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Tha Ga ?attack Serving USC Since 1908 hief Susan Goodwin, Viewpoints Editor Editorial Board ax, Lupe Eyde, Steven C. Burritt, ly DeButts, Kim Truett I spirit own with end of home needs to be improved u Lee Gontz, Editor in C Keith Boudreai Jimn Vanishing Student unity d football games, Y y en<* ?^ome ? W iooroaii season, siuo Y campus on the week As long as students can make ever, once football is gone, thi low morale. Ifs disturbing to think thi gether is a particular sport. A there are still similarities to d field of interest, we all have ei of all, we're all Gamecocks. Tl some fashion, so we do not ha to express pride in our school. With all the students orga to find some niche to fall inti Many charity organizations 1 volunteers. There are other c falling into boredom. CPU ex many opportunities to come t throughout the year. Diversit planned for students. While sports events are \ hancirig the Carolina spirit, tl er occasions exist for student! tunities for students to make The basketball season will prove from its off-season dov during football times. Still, ai students should make every i that USC has to offer in upcoi With all the dubs to join, u activities to go to, students wc apathetic. We all are members it. 'Contract rehashes BYROr > I JAMES Columnii Hie Republicans "Contra America," is a contract on i ca. Hie document is a guide des the Republican Party wo act if they gained majority < or the House 01 itepresentanv the United States Senate. It' with the failed economic pol: the past and harsh reform would hurt the underclass. The author of this "con Newt Gringrich, says the cc clearly defines what the R? can candidates are all about agree. They are about tax c the rich and big business anc ty that values money over ] The worst part of the cc is the economic policies. N would these policies hurt thi try, but they already have. T ply-side economics of Reagi Bush created recession, staj economic growth and unei ment levels not seen in 40 The other economic policy I problem with is not even a it's a gimmick: the balance get amendment If the amer were passed, it would mean diate cuts in programs and reductions in employment federal level and would cause 1 dous harm to the economy. I almost be shock therapy i economy, causing deep cutt fense, education, Medicare an icaid. Of all the cuts in the pli one that would hurt the moe 20 percent reduction in So< curity benefits. That cut wo dancrer the lives of mav older icans who can barely managi on what they now receive fr government Older America paid into the system deserv back what they put in. Letters shoul phone muni number. 11 Russell *\5Aod Student Media Russell Hous Lee Clontz Allison ^ Editor in Chief Feature! Susan Goodwin Jimmy Viewpoints Editor Sports Steven C. Burritt Km** Copy Desk Chief Photo Keith Boudreaux Ethan I* News Editor Graphic Lupe Eyde Erin G Features Editor Asst. The Gamecock is the student newsp University of South Carolina and is publis Wednesday and Friday during the fall and lets, with the exception of university holid periods. Opinions expressed in The Gamecock are editors or author and not those of the 1 South Carolina. The Board of Student Publications and Co is the publisher of The Gamecock. The I Student Media is its parent organization. x)tball games and the approaching finis of the ents are faced with the prospects of an empty ends and a general lowering of student unity, the trek out to Williams-Brice all is well. Howe USC community suffers from home-itis and at the only thing that can pull the campus todter all, students at USC may be diverse, but raw us together. We all are here to study some rams to take and stress to deal with, and, most lese characteristics should bind us together in ve to depend on seasonal activities to allow us nizations around, every student should be able 5, some way to get plugged in to campus life, lave extensions at USC that desperatly need >rganizations designed to keep students from erts much effort to insure that students have ogether, and the USC Symphony has concerts y Week is another example of a unifying event vonderful ways of unifying students and enley should not be the only ones. Too many othj to take pride in their school, too many oppora difference in the way things are done. [ be here soon. Though student rapport will immswing, it still does not hit as high as it does ly improvement is better than none at all, and effort to get to see this and all the other sports ning weeks. pcoming sporting events to attend and student ?uld be hard-pressed to find reasons to remain i of the USC community. Its time we acted like with America' Reaganomics The social reforms are not much I better. They call for welfare reform, 5 and no serious attempt at curbing st health care costs. Their idea of wel fare reform is to literally cut the program is half! This measure would i With cut off aid to many single parents ^men- and children who need the system, of poli- Legislation would hurt these peould en- Ple and not punish the real abusers control of the system. Many people on weles ^ fare are not on it because they don't s filled Wflnt to work or because they are icies of lazy; they are on welfare because is that they needed a helping hand. According to the Clinton Commission tract", ?n Health Care, 30percent of wel>ntract tare recipients are on welfare beipubli cause of its health care benefits. , and I We need change, but not the kind ..x_ e? nf oh on ere the Rermhlirans want.. UUJ iur ? o r I a par- Vice President A1 Gore said it people. 