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mmmm _ Gamecock movie critics say ‘Blair Witch Project' among best movies of 1999. Serving the Carolina Community since 1908 pageS >rurne93. Number 5 University of South Carolina Friday, Augurt 13,1999 ngineering ean faces ial Dec. 13 a Virginia r Clayton Kale ws Editor The dean <f USC’s College of Engi «ring and Iiformation Technology ill stand trill Dec. 13 for allegedly ibezzling tlousands of dollars in a evious job. Craig Roge-s was indicted by a Vir K3ERS ved. guua grana jury on five counts of eifibezzlement of public funds and three counts of obtaining money or property under false pretenses. He has stepped down from his administrative duties until the matter is re Rogers alUedly embezzled funds ‘>m the Virgita Polytechnic Institute, here he was (Vector of a research cen ;r. Rogers did’t return phone calls, ut said in a Rjpared statement that e was shockeiby the allegations. “I am puzzid by the nature of the bairns, but I hie no doubt that my ac ions will be foud appropriate and were •'deed in the 1st interest of Virginia Ji and the rfoarch center,” he said. Authority didn’t disclose the mount of moity involved, but the in tictments alle$ thousands of dollars ’ state funds ere handled lmprop «-ly-. . Virginia SUe Police began inves igating after Onplaints that Rogers (as taking fun< for the research cen er and puttin|hem into Paradigm ic , a private coforation that no longer lists. According Hffidavits filed in the ontgomery C^rity Circuit court, the iployees proved documents to sup rt their claim The grand ju. charged Rogers with d counts of sp\ding public funds on ternational lgineering confer ees without opining proper autho •auon. A third embiZienient indictment leges that Rog-s pUt $1,500 of pub : fimds into a piate banking account Rogers speni5 years 0n the facu of Virginia He was a pressor of mechanical igineering an£ieCame the center’s ending director 1988. He left Tech August 19961USC. With the absige 0f Rogers, five of iC's deanshipire open. Other va at deanships aijn the Darla Moore hool of Businei the College of Ap ed iYofessionShe College of Edu ■ion and the S<iol of Music. It is still unc|r whether Rogers II teach in the i Joe Gibbons * be acting dean un • the matter i%solved. Gibbons is been at USCnCe 1963. i mm Ashton June Photo Editor Information management junior Loretta Moore and liberal arts junior Marsden Johnson move their belongings out of a summer residence hall in the Towers. Students moved out of summer housing in Douglas and Snowden this past Saturday to make room for almost 1,000 students who will move into the Towers this weekend. Greek housing moves closer to groundbreaking By Kevin Langston Vleupoinls Editor _. Greek organizations will be told in the upcoming months to ready them selves for development on the proposed Greek housing sites. Roughly eight blocks of land near Wheat, Assembly, Gadsen, Blossom, Wayne and Lincoln streets have been purchased by USC in order to imple ment a Greek housing system and to build the Strom Thurmond Fitness and Wellness Center. The $43 million project is set to be gin in October with further land prepa rations for the wellness center and the preliminary stages of the Greek hous ing. There are a proposed 14 sites, and eight of them should be ready for de velopment in .the next few months. The next six will, in turn, become available as USC continues the land acquisition process. The initial nine sites that were clos er to campus were all passed on by the prospective fraternities and sororities in hopes of getting a spot in this new area. These previous sites will still be used if necessary. According to Director of Student Life Jerry Brewer, the Greek organi zations with intent to build will be told to bring their information before a se lection committee. The committee will then determine what organizations are ready to build. He expects ground to be broken in fall of 2000. The Greek Village is expected to house both fraternities and sororities. Three of the Greek organizations that spoke with the selection committee this past week were sororities. The construction process should take up to 11 months per house, so Greek students should be moving into their houses by fall of 2001. Brewer said it's very possible for more than eight organizations to be ready to begin building when they re quest individual information. If it comes to that, Brewer said an unbiased lot tery-style drawing would be held. GREEK continued on page 7A Special lo The Gamecock The latest sketch of what Greek housing (left) will look like upon comple tion. The houses, along with the