Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

The Emperor to save SCPIRG Fear not SCPIRG! Your Em peror comes to defend you! Who is that insect Eddie Fennell charging the ranks of the Just with his lean, hungry-looking barbarians from the South and West? The flag I see in the distance is the familiar red, white, and blue of 'involuntary taxation' but, no matter- my legionnaires will mow them down with YAF's own hypocrisy and, as for Fennell, my lancers have or ders to skewer him so thoroughly he'll be mistaken for a prickly pear. It seems a pity that SCPIRG must be defended at all from these conservative predators. Instead, South Carolinians should get on their ragged knees and thank their diverse Protestant gods for the opportunity of having a public interest research group taken any interest at all in this Byzantine Throwback called South Carolina. Eddie Fennell couldn't argue candy from a pre-schooler if he maintains that SCPIRG is 'in voluntary taxation'. One CAN get one's money back if one feels so emotionally disturbed about supporting an organization to make the bureaucrats in this state answer up for their wickedness, ignorance, and sloth. This is not so with athletic tickets I and my friends in Maxcy are forced to buy every year in my student activities fees. I have yet to go to - a single football or basketball game and yet I am not allowed to sell my tickets to those non-students who 8,000 si have sig SCPIR( ftoe S-THE GAMECOCK-C JIM FAR E5ii@ LUCRETIA JONES MANAGING ED E DITO01 Within i Ralph Nader has done this coe his muckraking studies into the g He has made It possible to a guessing as to their value and have also given us information which do- not meet standards a might not have noticed. Many states throughout the U groups that have followed the I achieved theIr goals of const vironmental control and contin The State of South Carolina coi and do well by It. There Is a group of interest. state that are attemptIng the b Ned.r, the South Carolina PubIl (SCPIRG). There would be a taxation of t help fund thIs non-profit corpora group to hire many educated various fields of stiudv The group prospectus states, South CarolIna students to a educational and social system t Carolina's pressing problems vironmental preservation and cc statement does not espouse a because there are none. For this group to exist it wi support the existing proposal. TI baligame. It will be a workab support. So far. would very much like to go; that is providing I bothered to get up on a specific day at 6 a.m. to pick up my tickets at all. No, the student cannot reap the profits of his own tickets which he has paid for, but even more perversely, his tickets are sold AGAIN if he doesn't show up for the Games. A beautiful capitalistic rip-off, don't you agree, Mr. Fennell? You're quite mad, you know, when you suggest that an organization that could be as technical and expensive as SC PIRG must depend upon periodical tambourine-shaking to make ends meet instead of the proposed voluntary registration assessment. Mr. Eddie Fennell, you and YAF, must still be thinking in typical WASP terms of the Salvation Army if you think that the entrenched industrial capitalists can be beaten with an occassional tossed dime or quarter. Unlike Christians who buy souls with a warm, run down tenement and some chicken soup, SCPIRG must bid for a planet against some of the most voracious plunderers the world has ever known. Powerful enemies like Strom Thurmond and Sol Blatt, may a black year take both of them, stand in the way of all such public interest work, for, you see, it's not to THEIR advantage to have dirty linen aired in public. Your argument about signatures being invalid because they were collected at 'unauthorized areas' is laughable and pathetic. Worse, it smacks of lawyerism and a small type of legal mind that is peculiarly Southern and in par .ticular South Carolinian. I refer to :udents ned for Cth"e 14, m71 DAVE LUNDGREN AD. MNGR. UIAL system intry a groat servtce with racticesof our industries. uy many goods without safety. Nader's Raiders pertaining to those goods Id that we as consumers ilon have public research aeder methods and have mer protection and en eto do so. ild use a group of this sort I students throughout the irth of a group typical of e interest Research Group * student body that would lion and would enabl, this men and women in ''SCPIRG is an effort by ark within the existing a analyze and help South in such areas as en nsumer protection." This ny political connections |I take every student to ,e group isnot a poitical le plan with the need. Letters John Garcia on this matter: "A 'legal' type of mentality is one that is concerned neither with truth nor awareness but with the manipulation of power through the exercise and interpretation of 'unnatural' bureaucratic rules of behavior (bureaucratic rules of behavior are "unnatural" because they have no basis in natural science such as physics, biology, or what little is known of the behavioral sciences. They are overtly unethical because the serve mainly to destroy feedback and increase entropy. Sometimes they are completely illogical and contradictory and represent political expediency as opposed to a coherent policy. This is typified by the real estate and income tax laws of the United States and most other nations.). These imen are the technicians of the Immoral Community. A legal mentality will usually seek to acquire the training of a lawyer. The technicians of the Immoral Community are, therefore, likely to be lawyers but certainly not all lawyers are legally minded. The 'legal men tality' is, therefore, the antithesis of the ethical mentality, which is concerned primarily with 'truth' interpreted as prediction