Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Leadership Smith, Benjamin will guide USC well these next semesters In the last six months, the University of South Carolina has seen some drastic changes in the face of its leadership. In the spring, Stephen Benjimin was elected (albeit by an apathetically small pool of voters) the the position of student government president. Besides meeting the challenges of everything that the office holds in the first place, Benjamin also must contend with the looming shadow of former President Marie-Louise Ramsdale. Perhaps one of the most effective student leaders that USC has seen in recent years, Ramsdale enjoyed not only the support of the administration, but of the students as well. A rare luxury, but one which Ramsdale did not revel in. She succeeded in launching a necessarily comprehensive safety program that included one of the best additions to the campus safety scene: strategically placed call boxes routed directly to USC police headquarters. These have now been fitted with lights and are even more obvious, and will hopefully deter crime even more because of it. Benjamin has verbalized two of his most important goals, those being particular issues dealing with race, and an beginning ongo ing recycling effort on the USC campus. With these, Benjamin has addressed the two subjects that are likely to be not only important on campus, but in the nation and world as well. Benjamin's goals in the area of race include pushing for a more racially diverse faculty, which does not only include, we would remind him, an even balance between black and white. To reflect the high concentration of black South Carolinians, and also to appeal to black university students, the number of black professors and faculty should be increased. Efforts should also be made, though, to reflect the cultural diversity of the nation. And English being the predominant American language, a special effort should be made to ensure that foreign graduate students can communicate effectively before they are thrown into Computer Science 101 classes full of eager but frustrated freshmen. The recycling issue is one that has needed to be addressed for some time, and it's reassuring to know that Benjamin has been the one to take up arms in its favor. A tremendous amount of waste takes place not only in university offices, but also in residence halls. If students, faculty and staff are encouraged to eliminate waste on campus, the seed will be planted to carry that attitude into the off-campus world. ? Benjamin's big challenge here will be to set up an effective and convenient mechanism for recycling. At present, no large scale paper collection facilities exist, and collection of aluminum cans is hindered by the fact that specific containers for that purpose don't exist on campus. Aluminum can containers and a dumpster reserved for paper are two of the first recycling priorities. Of course, with these there come the ever present problems of parking, tuition increases and the like. These have dogged every SG president for years, and are not likely to be solved ih 1990. Benjamin will, we trust, deal with these issues with the same directness and effectiveness that he has in the past. As for the other new leader, Dr. Arthur Smith has the unusual job of filling in as the president of the university while USC searches for someone to adaquately fill the shoes of former president Dr. James Holderman. In this awkward position as interim president, Smith has shown himself to be worthy of the title of permanent president. He has succeeded in running the USC administration smoothly and as if very little had ever happened to dis rupt the flow 01 USC s progress towards being a great state university. Not only has Smith pledged to end the reign of top-secrecy that made the Holderman era difficult for the university and tempting to reporters' rooting about, but he has demonstrated a strong committment to USC regardless of the temporary status of his job as interim president. His relationship with the USC Board of Trustees has shown much promise, and Smith apparently overshadows his predecessor in the area of relating effectively to the board. He is also a man of discretion, who will continue to seek outside funding for the university to help the school overcome its continuing fund imbalance. He is doing well, and as has been mentioned in this space before, would be welcome to stay on permanently. The Gamecock Scott Pruden robyn Thompson Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor, Copy Desk Chief rnmraod ncmmiq qupaiv News Editor Carolina Life Editor Fred Gonzalez Nick Leoncavallo Sports Editor Photo Editor Kristin Francis Erik Collins Graduate Assistant Faculty Adviser Ed Bonza Laura S. Day Director of Student Media Production Manager Ray Burgos Renee Gibson Assistant Production Manager Advertising Manager Kyle Berry Carolyn Griffin Assistant Advertising Manager Business Manager Letters Policy: The Gamecock will try to print all letters received. Letters should be, at maximum, 250 to 300 words long. The writer must include full name, pro fessional title if a USC employee or South Carolina resident, or year and major if a student. An address and phone number are required with all letters sent. The Gamecock reserves the right to edit letters for style, possible libel or in case of space limitations. The newspaper will not withhold names under any circumstance. (^?We (w) . f jY\ [AV'By ^ai c ^Jnrw Save our soldi Well, yet again it's gotten absolutely terrifying for us males hovering in that ripe-to-beplucked draft zone between 18 and 25 to listen to the radio or watch TV or read the paper or anything. When I picked up The State the morning after Kuwait had been invaded, I didn't see the headline "Iraq invades Kuwait." I saw "Thousands of guys younger than me who joined the Army 'cause they liked jumping out of planes onH o hrpot on cnllpnp tuition coon to Si aiiu rrcuiivu u uivcuv vyn vv/nvgv ttuuvn jwii iw be sprayed with mustard gas by some Middle ti< Eastern loony toon." le That's enough to really ruin your Fruit sc Loops. w Now that guys are getting sent over to the land of eternal rolling sands for real, it's Pi enough to make a young, healthy potential draf- N tee like myself get kind of nervous. At this tei point I've reviewed all of my options if that dc fateful call does arrive. Generally, my aim is to ca prevent any kind of bloodshed whatsoever, so in many of