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TUESDAY
October 12, 2004
Vol. 112, No. 38 | Athens, Georgia
Isolated thunderstorms.
High 73 | Low 62 | Wednesday 74
ONLINE: www.redandblack.com
An independent student newspaper’ serving the University of Georgia community
ESTABLISHED 1893, INDEPENDENT 1980
NEW NOODLES
V Doc Chey’s serves
up noodle dinners
downtown. PAGE 6
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD
BRETT CLARK | The Red & Black
A Tiffany Holder, a sophomore from Marietta, walks through a closet door
set up and decorated by the Lambda Alliance in the Tate Student Center in
honor of National Coming Out Day, which was Monday. The Lambda Alliance
is celebrating National Gay and Lesbian Month throughout October with activ
ities such as the Coming Out Dance Oct. 22 in Memorial Hall.
Univ. faculty petition
Perdue on new cuts
By BRENT MOSLEY
bmosley@randb.com
A faculty petition
denouncing budget cuts to
higher education will be
delivered today to Gov.
Sonny Perdue in a last ditch
effort to persuade him to
scale back his plan to slash
$68.7 million from the
University System.
The Board of Regents,
which received the letter and
petition Monday, is meeting
today to decide how to dis
tribute the cuts among insti
tutions.
The University stands to
lose $16.3 million.
“It’s a truly catastrophic
thing, and we have a very
short time to make this
clear,” said Randy
Hammond, an associate pro
fessor of psychology.
The petition, which began
last week in the history
department, has circulated
on campus and garnered the
signatures of nearly 200 fac
ulty members, said Susan
Mattern-Parkes, an associate
professor of history.
“We realized we needed
to do something,” she said.
“These cuts will have an
irrevocable impact on the
University System.”
The letter to Perdue
states impending cuts
already have
to leave the
University
and will
cause the
University’s
rankings to
plummet as
a result of
lack of
proper fund
ing.
Grant
money will
disappear,
the letter states, as faculty
members leave the
University.
Class sizes will increase,
and students will have a
more difficult time getting
into graduate school because
“high-profile research schol
ars” will not be as accessible,
faculty members wrote.
Hammond said budget
cuts to higher education are
bad for morale in Georgia
because many states are
rebuilding their education
programs after coming out of
the recession this year.
Doug Crowe, an associate
professor of geology and pre
siding officer for the Franklin
College of Arts and Sciences
Faculty Senate, said the cuts
would cause the University
to lose a great deal of pres
tige it has built up over the
past couple of decades.
“It took us 25 to 30 years
to get here,” Crowe said. “In
one governor’s decision, we
are going to lose all of that.”
Although the University
System has sustained nine
cuts since 2001, Crowe said
these cuts would be the
worst because of the cumula
tive effect they have had.
“There has never been one
massive budget cut,” he said.
“The cuts come in little
slices.”
Crowe added usually when
the budget is cut, vacant
positions are lost rather than
actual people, but the end
result is the University’s
departments are shrinking,
and the student body is not.
Laura Mason, an associate
professor of history who
helped start the petition,
said faculty and students
both will suffer in the same
way as an end result of the
cuts.
“We have an interest in
protecting the value of the
degree from the University,”
she said.
caused faculty
PERDUE
Regents to vote on hike
By PURVI PATEL
ppatel@randb.com
Next semester, University students might
need to part with $168 — about 34 six-packs of
beer or 21 movie tickets — if a 10 percent mid
year tuition increase is approved today.
The Board of Regents, which meets today
and Wednesday in Atlanta, will discuss the pro
posed hike and decide if such an action is
appropriate, according to its meeting agenda.
If approved, the mid-year tuition increase
will help offset $25.6 million — or 37 percent —
of a $68.7 million University System-wide bud
get cut Gov. Sonny Perdue approved in August.
The University will shoulder $16.3 million, or
almost 24 percent, of the system-wide cut. Of
this total, the institution’s instructional budget
will have to slash $12.8 million.
The state has never had a mid-year tuition
increase before.
A 10 percent mid-year hike, if approved,
would force full-time in-state students to pay
$168 more than they previously did, and out-of-
state students would dish out an extra $734 for
tuition.
Resident students taking fewer than 12
credit hours will pay $14 more for their tuition
and out-of-state students will pay an additional
$61.
Full-time resident graduate student fees will
increase by $202, and out-of-state graduates
will pay $869 more, according to the regents’
preliminary figures.