and control of the natural environment. Only unethical persons have a legal mentality." (page 121, "The Moral Society, A Rational Alter native to Death") In short, Mr. Fennell, I find all of your arguments against SC PIRG very flimsy upon examination and you and your incompetent, mud-slinging illogical, and worst of all, CON SERVATIVE YAF can go to Guinea. WAGNER HALSELLE ROBERTS SCPIRG answers in generalities There is a saying that it is better to keep one's mouth shut and let everyone think you are a fool than to open it and assure everyone that their estimate was correct. The South Carolina Public In terest and Research Group recently distributed a sheet en titled "SCPIRG Answers YAF." In RSH Calabas Carry Out c 1208 Knox OPEN 11 AM. - it they state they are going to answer "YAF's charges--in specific terms." Specific terms indeed. YAF asks when, where and how the supposed refund will be given. The only answer SCPIRG is able to come up with is evasive generalities. "The date will be published," "readily accessible," and "concurrently" are NOT specific answers to the questions. Better they should not answer at all than to try to decisive the students in this manner. SCPIRG answers YAF charges that the organization will enter into politics by saying "SCPIRG will be non-partisian." They give NO guarantees of this--only a vague sentence. In Oregon the OSPIRG group urged students to in vestigate defense contractors. Elsewhere PIRG's have been busy investigating the M-14 rifle. Public Interest? Even at SC PIRG's very first organizational meeting the leaders voiced one aim as "getting rid of Sol Blatt." The leaders of SCPIRG, from the very start, have been from the law school. Surely every thinking student can see how convenient the SCPIRG organization will be to those desiring to get ahead quick are at the expense of the un dergraduate. SCPIRG will be a vested interest group and will depend on a small .circle to supply it with leadership. Student apathy will soon take away any possible effective controls on the group. SCPIRG seems to equate majority rule (i. e. democracy) with fairness and "rightness." This is not necessarily true, and as stated by one conservative, "The democracy of universal sufferage is not a bad form of government; it is simply not necessarily nor inevitably a good form of govern ment. Democracy must be justified by its works, not by doctrinaire af firmations of an intrinsic goodness that no mere method catn legitimately lay claim to." One may additionally wonder why SCPIRG chose a petition drive over a referendum or voluntary funding. There are two basic reasons. One, it is much easier to get a student to sign away $3 payable later than to get him to fork over $3 right then. It's always easier to charge something than to h Style ir Dining In Abbott Drive 3760 7 DAYS A WEEK pay cash, but, oh how many people regret their eagerness to charge once the bill comes in. Two, with a petition it is possible to badger and hound the poor student until he signs only to get the petitioner off his back. It Is easier to be obnoxlos petitioning than at the voting booth. So, I would encourage every thinking Carolina student to consider carefully before giving support to a group of SCPIRG's nature. MICHAEL TRINKLEY Exams good for students "Near the end of each semester, we see students killing themselves for exams." If they would spend a reasonable time studying and learning throughout the term, they would not have to go about "killing themselves for exams." "Everything the student does centers around his grade." Is that bad? What better criteria to determine what he has learned - or whether? "Is it so important to memorize facts, quotations, and theories?" It is so important to memorize facts, quotations, and theories. If a student does not do these things while he is in school, even though he does it unwillingly and under pressure, he will never do it. Later, when he could make good use of these things learned, it is too late to backtrack and hunt them up. "Theoretically, we are here to develop a system of thinking." Right. "The thoughts of others are important for what they stimulate in us" - right, to a degree. Facts are necessary not only as background material, but also as a firm foundation upon which to review the thoughts of others - thoughts that perhaps a student does not grasp fully on a quick, once-over-lightly technique. "If we are to grasp the true significance of education, we must question everything that is put before us." . At least question part of it. But having questioned, be honest enough to admit that you don't know all the answers. At that point, accept, at least temporarily, the opinions of others for what they may be worth while you are seeking your own answers. "Many support the idea of exams because it is traditional" - also because no better way has been devised to determine what each student is getting out of his exposure to knowledge. The prudent student will welcome exams as a challenge and as an opportunity to find out where his weak spots in learning are. A good grade is desirable-yes; but a poor grade can often be really valuable in pointing out where you have failed to understand, failed to grasp, failed to devote sufficient real study to a problem; valuable in giving you a second chance to learn what you have missed while you are still lb school where the opportunity to learn is yours just for the willingness to accept it. "The amount of knowledge a student is expected to accumulate for the exam increases every semester" - I wonder. It is true that the student of today has before him a great mass of knowledge that had not been thought up for the student of some years ago; however. the student of today is (Continued oan page 12)