Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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GLENDA MILLER INTERIM EDITOR HOLLY GATLING .ART FRANK .INTERIM MNG. ED.' AD MANAGER EDITORIALS Incorrect guide to grand juries Clearing House for Action, a chartered campus organization, has been distributing a leaflet on campus called "'People's Guide to Grand Juries." At best, it Is a poor effort. CHA has many of its facts wrong and the pamphlet clearly shows they are ignorant of (or have neglected) many of the facts. Grand Juries do have investigating power, but they do not prosecute. Since some of our staff members recently have been before the Jury, we have also found that they do not persecute. Evidence submitted to a grand jury may result in an indictment against a person, but the Jury neither convicts or sentences a person. Only a Criminal trial does that . The grand jury only decides if there is enough evidence to try a person. He may then be acquitted in the trial. A copy of the names of the Richland County Grand Jury can be obtained from the Clerk of Court. A close Inspection of the list shows that a majority of the jurors for this session are black. A majority of them are women. The solicitor does not pick the Grand Jury, they are chosen at random. They are citizens between the age of 21 and 65. The ease or difficulty of the solicitor's job depends entirely on the amount of evidence he has. Clearing House for Action is sounding the alarm before the fire gets started. Everybody's uptight about the grand jury, when there's nothing to be uptight about. Everyone has missed the point. The problem Is not the grand jury, the problem is drugs. If you use, you know you're in danger of getting busted. Since the Gamecock articles appeared, there have been no more busts than usual. They have just been brought to the forefront by the articles. Most of the people on this campus are eligible to vote. If you want to be free to smoke dope, why don't you start applying some political pressure? You have facts to back you up. You have the President's Council on Drug Abuse report, the studies done by the University of North Carolina, and many other reputable sources. Are you afraid to take a stand? Or, would you rather fight than switch tactics? There are dangers to taking amps. The articles clearly pointed that out. They also pointed out that If you speed, you may think you're doing better when you're not. Everybody has heard the stories about those who couldn't come down, or those that flipped out. With all the bad speed on campus, could It happen to you? Everybody keeps saying that nobody wants trouble. Well, lets use some of the "enlightened knowledge" we have acquired and try to look at both sides of the coin. The solicitor says he doesn't want to see kids hurt themselves, so he uses the law to stop them. Students say leave them alone to make their own decisions. The whole problem has been approached with more thought and understanding than ever before. N one wants to see a repeat of spring, 1970. Or, do they? The important thing right now is to stay cool. Don't sound the alarm until you see the smoke. And make sure it's smoke and not fog. .If the Solicitor Is concerned with the students, what-other Neurs,Q( At)p. sIpps. bp. have?. W9.Y.jqt say ing .e isn't If possl6ledo Ybthe solic(for10' begenulnel'concerned. Today revisited Not gran By JOHN T. GASH Associate Editor "Can you tell us if you revealed who Mr. X is?" the voice at the other end asked. "We can't tell," we said in unison. The voice sort of gasped, groaned and muttered under-the breath obscenities--the universal sign of a reporter who can't get the information he needs. This type of thing has been happening for the last two days ever since the Gamecock staff members appeared before the R ichland County Grand Jury. And, because of state law, we are required to maintain secrecy. Being journalists, this is a paradoxical situation--after all, besides politicians and Martha Mitchell, journalists love to talk, especially when it comes to asking questions. Just how inquisitive and ingenious some of the press can be has been pointed out to me by their attempts to obtain information from us. Also the press has distorted some of the aspects of the drug stories. For those of you who presume to think that we, the press, think that we are grammatical Van Goghs and editorial Horace Greeleys, I am stressing the fact that we are indeed very human and mistake prone. Matter of fact, The watermark 'The Li By BOB CRAFT' Columnist There was a character in Catch 22 who operated his life under the assumption that you must spend part of your life being bored so your life will seem longer. Well, if you want to lengthen your life by about three decades, go see the travesty entitled "The Last Movie," pretentiously sub titled "A Film by Dennis Hopper." I'm glad he identified it, otherwise I % >uld have grped around in the darkness trying to place some sort of tag on it. Dennis once said that "The Last