University of South Carolina Libraries
r i'Mtd Serving US Chris Dixon, Stephanie Sonnenf Editor! Lucy Arnold, Achim Hunt, p- Ben Muldrow, Jennife Thomas Cot ^ signal need Whatfs the purpose of a college library? It might, be considered the soul of the university, housing all that encompasses knowledge, including books, historic documents and periodicals. Or it might be the perfect place m. for students to do research and " study. In short, the library has the image of being a quiet, reserved center that promotes learning. This is true at USC. The Thomas Cooper Library is recognized nationally and ranked among the top college libraries in America. in adcnnan to inomas uoopers national ranking, the library is also known across campus for the ^ many thefts and sexual assaults plaguing it. The reports of flashers in Thomas Cooper have appeared in Gamecock crime reports too regularly, as have the reports of stolen bookbags and purses. It seems that it's safer to be out on the streets at midnight in a bad part of town than to be in j) the Thomas Cooper library. Teachers ne< to fight drug; r The war on drugs has been around long enough for our generation to remember the "Just Say No" and "DARE." programs of elementary school. It has been drilled into our heads that marijuana, LSD, crack, cocaine } and heroin are evil agents destroying minds and lives. We have had former drug abusers come into our middle schools and tearfully tell us how their lives were affected by drugs. We have had police officers stand at the front of the cafeteria and warn our young minds about the legal repercussions of drug use. ^ So by the time the stuff was finally offered to us, some of us said "no" right, off the bat Others, however, said "ves." By the time a person is in high school, the material has either been grounded in or it hasn't. When drugs are offered, who will say yes and who will say no were long ago determined. High school is not the time to educate students. The early, impressionable years are the w time. High school is the time to educate someone else?teachers. Several teachers at Richland Northwest High school failed to report a student who had been smoking marijuana. They said ^ Student Media Russell House Chris Dixon News: 7' Editor in Chief Advertising; Stephanie FAX: 77 Sonnenfeld Viewpoints Editor Achim Hunt I Karen Layne Bryan Jennifer Stanley Johnston N News Editors Sports Editors ' Lucy Arnold Mark Hopkins Features Editors Copy Desk Chief IVikkl Thorpe Photo Editor _ ? J The Gunecock is the student newspaper of the Univet Wednesday, and Friday during the Fail and Spring semesti periods. Opinions expressed in The Gamecock are those of the editr Carolina. The Board of Student Publications and Communications Student Media is its parent organization. The Gamecock will try to print all letters receive include full name, professional title or year and delivered by the author to The Gamecock newsnx reserves the right to edit all letter for style, possib withheld for any circumstance. ? 1 >amecock C Since 1908 Editor in Chief eld, Viewpoints Editor tal Board Bryan Johnston, Karen Layne, r Stanley, Nikki Thorpe. Mier crimes for action Students and faculty, as well as library administrators, have recognized the problems. They roolhr mnWri't icmnw tHom /wiilrl AVUJUJ wum>? V 10UV/&V UJlVJUi^ WUiU ' they? No, they couldn't. To combat the random streakers running around in the stacks and to deter theft, library administrators have instituted an awareness program, urging students to report crimes as soon as they happen. They also have placed red emergency phones on each floor near the elevators where these crimes can be reported. Future plans include more emergency telephone installation, more surveillance cameras, more security officers and panic buttons which can be pressed in case of an emergency. It would be asking the impossible to completely eradicate crime from the library or the campus. But, with measures like those instituted by library administrators and support from faculty and students, library crime can be fought. ed education ps in schools i i they did not realize the student was doing something illegal, 1 because they did not know how < marijuana smelled. If they had i simply asked just about any high i school student, they could have i pointed out the smell. 