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FRIDAY,MARCH25,2005 „ , Cohen discusses national security \ % Former defense secretary discusses U.S. role in international community in post-9!11 era By JON TURNER NEWS EDITOR Former Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen spoke to an audience of students and other community members at the Koger Center on Wednesday about the role of the United States in the post-9/11 world. Cohen, the Clinton cabinet’s lone Republican, forecast the future of the United States in a grim light, referring to the 2001 terrorist attacks as a “life transforming experience,” but not necessarily a positive one. Cohen’s address concentrated on homeland defense, pointedly comparing American security measures to Chinese strategies. “The moment you step off the plane,” Cohen said, security cameras are watching you. More specifically, he said, they’re watching your body temperature, guarding against the SARS virus that devastated Southeast Asia last year. Would Americans submit themselves to such treatment at home, he asked rhetorically. Probably not, he said, until they had experienced a similar biological threat. Cohen implied that personal privacy might not be worth the sacrifice of national security, indicating a bulge under his coat. If he hadn’t been such an upstanding individual, he said, that cell phone might have been a bomb. “There are no rear lines. There are only front lines,” he said. Cohen called war a “misnomer” for the Iraqi conflict, though. “We have a Tong twilight struggle’ against terrorism,” he declared, invoking former President John F. Kennedy’s description of the Cold War. “This war on terrorism, this ‘struggle,’ is not going to be fought on the battlefield.” This war of the Information Age will be fought with information, he said, information that will only become more readily available via the Internet and other means. “Technology is available to everyone for better or for worse, but mostly worse,” Cohen said. Cohen indicated that the most pressing questions of the Unites States’ future hinged on the persistence of freedom, as the world increasingly reflects a scene from George Orwell’s “1984.” In fact, Cohen said, the nation already has “lots of little Orwells.” “We call them credit-card companies,” he said. Cohen cited the danger of maintaining a relatively free society in the middle of fundamentalist opposition. “All these things that we embrace are seen as a threat by other people,” he said, comparing the war on terror to a Cold War minus the mutually assured destruction. There is no way to deter “messianic individuals seeking martyrdom,” he said. “Who are we, and why are we here,” were the fundamental questions Americans should be asking themselves in this modern era, Cohen said. “Our view of ourselves, as well as others’ view of us, has changed.” He added that the 9/11 attacks ♦ COHEN, page 3 Sorensen identifies research as top goal • USCpresident says hiring, funding will propel university to higher national status By TAYLOR SMITH STAFF WRITER Despite his ambitious vision of a research campus, his fund-raising ability and his knack for combining commercial and academic ventures, USC President Andrew Sorensen wants to return to administration basics. Sorensen has said USC’s most important goals are to attract new faculty members, increase state funding at all levels of public school and enhance its own reputation. Sorensen said approximately 350 faculty members are on the verge of retirement, underscoring the need for hiring. “The No. 1 goal without any question, is to increase the salaries and benefits of faculty and staff, so that we can retain the really good people we have,” Sorensen said. “In this drive We will be hiring approximately 100 people a year for the next five or six years.” By increasing incentives for the recruitment of new teachers, Sorensen said he hopes to attract “cracker-jack” faculty members to the university, raising the level of academics at USC. He said new research-minded employees would convince undergraduates to join them in their extracurricular endeavors. “When faculty are being recruited,” Sorensen said, “I hope, I pray, I trust that they are being told, ‘We want you to be first-rate scholars and we also want you to share that passion with students and especially undergraduate students.’” Sorensen said there is no line or conflict between a teacher’s teaching discipline and research discipline, adding that during his years as a professor, he found that his research stimulated his teaching role, making the class more enjoyable for students. To create the pre-eminent research university he has promised, Sorensen said he would abide by his mission statement to blur the line between research and academics. Sorensen said he had worked with a “well-known large American corporation” about research opportunities as recently as two weeks ago. “I described it to members of that board and other prospects as a high-risk, low-gain situation where you, as a student, can literally walk across the street and work part-time for that company, or even earn a summer internship,” Sorensen said. He described possible nine-month terms — spring semester followed by summer or a summer followed by a fall semester — during which students would work for a NICK ESARES/THE GAMECOCK Library administrators will have the main level’s cataloging department, above, moved to make room for a student study area. Main level offices will also be converted to study rooms. Thomas Cooper Library to remain open 24 hours By KELLY CAVANAUGH ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR When students return to campus in the fall, they might not recognize the inside of the Thomas Cooper Library. The library is undergoing renovations to provide more studying space on the main level and plans to stay open 24 hours beginning this fall. t The library is also planning to add two wings to its main level. Thomas Cooper Library Director Thomas McNally said construction will begin about a year from now and will be completed in summer 2008. The wings will house the library’s rare books and special collections. McNally said the renovations will create more than 220 additional seats on the main level. The renovations also include adding mezzanine seating. The changes are largely in response to students’ requests, McNally said. He said students had been requesting 24-hour access for years, but that the library lacked the space. “We’ve wanted to go 24 hours for years and years now, but this opening of the main floor is really the way to do it,” he said. “We can’t open up the whole building and secure your safety in the middle of the night,” he said, adding that the expansion of space on the main level will be ideal because it is a space that can be closed off and monitored. McNally predicts that the response from students will be positive. • “I think they’ll be very pleased with what they find when they come back,” he said. Plans are under way to put student study tables and study rooms on the main level all the way to the windows on the south side of the