80 well on "This Week with David intract Brinkley," Sunday morning that ot only the Republican Contract with Amere coun- ica is a "blueprint for the 1980s verhe sup- si on of warmed-over Reaganonoman and i08" that will return the country to gnated skyrocketing deficits, high unemnploy ployment levels and an economic years, recession. have a 0? Nov. 8, Americans will go to policy; the polls to vote on a variety of isjdbud 8Ues and candidates. The GOP idment would have you believe the election ixnxne- is a referendum on the Clinton Presdrastic idency, but I say it's a referendum at the on change. Will it be the change remen- sponsored by President Clinton that t would includes the lowest levels the deficit for the has seen in thirty years, the crime i in de- hill that gave us 100,000 new pod Med- lice to make our streets safer and education reforms that include anf the Americorps and an easing of the t is the student loan burden or a return to rial Se- the policies of the 1980s and a doruld en- niant economy, tax breaks for the Amer- rich and more gridlock. The "Coni to five tract with America" really is a conom the tract on America. rts who Byron James is a political e to get science senior. His column appears every Monday. Id include name, major, >er and Social Security ley should be sent to House Room 333. I News: 777-7726 tSSSSS. 1 Advertising: 777-4249 Laura Day '* FAX: 777-6482 Geative Director ;e-USC? Columbia, SC 29208 Jim Green Art ninvtar Williams Robert Wertz rp. ?Editor Asst. New, Gregory Perez DeButts Wendy Hudson Editor Asst. Copy Desk Elizabeth Thomas r Tanja Kropf Adv. Graduate Asst. tt Asst. Copy Desk Renee Gibson Ed"01 Ryan Wilson Marketing Director dyerson ** Sports ChHs Wood a Editor Am. Advertiang Manager Asst. Photo 6 ' alloway Jason Jeffers Erik Collins News Cartoonist Faculty Advisor aper of the Letters Policy ibed Monday, spring semes- The Gamecock will try to print all letters received, ays and exam Letters should be 200-250 words and must include full name, professional title or year and major if a studeut. those of the Letters must he personally delivered by the author to University of The Gamecock newsroom in Russell House room 321. mmunications The Gamecock reserves the right to edit all letters for Jepartment of styles-possible libel or space limitations. Names will not be withheld under any circumstances. firecock VIEWTOH THe QfUG/NS r IT? QUOTEUNQUOTE "He loves his students and misses th students, those whc Proposals abolis After reading through the news sections of various papers this week, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for sending me to parochial schools until I turned 18. Public education in this country is like the Cincinnati Bengals football team. Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, it does. Okay, maybe I am overreacting just a bit. I wil limit my critique to just one of the fifty United States If you want to understand just what is going wronf with the educational system in America, you neet look no further the beacon of the left coast, the Gold en State of California. The first item from the land of fruits and nuti comes from beautiful Half Moon Bay, California Those of you who rely on this paper as your prim an news source (yeesh!) might not be aware that Gar rett Redmond of the Half Moon Bay School Boarc has proposed abolishing homework in Half Mooi ri i i_ Trr? A j Day scnuois. uoa luuay ioii tx xxuxxt page owij ui the idea (which has not been voted on yet) alon) with quotes from the interested parties. One high school senior interviewed for the arti cle voiced her support, saying "This would give i lot of us a real life." (Oh, the stress placed on a Cal ifornia high school student!) The article also quot ed researchers who point out that, yes, the mor homework a student does, the better the studen College: life at t In just about every class I take, I always win< up hearing about Maslow's hierarchy. For those o you who may have forgotten your teachings on ol Maslow, his theory says that people have to mee certain needs before they can meet others (i.e., foo< and shelter before security, and security before al fection), the implications being you won't get anj where hitting on a person who's got a hunkerini for a T-bone steak. I think I've formulated a theory on the mattei college students always end up on the bottom le\ el. I started going to college with the hopes of leaning a little about the world in general and gettin away from my curfew. However, instead of holdin Saturday-morning discussions concerning mass m< dia's effect on New Hampshire shih tzus, I find mj self watching reruns of "Air at 3:30 in the aftei noon. I feel validated in sinking to such depths for tw reasons. One, It all fits into my theory, and two, ] was a special episode with Jim J. Bullock. The real meat of my new theory comes unde the "prioritization of goals" section. In planning t attend college, my aims may have been to get a d< gre.e and better my chances of getting a good job, t a successful human being, etc. Yet, actually a tending college has an interesting way of reordei . Is football the only t "It denends nn t.hp cmnn vn r o- r J nothing like football that a for that variety of reasons.' HHMf ^ "No, I think you see a lot o: have a lot more interests th{ football's a lot of fun and a g YTS Monday, October 31, 1994 or -me M)PPl l ,ANP 60% of-mosT^Sy 30U?D SAlP TH?Y WOOLP J OAFPFt THflT YOU L fw J "THf COUNTRY. y em, and when he can talk about the future, he ? ? do, to pray and for everyone to think positive t Poet James Dickey's wife, Deborah, on his condition ih homework, Einst< Ga ? abc tm *M PAT MCNEILL wit Columnist ogr ? T ' ? vr- ^ wh will do academically. 