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2 *t5ai Serving US' Wendy Hudson, Editor in Chief Edttorfc Lucy Arnold, Jamie Clark, Eijin Gallow: Allison Williams, Larry Williai Give credit w Order of Palmetto c Blowfish worthy of Really now, why all the unnecess Tri ?*-?*-? ll^r nn fn nrl%/ ls uiicic icoiijr any uuuul cu uu win and the Blowfish should receive the C cut and dry: According to Gov. David Beasl award is granted on the basis of conti litical grounds. Hence, Darius Rucke eminent, apparently the main point considered, while the band's extensi The band already has establish state. They continually promote Soi ment of Parks, Recreation, and Touris Carolina T-shirts and other material The award has been given to coi of the recipients' political beliefs. In that Beasley has given 69 such awar week). If the award can go to the rer certainly be awarded to living and fc The decision, in essence, boils doi out his lip and pout because of som< granting a request by a member of tl adult and give credit where it is due; The decision should be made by W ital City Stadium. Stay tuned. Politics m< solution, r When I was growing up in Summerville, then a small town, my family owned the corner drug store at Central and West Richardson streets. Evoy morning when the store opened, about five to 15 of the "town elders" would gather in the vinyl-covered booths of the soda fountain to drink coffee and solve the world's problems. Some were old-time Southern Democrats and some were Democrats-turned-Republicans. Regardless of the discussion ? no matter how long they talked, how many cups of coffee they drank or cigs they smoked, no matter what the topic, when it was time to go ? they'd always shake hands. For them, politics was just a way of approaching a problem, not how you judged a man. When we closed the store last February, the gentlemanly discussion of major issues by the coffee club membership stopped, too. It went by the wayside like the Democratic-led Congress and State TT T7 +1 xiuuae. rui uiuui ui uic mcuiuciship and almost all the leadership, the aim of politics is to push a "right" agenda and destroy its converse and those who pronounce it. Someone told these people their opinion was absolute, and anyone who dared to think differently is devoid of character. The examples flow like a quick stream. In 1994, President Clinton railed against talk show hosts be cause he was sick of the unsubstantiated claims and attacks being levied at him. "There are a lot of people who communicate to the american people who need to ask themselves, what are we telling the people? Are we telling them the whole truth? Do they know what's good as well as what's bad in this country?" Rush Limbaugh, ever-so-mindful of his duty to put the President of the United States in his place, responded: "I am the truth." When Republicans have nothing better to say, they resort to stereotyping and labeling. My favorite term involves the use of "liberals" or "leftwingers" to denote the "evils" working against them. Last week, S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon, on NBC's "Today" show, kept call. ing death penalty resource center workers "left-wingers" who believe TBafacfe ? Student Media Russell House-USC* C Wendy Hudson Lucy Arnold Editor in Chief Stephanie Matt Pruitt Sonnenfeld Viewpoints Editor Feature! Editor! Chris Winston Larry Williams c?py 5e,J' Chief Ryan Wilson Erin Galloway Sporu Ed,ton Allison Williams jamfc Clark New! Editors photo Editor Keith Boudreaux Circulation Manager The Oamecock is the Mudent newspaper of the University of South Carolina and is published daily during the fall and spring semesters, with the exception of university holidays and exam periods. Opinions expressed In The Gamecock are those of the editors or author and not those of the University of South Carolina. The Board of Student Publications and Communications is , the publisher of The Gamecock. The Oepertment of Student Media is iu parent organization. 1 tart C Since 1908 ' Matt Pruitt, Viewpoints Editor il Board ly, Gregory Perez, Stephanie Sonnenfeld, ns, Ryan Wilson, Chris Winston there its due lebate futile; high honor ary debate? ither or not the Columbia band Hootie h*der of the Palmetto? The case seems ay's spokeswoman, Ginny Wolff, the ibutions to the community, not on pot's denunciation of the S.C. state govof conflict for Beasley, should not be ve community service efforts should, led themselves as ambassadors of the ith Carolina, and the state's Departim even provided the band with South s to take with them on the road, untless others without any knowledge fact, an Associated Press story notes ds in his short term (averaging 2 per uains of a Confederate soldier, it can reathing ambassadors for the state. nn to this: Will the governor (a) stick 3 criticism; (b) defend his ego by not tie opposing party; (c) or be a mature ? Wednesday, when Hootie plays at Cap;ant to be .1 . .1 ity. Ethan Myerson 'S: 777-7726 Graphics Editor ertising: 777-4249 Ryan SIms [I 777-6482 Sttoe Editor Columbia, SC 29208 ChrisCarTOll Director of Student Media Martha Hotop Laura Day Tina Morgan Creative Dircctor Asst. News Jeff A. Breaux Ben Pillow All Director Chris Dixon Gregory Perez Asst. Features Design Editor Robbie Meek Kim Golden Asst. Sports Asst. Advertising Manager Jason JefTers Erik Collins Cartoonist Faculty Advisor Letters Policy The Oamecock will try to print all letters received. Letters should be 200-230 words and must include full name, professional title or year and major if a student. Letters must be personally delivered by the author to The Gamecock newsroom in Russell House room 333. The Gamecock reserves the right to edit all letters for style, possible libel or space limitations. Names will not be withheld under any circumstances. lot Datue DAVID HALLER Columnist a person should have their day in court before being put to death. At the end of the interview, Condon, with a boy-I-got-you grin, kept asking the resource center representative, "Do you believe in the death penalty?"