building. “It’s going to be great when you walk in and see daylight all the way at the back,” McNally said. “People don’t want to go down to the lowest library level where no one is. During the night hours, 70 percent of the students are on the main level.” The library’s acquisitions and cataloging operations will be moved to level five, where extensive renovation is already underway. The renovations on level five are expected to be finished by June, so the main level renovations can be completed during the summer. The offices in the catalog department will be converted to study rooms for student use. The library will stay open 24 hours April 18-May 5 for exams to test the response the library could expect. Rose Marshall, a reference librarian, said she thinks students will react positively to the change, because it is something they have requested. “It puts students closer to the services they need,” she said, referring to the main level reference and circulation desks. ♦ LIBRARY, page 3 Dean search narrows field to 4 hopefuls By SYDNEY SMITH STAFF WRITER The USC Honors College Dean Search Committee has narrowed its search to four candidates. The committee will interview Davis Baird, Kwame Dawes, David Godshalk and James McKusick. After current dean Peter Sederberg announced he would resign after the 2004-05 school year, the committee started its search Feb. 15. The new dean will start June 30. Sederberg has been with the Honors College since its inception, helping to write the original founding proposal. In 1994, after 23 years with the university, he became dean of the college. The committee was looking for a teacher and scholar at the rank of a full-tenured professor, preferably with experience with honors colleges. They searched for candidates skilled in advisement and recruitment and with vision. James McKusick, with degrees from Yale and Dartmouth, is an English professor and directs the honors college at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. McKusick will meet with the committee March 30. The committee will interview David Godshalk on April 5, a USC graduate who earned a Ph.D. at Yale. Godshalk is the history and philosophy department chairman at Shippensburg University. Davis Baird, who earned degrees at both Brandeis University and Stanford, and Kwame Dawes, from the University of the West Indies and the University of New Brunswick, both work at USC. Baird has served as philosophy department chairman since 1992. He will meet with the committee ♦ CANDIDATES, page 3 NICK ESARESfTHE GAMECOCK USC President Andrew Sorensen said USC’s future depends on its future students. One way to insure the success of USC, Sorensen said, is to fund public schools. Sorensen said he would ask the S.C. Legislature for these funds. company on the research campus before returning to their fields of study at the main campus. Sorensen said the S.C. legislature could do more to support education and promote technological growth in South Carolina, adding that such growth didn’t happen from the top down. “What I want them to do on education is say, ‘We need to invest on the South Carolinians who are 5, 6 or 7 years old now, so that a higher proportion of them will graduate from high school,’” Sorensen said. “‘We have to invest in the six, seventh, eighth and ninth graders so a higher proportion of them will go to college, and we have to invest more in high schools and colleges so more of them will have the skills needed in this knowledge-driven, revolutionary industry base.’” To attract students, businesses and donors, USC must work on developing a unique image, Sorensen said. “Most of us have to say, ‘What is there about Carolina that distinguishes it from the other 250 research universities?’” he said. “I honestly believe that thfs intentional blurring of the lines between research and teaching and involving undergraduates in that research is one of the ways.” USC announced it had received a record number of applications Friday, and Sorensen said it was a ♦ FUNDS, page 3 Students send supplies to Haitian midwives By MARIA CHARLES FOR THE GAMECOCK Saving a life can be as easy as donating a clean bath towel or a bar of anti-bacterial soap, members of an on-campus student organization say. The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) is assembling midwifery kits to send to Haiti, a country where most women are too poor for transportation to a hospital and give birth with the assistance of a midwife. “Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. The midwives have all the skills, but they don’t have clean supplies,” said Amanda Peel, a second-year international studies and women’s studies student and founder of the USC FMLA chapter. The goal is to send about 125 midwifery kits to Haiti. Each kit will contain a large bath towel, a bar of anti-bacterial soap, a shoelace to tie off the baby’s umbilical cord, a razor blade, Q tips, gauze, bandages, paper towels and betadine, an antiseptic used in surgery and to clean wounds. When FMLA held its first meeting last April, the members discussed projects that would support their mission to help and empower women. Kim Ballard, a second-year public-relations student, proposed the idea of midwifery kits. Ballard’s father, a pastor, works with the United Methodist Volunteers in Mission, an organization that creates relief kits and sends them all over the world. Among the aid projects are Christmas stocking for children, flood buckets and the midwifery kits. Knowing that FMLA wanted to tackle women’s and reproductive health, Ballard said she felt the midwifery kits would be a good project to get involved with and that it would be a project that made an impact. Almost half the population of Haiti is without health care. Women who give birth face a maternal mortality rate that ranges from 500 to 1,000 deaths per 100,000 women. The rate in the United States is 11 per 100,000, according to the TransAfrica Forum, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about the efFects of U.S. foreign policy on Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Haiti’s infant mortality rate is bleak as well: 114 deaths per 100,000. Peel cites infection as the reason most babies die. With the proper tools and sanitary delivery kits, many of these deaths can be prevented. Most of the kits’ supplies have been donated, particularly the towels, which are “currendy overflowing” in Peel’s dorm room. Stuffing her closet and dresser, Peel received most of the towels after ♦ FLMA, page 3 IN THIS ISSUE ♦VIEWPOINTS Be on the lookout In a crime-infested city, Steven Van Haren has some advice for drunken female revelers. Page 4 ♦THE MIX We be jammin’ The Jam Room Showcase at New Brookland Tavern is an opportunity for local bands to display their talent to music industry representatives. Page 5 ♦ SPORTS Under the Visor with Spurrier Sports Editor Jonathan Hillyard sits down with the ol’ ball coach in part 2 of a 3 part Q & A series. Page 10 INDEX Comics & Crossword..7 Classifieds.8 Horoscopes..7 Letters to the Editor..4 Online Poll..4 Police Report..2 — www. dailygamecock. com