For graduate students taking fewer than 12
credit hours, state students will pay an addi
tional $17 and out-of-state students $72 more
than they did this semester, if the 10 percent
hike is approved.
On Wednesday, regents will discuss authoriz
ing the creation of a new state college in
Gwinnett County.
If approved, the proposal will the Gwinnett
University Center will be made into one school.
It currently serves as a satellite campus for
the University and Georgia Perimeter College.
The center has 975 University students
enrolled in classes.
If the schools are combined, these students
will not be displaced.
In the last two weeks, Provost Arnett Mace
requested all academic unit heads to prepare
tentative plans accounting for any scenario,
such as a 10 percent mid-year tuition increase
or no increase at all.
The plans indicate class sizes would
increase, vacant faculty positions will remain
unfilled and layoffs would be inevitable.
Mace said Monday evening he had not
decided whether he would attend the regents
meeting and declined further comment.
Student Government Association president
and vice president Adam Sparks and Mallory
Grebel will attend the meeting.
Tillery passes $3K
in campaign funds
By BRIAN McDEARMON
mcdearmon@randb.com
Republican commission
candidate Blake Tillery has
brought in $3,385 since
June, at least $1,350 of which
came from outside Athens-
Clarke County, according
to campaign finance
disclosure reports filed last
week.
In recent months, Tillery’s
campaign has received sever
al contributions from elected
officials and business owners
from other parts of the state
like Atlanta, Vidalia, Roswell
and Newnan.
Now, three weeks before
the election, Tillery has more
than $6,500 — almost twice
the total amount of
Democrat Alice Kinman,
his opponent in the
District 4 Athens-Clarke
County Commission race.
Tillery and Kinman are
vying for the ACC commis
sion seat being vacated by
John Barrow.
However, Tillery said
Monday he has not actively
sought campaign funds, but
instead the money has come
to him.
“To be honest, I’ve slacked
off on fund-raising lately,”
Tillery said. “Votes are more
important than dollars at this
point in the game.”
The latest report shows
Tillery received $200 from
business owners in Vidalia
and Roswell and $250 from an
individual in Sylvania.
His second largest gift in
the last four months came
from the Atlanta-based
Georgia Association of
Realtors, although Tillery
said the $700 came from the
group’s Athens branch.
However, his largest dona
tion in this cycle — $1,000 —
was from the Athens Area
Chamber of Commerce.
Kinman said she doesn’t
think outside money means
Tillery is out of touch with
the local community; howev
er, she said it does raise some
questions.
“Why does this person in
Macon or wherever care
about this race in Athens-
Clarke County?” she said.
>- See CAMPAIGN. Page 3
Sonny’s flies high in local airport
BRETT CLARK | The Red & Black
A. Sonny Smith poses by an airplane at Athens Ben Epps Airport.
Smith was a flight instructor there, but quit flying when a stroke two
years ago hindered his flying.
By MICHAEL FRENCH
mfrench@randb.com
At Athens’ quiet Ben Epps Airport,
there is a hangar that stands out among
the rest. Its cinder block construction and
curved metal roof reveal its World War II
origin.
Since 1970, it has been the location of
Sonny’s Air Service.
Sonny Smith, 72, who operates his
flight school out of the airfield relic, said
he has taught generations to fly and has
watched Athens change over the decades.
Smith, who was born in Oconee
County, said he remembers when down
town Athens was very different.
He said he knew a time when the entire
population of Athens was only 30,000 —
students included.
“You don’t even recognize this town
anymore,” he said. “If you don’t go down
town every six months, you get lost. I
remember when we had cobblestone
streets.”
Smith said he started building model
airplanes in the third grade. As a teenager,
he worked as a street sweeper cleaning
those cobblestone streets.
“When a teenage boy wants money,
he’ll do anything,” he said.
In the summer of 1949, Smith said, he
started hanging around a former airport
that once was located at Alps Road and
Baxter Street.
After two years in the Army,
Smith said he went to South Georgia
Vocational School in Americus, because
he said he was too lazy to work for a living.
There he studied aviation maintenance
and flew with a Mend who owned an air
plane.
“I used to just ride,” Smith
said. Eventually, he learned to fly
“because I wanted to be a pilot all the
time,” he said.
For more than 20 years, Smith said he
worked as a pilot for local and national
businesses.
“That was my hobby,” he said.
>- See SMITH. Page 3
INSIDE TODAY
News: 2 | Opinions: 4 | Variety: 5 | Sports: 6 | Crossword: 5