1 Teachers spend large quantities of time around youths, I sometimes even more than i parents do, certainly more than 1 police officers do. It is ridiculous to expect them to help out in the war on drugs if they do not have the slightest clue as to what drugs are?what they look like, smell like when lit, or what the physical results are. The ones who know these things, the police, do not come into contact with students nearly as much as teachers. If teachers had the knowledge that police do, perhaps a more vigorous fight against drugs would exist in the high schools. Yes, it is true teachers are not paid to bust kids smoking down in the bathroom; it is not one of the job i i i requirements m ineir teacning contracts. However, teachers, like their students, do come into contact with drugs, and they need to know what they are seeing or smelling. Teachers need the knowledge to be able to fight drugs in their schools. t { ( H , USC Columbia, SC 29208 77-7726 Adam Snyder : 7774249 ?fflce Manager 7-6482 Jason Jeffers ] Cartoonist Sen Muldrow Melissa Sellers . Graphics Editor Online Editor [kkl LaRocqne Marilyn 1 Lsst Viewpoints Edwards Taylor ] eginna Green Marketing Director i Asst News Erik Collins Jessica Nash Faculty Advisor 1 AsstFeatures j eff Nicholson Asst Photo ( sity of South Carolina and is published on Monday, as, with the exception of university holidays and exams 1 *s or the author and not those of the University of South ' is the Publisher of The Gamecock. The Department of ^ UUfliUiHH i id. Letters should be 200-250 words and must . major if a student. Letters must be personally ' >m in Russell House room 333. The Gamecock , le libel or space limitations. Names will not be t VIEW] HALe-BOPP? :HMF fws IS WW ON THE NEXT OOOOOOO c I ki T T Upcoming B BB ooking back at all the I years of my supposed BBB1 education, I am sometimes surprised that I am only a few weeks away from graduating from college. I know its cliche, but it seems Like only yesterday that I walked through the doors of my first grade class. My mother took a picture of me as I was about to go in, and it 3hows a boy red-faced from crying, scowling at his mother for sending him to such an awful place. First grade wasn't really that had though because I chose to spend my time misbehaving instead of learning. It got so bad that the teacher had to start drawing a smiley face an my hand at the end of each day to let my mother know if I was good ar not. If I was bad, I got a straight face or a sad face. Second grade was the absolute worst grade of all. In kindergarten and first grade, the teachers kind af baby the students, but in second, they treated us like marines at boot Apathy: d Earlier this semester, I wrote a column about how apathetic my fellow African-Americans are vhen it comes to voting. Today, I will offer my sincerest apologies (for I don't do this very )ften) to these people for I can now jee what all the apathy is all about. Whether it be in the Statehouse )r in the "friendly" confines of this ampus, this state remains to wallow n the murky depths of our sordid Dast like pigs in a pool of slop. Our lawmakers in Columbia :reate bills outlawing affirmative action yet pass bills to produce license alates bearing the Confederate flag, ifou wouldn't actually think these people are looking out for our nterests, are they? I last heard the Sons of Confederate Veterans was having a public lynching with free fried :hicken and watermelon, so why lon't /all just come out and watch. Of course, the forward-thinking vorld would have been foolish to aelieve that our esteemed governor, David Beasley, was actually serious vhen he talked about removing that )ne symbol that shows us how racist bis state is as a whole. It had about as much hot air as POINT! O O O O o ?????? (just what jb? the king ^ jjjfflm* t' po t' ge wti* jelly pou level?7 ?-*0 O 6 0 o o d bW .1 now In my heart I - Trinity Johnson, USC se \ graduatic | FRED LEACH | camp. The teachers rarely smiled and when they did, it was usually because someone was getting their recess privileges taken away. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from second grade was that teachers do not like to be corrected by students.. We were learning about dinosaurs when the teacher mispronounced Diplodocus, which was the longest dinosaur. I was an amateur paleontologist back then, so I corrected her. I can still remember the icy stare that she shot me across the room as she arrogantly said it again the wrong way. There was a bright spot in second grade and that was a boy named Preston. Preston was the class clown who would entertain all of us with his antics. H e would leap across the desk and yell, "Superman," landing on the floor with a thud. It amazed me that he never broke his back. lefendable SHAWN SINGLETON anything said by Rush Limbaugl or our esteemed president. Do you honestly believe that thej will pass the hate crimes bill here' If anything, they'll probably makt it legal to assault, kill, or destroy th< property of anyone because of theu race, color, creed, or religion. I personally don't trust anything said by David Beasley for he is e redneck charlatan, a hillbilly fron Society Hill, South Carolina. This puppet for the Christiai Coalition was, for years, a Democrat Yet when he saw the rising tide o conservatism and the Christiai Wrong, he switched sides and became a