low on student loans. In conjunction with the president’s visit, TV host Jimmy Fallon will record his late night show on campus Tuesday. Of course, the president will be one of Fallon’s guests.
The president travels to a state that he barely won in 2008 – only the second time that a Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina in more than 40 years. Many pollsters say the state could be crucial to the president’s reelection effort.
We’re joined by Tom Jensen, the director of Public Policy Polling in Raleigh. It’s a Democratic-leaning research firm.
By Ashley Gunsteens
In less than a month, many North Carolina residents will vote on Amendment One. It would add the state’s existing ban on gay marriage to the constitution.
On campus, opponents are far more visible and vocal than supporters. They’ve staged plays, symposiums, and other events to demonstrate their opposition.
Carolina Connection’s Ashley Gunsteens talks with students on both sides of the issue, and reports on how some UNC students are finding creative ways to encourage their peers to go to the polls.
By Reema Khrais
One of the more vocal educators behind Amendment One has been UNC law professor Maxine Eichner. She says that both opponents and supporters of it agree that the amendment would do more than just add the state’s ban on gay marriage to the constitution. Most supporters and opponents agree that it also would prohibit civil unions and domestic partnerships.
But there are still significant areas of disagreement. Supporters such as Eichner say that courts could interpret the amendment more broadly to keep the state from giving any rights to unmarried couples – same-sex or homosexual, while opponents deny that.
By Mary Withers
Every year, thousands of UNC seniors flood Kenan Stadium in a sea of Carolina blue caps and gowns. But this year, some won’t head there. They’ll be a mile away at another commencement.
Students set up an alternative graduation event to protest the University-chosen commencement speaker, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They say he doesn’t represent the values of Carolina. So, instead, they’ve scheduled another set of speakers that includes a peace activist, a novelist and an Occupy Wall Street organizer. Carolina Connection’s Mary Withers reports more on the reasons behind the alternative graduation and how students are reacting.
