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Justice National security important, but North's trial must go on After months of legal wrangling, it looks as if the trial of ; Oliver North will finally begin. For the sake of the former Marine, the government and the country, this matter must be i resolved once and for all. Although some of the allegations against him have been dropped, North still faces 12 criminal charges. Prosecuters will attempt to show that North concealed from Congress activities with the Contras in Nicaragua. He is also accused of covering up the National Security Council's role in the diversion of funds frAm t\10 Trnnmn ormc cnlar -f An+?>r*n TV?? ii urn liiv ii auiau aimo oaivo tu mv vim as. i nc ease id an cauy ; years old; details of the Iran-Contra affair were made public in | November 1986. After the Tower Commission investigation, i hearings before Congress jury selection and more than two years later, Justice Department officials continue to delay action because of worries over national security. This latest concern about security matters is certainly legitimate. No one wants crucial secrets about the CIA to be made public. North, the chief figure in the deal to sell arms to Iran mid. divert the profits to the Nicaraguan Contras, had access to some of the nation's top secrets. His testimony could reveal many of those secrets that could potentially damage national security interests. At the same time, the trial cannot be suspended forever. The prosecution and defense should be eager to set the wheels of justice in motion.It would seem that all parties involved ? including North himself ? would be interested in getting on with the trial, which is expected to last for months. The sooner the trial starts, the sooner it will end ? and the sooner this entire matter will be settled. Justice cannot be sacrificed for secrecy. North's trial must go on to ensure accountability in our government. The opposing sides in this issue should reach a compromise as soon as possible so that North's trial can begin. If they do not work together, this travesty will continue, and North's case will linger forever. "YOU REALIZE THIS IS IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY" ?(9S$"7^J|eTa5^5*=K The Gamecock Best Non-daily Collegiate Newspaper, Southeastern Region Society of Professional Journalists, 1987-88 i"Chief Datebook Editor ANDY BECHTEL JAN PHILLIPS Managing Editor Graphics Editor 1 JEFF SHREWSBURY MICHAEL SHARP J Copy Desk Chief Comks Editor KATHY BLACKWELL TRACY MIXSON Assistant Copy Desk Chief Graduate Assistant CARYN CRABB ROBERT STEVENSON News Editor Adviser MARY PEARSON PAT MCNEELY 1 Assistant News Editors Director f Student Medja KELLY C. THOMAS ED BONZA SUSAN NESBITT Advertising Manager 1 Features Editor MARGARET MICHELS TODD HINES Production Manager 1 Assistant Features Editor L AURA DAY ( TOMMY JOYNER Assistant Production Manager Sports Editor RAY BURGOS KEVIN ADAMS Assistant Advertising Manager Assistant Sports Editor BARBARA BROWN CHRIS SILVESTRI > Photography Editor I TEDDY LEPP 1 Letters Policy: The Gamecock will try to print all letters received. Letters should be. at a maximum, 250 to , 300 words long. Guest editorials should not exceed 500 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for style or possible libel. The Gamecock will not withhold names under an> circumstance. I r U Election proct I should have written this column three weeks ago. Maybe it would have made a difference. Then again, knowing the history of the Student Government elections, it probably wouldn't of helped anyway. Every year at this time, I get ticked off at the ineptitude in the election process. It never ceases to amaze me that the election commission and the people in charge of this process can't come up with a better plan than they have now. Because as it stands now, the system is out of date, cumbersome and completely inefficient. As the process stands now, voters must cast their ballots in their respective districts for both executive and senatorial positions. The voters must fill out different colored cards for each office, and i they must go to where they are majoring to do so. That means that a journalism student, who may < or may not have a class in the coliseum on Thurs- i day must go to the coliseum if he wants to vote. Or a business student must vote in the business i building. This is intended to eliminate voters voting in ] more than one district. ! There has been discussion about having all the voting places in the Russell House, but it was determined that that would cause a pile up at the polls. 1 And as it stands now it takes hours and hours to vote and hours and hours to count all the votes j manually. 