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Blog and Media Roundup - Monday, October 25, 2010; News Roundup
Topic Started: Oct 25 2010, 03:36 AM (338 Views)
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/10034024/article-Deputy-police-chief-set-to-retire?instance=main_article

Deputy police chief set to retire
The Herald Sun
10.24.10 - 10:31 pm
AWER_15065407_DeputyChiefBjurstrom.JPG
By KEITH UPCHURCH

kupchurch@heraldsun.com; 419-6612

DURHAM -- A cop with a heart.

That's a good way to describe Jim Bjurstrom, who is retiring from the Durham Police Department after 28 years on the job.

Bjurstrom, who came to Durham in 1981 with no friends here but is leaving with many, always wanted to help people and make a difference. And to hear those who know him, he's succeeded at both.

He never wanted to be a police officer who just arrested people, threw them in jail and moved on to the next arrest. Instead, he tried whenever possible to help those who needed mental help, for example, and has served as police liaison with mental health and social service agencies.

Now, as he looks to become a gentleman of leisure starting Nov. 12 -- at least for a while -- he plans eventually to plug back into the Durham community and focus on three areas he likes most -- youths, the elderly and the faith-based community.

"In police work, you often can't be committed to just one thing; you have to pick and choose," he said. But now, he'll have the luxury of doing what he likes most.

"Being as young as I am, there's always other options, but right now I'm just waiting to see if anything falls in my lap. If not, I'll just take my time waiting for something, or volunteer or just enjoy life."

With sick time, Bjurstrom, 48, will leave with 30 years of service and full retirement pay.

He joined the department in 1982, rising through the ranks to become deputy chief, the department's second-highest rank, in January of this year.

"I've always enjoyed the community part [of the job], and I've always enjoyed the camaraderie in the Police Department," he said.

In the past 28 years, he's seen what he calls "a complete paradigm shift" from a department focused mainly on the criminal and victim -- but forgetting about the children who had to see the crime.

"We were worried about the victim who got hurt, and then catching the bad guy, and that was really what we looked at," he said. "Now, we go to crime scenes, and we're looking at not only the victim, not only who did it, but whether there were any kids there and how it affected them."

Through his work with the N.C. Child Response Initiative, which gets help for children who witness crimes or are victims, he knows he's made a difference.

"I think everyone has a soft spot for kids, but I think we kind of missed it before," he said. "Now, we can actually put our hands on some services that we can get to [the children] immediately."

Another positive change he's seen in the department comes through its Crisis Intervention Team, where police "don't just try to arrest our way out of a problem, but see if we can get someone help, because a lot of the people we deal with do have mental health issues."

Examples include repeat offenders or perhaps someone barricaded in a house or holding a hostage.

Some people need to be arrested, Bjurstrom said, but others are sick and need help.

"I'd say [helping people in need] is one of my strong points," he said. "Arresting folks was not high on my priority list."

Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said Bjurstrom's replacement hasn't been decided yet, but will come within the department.

"We've got some interviews planned and individuals we're looking at to succeed him," Lopez said. "We have extremely talented individuals right within our own department that we can choose from."

Lopez praised Bjurstrom's service to the department, and said his work with social service agencies in particular has given a lot to the community.

"He has done an excellent job as deputy chief," Lopez said. "He is going to be extremely missed."
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http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/10034018/article-Duke-senior-falls-behind-East-Union--dies?instance=main_article

Duke senior falls behind East Union, dies
The Herald Sun
10.24.10 - 10:31 pm
Duke News Service

DURHAM -- Drew Everson, a Duke University senior from Tampa, Fla., died Sunday following an accidental fall behind the East Union Building on Friday morning, according to Duke News Service.

Everson was found outside the East Campus building at 11:30 a.m. on Friday. Duke Police and Durham EMS responded immediately, transporting him to Duke Hospital. The investigation so far has determined that his injuries were the result of an accidental fall, university officials said Sunday. No further details will be available until the review is completed.

Everson's family, including his brother A.J. who graduated from Duke in 2009, was with him at Duke Hospital at the time of his death.

"Drew leaves behind many, many friends throughout the Duke community," Larry Moneta, the university's vice president for student affairs, wrote in a message to students. "It saddens me greatly to share such tragic news and I hope we can all comfort each other as needed."

The university is planning a memorial service in Duke Chapel at noon, Wednesday, Oct. 27, followed by a reception in the Scharf Commons area adjacent to Cameron Indoor Stadium.

On Sunday afternoon, students gathered in the Devil's Den on campus to offer support to each other. The campus has made counselors available to students.

