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DILUEEIEIRS
Besides staring down
danger at the scene of a fire,
Augusta’s firefighters must
also deal with ...
By Rhonda Y. Maree
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
After being laid off from his last job, Pvt.
Donald White took a job as a firefighter with
the city of Augusta because of the security he
thought it would provide.
Almost seven years later, however, Mr.
White faces the threat of losing his job again,
and beginning this Friday, he will suffer the
loss of 12 percent from his paycheck.
Pvt. White and firefighter William Bryant,
like most other city employees, say they are
innocent victims of city officials’ careless
management of funds.
“The question still stands — why should
employees be responsible for the apparent
mistakes of the mayor and council?” Pvt.
Bryant asked.
As Class A privates, Pvt. White and Pvt.
Bryant made only $6.72 an hour before coun
cil voted to cut their salaries. Class B pri
vates made $6.31, and Class A privates made
$4.94. After cuts Class C privates will make
only 10 cents more than minimum wage.
It often goes unnoticed that for such a
modest salary, fire- fighters do more than
See BUDGET CUTS, page 3
MCG promotes first
African-American
associate professor ;
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Dr. Deidre Sams
and nitrous sedation, and was recently hon-f
ored for her work. She was recently awarded
diplomate membership into the American Col
lege of Pediatric Dentistry. While in Augusta,
Dr. Sams has been a member of the Stoney |
Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Society,
where she co-chaired the Society’s Adopt-A-
School program. She also serves as a member|
of the dental school’s admissions committee.
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Dr. Deidre Sams, a pe- l
diatric dentistry faculty |
member at the School of
Dentistry, MCG, has be
come the school’s first Af
rican-American to be pro- |
moted to associate proses- |
sor. Dr. Sams has done
muchresearchinthearea
of pit and fissure sealant :
May 25 - 31, 1995 VOL. XIV NO. 701
FOCUS
Metro Augusta's Finest Weekly Newspaper
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COPING WITH a cut in pay and possible loss of jobs, William Bryant (L) and Donald White
feel they shouldn’t have to suffer for the mismanagement of city funds.
Teen pregnancy presents
tough choices for students
B Richmond County
schools still coping
with problem that
creates dropouts.
By Rhonda Jones
AUGUSTAFOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
“Do you not have a heart ...?”
asked Norman Griffin, princi
pal of Westside High School. He
RACE MATTERS
Across the Southland, access
to college still based on race
B Poor preparation,
socioeconomic
factors continue
to separate whites
from minerity
students.
By Sally Stress Buzbhee
AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON
Forty years after the U.S. Su
preme Court outlawed segre
gated schools, blacks and His
panics still lack equal access to
public colleges and universities
across the South, a private ad
vocacy group said Wednesday.
High schools serving blacks
and Hispanics often don’t offer
college-preparation classes, the
Southern Education Founda
tion said. Colleges rely heavily
on admissions criteria, such as
standardized tests, on which
minorities perform less well.
. Whites and minorities still
overwhelmingly attend differ
ent colleges. And blacks receive
was talking about all the teen
age mothers he has to with
draw from school each year.
Girls who are penalized for try
ing to be good mothers, who
stay home when their babies
are sick, and when they don’t
have a baby sitter.
“If there’s not a family mem
ber there,” he said, “they can’t
afford to get child care.”
At Westside, 13 missed days
is all it takes.
Charlene Wilkerson, guid
ance counselor at Richmond
college diplomas at a lower rate
than whites.
“Not one of the 12 states stud
ied can demonstrate acceptable
levels of desegregationinits high
er education system,” said the
study’s author, Robert Kronley.
Nevertheless, glimmers of
change have emerged since a
1992 Supreme Court ruling that
instructed Mississippi’s public
universitiestodomoretoachieve
desegregation, Kronley said.
Kentucky has changed its school
financing system to ensure that
students at poor high schools can
take college-prep classes. Mis
sissippi and Florida ease minor
ity students’ transfers from two
year community colleges to four
year universities. And North
Carolina encourages minority
undergraduates to consider grad
uate school.
But some of the group’s recom
mendations have little chance.
The study calls for more higher
education spending and more
studentaid at atime when states
are cutting one and Congress is
considering cutting the other.
“We found that where the cli
Academy, echoed Mr. Griffin’s
frustration. “You do have poli
cies that you have to follow,” she
said.
The “bottom line,” according
to Mr. Griffin, is that having
children makes students miss
class, which makes them unable
to keep up.
