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Viewpoint 2 THE GAMECOCK Wednesday, July 5,1989 Civil Rights President should fight for bill tr\ ovirl rl/?cr>r>vnti/^\n r\-f /inu'/ 1^-fc tv/ KJJ llgflld Exactly 25 years ago Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson sign ed into law a bill that ended "apartheid" in the Southern Unitec States. The bill banned discrimination in voting, jobs and publi< accommodations. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a victory for everyone minorities, women, young people. Most importantly, the lav was a victory for the thousands of black Southerners who stooc up to the system and fought for change. The law also set in motion a debate over Affirmative Actior that would last for the next quarter of a century. It is this debate that brought a very emotionally charged atmosphere to the Supreme Court this past month as the Courl made ruling after ruling which chipped away some of the gains made back in 1964. Four key decisions have caused an outcry from Civil Rights activists nationwide. These rulings affect all minorities and women because they have made it harder for them to wage and win discrimination suits while at the same time making it easier for employers to appeal they loss a case. The Supreme Court decisions are major setbacks. Even more damaging, however, was President George Bush's stamp of ap 1 i.L . f O I i ' * The Gamecock Best Non-daily Collegiate Newspaper, Southeastern Region Society of Professional Journalists, 1987-88 Editor in Chief MARY PEARSON Copy Desk Chief TODD CHRISTENSEN fS Assistant Copy Desk Chief k ~ PAMME EADES ID Z ~Z''\\\ News Editor 11/ RON BAKER \'|VV | : Eeatures Editor CAREN CAMPBELL ^ Sports Editors DEBBIE JORDAN Assistant Production Manager D R. HAYNES RAY BURGOS Photography Editor Advertising Personnel LES ALVERSON Advertising Manager Gamecock Advisor MARGARET MICHELS ERIK COLLINS Campus Representive Director of Student Media TERENCE GREEN ED BONZA Account Executives Production Manager 1 |.bu^Cv^^.AcNIGUAL [ LAURA DAY l.elters Policy: the Gamecock ?ill try lii prinl all Idlers received. I .viler* sliimld lie. at a maximum. 25(1 lu 304) nurds long- I he nriter should include lull name, professional title it an employee- With BSC or Columbia resident, or tear and major il a student. An address and phone number are required with any letters sent, (.ucsl editorials should nol exceed StMl nurds. We reserve Ihe right to edit letters for style or possible libel. The Gamecock will nol nithhold names under any circumstance. I I piuvai 011 me supreme v^ouri s decisions, tsusn was quoted in The New York Times saying that nothing in the rulings "calls into question affirmative action or minority outreach efforts" But, the rulings do jeopardize the basic priniciples set forth in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent laws which were set forth to root out discrimination and to remove legal barriers to the advancement of not just black people but also other minorities and women. Despite what Bush believes, these principles were never fully realized in the first place. Discrimination still exists in the work place, and now because of the Court's decision it will become harder to fight this discrimination. Instead of fighting for an amendment which would ban flag desecration, Bush should fight for an amendment to the Constitution which would stop the desecration of Civil Rights for all minorities and women in the United States. 4BUT WE PONT VMT10 UTMfONE PKKWE If ' f HELLO? / ftiEUO... ; / MAY 1_ 1 ; SPEAK ' ALU E M6 \ PLEASl ' I OUT (' JSM. Bush should ! "We Are a Family." The letters were red and white, and the background was George Bush's blue sports jacket displayed on the cover of Parade magazine. 1 hope he means it. Bush has threatened to veto the U.S. Senate's Act for Better Child Care, which was passed in place of a more conservative measure sponsored by Sen. Bob Dole last week. Hopefully that was the first step toward what would be a long overdue piece of legislation. The purpose of the ABC bill put forward by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is twofold; it seeks to provide adequate child care to low-income families and to improve the quality of that care by imposing federal .^lanuai u.^ uu ua^-tai t i av>11111. The ABC bill would provide about $1.75 billion in funding annually for just these purposes. The program would last four years. The bill includes provisions which give tax exemptions to those whose children are cared for by relatives and an annual tax credit of as much as $500. The latter measure is entirely phased out for families with incomes above $15,000 yearly. A New York Times editorial proclaimed, "The Senate has ratified a revolution." Indeed, a revolution it is. The average costs for a week of care for one preschool child (in Columbia, at least) run at about Women's right What do pro-life and pro.-choice have in common? Everything. Nothing. 1 guess it depends on your point of view. For me, there are overlapping areas of concern. Many pro-choicers (like myself) are also pro-life. The issue is whether or not the government should have the ability to dictate something as intrinsically fundamental and private as whether or not a woman should have a baby. Having the right to choose has nothing to do with whether or not this person of this religion or that person of that religion thinks that abortion is immoral or against God. No where in the constitution does it extend rights to persons unborn; so, legally speaking, the rights of the fetus are kind of moot. So we are left with a woman, or ideally a couple, who might or might not be on the brink of having a family. Shouldn't they make this decision? Should the government be given the power to regulate reproduction? Oh, but it does. In lesser developed countries, where birth control is unavailable for various reasons, women turn into a means for producing a labor force. In other countries, couples often resort to killing their first-born if it is not male because of resrictions on the amount of children a couple can 1 have. To me, this is nothing but government enforced delayed abortions. Citizens of the U.S. would never stand for enforced abortions, nor should they stand for enforcing births. Letters to the e< Fair to blame -a A 11 to suffer beca for his troubles vasive mora To the editor: Carolina coi In response to the article re: Mike should have Fair's daughteriJune 28, 1989)1 have before you ca tried to keep my opinions to myself. and wrong ini But this has gone too far. 1 am a of strangers graduating senior in biology. 