The Carolinian [November 6, 2007]

              THIS WEEK: Nov.6-Nov. 12,2007
Movie Review:
American Gangster
ARTS PAGE 9
THE
Privacy Up In
Smoke
OPINIONS PAGE 6
man
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER 0E UNCG
www.carolinianonline.com
Getting Off On The Right Foot
*:
FREE-Former
inmate speaks of life on death row
After being wrongly accused, Juan Melendez shares his story with UNCG
-.*
Danielle Moore
Staff Writer
As the Bryan Auditorium slow-ly
became crowded with students
and faculty on Thursday evening,
Mr. Juan Melendez, the 99th per-son
exonerated from death row,
was preparing to give an emo-tion-
filled speech about violence,
justice, and death penalty policies
in the United States.
Kelly Travison, a senior, and
president of the Sociology
Club, helped to introduce Mr.
Melendez.
"The Sociology Club wanted
to host Juan Melendez because
he is just one example where the
justice system wrongly accused
an innocent man," said Travi-son.
"We wanted to make people
aware than this is an irreversible
process that should clearly be put
up for review in the U.S."
After a brief introduction, Me-lendez
was given the floor, and
immediately grabbed the audi-ence
with his sense of humor.
"If you feel like crying, cry. If
you feel like laughing, laugh. But
please don't fall asleep on me,"
began Melendez.
He went on to give a brief his-tory
of his childhood, and the
move he made from his home in
Puerto Rico to the United States,
where he hoped to find a better
life.
However instead of living the
American dream, Melendez was
accused of first-degree murder.
Despite the fact that there was no
physical evidence to tie him to the
crime and the two witnesses who
testified against him had criminal
records, Melendez was tried and
found guilty.
Melendez talked about his ex-perience
with the legal system
and, in particular, his inability
to understand much of what was
happening to him because he did
not speak English well at the time
of his trial.
In great detail, he took the
audience to his time spent in
prison, describing the horrible
conditions he lived in for almost
18 years.
"Death row is hell," explained
Melendez.
Melendez's strong faith in
God also showed through in his
speech. After three failed attempts
to appeal his case, Melendez be-gan
to fear he would be executed
for a crime he did not commit,
and turned to God for help.
"I learned I had to trust some-thing
more powerful than the
system, and the only thing I saw
more powerful than the system
was God," he continued.
Melendez told the audience that
he was given a miracle from God.
A new lawyer decided to help
Melendez and after some digging,
found the key to his freedom.
Melendez was released after a
video of the real killer's confes-sion
was discovered in some old
files relating to his case. Although
he could not believe the evidence
had been there all along, he was
still ecstatic to be free.
"I was in a state of shock, but
smiling," said Melendez. "And I'm
still smiling today."
Melendez spoke about his belief
that the death penalty as punish-ment
is a faulty policy and should
be abolished. Citing the reasons'
for his belief, he said the process
is unfair, costly, and racist, but the
biggest problem lies in the fact
that there will always be a chance
of executing an innocent man.
"The death penalty will be
abolished," proclaimed Melendez.
"The question is when. I pray to
God that it's in my lifetime."
A short question-and-answer
session followed Melendez's lec-ture,
and many students thanked
Melendez for taking action.
Milo Irsula, a senior, comment-
SEE INMATE ON PAGE FOUR
Google email to possibly become primary system
Jerry Arnold
Staff Writer
E-Spartan beware, there is a
new system in town possibly tak-ing
the place as UNCG's univer-sity-
wide e-mailing system in the
near future.
The new UNCG student e-mail
system is powered by Google and
is currently in its trial stages on
campus. As of Friday, Nov. 2,
there were 1,332 students using
the new Google e-mail pilot.
"Our current plans are to eval-uate
the success of the UNCG
Student Email Pilot sometime in
mid to late January," says Todd
Sutton, assistant vice chancellor
for Application Services with the
ITS department at UNCG. "At
that time we will make a 'go/no-go'
decision as if we will move all
students to the new UNCG Stu-dent
Email system."
If they decide to "go" and
switch the university to the new
system, ITS will begin to develop
a migration strategy to move ev-erybody
to Google.
"Our initial plans are if we de-cide
to go with Google, by the be-ginning
of the Fall '08 semester all
student e-mail accounts will be in
the UNCG Student Email sys-tem
and out of E-Spartan," says
Sutton.
Students signing up for the
pilot are assigned new e-mails,
using their username@spar-tan.
uncg.edu, rather than the
old username@uncg.edu. Their
username and password stay the
same, and all e-mails sent to the
student's E-Spartan account will
be forwarded to the Google pow-ered
e-mail address.
Students who register for the
new system will have 48 hours to
access both E-Spartan and Google
powered Spartan E-mail, where
they are expected to forward any
e-mails they wish to keep to their
new address.
There are only a few differences
between the two systems. The
UNCG Student E-mail Opt In has
up to 4255 megabytes of space for
e-mail storage, whereas E-Spartan
only had 65 megabytes.
The new system still has spam
filtering, options for folders, cal-endars,
message filtering, and
message searching, but also has
file sharing and instant messaging
capabilities the E-Spartan system
did not have. The only downside
is that you can only attach up to
SEE GOOGLE ON PAGE FOUR
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