CHAPEL HILL — Despite the rude reception given former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and other conservative speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill recently, there are indications that the effort to get conservative voices on campus is making progress.

One liberal student even complained in a local paper recently that the star power of conservative speakers now outshines liberal speakers.

Leftist and liberal students on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus have kept up their tradition of heckling, disrupting, and walking out of speeches given by conservatives, most recently when Ashcroft appeared on campus last month.

UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Austin Fowler spent about $500 this semester on textbooks. His classmate Andrew Wein spent about $400.

“On top of that, Student Stores didn’t have a CD I needed,” Wein said. “They only had used copies, which don’t work because they are made so that they can only be activated once.”

Students like Fowler and Wein are experiencing a growing national problem. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office found that “college textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation for the last two decades.”

CHAPEL HILL – Chancellor James Moeser Wednesday set a goal of raising $1 billion in external research grants by 2015, a substantial goal that would require a significant boost in fundraising annually.

The challenge was among the policy recommendations Moeser made in his annual “State of the University” address, delivered to a gathering of faculty, staff, and students in the Great Hall of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union. It was the sixth address for Moeser since arriving at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2000. He kept with the tradition of previous speeches he used the time to announce new policy initiatives. Previous speeches have launched global education projects as well as the Carolina Covenant initiative.