Fewer ticketed for
underage drinking
The number of underage drinking citations issued by the Greenville Police Department declined nearly 20 percent last year, but campus officials say they are not letting up on their efforts to educate students, particularly freshmen, about the dangers of alcohol. In a year-end report, the Greenville PD said it issued 363 citations for underage drinking in 2007 compared to an average of 450 in the previous three years. One incident alone—an August raid on a party held by the since-suspended Chi Phi fraternity—accounts for nearly 80 of the 363 citations for the year.

A spokesman for the Greenville Police Department said he thought the vast majority of those cited for underage drinking were East Carolina students, but he added that the number includes some who are not.

Many students say they believe police have tightened up on underage drinking. “You really can tell it’s changed around here,” said Matthew W. Cohen, a political science major. “I remember going to places a few years ago, and, without admitting to anything, I know there was a lot of underage drinking going on. Now, a lot of those places are shut down. I never really thought about it before, but the Sports Pad and Main Street Beer Company are gone, and that’s where we’d always go…before we turned 21.”

Underage drinking and sexual assaults are two key areas of focus for Greenville police. The city and the university created a task force that concentrates on those issues and is paying particular interest to off-campus parties where it’s believed that most underage drinking occurs.

“Everyone checks for IDs now. A lot of times, we don’t even try,” said Pollyanna Castro, a 20-year-old Greenville resident. “I don’t want to get in trouble, so I’ll just say that we stay at home until we’re ready to go out, then we go out and have fun and then come back home. It’s not worth the risk, going out [and drinking] in public.”

The number of citations issued by campus police for liquor law violations fell from 537 in 2004 to 425 in 2006, the last year for which complete statistics were available. However, citations by campus police for drinking on public property rose from none in 2004 to 64 in 2006 in what was thought to be a crackdown on drinking at tailgate parties before football games. It is illegal to consume alcohol on university property regardless of age.

Bob Morphet, assistant director of the Center for Counseling and Student Development, said drinking remains a major problem and the statistics he sees rise and fall sporadically. “Each year we have 4,000 new 18-year-old freshmen coming here and getting their first taste of personal freedom. That’s the group we work the hardest with because they are the most susceptible.”

Morphet added that he believes the statistics on drinking at East Carolina “are within one percentage point above or below what it is on every other campus around the country. We are not unique in any way.” —Communications major John Swartz contributed to this report.


Students ticked
over towing
A student group has presented campus officials with a petition signed by 1,600 students demanding that campus police stop towing illegally parked cars and instead use Denver boots. That would save students the $75 fee that private contractors working for the university charge for towing. Including the towing fee, a parking ticket can cost as much as $150.

University officials met with the group to discuss options. Ashley Yopp, speaker of the Student Congress, called off a scheduled protest because she said parking officials “have been more than willing to listen to us and work with us on this. And hopefully we can work together to make parking a little bit more friendly entity on campus.”

A policy implemented last year already has resulted in a sharp reduction in the number of towed cars. Now, a car is towed if it’s illegally parked in A1 zones—areas usually reserved for VIPs—if their owners previously were ticketed for parking in those zones. Under the old policy those cars were towed on a first offense. Between July 1, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2008, 368 cars were towed, down from 991 during the same period a year earlier.

There are about 12,000 parking spaces on campus.




ECU begins
required reading
East Carolina is joining N.C. State University and UNC Chapel Hill in requiring incoming freshmen to read the same book. During summer orientation sessions, all ECU freshmen will get a copy of My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, by Dr. Cathy Small and published under the pseudonym Rebekah Nathan. It recounts the experiences of Small, a faculty member at Northern Arizona University, who enrolled as a freshman with the goal of better understanding today’s students. N.C. State freshmen will be reading Colors of the Mountain, the autobiography of a boy coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution. Carolina freshmen will be reading Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, in which a gay Japanese-American examines the current state of American civil rights.

Above, students crowd the stage as a rock band being playing at Barefoot on the Mall. For 29 years, Barefoot has offered students a last fun fling before buckling down for final exams.