1 So, lefs review the chain of logic behind this pro; posal: 1. Japan is kicking the snot out of the United . States in every educational category you can think ^ ?f- pa 2. Japanese students do more than three times 3 the amount of homework American students do. ^ut 3. Therefore, America should abolish homework * in its public schools. sj0 In order to find out how well this idea would play here at USC, I called up one of the deans over at jn^ ^ USC Law School and asked what he thought about fev y abolishing homework for law students. He wasn't gn ' wild about the idea (Darn!). Fr, The other education factoid from sunny Cali- pic a fornia this week was the release of the first part of his the government's proposed history curriculum for if t the public schools. It is called "National Standards tor e for United States History" and was created at the t University of California at Los Angeles. In a moving interview in Friday's USA Today, he bottom of Mask l? "I JfLr JjL SUSAN GOODWIN t Viewpoints Editor ke ing priorities. I've found that my goals are simple g these days?getting food and going to sleep. an The symptoms of college priorities gone awry are quite easy to observe. When I'm awake, I dream about going back to sleep. When I'm asleep, I want ( to stay that way. In class, Fm always thinking about what HI do for lunch. At lunch, I wonder why "Days Pu of Our Lives" has gotten so stupid. (Of course, TV ^ has to fit in somewhere.) ori J. Yes, my life seems to have been boiled down to stl a bowl of Captain Crunch and a four-hour nap. And he exactly where does studying fit into this scheme of he 0 things? Between the oh-so productive hours of mid- en [t night and 5 a.m., a schedule which forces me to take a nap the next day or consume an almost-lethal sr amount of diet Coke to stay awake. Wi ,o Manifestations of this "12-to-5" phenomenon are 011 5- easy to see. On campus, which conversations are Lk >e eavesdroppers more likely to hear? t- Conversation A: r- Student #1: You know, I was reading a most in hing that brings students to{ u're talking about. There's flHRBflfl <^?' ^ecai ttracts that many people ganizatioi Cassie Sturkie ^ Baccalaureussenior f student eroups. People BHHHI "Everybody in just sports. I still think different ii ,Teat thing on Saturday." IWR" '^Hpl mon in sp Shawn Nottingham Broadcast senior 3 PAST MISS/ON,t, rants to continue to teach. Ask the houghts for him." iln in California ry B. Nash, the co-creator of the project, talked >ut his inspiration for the project. He took issue h the traditional definition of history as "the biaphy of great people." "Isn't that a disabling notion in a democracy ere we believe that active, knowledgeable, enjed citizens hold the fate of the republic in their ids?" asks Nash. In keeping with this theme, the latest revision American History has omitted some "great peo" from the discussion. People like Thomas Edii, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Jonas Salk, ill Revere, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee are vhere to be found in this "history textbook of the ure." Of course, I can understand the last two omisns. The Civil War took place 130 years ago, and jrefore has no possible relevance for anyone liv\ in 1994. And I understand why students need ver facts about people who have accomplished ;at things and more about mediocre types like ed, the out-of-work plumber who collects unemyment, blows his money on video poker and beats i wife regularly. But I'd like to offer a warning: he great people are taken out of American hisy classrooms, what remains will be truly mediocre. Pat McNeill is a third-year law student His column appears every Monday. tw's hierarchy *esting passage on ethical considerations associjd with product strategy. Student #2: Actually, I found the section on marting analysis and performance ratios to be far ore stimulating. Conversation B: Student #1: Man, I got an hour of sleep last night, id the only thing Fve eaten in three days is a bag Pixie sticks. Student #2:1 hear ya. I rest my case. Okay, okay not quite. If I'm going to be fair in itting forth my theory I must acknowledge that ere are exceptions to this theory. I can think of ily two: my roommate Lori, who does all of her ndying in the afternoon while I slip into a threeair coma, and my friend Teresa, who does of all r work at least four months in advance. If I have abarrassed either in this column, it's their own ult for being so productive. Exceptions to the contrary, I'm still willing to ager a bet on my theory. After all, I can't be the Jy one who spent a Saturday afternoon watching >ni Anderson in "Sorry, Wrong Number." Then again, maybe I can. Susan Goodwin is a journalism junior. Ejether on campus? ise there are parties and other activities, oris and intramural (sports)." John Carbone Business administration freshman y can get into sports. Different people have iterests. Everybody can find something comorts. Everybody wants their team to win." Dwayne Mullius Communications junior