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JIM FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS E in in ation wise move The South Carolina State Student Legislature has once again met in the mother city to act as official politicians for the youth of the state. The body has met and adjourned with nothing more than a speech by the Governor, Polly Spann. The body in the past has been involved with nothing more than those issues that have been considered pertinent to the student population in the state. Last year they started to become involved with issues that have been on a more citizen oriented level. This year there seems to be sentiment that the group should dissolve and stop playing mock politics. Delegations have started to drop out of the picture. One delegation only showed after money for the group had been found. The group has proven itself to be insignificant as to the student population in the state. Its function has not been carried out and the wild parties seemed to have been the only reason for holding the legislative sessions in the past few years. If the South Carolina student solons were eliminated, a few bleeding hearts would be broken. But in light of their performances (more like a cir cus), this seems to be the wisest move. To play political games with some concrete results is one thing. To play for the sake of the game is another. 10l or DAN SCHORR. oV CBS WEE M7T 7RY/N& TO /NTIM/DM7E ANY NEW6.4fAN, WER i7/57 A6KAM9- FVENDS ABOL/T H16 PESN- DR/~NKIN&; 2WU/- AND SETX HA6/7O 60 wt CAN PY/T AN END D, AU-. HOU6~t4 7tRR/FY/AWQ #ORIBLE 6HA9LY RVMO7A ..AND 6/VE H/Mf A GOB' Harriet Van Hon When co By HARRIET VAN HORNE Columnist What New Yorkers have always known, in a dim sort of way, is now a matter of public record. Our police, sworn to uphold the law, are themselves lawbreakers. The cop on the corner we pay to protect us from criminals is instead protecting the criminal. It's not a thought to calm your thumping heart as you walk quickly down a dark street at night. The most shaming aspect of the Knapp Commission hearing is how little astonishment it has generated. In general, it has stimulated the standard reflex of New Yorkers faced with bad news: a shrug. If you can fix a parking ticket, goes the theory, you can fix a murder charge. Things are rotten, up and down the line. When a single illegal enterprise gambling--reportedly pays the police $4 million a year, we may fairly conclude that extortion, bribery and protection are vir tually a way of life among New York's finest. We ought to be more shocked than we are. The moral failings of the police are a reflection of our values as well as theirs. If we permit corruption--or police brutality-to exist, we are ac cessories to the crime. If the police have failed in their vigilance, so have we. To many people the fact of several thousand cops being "on the pad," as the jargon has it, is lesq significant than the muggings and burglaries that go on all over the city, including the nicest neigh borhoods. This is specious reasoning. There is more than a casual connection between police Lette Religion editorial full of fallacies, worst recently MR.FARRELL: The editorial "Whose Image?" by Rusty Robinson (Nov. 10 issue of The Gamecock) is the worst one I can recall seeing in The Gamecock recently (in the last five years). Any student who has taken Philosophy 101 (and passed the course) can point out to Mr. Robinson a number of fallacies which appear in his column. In fact, I would suggest that Mr. Robinson donate his column to the professors in the Philosophy department for they are forever trying to make up fallacious arguments for exam questions. I would like to know as would others ( i. e. the FBI, CIA, UNCLE, KAOS, Etc.) where Mr. Robinson got such reliable information. How did he / ' y that "the Irish Catholics have decided that they are the chosen people to wipe out the Irish Protestants"? Did he ask them? How did he find out that the Pope has "yes men." Pope Paul VI might like to know who they are and I would also. Last but not least, how did Mr. Robinson find out about the "many children of many priests"? Did he draw this con clusion from reading a cartoon in Playboy magazine or was his source even more reliable? I am a Catholic and so I won't atte.mpt to criticize or, defend the Pi'nt'estant i'bligions:--'r would ps protect corruption and the rise in street crime. And it is precisely this connection that should have New Yorkers in a state of outrage over the sworn testimony of two "rogue cops" before the Knapp panel. Patrolman William R. Phillips, the cop who got caught while arranging protection for an East Side madam, testified that he never met or heard of a plain clothes man who didn't enjoy a private income from payoffs. To accept payoffs from gam blers, though illegal and.immoral, is less