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EDITORIAL Tuition Six percent increase amounts to pickpocketing students ^nee again the shallow pockets of the f 1 stu(^ent anc* their hardworking parV_>/ ents are being picked to make up ^for a shortfall in higher education funding. The 5.89 percent tuition increase from the spring to the fall semester for in-state undergraduates represents an almost 10 percent increase from the prior academic year. All during the spring semester, when the Future Committee hearings took place, the administration said the point was being reached where higher tuitions could no longer be supported or endured by students, their parents or even the board of trustees. Yet, the board passed the tuition increase unanimously, and USC is suffering from raids on faculty from other schools. Will it come to the point where the state's college-material students are scared away in droves? It may already be happening. Will they decide not to come because of fewer faculty and overcrowded classes? Take a look around the campus once classes start. Will your degree be worth anything when you graduate? There's always the paper it's printed on. And if it's not worth much by itself, then maybe you can get the other members of your graduating class to give you theirs, so you can get them recycled. This may all sound depressing, but it's the grim reality we face, and the solution will be hard to come by. If the legislature is going to be made aware of the need for full-funding of higher education, it will have to come from the Carolina community, and that community will need a leader. Is our leader USC President John Palms or SGA President Carl Solomon? They have made their attempts at tuition rollbacks and lobbying the legislature but neither one has shown us the a vision for Carolina. Athletic Director Mike McGee has provided more leadership in making USC a community again. If a leader is to emerge and bring this institution back to prominence, that leader must realize the difficulty of bringing this far-flung community into focus. Universities are not what they used to be, with 80 percent of students living Off-campus. It takes longer for the average student to obtain a degree. Sometimes they are here when they have money, other times they take a semester off. USC lacks any type of vision or any type of comprehensive plan mapping out the university's future and where it is heading; something that faculty, students can cling to and say without hesitation this is what the University of South Carolina stands for. Sidney Park? Housing development will hurt public access If the City of Columbia has its way, Sidney Park could see some new additions within the next few years. No, it won't be the concert stage that was proposed earlier this year. Instead, Governor's Hill, a high-priced land development, is being placed within the zoning limits of the park. The land in question, a 5-acre spread connected to the park, will contain up to 30 houses. The congestion of houses and traffic will make the occupants realize it isn't what they hoped for, then Governor's Hill will be nothing more than an abandoned subdivision. The need for better, high-cost housing located near the governor's house seems ludicrous. The nicer sections of town, like Shandon and the Northeast, should suffice. And while downtown needs an economic boost, Governor's Hill will prove to be a bust. The additional property taxes gained by the development is unsound economically, and it would be foolish of the- city to allow the project to continue. The Save Sidney Park Coalition has spearheaded a massive petition campaign to push for a citywide referendum on the future of Governor's Hill. Construction of the first house is slated for November. However, it appears that their efforts may be in vain. City bureaucrats have been stonewalling the coalition's efforts by demanding that they need to have 5,233 registered voters. However, the process of identifying petition signees as registered voters has taken an exceedingly long time, perhaps long enough for the completion of Governor's Hill. Are city officials stonewalling because they have something to hide, or is it simply the usual inept process of bureaucratic paperwork that city government's are thought to be? If the coalition is successful in obtaining enough signatures, they must then submit them to the city's election commission, which is likely to ignore them. The responsiveness of this city's elected representatives to their constituents is lackluster at best. The S.C. Bill of Rights guarantees the right to petition, implying that the government, at all levels, will respond to the people's wants. lr uovernor s hiii is even ouiit, me pane win oecome less public, and will be policed to "keep out undesirables." The likely occupants of Governor's Hill will be white, upper-class, conservatives who would probably define the "undesirables" as any minorities, even USC students. Sidney Park would become their park, not