Strom Thurmond Fitness and Wellness Center (right), are expected to be complete by fall 2001. Trustees approve 3 percent tuition increase By Clayton Kale and Adam Dawkins Staff Writers USC’s Board of Trustees approved a $591.7 million budget June 23 for 1999-2000 that includes a small tuition increase for students at its eight cam puses. Undergraduate students from South Carolina will see the cost of attending USC-Columbia increase by 3 percent, or $55 per semester, beginning this fall. Under the plan, a South Carolina undergraduate’s tuition and fees will be $1,820 per semester, or $3,640 per school year, up from $3,530 for 1998 1999. There will be no increase in anj across-the-board fees, such as the stu dent activities fee, student health fee, athletics fee or the student technolo gy fee. Along with the tuition increase, trustees over the summer approved sev eral other measures: • Trustees approved the use of $136,620.85 from the now-defunct Rus sell History Lecture Endowment In come Fund and will use it to fund schol arships for this fiscal year. • The board approved an increase in faculty salaries and a request for mon ey to hire a chief informations officer. • The board passed a proposal granti ng Time Warner the right to sponsor events at the Koger Center. Time Warn er will pay the university $40,000 and offer 6,000 free, 30-second commer rial spots per year. The two-year con tract began July 1. • The Board of Trustees also approved the purchase of a $1 million message board for the northern scoreboard of Williams-Brice Stadium. As for the tuition increase, it’s among the lowest of state-supported schools in the Southeast. “With the ongoing effort to improve academic programs at USC, I think this increase is more than reasonable,” Eng lish sophomore Scarlett Smith said. Graduate students from South Car olina also will see their tuition increase by 3 percent. Non-resident undergrad TRUSTEES continued on page 5A Ashton June Photo Kditor Colombians Li ; Glra1 an<1 Beatrlz Santamaria and Venezuelans R®Vna Exposlt and l^*®1 Irausquln enjoy a day on the Horseshoe. USC to see fewer new faces than usual this fall By Brad Walters Editor in Chief Students returning to Carolina for classes won't see quite as many new faces in the crowd this fall, as freshman enrollment at USC is expected to drop for the second straight year. According to preliminary statistics, this fall’s freshman class is expected to total around 2,650 students, a decrease of about 100 students from last year. Terry Davis, director of admissions, attributes the slight decrease, in part, to the cuts that were made in USC’s Transition Year program this past spring. The program, designed to help ^students on the admissions "bubble" atijust to the first year of college, ad mitted 300 students last year, but on ly about 175 this year. Between fall 1997 and fall 1998, en rollment dropped by more than 200 stu dents because USC increased admis sions standards that year. Davis said it will probably take “two or three years” for the number of admitted freshmen to get back where it was in 1997, when USC admitted almost 3,000 freshmen. Enrollment has dropped despite the advent of the Palmetto LIFE scholar ship, which awards $2,000 a year to students with a B-average in high school and at least 1,000 on the SAT. Those scholarships, which were available to students beginning in the fall 1998 semester, complement the more exclusive Palmetto Fellows schol arships, which provide $ 5,000 annu ally to students with an SAT score of 1,200 and grade point average of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Excitement about the tenure of Lou Holtz as USC's new head football coach probably enticed a few more students to enroll who otherwise might not have, as well. “I think personalities like him [Holtz] always pique an interest,” Davis said. “Schools that win a lot of games tend to see an increase in admissions appli cations.” While freshman enrollment has de creased somewhat, the average SAT score of incoming freshman has re mained steady at right around 1100 out of 1600. “This class is going to be real simi lar to last year’s,” Davis said. “The trend continues that we have more female applicants than male, as well.” USC's Honors College attracted a crop of a little more than 250 stu dents this year whose average SAT scores are in the mid to upper 1300s, again similar to last year. USC’s Carolina Scholars, the top students from the state who have come to USC, each will get $28,000 over four years. The scholars boast average SAT scores of 1427 and rank in the top 1 per cent of their graduating classes. Brad Walters Hie Gamecock