Republican. Anytime Gov. Beasley gets i . sudden attack of morality, horniness or whatever, Ralph Reed pulls th< strings to set him straight again Wouldn't Benedict Arnold be so proui of him? Beasley says whatever it take; to get himself elected, but then again there is also this guy from Hope Arkansas, who is just as bad. Nevertheless, there is one difference; I did vote for the mai hum Arkansas for it was either hin or a 70-something-year-old Republicar -f can strike anybody 01 nior, Ail-American softball player in prompts ir Preston got into a lot of fights Doo \ and this was a big event at my school. game The whole second grade would gather on D, to see his next victim. E New students always fell prey granc to Preston, who welcomed them to she \ their new school with a playground backs pummeling. up al Preston provided a few interesting wind moments throughout the remainder A of elementary school, but the visib! remaining time I spent there was from pretty boring. thinl I was always wishing I could be close somewhere else, that I could skip I the teenage years and go right to Pooh adulthood. my p As the old saying goes, the grass prote is always greener on the other side, a feel Back then, college seemed an eternity 11 away, but now these four years have mom flown by. You < The grass that looked so green out v back then is now looking like grass L that has been trampled on by a herd unce of buffaloes. unch As I experience the doubts and inter trepidation that accompanies the G journey into the "real world," I fondly chapt remember the days when the biggest of an worry I had was whether Scooby good and undersl I from Kansas who was pushing the C most conservative agenda since Barry Can Goldwater, and that would have the 1 done wonders for civil rights. \ 1 Extremism at the cost of liberty is in ol one hell of a vice these days. flag \ Dole himself has been a fence- rais ^ jumper for about 30 years now. civil As a young senator in the 1960s, the ! ' he was one of the few Republicans War to openly support affirmative action, you, r Now as an old senator running this ' for president in the 1990s, he is one J of its many Republican opponents, befo If there has ever been a place sms i where apathy runs rampant, it's Coll right here on this campus. Let's However, I can't really blame the Was i offenders for there have been times he's that I myself have stopped caring. idkx We attend classes at a university F in which members of our student sug? government try to cut funding for I I the NAACP and the African- from American Students Association, yet in n j they allow things such as Old South spin Weekend and the Homecoming King to "I ? and Queen elections to exist. and There isn't any racial polarization The here, is there? Mor Why should we vote in Student / s Government elections when stupid The " idiots like these keep getting elected? ] * Forget it, there will never be any and j real change here in South Carolina, citiz so why should we care? f 00000 oo? 1 it. leiiiuries vould be pre-empted by a Cube i on WGN. I had a huge crush aphne back then, very time I would leave my Imother's house in Summerville, vould make me a bed in the seat of our LTD-HI would gaze t the stars through the back ow. multitude of stars would be le since we would be far away the bright lights of the city. I i that must have been pretty to heaven here on Earth, laid in the back seat with my Bear by my side and knew that tarents were in the front to !ct me from any harm. It was ling of total peace, vish I would have savored those ents, but time is not for saving, can't put it away and take it fhen you need it. dfe is a great adventure full of rtainties but treading into arted lands is what makes life esting. raduation marks the end of (me er in our lives but the beginning other. I hope the next one is as as the last. tandable Change is something that South )lina has managed to elude over last half-century. Ve have a senator who has been Bee for that entire period and a in which the sole reason for its ing in 1962 was to protest the I rights movement and not for LOO-year anniversary of the Civil as any conservative tries to tell but you aren't actually believing bull, are you? Jext time the flag bill comes up re the General Assembly, some irt-ass is going to read the imbia phone book for 24 hours. } bring in Strom Thurmond from ihington to do the honors since so experienced at this form of inally, I would like to make some jestions for the good of the state, jet's change the state mottos i Animis obisque parati (Prepared lind and resources) and Dum o spero (While 1 breathe, I hope) ^irst in STDs, Last in Education," "Nothing Can Be Finer Than Smell of Nuclear Waste in the ning." Another good choice is, "Screw State But Don't Touch Our Flag." Sither way, it denotes how jaded trashed the values of this state's ens are. M