1 am making their also 26 years old, and have lived 1 am convii away from my parents for some time. would have rt 1 took offence to Mike Fair acting as welcome, reg a surrogate parent to me and iny I'm sure you friends, but felt that his views on responsibility visitation were necessary to offset the receive. Now majority opinion of the students. take the sam However, now that he has sue- family proble cessfully implemented his intrusive day. Meredit policies, he has the nerve, nay the another instit gull, to blame the "supposed" is a loss to US threats toward his daughter on attributed to "scumbags too ssrared to+afk man-to- havehappene man." Mr. Fair, take responsibility your morality for your dilemma. My mother always I used to say, "you made your own rrn <r IB IspTlM ^j say yes to fam Ron Baker $50. This is no small expense to low-income families. With child-care costs rising regularly because of insurance increases, one expect government funding and federally regulated standards to decrease expenses all around. In the past, opponents of such child-care legislation have argued that taxing everyone to pay for child caniSdiscriminates against those who choose to take care of their own children in their own homes. Hopefully, the exemption this bill provides to those whose children are cared for by their parents ; to personal ch Caren Campbell Hi V"* MM Indeed, no one will go unscathed in this gauntlet for choice that women have been forced to run for a basic human right. In the Soviet Union, the average woman has six abortions in her lifetime. This is not because of any moral decisions made on the part of these women as much as it is a product of the severe supply problems plaguing the USSR. To further add to the plight of the Soviet woman herancp of thf? nrmrcr nualitv nf nVior - V..W Wi Muu.a; v/? pnui maceuticals in the USSR, women often experience severe cramps and hair loss when using the birth control pill that is offered. As a result, many women choose not to take this option. Imagine the outcry by Americans and others if these women were forced to take this pill as a means of birth control. Remember the shock you iitor hter is not being made Lower tuit iuse of cowardice, she is _ 111 direct result of your in- SlIOUlCl I3G lity on to the adult mmunity. Maybe you To the editor: thought about that For the 1989-90 scf rried your sense ot right students at USC, as well i to the lives of thousands throughout the state, are f; who had no problems tuition increase which, wh own personal decisions. sant, is becoming quite ro need that your daughter rceived a warm Carolina Because of the appal lardless of your views. level of funding provided t would have taken full General Assembly (about for the warmth she'd this year, excluding supe is the time for you to funding), the administr; e responsibility for the Board of Trustees were fac m that is facing you to- other choices than to raise h's decision to attend week, ution of higher learning C, but it can be directly In this state that has c your actions and would prioritized K-12 educatic d had you not imposed education has been negf ' on others. after year, creating a syster S. Lee Fames restrict access for some Biology senior Furthermore, reduced fu H ~ \ ? i1 1 aJJ %oN I y VLtTS X UGAit h & l%?> 1?r1 ily, child care or other relatives is an excellent measure to prevent such a bias. In addition, the tax credit should relieve some of the financial stress on families below the poverty line. Some may look at the bill as simply good business sense for the United States. It is. Once it becomes more affordable for parents to have their young children looked after, more parents will have the option of returning to the work force. Critics argue that this is big government, not big business. What they are missing is that this proposal is only different from the big spending of the Reagan years in one way: it benefits the poor, not the military-industrial complex. But some may see more than this in the ABC bill. I see it as potentially a genuine piece of civil rights legislation. As many of the fears of our elected officials as possible have been addressed and alleviated by this bill, and it's about time to let the women of the United States liberate themselves from the overtly sexist-drives of traditional culture. "God Bless America and her familes," writes President Bush in that Parade article. If this bill fails because Bush hasn't extended his concept of family to include women, 1 hope that America will remember that in her next presidential elections. She deserves it. oice real issue felt the first time you learned of laws that restrict the number of children a couple can have in China. Here again, we rage because these people have no choice (something we, as Americans and members nf a Hpmnrrarv arp cnnnr?c<=>rl tr? r-h*>ricM The ability and the decision to have children was not given to us by the government and it should not be taken away by the government. Freedom is what the United States is supposed to be about. Freedom of choice is what it is all based on. For instance, freedom of religion allows us to choose our own religion. Freedom of speech allows us to speak out if we so choose. Reproductive freedom will only give us what we should already have. Is abortion a fundamental privacy right? What should be more personal and private than a couple's choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? Even if the court doesn't reverse its decision on Roe v. Wade, the slightest tampering with the existing decision will open up the issue for debate on the state legislative floor. Thus, the Supreme Court justices are on the brink ef time travel. But the taking of an entire nation back to the times before 1973 is a feat that will not go unnoticed by the men and women who believe in the fundamental rights of privacy and freedom of choice. We all have a ticket to ride and hopefully this journey will end our quest for something we should already have ? freedom of choice. "" jfWMBBI 8 "" ' < Y * * %, ~sf$0i *'*$** **% ' -- x ' - - ,:---: I^n also eroded away at the excellence in Ivrll our educational system, causing cairn backs in programs that are necessary OQ^I if our higher education system is to ^ improve. We cannot continue along this 100I year, path of escalating tuition. While as students South Carolina is not a wealthy state, aced with a USC has the third highest tuition in lile unplea- the southeast. It should, therefore, utine. become a priority for every individual in this state to ensure that we lingly low are not in the situation of having to o us by the raise tuition again next June. 91 percent rcomputer Higher educaton is the future of ation and this state, and it should become a ed with no priority funded item in the minds of tuition last everyone. The adequate funding of higher educaton is a challenge that we all must face together, and one onsistently that we have to face for the sake of >n, higher our students, ected year n that may students. Marie-Louise A. Ran. nding has USC Student Body President