ours. As for Sidney Park, which was built and funded with taxpayer's money, it belongs to the citizens of Columbia, not to an elite set of people who desire it to be their backyard. Mall etiquett* I've been in the woods for three months now, and I'm beginning to get used to the feeling of working at a Boy Scout camp. I've noticed how quiet the outdoors can be, and I'm really starting to appreciate the polite respect most of the scouts and even the scout leaders give me; they've basically shown me the priori sirlp of hpinu human We get the weekends off, however, and I entered the "real world" last Saturday to visit the mall. My visit has convinced me that shopping with hundreds of other people in a huge covered space is designed to bring out the bad side of being human. When we got inside the mall, we moseyed over to the food court, that wonderful conglomeration of fattening eateries that graces the center of nearly every "good mall," if there is such a thing. I sidled up to the counter of Chick-Fil-A, home to the chicken sandwich of the gods, so I could order some dinner. A tall lady (and I use the term "lady" as loosely as humanly possible) in a yellow dress rushed back up to the counter as I attempted to place my order. The yellow lady, who kind of looked like a very tall, walking lemon, bellowed to the harrowed girl at the register, "I asked you to leave off the pickles. I want my money back!" Register girl told lemon woman that she would open the register when she took my order, so that she wouldn't have to take time to get the register key from the manager. Lemon woman yelled, "Why don't you just Malls challenge I have become what all malls loathe: the professional bargain shopper. Any shopping I do now must be paid for from my meager paycheck. Now that I've been making my own money for awhile, I tend to pay special attention to price tags. I only shop with a purpose, and my budget, in mind. Who would have thought that I actually picked up a tip from my practical dad? And let me tell you, I do very little shopping, unless I really have to. For those of you unfamiliar with professional versus amateur bargain shopping, let me explain. The regular browsing shopper ? one who shops on an unlimited budget and without a purpose ? is not offered much of a challenge. It's easy to do and is especially dangerous. I have ended up with such impractical fashions as an electric-blue suede jacket, which is rarely worn and still being paid for, and a white linen dress, which is currently residing at my dry cleaner ? again. Professional bargain shopping has become like an Olympic sport to me. While I'm still a novice at it, I think I've devised the rules to this new game. Rule one: Head straight to the back of any store and scour the sale racks for the perfect halfprice outfit. You'll be able to find it because it's Conservative glos According to the latest surveys, the average American student is woefully misinformed about most aspects of American politics, or as the experts put it, they are "dumb as dirt." Therefore, I present a brief glossary designed to help students understand words and phrases used on highbrow cable channels like C-SPAN: Gridlock: When members of Congress disagree with the president and neither side can accomplish anything. During a Democratic presidency, gridlock is good. Compromise: The only known cure for gridlock. Usually it involves the use of tax dollars to create things like the multi-millionaire dollar Senator Robert Byrd Animal Flatulence Research Center in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. Rush Limbaugh: The leader of the free world, based on the fact that his ratings are consistently higher than Bill Clinton's. Tax Retroactivity: As you know by now, the problem with America is that the evil Republican administrations before Clinton did not tax people at a high enough rate. To make up for this, the IRS will immediately start taxing you AGAIN on money you've already earned for 1993, based F r^nllr A IJryil k At i r tju-io, hkc- iw /?n r 'BECAUSEPaW M AMOUNT OF tAoNEH ' MEMBER FR "A I w?Ax?u? a \ Most kipi ^r^wGi'vf i leaves much # in the I > * give me his five dollars and give him his chang from the register?" She was pointing at me! When I first saw lemon woman complaining, just thought it was a little dispute that was non of my business. But when she dragged my five dollar bill into the equation, I was forced to mak some rather quick decisions. Decision one: I wasn't going to say anything for fear of a brutal lemon attack with only th mall cops protecting me. Decision two: If someone takes a pickle o their Chick-Fil-A sandwich that seriously, the you should probably avoid the food court al together and take a bag lunch to the mall. Anyway, lemon woman got her five bucks, an I placed my order again after she left because reg ister girl was too scared to remember what I'd saic When this kind of thing happens, I always fee guilty for being the same species as the offendin party. When I ordered, I tried