"The death of a student is the saddest moment for a university, and our thoughts and prayers go out to Drew's family and friends, and to the many people at Duke whose lives he touched," said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

A political science major, Everson spent the past summer in New York working as an intern with Goldman Sachs. He was recently weighing job offers to pursue after graduation this spring, the university news release said. He was a member of Pi Kappa Phi and the Duke Debate Team and served as a line monitor for Duke Men's Basketball.
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/senior-dies-sat-after-tragic-fall

Senior dies Sat. after ‘tragic fall’
By Matthew Chase
October 25, 2010

Senior Drew Everson died Saturday night after sustaining severe head and body trauma from an accidental fall.

Everson, a 21-year-old from Tampa, Fla., suffered two collapsed lungs and severe head injuries after falling down a set of stairs behind the East Campus Union in an event that is believed to have occurred early Friday morning.

A Marketplace employee found Everson unconscious at the bottom of the outdoor stairwell at around 11:30 a.m. Friday Oct. 22, after which Everson was transported to the Duke University Emergency Department.

No criminal activity is suspected, administrators said. Chief John Dailey of the Duke University Police Department referred all comment to Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

Everson was in an induced coma until he died around 8 p.m. Saturday Oct. 23, according to administrators.

“There is no other way to describe it but an absolute tragedy,” said Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek. “It’s such an extreme level of sadness that I cannot even describe it. To watch his friends learn about the situation—it’s just devastating.”

At the time of his death, Everson was surrounded by family members, including his parents, his aunt and his brother A.J Everson, who graduated from Duke in 2009. Family members started arriving Friday night to be with Everson.

In a statement released Sunday, the University announced that an ongoing DUPD investigation determined that Everson’s injuries resulted from an “accidental fall,” adding that no details would be available until the end of the inquiry.

Wasiolek said Everson was “out with friends” the night of the accident. Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta added that Everson, a political science major, had left his group of friends to head home alone to his Watts Street apartment off East Campus when the incident occurred.

The outdoor stairwell where Everson was discovered is a “small” staircase with about six to eight stairs, Moneta said. He added that there are some details of the event that “we will never know.”

Wasiolek deferred comment to Dailey regarding the specifics of Everson’s state when he was found. Dailey then directed comment to Schoenfeld, who did not respond to the second request for comment late Sunday night.

Moneta notified the student body of Everson’s injuries at 5:45 p.m. Saturday. The e-mail instructed students to contact Duke Police with pertinent information and Counseling and Psychological Services for assistance.

Schoenfeld wrote in an e-mail that Moneta’s message was prompted because “a number of students and parents were contacting the University having heard inaccurate and incorrect information about the incident.”

Administrators also met with students throughout the weekend.

About 60 to 75 students met with University officials, including Moneta, Wasiolek, Associate Dean of Students Todd Adams and representatives from both CAPS and Residence Life and Housing Services. The meeting was held at Devil’s Den 4 p.m. Saturday and aimed to give an update on Everson’s medical status.

“I don’t think it was a long time after that when it became much clearer that this was not going to be heading in the direction that [the medical staff] had hoped,” Wasiolek added.

About 100 students gathered again to meet with administrators at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, when Everson’s death was announced. Moneta sent another e-mail shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday announcing the death to the entire student body.

At Duke, Everson was a Chronicle columnist in 2008-2009 and a member of the debate team and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. Pi Kappa Phi President Jordan Stone, a junior, wrote in an e-mail that Duke’s response to the death has been strong.

“The administration has been nothing short of amazing in communicating with those close to Drew and in providing support to all those affected by this numbing tragedy,” he wrote.

President Richard Brodhead and Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, visited the Everson family at the hospital Sunday.

The University will host a memorial service in the Chapel at noon Wednesday Oct. 27, followed by a reception in the Scharf Commons. The memorial will be open to the student body.

Wasiolek added that Everson’s family may host a private memorial in their hometown of Tampa, Fla., but said Wednesday’s service will be the primary event to commemorate Everson.

“The family very much wanted to have the service at the Duke Chapel,” she said.
Editor’s note: The Chronicle will accept letters to the editor remembering Drew until 8 p.m. Tuesday for Wednesday’s paper. Following Wednesday’s service, The Chronicle will write an obituary honoring Drew’s memory. Our thoughts are with Drew’s family and friends.
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/node/153383/talk

3:36 AM
October 25, 2010
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✔This is one of those moments when a pall falls over the entire university, when someone who just days earlier had so much to look forward to, is taken from our midst.

I have re-read the columns that Drew wrote for the Chronicle as a sophomore, columns filled with love of Duke and whimsy. And I have imagined him last summer at Goldman Sachs, the hottest place on Wall Street, and how bright his future might have been.