Textbook cost controls working

East Carolina’s efforts to control the cost of textbooks is paying off, according to a report by the UNC Board of Governors which shows that a typical student here pays substantially less for books than students at most other public schools in the state. The report says ECU students pay an average $646 per academic year for new books, compared to $890 at UNC Chapel Hill and $894 at N.C. State.

“That was just wonderful news for us because we have been working hard the past two or three years to do everything we could to contain costs,” said Director of ECU Student Stores Wanda Scarborough.

Pushed by the General Assembly to address the issue, the Board of Governors in 2006 began requiring all 16 UNC campuses to submit data on what they charge for books. Last year, the board also began requiring the campuses to submit more detailed data and to report on progress toward implementing a guaranteed buyback or rental program for required textbooks.

East Carolina and several other campuses launched guaranteed buyback programs last fall semester. To make it work, professors must commit to using the same textbook for consecutive semesters. That allows the bookstore to guarantee it will buy back the book at half price, knowing it can sell the used book the next semester.

Scarborough said another factor in controlling prices is timely notification from professors about which books they will be requiring students to use. That allows the bookstore to purchase in bulk and avoid last-minute purchases, which are more expensive. Professors here are doing that about 78 percent of the time, which is above the systemwide average of 71 percent. She said the goal is 85 percent.

East Carolina, N.C. State and Carolina pool resources to make the guaranteed book buyback program work better. The three schools share information about which books are on their required lists, which means the ECU bookstore can buy back a book even if it won’t be used again here because it may still be required at one of the other two campuses.

“We try everything we can to control costs but there are some things we can’t control. Because of the high price of gas, we’re now being hit with fuel surcharges by the freight companies that ship the books to us,” Scarborough said.

Dowdy Student Stores generates about $13 million a year in revenue and earns roughly $365,000 in profits, all of which it gives back to students in the form of scholarships, Scarborough said. Because it receives no state funding, the bookstore pays all of its expenses, including staff salaries, “The bookstore is totally self-supporting,” she added.

Appalachian State, Elizabeth City State and Western Carolina have the lowest costs because they rent textbooks to students. Scarborough said converting to a rental textbook system wouldn’t be practical at East Carolina because it serves a larger student body and because it must stock books for a greater array of courses.

Faculty don’t like textbook rentals because they are required to use the same textbook for three years. Students like the low cost but they say many books are falling apart by the time they’ve been used for several semesters.

According to the National Association of College Stores, the typical American college student pays $53 for a new textbook and spends $763 for books per year. Combined, college bookstores sold $6.5 billion worth of books in the 2005–06 academic year.




Enrollment has grown by more than 5,000 students in five years

Should ECU tighten its admissions standards?
East Carolina has been the fastest-growing public university in North Carolina for the last five years, but that may change. Chancellor Steve Ballard said he’s awaiting recommendations from a task force that will examine, among other things, whether the university should curtail its enrollment growth by raising admissions standards. Ballard said he will be guided by “how much growth we can accommodate and still do everything possible so that each student is successful.”

In the past five years ECU’s enrollment shot up from 20,577 to 25,990 last fall. “This is an appropriate time to take a close look and make sure that our growth is focused in a way that ensures that we are maintaining access and properly serving the people of North Carolina,” the chancellor said.

On the task force are members of the Board of Trustees, faculty, students and administrators. Leading it is Judi Bailey, who oversees ECU’s enrollment management enterprise. She said one task is examining the proper ratios of undergraduate students to graduate students. “We must also develop a better answer to the question of what the appropriate admission standards for ECU should be,” the chancellor said.

The average SAT score of ECU freshmen rose from 1,023 in 2001 to 1,042 in 2006. The average of all UNC campuses is 1,078.


ECU, Carolina cooperate on medical schools
The UNC Board of Governors has approved a cooperative plan by East Carolina and UNC Chapel Hill for major expansions to their medical schools in order to meet a predicted shortage of doctors in the state. The board gave its blessing to a proposal to expand the UNC School of Medicine from 160 first-year students to 230 with the Brody School of Medicine expanding from 73 to 120 first-year students. In addition, both schools would add regional campuses where third- and fourth-year students would complete residency training.