1 There is a better way. < The best and most intelligent plan is to have a i computerized system where students can vote at i any of the polls on campus by bubbling in their I Despite progr* Thirty years after the Fidel Castro revolution, I joined 25 social work students and educators in Havana last month for a joint Cuba-United States conference arranged by the Cuban National Social Workers' Association and Boston College. Visitors receive an unusual and perhaps distorted view of the island nation, the communist country most closely located to the United States. NonCubans are greeted, transported, housed and fed by Intur, the national government tourist agency that appears to operate like the Soviet Union's Intourist. Although visitors are free to go wherever they want and take all the pictures they please, Intur nnprufpc thp hnf<a1c: nmnlni/c fKo m 11 Ac*c rune V^VIUIVJ 111V 11UIV1J) vmpiUJ'Lj 111V 5U1UVJ, 1 U11J lliw gift shops and even operates nightclubs. Therefore, the visitor's life is different from that of the Cuban citizen. According to Cuban figures, the country's population is about 10 million, two million in Havana. Almost everyone (97 percent) is literate, and 92 percent of school-age children are in school. Life expectancy compares favorably with that of the United States. There are no homeless. Citizens pay small amounts of rent and eventually own their houses or apartments, which they can pass on to children. Older people can retire on a modest pension through a social security program. Alcohol and drug use exist, but at a scale that might be envied in America. One Cuban told our group that there were people who drank too much alcohol, but not so much they couldn't work the next day. Others in the group saw a trial of a young man who faced a severe penalty for possessing three marijuana cigarettes. Letters to the Editing alters misquote me,a 0 # subsequently ? letter's intent ro the editor: I guess you could title this "Gamecock misuses letter writer." Dr maybe "Gamecock gives gallows Vr rilvl humor the ax." In my original letter ("Bible ||V HQ doesn't forbid abortion, Feb. 6), I r wrote as a commentary to the Hosea eference, not "a clear case of the To the editor: performance of abortion," but "a In response dear-cut case where the performance editor from J pf abortion is murder." What began peared Wedne is a pun on the dark demagoguery of remind Hanso he pro-life movement was perverted Hanson, we py an editor so that it appeared that I that you are a was saying that the hacking up of own opinion c pregnant women sanctioned by the president o hlosea was an historical example of We are also n dinical abortion. I believe we can all that USC stud igree that both fetal destruction and enough to rea nurder can be accomplished in the ment of a ca naneuver proposed by Hosea. It's organization's KllllllllttJ* iIt TWt A 61 r ;ss outdated, i Jeff 7 * Shrewsbury ^ r f\, district and I.D.number on scan sheets and feeding them into a computer. This would tally the votes quickly and efficiently, but USC doesn't have this system now. So, if we have to go without the aid of computers there is still a better way to do it manually. Let every student vote at any of the voting places, and when they present their I.D., put a small sticker on it to signify they have voted. This would eliminate repeat voting. This would also facilitate voter turnout which has been a major problem in the past. i If the commission wants better voter turnout, < ?iving,^uden?ts only one place to vote is not the i way. A lot of people don't vote, not because they don't want to, but because it is completely inconve- ; tiient. If all the polls are open to all the people then it would give them a better chance of finding the i time to vote. < ess, Cuba har< Guest Column ? wfM \ i Several Cubans said they knew nothing of 1 spouse or child abuse. The Havana Psychiatric Hospital, the site of the conference, has attractive j facilities and a program that seems to meet or ex- < ceed standards for modern treatment of mental I illness. c Those in our group who were enamored of ( socialism were deeply moved by what they saw and s heard. Others of us were skeptical and perhaps s disappointed that the results of the efforts to create ( a Utopia were less than Utopian. The signs of incon- t sistencies between official statements and reality ( surrounded us. t For example, despite the high literacy rate,' reading was not a conspicuous activity. Neither the s airport nor the hotels had newsstands. The few v newspapers contained little news as Americans p Know 11. I Although food and drink were bountiful for visitors, there were stories from Cubans about /, editor ltle editors, when you necessarily mean that the < nd those misquotes are tion's members blindly fo ittacked. leaders and vote for a c accordingly. Jeff Ford From your letter, it app School of Medicine you spent the last two weel ramnaien in I JSC's urinals. m nlomipH disposed, did you happen I |Jl41'?