Students, faculty and friends gather on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill to remember Eve Carson on the one-year anniversary of her murder.

Hundreds of students gathered in the Pit at UNC-Chapel Hill Thursday afternoon to remember Eve Carson, the student body president who was slain a ... more

UNC will remember former Student Body President Eve Carson on March 5, the date on which she was murdered one year ago. A ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. on campus in The Pit, with music starting at 3:45 p.m.

The gathering will include remarks by Chancellor Holden Thorp and a performance by the Clef Hangers, a male student a cappella group. The rain site is the auditorium of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union.

"For many of us, the loss of Eve Carson continues to occupy our thoughts," Thorp said in a release today. "This ceremony gives us a chance to remember and celebrate Eve together after a difficult year."

A memorial service is in the works at UNC Chapel Hill for March 5, the first anniversary of the killing of Eve Carson, the popular student body president.

A ceremony that day will be held in The Pit at 4 p.m. Chancellor Holden Thorp will speak and the Clef Hangers, a student singing group, will perform.

If it rains, the event will move indoors to the student union, which is nearby.

"For many of us, the loss of Eve Carson continues to occupy our thoughts," Thorp said in a news release. "This ceremony gives us a chance ot remember and celebrate Eve together after a difficult year."

Carson's impact at UNC and in the community is seen in a variety of other ways.

A scholarship in Carson's name has been established and a campus garden bearing her name is in the works as well.

Click here for more information on the March 5 ceremony.

A UNC Chapel Hill junior is the first recipient of a scholarship named for Eve Carson, the UNC-CH student body president shot dead last year.

Elinor Benami of Knoxville, Tenn., is double-majoring in international studies and economics. She was chosen by a scholarship panel made up entirely of students.

More info here.

After the murders of two area college students earlier this year, we knew we wanted to dig into the state's probation system. The two young men charged with murdering the college students had been convicted of other crimes and put on probation. But they had little or no contact with their probation officers. We've spent much of the last year looking at how North Carolina's probation system works -- or doesn't work.

Starting Sunday, we will publish "Losing Track: North Carolina's Crippled Probation System." After reading the series, you will be angry -- and scared. There are solutions; each day of the three-part series (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday) includes a story on possible solutions. For the last eight years, the probation system has been under the control of Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat. We'll see if Gov.-elect Bev Perdue, a Democrat who takes office in January, has the will to fix this problem.  

This kind of reporting is expensive. It's threatened by the financial problems of the newspaper industry. Read more about our commitment to investigative reporting in my Saturday column.  

12/5 UPDATE: That headline did get changed during the course of the evening, from "Coming Sunday" to "Next Sunday." So some readers were correctly clued. TV 

Some readers were fooled by a front-page item Sunday that alerted readers to an upcoming series on the state's broken probation system for criminal offenders. The two suspects accused in the murder of UNC student Eve Carson had fallen through the cracks of the state system. The series follows up on the problems.

The promotional box said "Starting Sunday," followed by a headline that read "North Carolina losing track of probationers."

"I have read the Sunday paper thoroughly once, and scanned it again looking for, 'the start of our three-part series.' There is nothing like it anywhere in the paper," wrote Mark Hamblet. "Where is it? On-line (I looked there, too)? In a blog somewhere?"

The series starts next Sunday, Dec. 7. That headline could have been more precise.

The first Eve Carson Memorial 5K for Education takes place Saturday to honor the slain student body leader whose killing last year sent such a wave of grief through Chapel Hill.

Registration starts at 8 a.m. at Polk Place and the race starts at 10 a.m.

Registration is $15 by mail, $18 online or $20 in person on the day of the race.

Two-thirds of money raised will go to the foundation formed in Carson's memory. The rest will be split between First Book, an organization that provides books to low-income families, and the Clyde Erwin Elementary School, a Jacksonville, NC magnet school focusing on international studies and cultural arts.

Following is the Public Editor column from Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008:

The News & Observer seems to be increasingly at odds with government these days over public records.

This month, the paper's lawyers protested when a state judge sealed records related to handling of drunken-driving charges in Johnston County. Before that, the fight was over access to search warrants in the murder case of Nancy Cooper, the Canadian-born Cary mom. In May and June, the paper sued for access to autopsy records in the Eve Carson murder case.

The N&O has been in an ongoing battle with Gov. Mike Easley over access to e-mail records and has sued to stop his administration from destroying e-mails. The latest skirmish came last month, after The N&O requested e-mails from six officials of the Department of Health and Human Services relating to the opening of the new Central Regional Hospital in Butner.

In a column Aug. 3, Executive Editor John Drescher complained that it took the department a month to respond to the request, including 11 days for the public information office to forward the request to the officials. Drescher called Easley's office "the worst administration in decades" in terms of open government, then issued this warning to the two major-party candidates who want to replace Easley:

If you are as obstructive as Easley, he told Patrick McCrory and Beverly Perdue, "We will fight you. We will sue you. We will report on your obstruction and law-breaking. And I will pound you in this column."

Laurie Paolicelli liked Matt Dees' editorial on crime in Sunday's Chapel Hill News. (Matt was filling in while Dave Hart was on vacation.)  Matt wrote that the police should be more sensitive to people's perceptions that violent and or gang-related incidents are increasing even if the  year end statistics show little change in the overall crime rate. 

Paolicelli is the executive director of the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau. She gets to hear what a lot of people think as they come through her office on Franklin Street looking for places to see and things to do. The visitors center is getting about 60 people a day, down from the 80 to 100 they saw a year ago (more about coming in Sunday's Chapel Hill News.)

The office had about 1,500 visitors in July, many of them parents scouting out the town for their freshmen children.

"For the first time, we had parents ask about crime," Paolicelli says. "It wasn't an issue before."

Before Eve Carson, she means. "They know about it; there's an awareness," Paolicelli says.

"We tell them it was a horrific thing; it was isolated," she says. Still, the questions reflect the concern many local people have: Has Chapel Hill become less safe? "I think we wonder sometimes if it's seeping out there," Paolicelli says. "And I think, yes, it is."