to be as gentle an ? professional b the one that no one else seemed to care for, bi you adored it. No one thinks of starting in th back and moving towards the front of the ston Umimvar coIac hpahIp lrnrtii/ thtc firct riilp C iiV/VYVtVl, OU1VO pwyiv ftUVYf UllO ii*OV ?UIV, O they will try to play off your naivete. Rule two: Buy out-of-season clothes. Bu summer fashions at the end of summer, and sav them until the next year. Use your best judgmen Of course, this is where the professional ca outdo the amateur. Pros wouldn't end up wil platform shoes, knowing that it will not be tf rage next summer. Amateurs will easily b fooled into such a perilous mistake. Rule three: Avoid small boutiques. Usuall they are too expensive, and they have cling sary fosters politi aPatrick McNeill c -w g Columnist on the higher rate you SHOULD have been pa] ing all along. Plans are already underway t make higher taxes retroactive to January 2( 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Dan Rostenknwiki: Congressman froi Illinois who is facing criminal investigatior Apparently he likes to take checks made out t his campaign fund and take them to the Hous Post Office to buy stamps. Amazingly, when yo use a $20,000 check to buy a $5.80 book of Elv stamps, that leaves you with $19,994.20 in unr< ported, tax-free change. You or I might call th "money laundering" or "tax fraud," but o Capitol Hill it's just "the way we do business." Dan Quayle: Former Vice President of th ~R\6Nt?S W?f UTZA6EOUS Wm ll To Be a AfeRNlTH ? gjg| |j Mrs rue 11 culous . pi| I v EVER HEARP'ff l to be desired non-difficult as possible. I just told her to give me whichever soft drink was easiest to reach. Afterwards, I was hanging out with a friend of mine that works at a Hello Kitty store. We were holding a Barney dinosaur doll and singing, "I hate you, you hate me, I just ate your fam-i-ly," when a fairly young kid walked into the store and wandered over to the candy counter. As far as I could tell, he was experimenting to see how many pieces of candy could fit in his pockets without being overly conspicuous. At e first, I thought he could be browsing, but how many people pick up a piece of candy, check the price, turn on the engine, check the muffler, and I lift the hood before they decide that they don't e want to buy it? As the kid walked out the door, I told my e iriena mat some or ner store s canay naa just been stolen, but she shrugged much like the reg;, ister girl had, as if to show theft was an ordinary e occurrence. Is it really ordinary that people yell at each n other and steal stuff? Are the little scouts, who n shake my hand at the end of the week because II they want to politely thank me, not doing the right thing? Are the friendly "howdys" that I d give people I don't know incorrect? Maybe I should sit in the mall and learn how to be a good, i. bad human being. :1 g Chris Muldrow is a columnist d for The Gamecock >argin shoppers salespeople. In the clothes dryer, socks cling to sweaters because of static electricity. I think physicists at MIT are still investigating what makes salespeople cling to customers. Rule four: Never buy from the front of the store displays. Yes, rule numero uno for professional bargain hunters is to avoid those highpriced outfits that are placed perfectly, as if by some divine miracle, near the entrance. Take it from me, you will need to wear these fashions until you're six feet under before you get your Jt money's worth. Few college student budgets will ie allow for such a luxury. Scorekeeping in mall shopping is really quite simple. Whoever can get the most stuff, while obeying the four rules and without filing for per,e sonal bankruptcy, wins. t By playing the game correctly, shopping can in be a fun sport, thereby making the crowded mall h an almost pleasant place to be. And you might ie have just enough money to pay off your dry ie cleaning bills. y Tanya Stroman is a columnist f? 77, ? n ?i. y jut m f?v v/u^tcti/t/v cal understanding United States. Strongly resembles Pat Sajak. Much funnier than Pat Sajak. A1 Gore: Current Vice President of the United States. Strongly resembles a sheet of plywood. Much funnier than a sheet of plywood. C-SPAN: A cable channel devoted to covering our government in action. Twenty four hours a day of congressional debates and committee meetings, press conferences, speeches and briefings designed for insomniacs and people without lives. 0 Bob Dole: Senate Minority Leader and peren^ nial Republican candidate for president. Will be running in '96 on a platform of "I opposed ^ everything Bill Clinton ever did, including his 1 birth." 0 George Stephanopolous: Top Aide to ;e President Clinton. Recently demoted from White lU House Communications Director to Executive is Assistant in Charge of Calling Domino's and ?_ Tipping the Delivery Guy. Formerly seen on is "Sesame Street" as Big Bird's imaginary friend, n Patrick McNeill is a columnist ie for The Gamecock who s( the ?#.// |!|| was that; 51 AaMWAH ? ||