TECHNICIAN
wednesday september
25 2013
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
New tax law to increase cost of meal plans Jason Katz Deputy News Editor
Students who have a meal plan will soon be paying more for food, as a new state tax law will raise the cost of dining on campus. The new law, which will take effect Jan. 1, forces N.C. State, as well as all other universities in North Carolina, to charge sales taxes on all food—even for students who have meal plans. C a mpu s E nt e r pr i s e s , the umbrella group that includes University Dining,
NC State Bookstores and Trademark Licensing, had not anticipated the change in tax structure. “Well, it was definitely a surprise because, in the 30 years that University Dining has been in existence, we don’t have any record of ever having to charge tax,” sa id Jen n i fer Gi l more, director of marketing and communication for Campus Enterprises. The Commuter Plan will be the most affected by the law change. In this plan, students pay $750 to obtain dining dollars, which are used to
buy untaxed food on campus. Nex t semester t he advantage of this plan will be diminished substantially. “When we created the Commuter Meal Plan this past year, one of the attractive pieces to that was the tax-free feature,” Gilmore said. “So of course we were disappointed when the legislature chose to take that incentive away.” In addit ion to t he commuter plan, the new tax law will also raise the final price of food for students with any other meal plan. According to Gilmore, any new student who chooses to
BIENVENIDOS
live on campus in his or her first year is required to have a meal plan. She estimated that there are currently about 9,100 students with meal plans at N.C. State, and about 3,500 of those are required. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill into law in July with the intent of simplifying the tax structure and lowering both individual and business taxes. The bill will introduce a flat individual income tax of 5.8 percent in 2014, and be lowered to 5.75 percent in 2015.
TAX continued page 3
Bar Association seeks to decrease student debt, length of law school Jaqualine Lee Correspondent
PHOTO COURTSEY OF THE ONE STATE ONE RATE CAMPAIGN
“Students at UNC Chapel Hill deliver the petition from One State One Rate Campaign to the Chancellor.”
Students challenge UNC-System stance on in-state tuition for immigrants Paula Gordon Deputy Bienvenidos Editor
If you do well in school and receive good grades, you can go to college. This is the simple mantra that students hear again and again in middle and high school. However, for some Latino students growing up in North Carolina, things aren’t that simple. According to the National Immigration Law Center, “only about five to 10 percent of undocumented young people who graduate from high school go on to college, compared with about 75 percent of their classmates.” As a result of this, Emilio Vicente and Pablo Friedmann began the One State One Rate campaign to, which advocates for in-state tuition at UNC-Chapel Hill to apply to students who are in the country ille-
gally in North Carolina, but who meet the residency requirement. Currently, these students pay outof-state tuition at all community colleges and public universities in the state. On Sept. 17, the campaign held a press conference at UNC-Chapel Hill and delivered petitions to the chancellor. Since then, the campaign has made it to local news sources in Spanish and English, and made headlines in the Huffington Post. The question is not whether Latino students from lower incomes want to attend college—it is the fact that they cannot afford it. Action for Children in North Carolina estimates that in 2008, the median household income for Latino students enrolled in pub-
TUITION continued page 5
The American Bar Association has proposed to make major changes in the legal education system that might allow future lawyers to take the bar exam without attending law school or a four-year college. The report says college costs, rising student debt and changes in jobs available to graduates are reasons for the proposed reform. The proposal also includes training for people who do not have a law degree so they are able to perform limited legal services. The bar association will discuss the draft at its 2014 meeting. The report recommends that law schools should terminate the 45,000 minutes of class time required to graduate, and it also suggests law students shouldn’t receive credit for paid legal work. According to Sharon Gaskin, an associate dean of Admissions for the Elon University School of Law, the legal education system needs to be reformed because of how expensive it is for students,
and that law school needs to meet Obama said law schools would the needs of the changing legal be wise to make law school two market. years instead of three, according The proposals are ambitious and to NPR. innovative and must be carefully Jeremy Leonard, a litigation examined by law school deans and at tor ney at Hairston L ane professors at the 2014 meeting Brannon, PA and an adjunct of the American Bar Association, professor at N.C. State agreed Gaskin said. w it h President Ga sk in a lso Obama. s a id t h a t a ny Ac c or d i n g t o proposal adopted Leonard, reform by the American is needed in legal Bar Association educ at ion, a nd should take into f r om h i s ow n consideration ex per ience, he the tremendous wholly supports financial stress changing law assumed by school education law students to from three to two complete t heir years. studies and that “The bulk of the t he A mer ican information that Bar Association’s I needed to take Jeremy Leonard, adjunct pr op o s a l s a r e and pass the N.C. professor at N.C. State a good starting Bar E x am wa s point to make law provided to me in school more affordable. the first two years of law school,” Other members of the legal Leonard said. “The remainder community suggest different of the information I utilized changes, such as President to take and pass the bar exam Barack Obama, a Harvard Law was taught to me during the bar School graduate and a former law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. LAW continued page 2
“There is absolutely no way that anyone can say with a straight face that our state has enough job opportunities.”
CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS
“Humanities and arts Ph.D.s grow in popularity” A story that ran under the headline “Humanities and arts Ph.D.s grow in popularity” on the front page of yesterday’s issue included a chart that tracked national – not N.C. State-specific – trends with regard to the number of students enrolling in various doctoral programs in 2012 as compared to 2011. The information in that chart was taken from the Atlantic magazine article referenced throughout the story; the source of the data should have been noted on the chart. N.C. State currently offers just one doctoral pro-
gram affiliated with the humanities, the interdisciplinary Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program. Enrollment in CRDM has remained steady. The University offers no doctoral programs affiliated with the arts. Jeffery Braden, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, has submitted a Letter to the Editor further clarifying his comments to reporter Mona Bazzaz for yesterday’s piece. That letter can be found on Page 4 of this issue.”
insidetechnician BIENVENIDOS
FEATURES
SPORTS
Estudiantes desafían la postura del sistema UNC sobre la matrícula estatal
Gender gap in PCOM: Not an issue until graduation
Surkamp scores twice, Pack shuts out Wildcats, 2-0
See page 6.
See page 8.
See page 5.