? as if failure to do so is evidence of profound mental retardation. And in the worst example of ideological cleansing IVe ever seen, An^oronn Ron .TnVm Tnclrpr was UV1UUil - -V-W* . he couldn't switch to the Republican Party because ONE representative didn't like his abortion stance. Exclusion by one vote may be a great way to run a social fraternity, but it's an awful way to run a government. Arrogant. Paranoid. Bullying. Elitist These are the people running Congress and, for the most part, the state of South Carolina. They use these tools to exclude from the debate people who disagree with them, to cap compromise, and to cover up the real consequences of their actions. I'm sure you didn't know the Republican Contract with America will cause almost 53,000 students in South Carolina alone (the size of two USC's) to have their student loans slashed. What a bargain! Politics are not intended to be a battle, it's a discussion of different ideas, the end result of which should benefit ALL Americans, not just the constituency of those in power. Governing by using the cut and burn tactics which Lee Atwater made famous is wrong and anti-American, a claim even he would agree with. Nor would the coffee club be happy? those aren't the values which they tried to pass down to the next generation, nor are they the values I grew up with. My Southern values taught me to respect everyone and their right to be heard. Our goals now should be to find the common ground which makes us a nation; not to clean house of those who don't follow the whims of the elected major /IEWPQ] ( XttM3Z\ /lEEjUi / PRPSfWlS / PR.65K/ / CAUSED BY / CAUSED \r*? \^D?Wn! nfr A VL QUOTE UNQUOTE "To be given this honor so early In my Sophomore Heathe Futile hunt for I've spent the vast majority of the last two weeks adjusting after coming back from my psuedo-vacation (see first column). The rest of the time was devoted to finding the one thing that I need to make me a legitimate columnist/Viewpoints editor: a nickname. My viewpoints predecessor and mentor Chris Muldrow picked up the super-catchy title of "Beardman," due, obviously, to his ever-present facial growth. Unfortunately, my only distinguishing physical characteristic is a small scar under my right eye. Somehow "Scarface" just doesn't work for me. Having the same nickname as bell-bottom wearing, gold-chain sporting drug dealer could help me while Fm away from the paper, but probably won't do much to further my journalistic career. After a few days of pondering and several fruitless inquiries to my friends (their most original suggestion was "Scarhead," the rest are unprintable), my train of I" thought was disrupted by a series of strange events. The first occurred a few days after I moved in to the palatial Preston Residential College. I came home to find a letter under my door, folded in half, like the professor does when he hands you a test with a poor grade so the rest of the class doesn't see it (not as if Fd know what that's like or anything). This letter (addressed with the intimate greeting "Dear Student"), in effect, said that I was no longer a student at the University of South Carolina, that since I was no longer a student, I no longer had the right to live in University housing, and that if I didn't have the problem resolved by the following day that I should pack my things and leave the campus immediately. m ltpwa fpr Iravalr YY liltV YY UIV1 IVUJ' U1V 75% avoiding sub I asked around the newsroom up here at The r~ Gamecock for a column topic this week. I'm suffering from that old back-to-school, haven't unpacked everything, classes have started and nothing weird has happened to me yet case of writer's I? block. Nothing weird, that is, but the explosion of my upstairs neighbors' toilet, but that happened ^re last year, too. ?r. So I asked the guys up here if they thought ?* kayaking, one of my new hobbies, could possibly be funny. Someone shouted, "No!" ?| They've obviously never seen me kayak. . Yep, I'm a demon on the water, a veritable . p boatload of water fun rolled into one bearded, hel- ^ meted, life-jacketed ball of bleeding, rock-battered flesh So I offer you the Beardman Guide to White- ou^. water Swimming, Hard Object Avoidance and , General Drowning Prevention. ^ Essentially, there are three types of water- ^Qn craft commonly used on Whitewater rivers: kayaks, ^ canoes and raits. n.acft nas specinc cnaractens- to ^ tics guaranteeing a unique ride and a unique way I could get myself entrapped between the boat and a rock, threatening my life and providing a sujj thrill unmatched in most sporting events. pac| Canoes are paddled with a single-bladed pad- a w die. This means you can brace on only one side of the boat. Bracing is a paddling term for keeping yourself from falling in the water and drowning. ter I don't often canoe, because if you flip a canoe upstream from a rock, it has a nasty habit of filling with water and pinning against rocks. My pad- \y i< dling skills would have me pinned every five minutes. got Rafts are large bouncy craft requiring sever- ner al friends who are willing to stop