vicious than accepting payoffs from drug dealers. Nar cotics agents have made out so handsomely in hush money that some have even become pushers themselves. So it is that the drug traffic flourishes, addiction rises and the city's streets are unsafe after dark. It comes down to this: Every time the police fail to make an arrest, fail to confiscate a cache of heroin, more addicts with $50-a-day habits will be breaking and entering, knocking down old ladies and shooting innocent people through the head. In 1968, three narcotics agents were indicted for going into the heroin trade on their own. A college student I met recently described how the police of a fashionable Long Island com munity were selling drugs to teen agers. The more one reads about the narcotics traffic the more hopeless the problem seems. There are payoffs everywhere, beginning on the docks and at the airports; payments that permit the ship ments to enter the country. In his book, "The New York Cops," Gerald Astor says the rs to the E suggest to Mr. Robinson that he do the same with religion in general. I might also suggest, quite sin cerely, that he take Philosophy 101 in the near future. It isn't a hard course and it might be quite worth his time. NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST USC missing school spirit, competitiveness MR. FARRELL: In the past 50 years, education has advanced immeasurably through technology, research, and much hard work. All aspects have been improved upon except one school spirit. Where have our pride and en couragement for our schools gone? I know from personal experience that something is deeply lacking in student participation In school activities. Basketball, baseball, and tennis games come and go with little notice or interest on the part of the student body. The once-felt surge of exhilaration that ran through the halls on the day following a particularly thrilling football game no longer exists. Offices of importance and prestige among the student body are not sought after eagerly as they once were. Students have developed the "I don't care" and "hands off" attitude that is prominent in the same society against which they are rebelling. crim inals narcotics squad has access to the richest payoffs available to police. He adds another fact I never knew: "The nearly $1 million allowed to the police department for 'in vestigative expenses' largely falls to the 700-man narcotics division for use with informers and to make the necessary buys in order to catch peddlers. Detectives on this detail know full well that some of the money given informers is used by them to maintain their personal supply of heroin. While the idea of city money being used to support a drug habit may shock city fathers, no one has come up with a superior system.... The police consider the indirect effects of narcotics ad diction one of their most serious problems." Why are the police so easily seduced into breaking the law? The most persuasive explanation I have ever heard is Arthur Neiderhoffer's. He is a former cop who now holds a doctorate in. sociology and who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He says the average policeman suffers from ANOMIE. That he defines as "a morbid condition ... characterized by the absence of standards, by apathy, confusion, frustration, alienation and despair." Paradoxically, "society has granted him the license to violate the law in order to enforce it." A cop may kill where necessary, he may invade privacy and destroy property, all in the name of the law. "This sense of power often corrupts him into a belief that he is superior to the law." And that, if you accept the theory, explains that $4 million a year for protec tion. 3dito r Win or lose, whether in sports, scholastic competition, student body elections, or any other phase of school life, we as students, must maintain our school spirit. R. J. ANDERSON Spanish club going to be extinct soon MR. FARRELL: I am a sophomore Spanish major this year at USC and I am thoroughly appalled by the total lack of interest exhibited both inside and outside of the language department. Majoring in a language involves a bit more than just attending class, taking notes and then regurgitating them. Thus, when the Club Hispanico organized about a month ago I had hoped to improve my Spanish (through conversations, lectures, etc) plus broaden by knowedge of Hispanic culture. Unfortunately, the club is now on the verge of extinction, and I am disturbed by the fact that both the student body and the faculty are totally apathetic towards this club. And with all the talk about "Peace through Understanding" (especially languages), this wave of apathy seems highly con tradictory to progressive edu cational ideas, as well as to what the professors's role should be and that of a language major. NAME WITHEL BY REQUE..S..