these options may seem a bit too be peaceful for those folks who would rather we si; "fly in the B-2 and nuke the bejeezus out of those crazy Arabs." # Find Ron Cobb and drop him from the B-2 w bomber. Politicians are politicians, right? So c( send in the elusive Statehouse lobbyist with a lil suitcase full of cash, a few gram bags of co- m caine and enough blonde American bimbettes to ar keep Saddam Hussein and his boys busy for the e\ next couple of weeks. All we ask in return is he that he push for paramutuel betting in the Per- fc Constitution b Recently,in The State there have been a number of letters to the editor concerning decisions made by the Supreme Court and the possible appointment of David S outer to said court. The opinions of said letters bounced back and forth between conservative and liberal, but the conservatives seemed to all have the same misconception about the Constitution, which after reading it a few times began to bother me. It was the opinion of many of these people , that America's founding fathers were god-like in their omniscience and what they wrote into . pi tKo pAnotitntinn umo mAQnt tA Ka folrAn litArolli; ^ Uiv v^wujuiuuun wao iiivain i.\J UV UUVVU hlviU.11J word for word and not to ever be tampered with. In these letters the people expressed their in- f* dignation over a number of decisions made by the Supreme Court that they felt were not in the ir power of the Court to make, because they thought the the Constitution should not be sub- a) ject to interpretation. C( n< The opposite is true. The fact that the Constitution is open to interpretation is what has kept this country together for the last 200 years. al The idea that the men who wrote the Consti- pi tution knew more than the average politician to- al day is a complete fallacy. pi They were intelligent men, but definitely not all knowing. The Constitution is a synthesis of ci ers, drop Zsa Scon Pruden * ^ ? r?.-if :? ? 11 u :?u u;? nnn; aii vjuu icgiun as wcii as reiiiiquisu his pusi3ii as resident psycho in the Middle East and t Khaddafi take over. Heck, better to have >meone in charge there who's butt we know e can kick, I always say. Drop in Zsa Zsa Gabor. With ttfe proper anning and a ground support team made up of ational Enquirer and People magazine reporrs and photographers, it would take less than a ly for the troops to make it through to Iraq's pital of Baghdad. After the government buildgs have been secured, Zsa Zsa could float in sneath a boa-trimmed parachute and promptly ip Hussein in the face. "You horrible swarthy little Arab man!" she ould say. "How dare you even think about immandeering such an adorable little country Ice Kuwait. Besides, how do you ever expect e to be able to run my Rolls Royce without ly of that lovely oil? How will my little FiFi ^er make her grooming appointments? You irrible little man!" And then one more smack ir good measure, which would surely send the milt to last, n Dennis Shealy 1 f * te %Tew Jersy and Virginia plans, a number of ifferent ideas, a lot of bickering and ompromise. In fact, the Bill of Rights had to be added to ic ^onsiuuuoii as a cuiupiuinisc iur rauiicaon because many of the of the legislators who elped draft the Constitution thought that it was icomplete as it was. The really brilliant idea they had was to cre;e a document which could change as the )untry it was creating changed and adapt to ;w ways of thinking. For example, there was no really safe way to bort a pregnacy in their day, but when medical rogress allowed women to safely have an Dortion, a decision like Roe vs. Wade became Dssible. In fact, some countries have been stained benise their constitutions were rigid a? d came to ' 1 ' I - : / Zsa on Iraq now guilt-ridden leader slinking back to his rat hole. # Take Julia Roberts over to shoot a movie. Then when the shoot is finished, she can set up an interview with Rolling Stone and talk about what an icky, sweaty, sandy place Iraq is. Then when she really gets on a roll, she can start accusing the area of being racist because her Italian hairdresser and Jewish producer got spat upon by an angry camel. Then, of course, a battle of letters will ensue in the Iraq Daily Gazette over whether or not Julia really is a worthwhile human being and a decent actress who just happens to have really big lips and a bad attitude. All the lousy publicity will succeed in driving Hussein underground and the Iraqi tourist industry into a tailspin, effectively killing off any hope of the demagogue retaining power in Kuwait. Only as a last resort, gather up all of the "respectable" older gentlemen involved in the collapse of the United States savings and loan system and drop them into Iraq. In mere weeks, while our soldiers hang out and work on their tans, the pinstriped robber-barrons will have cleaned out the entire Iraqi banking system and be headed to invest the booty in Switzerland, where good upstanding pursuits like legalized drugs and prostitution await. The perfect atmosphere for the fellows that singlehandedly ruined the dreams of thousands of Americans, and subsequently served their nation in the name of truth, justice and a loosely regulated banking system. ot stagnate a point where they no longer met the needs of the people and the goverment. The idea of judicial review actually didn't come about for a few years after the ratification of the Constitution. Judge John Marshall started the precedent, but it fit in well with the idea of checks and balances so carefully built into the Constitution. I personally don't always agree with Supreme Court decisions, but I fully support the need for the Court to make these judge ments. Think about it for a moment. There is no way to set everything down in writing. Each case is different even if it deals with the same issue, and as our forfathers were smart enough to realize and plan for, times do change and the laws must be able to change to meet the needs of the people. Also tne wording of today may nave no relavance tomorrow, so having a conststution which will not yield in form to new vocabulary is destined to become obsolete. I hope I have made able to put a few thoughts into the heads of those who might think the way the letter writers do. This column was in no way intended to be an attack on anyone's beliefs, but is merely intended to make people realize that the decision making ability of the Supreme Court is both justifiable and necessary in this ever changing nation.