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'f aaffisaf" WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5,2003 Lieberman presents higher-education plan Democratic presidential candidate unveils policy at Benedict College BY WES WOLFE THE (iAMECUCK U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the second Demo cratic candidate to visit Columbia in four days, unveiled a major pol icy address on higher education at Benedict College on Monday. . In front of a crowded room at f .Benedict's Business Development Center, which included Benedict President David Swinton and S.C. Rep. John Scott, Lieberman out lined his plan, which included helping families in affording col lege, making sure students are ready for college and implement ing a system to test colleges and school districts on student readi ness and graduation rates. The senator also talked about giving assistance to historically black col leges and universities. “With Congressman Clyburn, I’ve been working and succeeding at obtaining $50 million from the federal government to rebuild buildings at HBCUs,” Lieberman said. Jim Clybum is the U.S. repre sentative for the 6th Congressional District in South Carolina. The frequency of the recent Democratic debates might have taken a toll on Lieberman’s oratory —when pointing out his problems with the state of American public education, he said, “There are two school systems in America: one for the haves and one for the have nots.” Another Democratic candi date, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, says the exact same thing in his campaign speech. Lieberman led his discussion of making college more affordable by first talking about what he says President George W. Bush has done wrong with federal financial aid policy, including Pell grant re ductions by the federal Department of Education and the proposed elimination of the Leveraging Educational Assis tance Partnership Program. “Those cuts, for the upcoming fiscal year — this is what the President proposed and negotiat ed with Congress — would mean more than 375,000 fewer college students would get federal student financial assistance,” Lieberman said. The Pell grant is the fed eral govern ment’s largest grant program for students, and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership Program is a collaboration between states and the federal government to pro vide grants to students with ex ceptional financial need. Lieberman’s plan would in clude raising the maximum Pell grant award from the $4,050 per academic year to $7,760 per aca demic year by the 2008-2009 term. According to his campaign litera ture, the senator would also pro vide tax credits to families that have children in college. Lieberman said his goal is to by 2020 have 90 percent of Americans go to college or vocational school or into the military after high school and have 90 percent of col lege students graduate within six years. Lieberman then proposed additional tund ing for colleges that have in creased enroll ment and grad uation of low income and mi nority students. Liebennan answered 14 questions from the audience of stu dents and teachers. The questions ranged from reparations for slav ery to Iraq to school prayer. When answering a question about Social Security, Lieberman harkened back to the policy debate between A1 Gore and George Bush in the 2000 election. ( “Remember in the 2000 cam paign, they were arguing about ♦ LIEBERMAN, SEE PAGE 2 “If you’ll allow me to say so, George W. Bush has made the lockbox into a cookie jar.” JOE LIEBERMAN U.S. SENATOR AND DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE PHOTO BY KATIE KIRKLAND/THE GAMECOCK Sen. Joe Lleberman spoke to a crowd of students and teachers at Benedict College on Monday afternoon. PHOTO BY JASON STEELMAN/THE GAMECOCK General Motors Is now working with USC on fuel cells to cut back on the amount of pollution from cars. •2 businesses help fund USC fuel cell center BY JON TURNER THK (lAMKCOC.K Two more industrial sponsors joined with USC on Friday to help fund its state-of-the-art research Renter for fuel cells. 9 On June 16, the National Science Foundation selected USC as the site of an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Fuel Cells, the only one of its kind in the country. Over the next three years, NSF will provide a total of $210,000 in funds for the new center. USC President Andrew Sorensen said he is proud of the progress the university is making. “The selection of USC to house the National Science Foundation’s Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Fuel Cells marks the beginning of an impor tant era in research at USC. Today, leaders in science, busi ness, industry and government will recognize what we have known for a long time: that scien tists at the University of South Carolina are among the best in the United States,” Sorensen said in a news release. Fuel cells are an essential part of the transition to a “hydrogen economy.” The National ♦ FUEL, SEE PAGE 2 New office to link USC to businesses BY LAURA MOSS THE GAMECOCK USC has established BusinessLINK, an office of eco nomic development, which will make its resources more accessi ble to businesses both locally and nationally. The BusinessLINK program was announced Thursday at a meeting of USC faculty and busi ness leaders from throughout the state. It will offer one point of con tact between five university of fices to make it more efficient for businesses and developers to use university resources. This is the first time the uni versity’s business-development and research resources will work collectively. Anthony Boccanfuso, manag ing director of the USC Research Foundation, will oversee BusinessLINK. “Combining these offices will make them more