Richmond Academy principal
Jerry Buckner said one of his
seniors has already missed too
many days and will not get to
See TEENS, page 3
mate was good, (minority) stu
dents flourished,” said Ruby
Martin, former secretary of ad
ministration in Virginia and a
former attorney for the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights.
Where bias is present, stu
dents struggle, said Michael
Jennings,agraduatestudentat
the University of North Caroli
na at Chapel Hill.
At North Carolina, he encoun
tered some professors who
“thought African-American stu
dents were not as intelligent,”
Jennings said.
The Southern Education
Foundation study, financed by
the Ford Foundation, comes af
ter years of court rulings on
desegregation.
In 1954, the high court ruled
that official segregation in pub
lic elementary and secondary
schools violated the Constitu
tion.
In 1992, it ruled that Missis
sippi, by simply ending thelegal
system of segregation, had not
done enough to promote deseg
regation in state universities.
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GEORGIA NEWSPAPER '?%:TA:;E
UNIVERSITY OF GA PAID
1/99 NO. 302
ATHENS GA soere 189 AUGUSTA, GA
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CRIME
Drug activity
conti 5
state prisons
ATLANTA
(AP) Drugs are a continuing problem inside state and
federal prisons in Georgia, and sometimes they’re brought
in by guards.
State officials last month caught a prisoner at Phillips
Correctionarlrlnstitution in Buford with $l5O, which the
convict said he planned to
use to buy drugs from a
guard.
The guard was caught
later that day with three
fourths of an ounce of co
caine and two bags of mar
ijuana.
Drugs also come in
many other ways, said state
Corrections Commissioner
Allen Ault.
“It’s a constant problem.
(We've had drugs) smug
gled in through baby dia
pers, through the mail.
We've had them just try to
throw itover the fence, so it
lands in the yard.”
At the Atlanta federal
penitentiary, convicted armed robber Ronald Posey was
caught receiving plastic bags of cocaine and heroin from his
ex-wife in the prison visiting room.
Posey, 46, told a federal judge he was concerned about
having money to live on after his impending release, so he
decided to build a nest egg by selling drugs to other
inmates. Hehad been scheduled tobe freed this fall, but the
drug conviction may keep him behind bars another two
decades.
Officials discovered those drugs before they were circu
lated in the prison, but other drugs often get through.
“There are a fair amount of drugs getting into the
prison,” said FBI agent Stuart Silver, whose unit investi
gates crimes committed inside the federal penitentiary.
Authorities at the federal prison, which has been the
scene of increasing violence in the past year, have been
focusing on the drug trade in an effort to stop some of the
disturbances.
Three inmates were tried this month for killing an
inmate who prosecutors claimed headed a drug operation
inside the prison.
About a dozen prison employees, inmates, and friends
and relatives of prisoners have been convicted or charged
in connection with efforts to smuggle illegal drugs into the
federal prison in recent months.
Jewish men show
highdepressionrate
B Researchers speculate that low
alcoholism rate may be key factor.
By Malcolm Ritter
AP Science Writer
MIAMI BEACH, Fla.
Jewish men show sharply higher rates of depression than
non-Jewish men do, maybe because they are less likely to
drown theirsorrowsin alcohol, two Rhode Island research
ers said Monday.
An analysis of surveys in Los Angeles and New Haven,
Conn., found that within a one-year period, 13 percent of
Jewish men had major depression, compared with 5.4
percent for non-Jewish men. Jewish women did not show
unusually high rates.
Researchers can only speculate about what causes the
high rate in Jewish men, but it may have to do with their
low rate of alcoholism, said study authors Drs. Robert
Kohn and Itzak Levav of Brown University in Providence,
R.I
Jewish men had a 2.8 percent rate of alcoholism vs. about
14 percent for non-Jewish men, Kohn said. That’s because
alcohol useis highly limited in Jewish tradition, giving less
opportunity for alcoholism, Levav said.
So maybe in cultures that do not use drinking as an outlet
for release of tension, sadness and distress, those things
show up as depression, Levav said.
Another possibility is that alcoholism simply covers up
the identifiable symptoms of depression in basically de
pressed people, he said.
Kohn noted that when researchers added up the rates of
See JEWISH DEPRESSION, page 15
“It's a constant
problem. (We've
had drugs) smug
gled in through
baby diapers,
through the mail.
We've had them
just try to throw it
over the fence,
so it lands in the
yard.”
— State Corrections
Commissioner Allen Ault