I commend President Brodhead and Dean Nowicki and other administrators, for their acts of kindness toward Drew's family and friends.

✔There is another dimension to this time of saddness, and FC is impelled to discuss the circumstances of Drew's death. We have a “small staircase” -- six or eight steps high -- about which FC and deputies have no recollection as we learn of this tragedy on a Sunday night, but a Deputy Fact Checker will visit this morning.

We have, we are told, someone who fell down those few stairs accidentially, suffering severe head injuries and two collapsed lungs.

As Larry Moneta said, there are some things we may never know about Drew's last hours. So FC must ask, how the university reached the conclusion expressed in an official Sunday news release that the death was "accidential."

I am most concerned that Duke Police are again feeding us the line that “the investigation is not complete.” That’s the line we heard last fall when a bus exploded in fire. We heard that line last winter when a campus cop was arrested for the S and M rape of a woman. And we heard the same line during the spring when a campus cop shot someone dead outside the hospital, hitting him square in the face with a bullet.

In all those other instances, this community simply let its concern go with the passage of time, and in all those instances we still have no answers. This time, the memory of a classmate requires more.
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/getting-your-money-s-worth

Getting your money’s worth
musings
By Antonio Segalini
October 25, 2010

Administrators rarely are honest and forthcoming when explaining themselves.

So I was thoroughly impressed by Friday’s Chronicle report claiming that University officials provided a detailed presentation to faculty members Thursday regarding the underlying processes and structure of Duke’s budget. They talked about the accounting processes and the revenue stream of various Duke schools, including the Fuqua School of Business and the School of Law.

They even discussed the idea of pending cuts, stating that schools’ deans are primarily responsible for balancing departmental budgets and deciding in which areas to make cuts. Provost Peter Lange spoke to the idea of where academic cuts will come from, stating, “Rarely have we said, ‘You need to make this cut and this is how you need to do it.’” Lange gave a somewhat (rarely is the same as never, right?) lucid explanation that where cuts come from will hopefully be decided based on class sizes, professors’ ratings from course evaluations and research.

Despite the clarity provided by Duke’s administration, the meeting failed to address an issue at the forefront of Americans’ minds since the recession: compensation. Administrators used the term “at-risk” salary to define what has been described as bonus pay or compensation bonuses for several officials in the Duke University Health System and Duke Management Company (the group responsible for managing the endowment). In discussing these at-risk salaries, President Richard Brodhead stated that a Herald-Sun op-ed article by Ed Rickards outlining the bonuses “neglected to note that the numbers in question were from calendar year 2008 and thus were from the period before the financial downturn and lack of salary increases.” He then went on to say “people who work at DUMAC and people who work in executive positions in the health system are not compensated with a flat salary—they are compensated with a base salary and then an ‘at-risk’ salary.”

My Duke education unfortunately has not yet prepared me for the idea that a flat salary with a bonus is different from a base salary and an “at-risk” salary. Consequently, I find myself unable to comprehend the idea that some Duke University employees are entitled to excessive compensation irrespective of performance or economic conditions.

Even if we are to believe Brodhead’s statement that the salaries and at-risk salaries came at the time before the financial meltdown, the numbers are still staggering. For the 2008-2009 academic year, the top earning DUMAC and Health System employees received substantial at-risk salaries during a time when the endowment shrank by more than 27 percent.

The facts are unavoidable: DUMAC managed the investments that led to Duke’s endowment shrinking from $6.1 billion to $4.4 billion. Yes, please pay them more. Go ahead and say it was a bad economic time, but the idea that these at-risk salaries kicked in when the endowment’s risk-management team failed is ridiculous. But “at-risk” salaries must be incentive based, I presume.

Perhaps the blame should not fall entirely on the administration, though. Duke University is essentially governed by its trustees and administrators, despite the fact that it is impossible for a small group of people to govern the entire Duke system. So I guess blaming the administration for not keeping track of the salaries and at-risk salaries of employees in different branches of Duke is somewhat of a stretch.

Yet, according to the American Association of University Professors cited in Rickards’ column, “male full professors earn an average of $164,700 and female $146,800. Male associate professors average $109,700 while females are $89,100. And male assistant professors are averaging $96,300, while females are $79,500,” not including research grants or outside funding or the fact that a cultural anthropology professor probably does not earn as much as, say, a biomedical engineering professor. So why in the world are DUMAC managers—managers Anders Hall and Andreas Ritter, for instance, received bonuses of $434,804 and $269,500 respectively in the last fiscal year— getting paid significantly more than professors? Why are the people that “manage” our endowment getting paid more than the people that make Duke University, well, Duke University?

