Viewpoint
PAGE 4 • MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2013
TECHNICIAN
Rivals in denial
I
f you’ve ever argued with a UNC-Chapel Hill fan, you’ve probably heard it already: “Our rival is Duke, not N.C. State.” The irony in this statement, among many others from the UNC fan base, stems from the idea that if we weren’t their rivals, then why do UNC-CH fans need to constantly remind themselves of it? We’re not asking for UNC-CH fans’ scorn, but rather for the respect that competitive adversaries merit. It’s easy to remember N.C. State’s most recent basketball rut, but to ignore us as rivals is to ignore sports history. As sports writer Thad Williamson put it, there was a time when N.C. State’s “David Thompson, not [UNC-CH’s] Michael Jordan, was the high-flying legend young players dreamed of becoming … a time when fans would circle Carolina-State and Duke-State games on their calendars just as fast — or faster — than the semi-annual Carolina-Duke games.”
{
IN YOUR WORDS
}
The unsigned editorial is the opinion of the members of Technician’s editorial board, excluding the news department, and is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. We said it once: We’re back. To ignore our talent and competitiveness is to ignore Saturday’s scoreboard. UNC-CH head coach Roy Williams summed up the game best, saying, “We stunk.” For the head coach to modestly express this unseen sense of humility, the fans should catch on too. But the Wolfpack didn’t win only because the Heels played poorly — it won because it’s a strong team, one of the best in the nation. Our basketball team is not an adjunct department to the Ag Institute, and State played a game to prove that point. Nevertheless, the
“We’re not asking for UNC-CH fans’ scorn, but rather for the respect that competitive adversaries merit.”
{
Why should UNC consider us its rivals?
CAMPUS FORUM
HOW TO SUBMIT Letters must be submitted before 5 p.m. the day before publication and must be limited to 250 words. Contributors are limited to one letter per week. Please submit all letters electronically to viewpoint@
BY CHRIS RUPERT
technicianonline.com.
“Lately its been all about Duke and UNC but lately N.C. State has been coming up in the sports world more than they have.” Geoffrey Gore freshman, business
“Because before Duke we were their rivals, and if we weren’t their rivals they wouldn’t make a big deal when we played them.” Richard Lewis sophomore, business
“Because we’re both one of the three biggest schools in North Carolina.” Lindsay Okowita freshman, biology
“It goes back to what Dexter Strickland said at the beginning of the season ‘It’s not a rivalry until we beat them.’ and we beat them.” Morgan Wood sophomore, engineering
WHY UNC WON’T HAVE STATE AS A RIVAL From a current UNCCH student To the Editor: First of all, I will admit, as a current freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, your publication of The Daily Tar Hell on Friday was an almost perfect parody of our school-wide publication. The way it treated the publication’s liberal and egotistic attitudes was comical and did give me a few laughs. Second, congrats on your win Saturday night. The best team showed up, and I can’t wait to see the next game Feb. 23 in Chapel Hill. The reason I am writing this is concerning the overall attitude of a large percentage of Tar Heels, who say that State is not a rival and basically treat you guys in Raleigh like dirt. I’m writing this to inform you that this is not only wrong, but it is based in the overall attitude, which is fueled by school officials and alumni. On one’s first day, he or she is constantly told how he and his other classmates are the best students from the state, and the percentage of us that are from the top ten percent of our high school classes. It gives us confidence about being here, but it also gives the impression that students at other schools, like State, are not as smart as us. Even though some statistics from U.S. News backs up this statistic (which ranks UNC as 30th and State as 106th), it is still not right to treat you guys as idiots. Think about how many kids get to go to college, and you begin to realize that anyone who makes it to this level is pretty darn smart. It’s an unfair assumption on anyone’s part to have that belief. Another reason for this attitude is that UNC has,
323 Witherspoon Student Center, NCSU Campus Box 7318, Raleigh, NC 27695 Editorial Advertising Fax Online
Wolfpack played a skillful game. We’re not asking for UNC-CH fans to boo our team when it enters the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill Feb. 23, we’re just asking them to recognize the Pack as more than another team that’s not Duke. Another common complaint UNC-CH fans bring up includes, “N.C. State fans are so obnoxious.” Though the Wolfpack is backed by many outspoken fans, if we were treated as more than just aggies and techies, we’d have a lot more respect for the Tar Heels. Sportsmanship is based off of mutual respect, and it takes both
515.2411 515.2029 515.5133 technicianonline.com
sides to recognize each other and reciprocate civility. In October, Dexter Strickland, a Tar Heel point guard, gained notoriety from Wolfpack fans for his comments via Twitter about N.C. State’s favorable preseason ranking, No. 6 in the nation. “[State is] the least of our worries,” Strickland tweeted. “[If they] beat us one year… then they can talk smack. Until then, you can’t put them in the mix.” As chants lampooning Strickland proliferated throughout Saturday’s matchup, it became clear that Strickland’s trash talk isn’t going to stop State from achieving, and as sportsmanlike rivals, we let our shots on the court speak for us. Maybe in a month, UNC-CH can do that too. Of course, that may not be enough to defeat us — but we sure would like to see the Tar Heels take a shot.
