Carolina Alumni Review - May/June 2009

mentary term,” said Jock Lauterer ’ 67, a lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “It tells you that this is a neighborhood that many people think is in crisis.”

Lauterer happened to be one of eight professors in the Faculty Engaged Scholars Program who were learning about marginalized communities, including Northeast Central Durham, when two of that area’s residents were charged with shooting Carson.

He seized on an idea that a colleague in the city and regional planning department passed on from a student who had studied the area: Why not start a neighborhood newspaper to create a sense of community and encourage civic engagement?

Lauterer, who started and ran two successful community newspapers in western

PHOTOS BY DAN SEARS ’ 74

North Carolina, plans to use local high school students to staff the paper. His “ Community Journalism” class, which focuses on service-learning, and students from The Campus Echo, N.C. Central University’s student newspaper, will mentor them.

The class spent the entire semester first building relations in the community. “I don’t want a flash in the pan,” Lauterer said. “This has got to be sustainable.”

death. He tutored at Jordan High School in Durham, helping a class that included the then-17-year-old Lovett. “I think there were only two people in our class that didn’t have criminal records,” he said.

So when Crouthamel decided to run for Homecoming king in September, his service project was a plan to help end the violence that had taken Carson’s life. Crouthamel, who plans to become a teacher, wants to educate local teachers about what they can do to help prevent gang violence. “We spend hours with students each day, and we have an incredible bond,” he said. “If [teachers] can just open their eyes to what to look for, they could make a huge difference.”

The Carolina Athletic Association is backing the plan and was expected to fund a half-day conference in April, free to local teachers. The plan calls for a speaker and workshops on everything from how to identify gang symbols to what teachers can legally and ethically do when they suspect one of their students is in a gang. Crouthamel is considering naming the conference “The Eve Project.” “It’s done in her spirit, to say the least,” he said.

“I also see this project as a natural pipeline for kids working on this newspaper going right into a university that they otherwise might not. You take a high-school kid, you take them over to N.C. Central’s Echo office. They’re in there. They’re surrounded by successful college kids that look like them. The kid is going

to think, ‘Wow, I could do this.’That might not ever happen otherwise.”

The project has won a $25,000 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and Durham Mayor Bill Bell included it in his State of the City address.

Top, planned Eve Marie Carson Memorial Garden. Middle, one-year anniversary gathering. Above, a “ 7” (sEVEn) lapel pin adopted by Morehead-Cain to remind alumni to stay closely connected to those three years above and three below their classes.

By March, Lauterer and his students had arranged to teach a series of photo/video workshops to kids at the Salvation Army in the heart of Northeast Central Durham, with hopes of continuing through the summer. “Perhaps some of those kids will be a part of our newspaper staff next fall,” Lauterer wrote in an e-mail.

The problem in the system

Carson’s death also has raised questions about what should change within the institutions that are designed to protect the public. Her murder drew intense scrutiny of the state’s probation system, whose supervision of both of the accused men in the case was, at best, inadequate. Carson’s murder also drew attention to the slaying of Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato several weeks earlier, which to that point had been largely ignored by the public. Lovett also has been charged in the Mahato case.

The News & Observer of Raleigh, in a series published in December, found that — due to outdated technology, inadequate staffing and other failings — the state had lost track of more than 14,000 criminals under probation supervision. The paper also found that, since 2000, nearly 600 people in North Carolina had committed murder while on probation.

“Nobody expects they’re going to have a perfect record. There are going to be cases like [the Carson case],” said Steve Riley, the paper’s senior editor for enterprise, describing the probation system. “But it’s a mess. There’s no reason to sugarcoat it.”

A tangible

reminder of
Carson’s legacy
will begin to
take shape on
campus over the
next few
months. Sited
just off Polk
Place behind the
Campus Y —
an apt location
given her passion
for social justice
— the Eve
Marie Carson
Garden will