paddling when you the intrepid raft guide yells, "Stop!!!!" This is be- ter. cause unbridled paddling often pushes rafts into places the raft guide doesn't want them to go. Raft hov guides must carefully place paddlers so there prei aren't two weak people on one side and two strong yea] ones on the other. Such paddler placement often as 1 results in circular raft motion, kind of a merrygo-round on water. hob Kayaks, my new preferred method of paddling, self DNTS \Q \ ^ /""" IJlcYlS / \/ -\SoH I HEP W / [ reEGNAKCV/S ) -fEENA #L w$aW. / CAUSED BY /[ rns career is quite humbling and I sincerely hope r Larkin, a volleyball player, on being named to th nickname causes MATT PRUITT 2 Viewpoints Editor ki fii sp I think the final paragraph said something about QV being swallowed by a fissure in the earth if I ever set ^ foot on the campus again. Fortunately, I, and the other 200 students, who received the letter found out the whole thing was just a te minor error. Hooray! sa Several days later, I walked into the lobby of the m ol' ResColl (I was allowed entrance), and there sits a I ] harpsicord. A harpsicord. Now, mind you, the lobby ^ is otherwise completely bare of furniture. Someone ap- jt parently decided that an archaic musical instrument was a good building block for the ambiance of the place. Any addition of chandeliers or dining hall mirrors will n< confirm my suspicion that the Preston staff is a group of vampires, fattening the little college students for w the slaughter. m As if these traumatic events, combined with the re stress of finding an appropriate name, weren't enough, tl long-time columnist Matt Horgan turned in his first sc column. I made the grave error of reading it in a weak- ^ ened mental state. Now, Fve never actually taken LSD, ^ but Td guess that a Horgan column would serve as an A excellent simulation, only his version is probably slightly more surreal. And now, the kicker. On a casual stroll past the Thomas Cooper library, I spotted several people kayaking 25% skill, ^ merged objects CHRIS MULDBOW Columnist like giant plastic cigars with holes in them , the paddlers. They have an interesting habit / ipping over if the person inside is too nervous / ut being in a watercraft rumored to be easily i oed. This flipping is remedied by a stylish move 11 ! ed the Eskimo roll; it's called that because a fflj j in a cold river such as the Nantahala results /V, i paddler who looks like an Eskimo who fell JI ?the frigid waters of the Arctic. Wi f1 Paddlers must wear certain safety gear when II i// , rm nrotnr A nnrannol flntofinn Iroana Mil f / A VAX uiib TTUi^i. xA |A/1 owaacax uuiauuu UVT1W AWJM WWII JT Idlers who've decided to go swimming from w j| ring. You might have known personal flota- ^Jfj i devices as life vests, a term used by non-padig types. You've got to know the lingo, though, , e a suitably cool-looking paddler. Paddlers also wear helmets. Helmets prevent nasty side effects of high-speed impacts with merged rocks, known to paddlers as pillows, idling lingo has a way of making things seem hole lot less dire than they are, doesn't it? Kayak paddlers also wear a spray skirt that over the cockpit of the boat, preventing wafrom entering and making the paddler look a neoprene dance queen. All of this equipment, of course, costs slightjss than a beachfront home at Hilton Head. After you've gotten the equipment, all you've to do is hit the water. Be sure to bring a part so you'll have someone to tell you how stupid looked when you flipped over in the flat wa- m m m Paddling is a great sport because no matter MMmml r much you stink at it, you'll still usually look flr mm I tty cool doing it. As Billy Crystal said many rs ago, it doesn't matter if you feel marvelous Reader ong as you look marvelous. editor Sh Maybe later, I'll tell you about my other new by: rock climbing. .New ways to injure my- '?ngtn a !!!! Woohoooo!!! Friday, September 8,1995 and r i iffovwr \ , 6e frkhanci i qftusedby / a 8 \ | Qo | CD U) cn -< a I ? that I... make my team a winner." e All-SEC team i mental strife' g in the foot-deep reflection pool. Kayaking. In the allow, newspaper-filled, pitiful little fountain-spoutrr roflor+inn nrtnl Strpflma lpQS tVinn f> mil PS 3WflV A le natatorium, plenty of room for practicing aquatic sorts, just 5 minutes away. It was obviously carryer from the Horgan column. I proceeded directly to e health center for medication. They, of course, prescribed the generic health cenr cure: Benadryl and some sleep. Funny how the me remedy covers the common cold, an outbreak of alaria, and hallucinations. It didn't work as well as lad hoped, however. That night as I slept, all my rent anxiety came crashing down on me in my dream, went something like this: As I'm walking towards the library, I pop a Be-| idryl. The usual drowsy effect overtakes me, and I 11, face first, into the reflecting pool. I come out of the ater, gasping for breath, only to see my worst nightare staring right at me. A purple kayak comes barsling towards me, Matt Horgan at the helm, blasting le "William Tell Overture" on the harpsicord and Teaming about Marshmellow Peeps all the while, [y hands are busy writing my column. My only dense is my voice. I take a deep breath, look Horgan jadinthe eye, prepare to meet him head on and, with 1 my being, shout the first thing that comes to mind: "Scaaarfaaace!!!!" Well, I guess it's back to the drawing board. xr look , . Hi?5 ! rite now. responses are welcome. Letters to the % ould be between 200 and 250 words in nd be should be delivered personalty to the Gamecock newsroom.