}
to quote former Florida State basketball player Sam Cassell, “a cheese-and-wine crowd.” What I mean by this is the fact that a lot of the alumni show up, but they sit down and cheer instead of getting into the game like the student section, which is a very small percentage of our stands compared to you guys. When I watched Saturday night’s game on ESPN, you could tell that PNC Arena was rocking. While watching a game at the Dean Dome, sure it starts off pretty well, but once a big enough lead forms, the place quiets down a fair amount and most people sit down. And when the going gets tough, the fans get out of the whole game. Throughout the entire football season, we could only fill Kenan Stadium twothirds of its max capacity, which may have something to do with the fact that we could not go to a bowl by our own doing. There was one game that was, for the most part, sold out, but a good quarter of the stands were in an intimidating shade of red. But I think for the most part, the main reason the students do not consider you a rival is because you’re not Duke. There was a time in college sports where the students would chant “Go to Hell, State,” but that changed when Duke became a large basketball powerhouse in the nineties. Since then, you’ve been ignored and have been the butt of our jokes. But after Saturday night, I believe it’s time that Tar Heel nation considers you guys over in Raleigh a serious rival. We must push our built up egos to the side, and realize that just because we think your place isn’t as good as ours, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are better than you. I hope Saturday dawns a new era in college rivalries, with an old rival who is tired of getting mistreated. See you guys in February, “Alex” Current Freshman UNC-Chapel Hill
EDITOR’S NOTE Letters to the editor are the individual opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Technician staff or N.C. State University. All writers must include their full names and, if applicable, their affiliations, including years and majors for students and professional titles for University employees. For verification purposes, the writers must also include their phone numbers, which will not be published.
Puberty.
Davis Leonard, junior in science education
Lighting up a green lantern
I
will always remember the sound that awoke me on the fourth night of my stay in the Everglades. I like to describe it as a series of “kerplunks,” moving through shallow water at the pace of a horse trot. I had been canoeing all week Erik with N.C. Vosburgh Guest Columnist State’s Outdoor Adventures in the region of the Gulf that is appropriately known as the Ten Thousand Islands. The modest landmass that we settled on for the night was pencil thin, with only 50 feet separating us from the Atlantic Ocean on either side. I sat up, my achy muscles protesting the previous ten hours of paddling. The commotion was growing in volume, coming closer to our tent. It was the sound of something big moving through the water, and its size was confirmed when I heard a deep, snorting breath no more than 20 yards from us. As a touch-screen tapping city boy, the kinds of skills that would have allowed me to identify this creature were largely left out of my education — fear filled in the blanks for me as I whispered to my two tent-mates: “Could be a bear, didn’t they say there were some
bears out here? Or it might even be a gator, just because we haven’t seen one yet doesn’t mean anything, in fact that even makes it more likely! It’s definitely a gator!” My tent-mates were seasoned veterans of the wild, and they didn’t share my feelings. They quickly convinced me that it was most likely a dolphin stuck in shallow water. This made me feel much better; my screen saver was a Dolphin at one point. I felt calm and a little dumb for worrying so much. Whatever it was though, it held its silence for the remainder of the night. We never did find out exactly what that creature was, but I’ve missed the way I felt that night ever since. We Humans have made a habit of compartmentalizing the natural world, and I know I’m guilty of this. Ask me where the nearest example of nature is and I’ll point you in the general direction of Umstead Park, but up until that moment I never fully realized how blurry the line between myself and the environment actually is — perhaps my formal education has lined too much of my thinking with sidewalks. But I’m not writing to you today to make corny, extended metaphors about the natural world. Instead I’d rather kick off a North Carolina State University environmental column the right way: by admitting to
Editor-in-Chief Mark Herring
News Editor Sam DeGrave
Sports Editor Jeniece Jamison
Viewpoint Editor Ahmed Amer
Multimedia Editor Taylor Cashdan
editor@technicianonline.com
news@technicianonline.com
sports@technicianonline.com
viewpoint@technicianonline.com
webmaster@technicianonline.com
Managing Editor Trey Ferguson
Associate Features Editor Jordan Alsaqa
Associate Features Editor Young Lee
Design Editor
managingeditor@technician online.com
features@technicianonline.com
features@technicianonline.com
design@technicianonline.com
Advertising Manager Olivia Pope
Photo Editor Natalie Claunch
advertising@sma.ncsu.edu
photo@technicianonline.com
you that I’m a gas-guzzling, product-consuming American who can’t tell the difference between a dolphin and a bear. Even among the environmental advocacy crowd, I’m not alone in this. If you look past the hemp laptop case, many environmental critics have done their share of ranting on mass-market computers that have been shipped from China (my MacBook will vouch for me on this one). Contradictions aside though, there is a point to environmentalism other than the kind you do with your fingers. Too often, the planet is modeled as a collection of economies, governments and ecosystems that have limited capacities to inf luence one another. This disjointed perspective has resulted in our current paradigm; the most heavily consumed energy sources have high environmental costs that are not reflected in their market prices. In addition, these distortions make it inexpensive for individuals to consume disproportionate amounts of resources, and as a result we are creating a deficit of another kind. While a coursecorrection is no simple task, the most important decisions can be made every day by individuals, rather than in a boardroom. There is something empowering about that.
Technician (USPS 455-050) is the official student newspaper of N.C. State University and is published every Monday through Friday throughout the academic year from August through May except during holidays and examination periods. Opinions expressed in the columns, cartoons, photo illustrations and letters that appear on Technician’s pages are the views of the individual writers and cartoonists. As a public forum for student expression, the students determine the content of the publication without prior review. To receive permission for reproduction, please write the editor. Subscription cost is $100 per year. A single copy is free to all students, faculty, staff and visitors to campus. Additional copies are $0.25 each. Printed by The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Copyright 2011 by North Carolina State Student Media. All rights reserved.