^Uvvl that officers from other ( tions went so far as to put rudox tures anc^statements ?n ^ of another candidate? If yoi to see one of these posters ( it sounds like you were too ii to the letter to the with Marie-Louise Rai ohn Hanson that ap- posters that you failed to sday, we would like to others), will you immediatel n of a few things. that every member of these < would like to believe tions agreed with their leadei n individual with your on, this is America. You are >f who should become student; surely you don't be f USC's student body. the South Carolina College taking the assumption ment means that you m ents are broad-minded accordingly, lize that the endorse- So you "wouldn't want ndidate by a campus in office who got elected be officers does not whom they know"? You inefficient But there is still a problem with this manual system that provides another argument for computerizing. Imagine if all the eligible voters decided to vote the way it is now. There are about 24,OCX) students eligible to vote, but only about 3,000 ever do. What would happen if all the voters showed up? There would be chaos. First, I don't believe there is enough time in the day to let everyone vote. Second, there are probably not enough ballots, and third, the poll workers would probably lose consciousness from the over work. Computerizing is the only way. Somewhere on this campus there are enough bubble sheet reading machines to supply four polling areas: the Business Administration building, Gambrell, Russell House and the coliseum. These machines could be easily set up and run by workers. The students would bubble in their information, district, I.D. number and votes, and the computer would automatically tally them. Any repeat votes or incorrect I.D. numbers would be kicked out of the program, and students could vote anywhere. President James Franklin said Thursday that there is already a plan in the works now to go to a completely computerized system next year. If it comes off, great, but, the next president should make it his or her biggest responsiblity to design and implement this system. Voters won't vote if you make it difficult for them. Make it simple, and the apathy will disappear. dly Utopian shortages. Housing is crowded and in short supply. We heard that Cubans could rarely buy basics such as fruit, paint and toilet paper. Imported goods are even more difficult to obtain. In many ways, Havana does not look like a Latin American city of two million. On Sundays, the streets are nearly empty. On weekdays, when school and work were in session, there was more activity, but not at the level one expects of a metropolis. We saw and heard about police stopping people who were just strolling on the streets. We also tieard about "mass organizations" to which most idults belong to prevent sabotage and ensure interlal security. In the process, personal privacy is iable to suffer. It is difficult to generalize about a whole nation tfter visiting it for only a few days. It is even more lifficult to predict what the future holds for J.S.-Cuban relations. Reports about the continued commitment of Castro to a strong, centralized communist country were not contradicted by perional observations. There were also other troubling ;igns: billboards that warned "imperialists" that Cubans fear them not at all. Of equal concern was he devil image already attributed to President jeorge Bush, partly because of his former direcorship of the CIA. Although many in the group believed they had een the ideal society, others of us were elated when ve landed in Miami. Despite its advances, Cuba >osed a frightening view that could be troublesome or all the world in years to come. Leon Ginsberg is a research professor in the Colege of Social Work. arganiza- tradicting yourself. Just a sentence llow the prior to this statement, you mention:andidate ed how you "personally know one of the candidates" and would like to enears that dorse him/her. Well, if you vote for ks of the this candidate (although it appears While in- you are hesitant because of your to notice belief that you must follow the voting Drganiza- behavior of others), your vote could their pic- be the deciding vote. Your vote may a nnrtarr 1, ^ ~ Al A ~ + ~ c mais.c a umciciicc iu iiic canuiuaic u happen you personally know. Now this apalthough pears to be going against your prinmpressed ciples, doesn't it, Hanson? nsdale's It must also be said that The see any Gamecock was very irresponsible in y assume printing a biased letter about any one Drganiza- candidate one day before the elec s? Come tion. We expect more profesa college sionalism from such a highly lieve that decorated paper, endorseust vote Vickie Emerick SCC biology /chemistry junior someone :cause of Kris Porter are con- SCC history junior