efficient in how they work together since they can use each other’s assets,” Boccanfuso said. BusinessLINK will combine the Small Business Development Center, the Industrial Agreements Unit, the Center for Manufacturing and Technology, the USC-Columbia Technology Incubator and the Intellectual Property Office. “Traditionally, we have pro vided the business community of the state with many services, and now we can make it much easier for both small and large busi nesses to gain access to us,” Boccanfuso said. USC President Andrew Sorensen said the USC BusinessLINK program is a radi cal change in university opera tions. “We want to aggressively market these offices, their re sources and the talents of our fac ulty and students to business and industry and put them in touch with the specific research and re sources here on our campus,” he said in a news release. Boccanfuso said the new office of economic development would provide both faculty and students with new opportunities in busi ness. Many USC students have al ready worked with local busi nesses in the private sector, and the BusinessLINK program is ex pected to result in similar oppor tunities by opening up communi cation between new businesses and the university. “From this point forward, USC BusinessLINK will help the uni versity bolster economic devel opment, enhance public-private partnerships, strengthen com munity relations and increase ex ternal funding,” BoccanfUso said. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com An enduring brotherhood Minority Greek organizations thrive in post-Civil Rights period BY KEVIN FELLNER THE GAMECOCK Rodney Hollis’ high-school friends told him he should be come a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity because he was often wearing its signature red-shirt-and-khaki-pants com bination. Even though Hollis, a Florida resident, knew little about the fra ternity, especially regarding its presence at USC, he sought and gained membership to the frater nity, .one of four campus frater nities composed predominantly of minorities. The concept began with segre gationist atti tudes on college campuses during the first half of the 20th century. Schoolteacher Elder Watson Diggs received Kappa Alpha Psi’s first laurel wreath at Indiana University in 1924, signifying the fraternity’s official inception, al a time when he wouldn’t have been allowed to join any of the ex isting fraternities. University officials nationwide have questioned the role of mi nority fraternities, as well as pre dominantly white fraternities, during the post-Civil Rights era as possibly ere amig i aciai ui vision on cam puses. “I think it’s just a reflec tion of the re cruitment pro cess and the number of mi norities on campus,” said Hollis, a fourth year public relations student and president of Kappa Alpha Psi. He said his fraternity is unique in ■ that it doesn’t actively recruit any of its members, thus making its racial composition impossible to control. Phi Beta Sigma President and fourth-year management and marketing student JaRodd Webb said he was instantly attracted to his fraternity when he arrived at use. “The brothers on campus seemed to be so friendly and close with each other,” Webb said. “They didn’t act like they were better than us; they were down to earth.” Webb said he had notjualms about joining a minority frater nity because he knew little about ♦ MINORITY, SEE PAGE 2 Index Comics and Crossword 12 Classifieds ~ 15 Horoscopes ^_ 12 Letters to the Editor 9 Online Poll 9 Police Report 3 Weather today tomorrow High 81 High 85 Low 62 Low 54 In This Issue ♦ NEWS Bush visits sites of California wildfires and consoles victims. Page 3 ♦ VIEWPOINTS Julie Cook says instant messenging is a way of life. Page 9 ♦ THE MIX Voices are raised during Opera at USC’s fall performance “Don Pasquale.” Page 10 ♦ SPORTS The USC football team must bounce, back to take on Arkansas. Page 13 HI)..I. McKissick to put collections on Web site BY IRA KLEIN THE GAMECOCK USC’s McKissick Museum re cently received a federal grant to help pay for the creation of an interactive Web site that will al low anybody anywhere to access the museum’s diverse collec tions on Southern and South Carolina folk life and material culture. The $90,985 Learning Opportunities grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services was only one of the 169 museum grants presented this year, totaling over $15 million. According to Saddler Taylor, cu rator of folk life at the museum and director of the Web site pro ject, it will probably take about three years to complete the pro ject, and an introductory version should be available toward the end of the second year. The Web site will contain several audio clips, particularly of traditional Southern music; image and photo galleries; video clips from the museum’s film projects; and vir tual exhibits. In developing the Web site, the museum plans to use a combina tion of university programmers and resources, as well.as inde pendent companies from the community. A technical com mittee made up of several USC students and faculty members as well as a group of technicians from ETV are working On the project. “What we’re planning to do here at the university is to use this project as a training ground for graduate assistants and in terns who are interested in au dio and video editing and digital media. Hopefully, they’ll be able to gain important experience and will be contributing to the university, while learning a great deal in the process,” Taylor said. According to Taylor, the idea for the Web site didn’t come from any one source. Instead, the idea was based on feedback from mu seum visitors as well as on a gen eral feeling of having to “keep up with the times.” ♦ MUSEUM, SEE PAGE 2