Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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JIM FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS Death penalty not necessary In the Columbia State yesterday there was a story of five men who have been sentenced to death for the slaying of a young man in Belvedere, S.C. Judge James Alexander Spruill, presiding judge, stated that this death sentence was the first In his ten years as circuit judge that he handed down and he deliberated It with "great sadness." The story continued to explain that if the jury had handed down a verdict of gully "with mercy" the judge would have had to sentence the men to life Imprisonment by law. The jury acted through conscience and handed down a verdict that probably involved much emotionalism. The fact that these men were convected is fact and nothing else. The issue is the sentence. The emotional reaction of the judge in having to hand down the death sentence is understandable. The problem is the fact that a man in his position has to deliver such a sentence. Capital punish ment is something beyond the scope of reason. In every religion we are taught that to take a life is without reason. Is justice so blind as to ignore all that is still sacred to everyone? The men are guilty of an unpardonable crime. They should not go unpunished, but for a human to play the role of God is insane. These men took it upon themselves to play that role. Is it right to take an eye for an eye? South Carolina has this death sentence. Like the men who cdmmitted the crime this state is deciding whether or not a man deserves to live. Every human being has the right to life once that life is established. The purposeof thepenal system in thiscountry Isto rehabilitate. It is of the express purpose to help those who may not have the capability to cope with the existing code of justice and rights of others. We are living in a society that has limitless access to knowledge. Why then does such a sentence exist? Is this the rehabilitation our society boasts about? --rm Insight: Chuck I Carolina t (Editor's note: The author of this column, Chuck Keefer, is a USC graduate. He works for Today, a Cocoa Beach, Fla., newspaper.) When I sat down to read the first edition of Carolinatype, my first reaction was, "This is beautiful." Then I reconsidered. It is one of the best "public relations" gimmicks ever at tempted by the University. It surpasses, by far, anything I have ever seen in so far as coverage and expertise are concerned. Without a doubt, it will be ex tremely effective as a mouthpiece for the administration. And that is what makes it so horrible. The university, utilizing massive resources in terms of money and paid professional manpower, is now capable of squelching an entire generation of college students. It's not so much that they will be squelched. More likely, they will be drowned. Drowned in a sea of words brilliantly arranged to convey exactly what the ad ministration wants the public to Harriet Van Horn No sent By HARRIET VAN HORNE Columnist In the great cities of America, the long dark night of the jungle has closed in. We live, all of us, behind a symbolic barbed wire of "security precautions" but nobody feels secure. Nothing reassures us. Not the triple locks and chains, not the burglar alarm nor the guard dog with the bared teeth and burning eyes. There's no place to hide and there's no guarantee you'll be alive tomorrow. And you can forget about the revolver in the glove compartment and the mugging whistle in the handbag. Nothing helps. A man was safer in the unlit alleys of Hogarth's London when throats were cut as casually as slops were thrown from windows. It was the way of the world. It hurts to remember that there once was a time, even in neigh borhoods of low repute, when a citizen simply assumed the goodwill of his fellow men and walked unafraid at any hour. 'There was a time when a woman could walk abroad, armed only in her innocence and dignity. One sighs for the lost grace of life, for the decencies that used to hold society together. Remember Montaigne's theory as to why his chateau was never robbed or pillaged? Read it now and weep. "Perhaps the ease with which my house can be attacked," he wrote, "is one of the reasons why it has escaped the violence or our civil wars... .I made the conquest of my house cowardly and base. It is closed to no one who knocks.. .1 have no sentinels but the stars." No sentinels but the stars were watching on West End Ave. when a young French student, here on a brief visit from Paris, was shot in the neck and paralyzed for life. Shot after he had handed over his wallet. It seems, at times, that we are no longer dealing with hoiums and thieves but with the criminally insane: We are llvIna n the ge. of Leefer ype:good know and think . about the University and its students. It is the only picture of campus life that gets home to the parents and alumni. Reading it, the parents will think that students have no legitimate complaints; that school is one big "fun city." The one thing that must be un derstood about Carolinatype is that it is, first and last, a public relations effort. Carolinatype is put out under the direction of Zane Knauss, director of the Univer sity's Information Services and a formidable public relations man, and is distributed free to all alumni, students, faculty and staff.. Its copy is designed to present an image of the University which is most favorable to the ad ministration and key faculty members. In addition, Carolinatype is printed in a newspaper format for maximum belieability. In effect, Carolinatype is designed to squelch students and student opinion. It is designed to hide the faults of the university and the blunders of its officials. mels but murder. More police with more guns is not the answer. The kind of violence we are now experiencing tells us that the mind and heart, the very blood cells of our society are sick. The institutions that hold civilization together are failing. Too many boys and girls are growing up savage, sadistic, choked with hate. Society fails them when they are small and vulnerable. Suddenly they are strong and swift, they have guns and knives. They even the score with society. Besides the overt violence at every hand, we live in a world of death wishes. Something perverse and bitter in people makes fan tasies of death, sets traps for the unwary, thirsts for blood. In recent months, a story has been going about wishing death upon Frank Sinatra. He has been reported ill with terminal cancer. In Memorial Hospital here in New York, in Los Angeles, in New Haven. That he was recently seen in Athens dining with a pretty girl, and elsewhere, and feeling fine will come as a disappointment to all the devoted ghouls who would rather read that he'd just had his larynx removed and would never sing again. It's impossible to contemplate Lettern We will continue our policy names) letters we receive. We have received quite necessary signatures. Thus, However, if the reader wishE we will do so only after he has Also, please have the lette our secretary won't get eye Just drop the letters off at Letters to the editor The Gamecock Drawer A Or bring them by the third fly (after all the controversy w took away the number s on ou us half way down the haln t gimmick And it will be believed. The public will see only Carolinatype. Student publications are directed toward students and seldom cir culate beyond the camDus. This will leave the students with only themselves as an audience for their ideas and opinions, fears and frustrations. Far from cauterizing a wound caused by lack of com munication, it will simply make the wound fester. The students, 'without an audience for their ideas or their gripes, will have but two ways to turn. One is revolt. But that has been tried without notable success. They could also turn inward, become complacent, and quit having ideas. This has already happened to some extent. What are drugs but a substitute for ideas that didn't happen? Carolinatype-a new type of yes man. Yes by default. Yes by manipulation. But, by all means, yes. Negatives do not register. Faults do not appear. And neither do new ideas, fresh intuitions, foreign thoughts. That's Carolinatype, of, by and for the administration. the stars the criminal climate of the inner city today without crying, "Why?" Where did we go wrong? Why must we live in fear? In a broad sense, one can say that the crime flourishes because poverty flourishes. We have failed to care for the aching and terrible needs of our poor, particularly our black poor. Congress has failed,. our bureaucracy has failed, the capitalist system has failed. Such' are the generalities, all subject to challenge. What sort of people commit the crimes that make our streets unsafe? When the summer of love in Haight-Ashbury was followed by a summer of violence--with the beats and the bikers, the hippies and the hoodies--turning the once respectable area into a foul ghetto, a psychiatrist, Dr. Ernest Dern berg, made a clinical study of these youthful sociopaths. Most were seriously disturbed, he found, and had suffered severe damage in childhood. They had poor self images and little sense of guilt. They built their self-esteem through drugs or acts of violence. Some could not be called runaways because they'd never had a home to run away from. Copyright 1971 Los Angeles Times i policy of printing all signed (no pen a few letters without the we couldn't publish them. ~s to have his name withheld, signed the letter. rs typed or written neatly so strain. the mairoom addressed to: or of the Russell House House a stirred up in the past, they r door. You can probably find eright side.)