There is a disgusting lack of correlation between importance to the University and payment for that importance. When I think of Duke, I do not think of the guys managing its endowment or even the guys in the Allen building who do... wait what do those guys do? I think of the professors that make this school great. Instead, Duke’s compensation structure is starting to look like that of a Wall Street shop. Duke needs to value education and success in the classroom above all else, and the only way to do that is to give people the salaries they deserve.

Antonio Segalini is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every Monday.
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/node/153399/talk

4:41 AM
October 25, 2010
Fact Checker

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✔Mr Brodhead has been smudging the facts by claiming the obscene payments to administrators are "at risk," whatever that means.

Surely he knows that the official documents that all the statistics identify the payments as "bonus and incentive compensation."

This is a red hot issue on a campus where some people are getting rich and some people have been laid off. I hope Mr Brodhead realizes that spinning is never the way to cool off.

Sample source: Duke Health IRS form 990, 2008-09, schedule J-1, line B (ii). PDF page 40.

✔Further, Brodhead claims the statistics for 2008-9 are "misleading" as they embrace bonuses for the previous year. Sir, the numbers in the Herald Sun only stated the amount of money lugged home during 2008-09, nothing more. We call upon you to immediately release information that auditors certified on October 5, about 2009-10, so we can then compare two bad years and demolish your statement.

✔We call upon you to reveal details about the conflict of interest forms you signed, in order to pay your wife $132,500 to host dinner parties and the like, unprecedented for the spouse of a Duke president.

✔And we call upon you to reveal the demographics of the 2,500 university employees making more than $100,000 a year -- a number that does not include doctors who earn fees for seeing patients at Duke Hospital. We would like to know how many are male, female. How many are white, black, Asian, Latino. We do not want names, we would like however, to compare department by department salaries and the number of administrators vs the number of professors.

✔✔✔✔✔Looking forward to hearing from you, FC
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/25/1785223/4-vie-for-2-superior-court-seats.html

4 vie for 2 Superior Court seats
But only 3 actively seeking Mecklenburg judgeships; Norelli not campaigning.
By Gary L. Wright
gwright@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, Oct. 25, 2010

Lane Williamson gave up a successful law practice in April for a judgeship. He must now win voters' approval to keep his job on the bench.

Williamson knew when he accepted Gov. Bev Perdue's appointment to a Superior Court judgeship that he would soon face an election that could put a quick end to his judicial career. "This was a rare opportunity to do what I really want to do," he says, "and no opportunity comes free of risk."

Williamson, along with Mecklenburg District Judges Bill Constangy and Hugh Lewis and former District Judge Nancy Norelli, are on the Nov. 2 ballot for two Superior Court judgeships. The top two vote-getters in the nonpartisan race will win the seats.

The race is only for voters in District 26B, which covers much of east and central Charlotte and parts of south Charlotte.

Williamson replaced Judge Robert Johnston, who abruptly retired in January after 28 years on the bench. The second seat has been vacant since Judge Gentry Caudill retired in July.

Constangy, Lewis and Norelli have years of judicial experience. Constangy has been a district court judge for more than two decades. Lewis has been on the bench since 2000. Norelli served eight years as a judge before resigning in 2008 to go into private practice and spend more time with her family.

Lane Williamson

Williamson, 57, has been a judge for only six months.

"I cannot think of a better job than being a trial judge, or of a better fit for my experience, abilities and temperament...," Williamson says.

"I have quickly developed a reputation as a judge who is welcomed by all parties as an unbiased and knowledgeable decision maker," he said. "I have worked hard to become a judge who can handle the routine cases efficiently and the tough cases effectively."

Williamson says taxpayers should expect judges to put in the time and effort to resolve cases and keep the dockets moving. "More importantly, everyone has the right to expect that the courts are a level playing field," he says. "A judge is an umpire - not a player - and like an umpire should hardly be noticed unless he makes a bad call."

Williamson has practiced law for more than 30 years. He was chair of the N.C. State Bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, where he presided over the hearing of former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong was disbarred and jailed for his handling of the Duke lacrosse case, in which three lacrosse players were charged with sexually assaulting a woman at a team party in 2006. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.
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Williamson has practiced law for more than 30 years. He was chair of the N.C. State Bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, where he presided over the hearing of former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong was disbarred and jailed for his handling of the Duke lacrosse case, in which three lacrosse players were charged with sexually assaulting a woman at a team party in 2006. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.


They were dropped because they were a fraud from the beginning...
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