Estimates are that expanding each medical school would cost about $239 million in one-time construction and $40 million a year for additional faculty and staff. It would be phased in over the next 10 years, depending on the timing of required funding from the General Assembly.

Officials of both schools made presentations to the Board of Governors in March. Carolina is proposing adding regional medical campuses in Charlotte and Asheville. ECU is eyeing two unidentified sites in eastern North Carolina, officials said. Charlotte is the largest city in the country that doesn’t have a medical school.

With uncertain funding, the timing of the expansions is up in the air, but Carolina wants to start admitting more students in 2009 or 2010, said Dr. Bill Roper, CEO of the UNC Health Care System. Roper cautioned that the plan remains preliminary. “It could get refined, changed, slimmed down or expanded,” Roper said. “The state needs to find out how much we collectively can afford.”

Teams from both schools have met several times in what they describe as a cooperative relationship, despite the history of a bitter battle in the 1970s when ECU established a medical school over the objections of supporters of the Chapel Hill campus.

“It’s very clear we need more doctors in this state, and we want to be part of the solution,” said Nicholas Benson, vice dean at Brody. ECU had already planned to increase each class to 80 students, but the new approach could mean 40 more students.

East Carolina and Chapel Hill signed a memorandum of understanding in December to cooperate in the fight against cancer. The agreement calls for the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill and the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center in Greenville to share resources and agree on joint research goals.

The fact that ECU and Carolina are cooperating on two major medical endeavors leads some to wonder if the two schools have buried the hatchet. East Carolina people still remember when Chapel Hill opposed a medical school in Greenville and more recently when Carolina first supported but then opposed funding for the ECU Heart Center. Why the sudden thaw? Some observers point to the no-nonsense management style of President Erskine Bowles, who they say doesn’t tolerate infighting. Others say it’s purely financial.  State budget writers are demanding greater efficiencies and productivity by the higher education system, and that means making better use of existing resources—like the state’s two medical schools and cancer centers.


News Roundup



Dental school groundbreaking: More than 150 state, local and campus officials attended a February groundbreaking ceremony for East Carolina’s new School of Dentistry. “We know how to make a difference for those populations that have not been served well enough,” Chancellor Steve Ballard said at the ceremony, noting that more than 25 North Carolina counties have fewer than three dentists. Eastern North Carolinians look to ECU “to lead this region, and you have consistently delivered,” said Rep. Joe Hackney, speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives. “This dental school is just one more example of how your university is not just building an academic institution, but building up an entire region and this entire state,” he added. The 115,000-square-foot facility, to be erected near the Brody School of Medicine, is expected to cost $85 million.

Super virus studied: Researchers at the Brody School of Medicine received a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore ways to control a germ that sickens many cystic fibrosis patients and is resistant to many antibiotics. Dr. Everett Pesci, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology, received the grant to study Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes about 10 percent of hospital infections and chronic lung infections in about 90 percent of people with cystic fibrosis. Such infections are the primary source of progressive lung dysfunction for C.F. patients. Pesci has studied the bacteria for more than a decade.

Brody adds neurosurgery: ECU Physicians and a private neurosurgery practice in Greenville plan to merge and take steps toward developing the region’s first neuroscience institute at East Carolina. Doctors associated with Eastern Neurosurgical and Spine Associates will join the Brody faculty, according to Dr. Phyllis Horns, Brody’s interim dean. She said the merger should be completed by July 1.



Heart Center nearly ready: The $60 million East Carolina Heart Institute is nearing completion on the Health Sciences Campus and should be ready by September. The four-story facility will house clinical, research and education components where Brody School of Medicine and staff will work together in outpatient care, research and training. It will function with the new $150 million, 120-bed cardiovascular tower that Pitt County Memorial Hospital is building nearby.