Movie" would be a message movie. The message, he said would be about how we kill our selves with money values, as "Easy Rider" was about man's inhumanity to man. Wrong, Dennis, wrong. "The Last Movie,' is about man's inhumanity to man and the man creating the 'I SAID... ALL YOU HAVE TO YELL IS TE RUS$4S ARE C0OMH6 ryE GOffA YEtt THE WORLD IS C0t46G4 imatical V1 sometimes we end up more like Van Gogh's ear and Greeley's paper. When the story first came out about the drug issue, The State ran a headline saying that the Gamecock said that four teachers sold. That, of course, was untrue. The Gamecock said it knew of only one professor who sold. This was unfortunately a sign of things to come in the way of treatment of the drug article by the press. (These distortions I am pointing out are not restricted to the local professional press; we at the Gamecock produce more than our share, much more than our share. There are plenty to be found in this columnist's weekly column.) Next WIS-TV ran a story on their 7 o'clock news inferring that Mr. X had come to the Gamecock office, instead of the Gamecock finding him. This was absolutely false; we tracked Mr. X down and found him. The third distortion came from WOLO-TV, which said that Mr. X was an instructor and that all instructors are graduate assistants.. This is by no -means true. This also prompted a graduate assistant who was probably experiencing severe pains of paranoia to write the Gamecock and call us irrespon sible. ist Movie' inhumanity is Dennis Hopper by releasing this gobbler. When this bow-wow was released in New York, poor put-upon Dennis said that this would be a work of art that would last beyond his lifetime. If this is true, Dennis Hopper died twenty years ago. What basically happened with this cowpie is that Hopper took a bunch of his friends (Russ Tam blyn, Jim Mitchum, Peter Fonda, Michele Phillips and assorted other well known Hollywood freak types) down to Peru where they stayed drunk a whole lot. Carousing by night and creating "a great film" by day. No wonder the film was out of focus. I had kind of a suspicious feeling in my stomach when I saw the tout for, oh my God, whatever this is. It went something to the effect that there were many differing opinions on this film, that one should see It because the viewer's opinion could be the most important. When that type of hype goes down, that is, the reviews have been so bad that they can't even lie by taking something out of context, something is amiss. I guess the differing opinions had something to do with the fact that the opinions differed only in the degree of rottenness of this gar bage. Dennis did lots of cutesy things like sticking "Scene missing" frames in the middle of con versations, using flashbacks until one loses the entire thread of the moivfe, '(which wasn't all that in teresting to begin with) -Alowing t down an incredibly slow picture by in Goghs Now, I don't want to be too critical of my colleagues. They deserve a lot of praise for their handling of the case. They didn't badger us, which, I hate to admit, is a more common practice than most of us wish to admit. Ginny Carroll, of The State, called us up and asked us if we could reveal what happened in the grand jury room. We said we couldn't. Like a good reporter, she asked the next question, which we couldn't answer. It probably freaked her mind, but she remained cool and asked to talk to another person. I could really empathize with her. The guy who called from WIS would ask a question, then when we wouldn't answer, he would ask the same question again but a little differently. He tried every conceivable way of asking one question. It was a treatise on "32 ways to ask 'did you talk'?" But the best technique woe used by a reporter from WBT-TV in Charlotte. He asked one question:Is there any change from you previous stance? He was referring to our previous statements that we would not reveal any sources. We said, "No." stinks using the incredibly slow songs of Kris Kristoffersson and using extraneous scenery shots until you think that the movie is a public relations flyer from the Peru Chamber of Commerce. The overall impression I got from this picture (other than feeling extremely unclean) was that this was a film that was done by Hopper for Hopper's friends.. Kinda high-budget home movies. The only difference between your father's home movies and "The Last Movie" is that your father's are probably better. Letters policy We print all letters we receive. The only thing we ask is that the writer include his name, signature and address (this is in case of verification purposes). Please try to type the letter on a 65-space line. The letter should be double-spaced. We will withhold a name only if a valid reason is enclosed with the letter. To write to the Gamecock: The Gamecock Letters to the editor Drawer "A" USC For those of you who are on campus, you can put the letter in the "campus mail" slot at the post office. You don't even have to have "t stampen.