Police and media treatment inconsistent

I thought it was interesting the way that the Technician portrays and the law handles violent crimes involving students. Last year two of my friends (both black) were charged with three violent encounters in one night, one involving a pistol with suspected intent to kill. They were given $5 million bail (which they couldn’t pay, of course) and had their mug shots blasted on the front page of the Technician. Yesterday I read an article about a white guy who shot two of his neighbors with a shot gun. This guy got out the next day on $25,000 bail, a twentieth of my friends’ bail, and did not have his face put on the front page. From what I know about the two stories, both were the only incidences of violence in the studentsÕ pasts (or else they probably wouldn’t have been admitted into our school) and they were both extreme cases of overreactions and unbridled anger. My point is that I don’t understand why the two cases were treated so differently by the police and media when from my knowledge (which I admit may be limited) they seem like similar cases. In fact, the case from yesterday seems worse because he was said to have a shotgun, which he fired into two peoplesÕ bodies while my friend was said to fire a pistol at a car that almost hit him and the bullet only grazed a girlÕs shoulder. Why only $25,000 bail instead of $5 million? By the way, I don’t mean this as an attack on the Technician or our justice system. I merely wanted to bring up something that I felt was a little off and see what other people think about it.

Julie PittsSophomore, Industrial Design

Campout if you want tickets

In response to Andrew Milmoe’s Forum entry about the basketball lotteryÊnot being fair:There was a campout for the UNC-Chapel Hill game. Anyone who attended got tickets. Do you feel that you shouldn’t have to do this to get a guaranteed ticket since you are a senior? You are seemingly not in favor of a system where the tickets are given out randomly and not in favor of a system where you have to camp out to get tickets. What exactly did you have in mind for ticket distribution? If this was any other game I may be inclined to agree with you, but this time you clearly didn’t want the tickets as badly as you say.

Jason SimonJunior, Civil Engineering