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Quote, Unquote ‘The support and enthusiasm for our student-ath letes, coaches and sports programs is outstanding.’ Mike McGee, athletics director Page 7 Whe (5amcock Serving the Carolina Community since JQ08 Editorial Board Sara Ladenheim • Editor in Chief Kenley Young • Managing Editor Emily Streyer • Viewpoints Editor Corey Ford • Assistant Viewpoints Editor Brad Walters • Editorial Contributor New housing trend good for students USC was mentioned in a recent article noting the trend in colleges across the country of building more desirable hous ing. % More and more colleges are building apartment-style dorms in an effort to keep upperclassmen on campus. This effort is not mo tivated merely by financial interests, but in the seeking of the in fluence older students have on activities when they live on cam pus. The university benefits from extracurricular participation from all its students, and the best way to ensure students’ involvement is to keep them on campus. The most recent addition to on-campus housing at USC is South Quadrangle-East, which opened in fall 1998. Its counterpart, South Quadrangle-West, is currently under construction. What we like most about the trend toward building more apart ment-style housing is the implicit acknowledgement that we’re becoming grown-ups as we collect the semester hours every year. Strict rules can’t be as easily enforced in apartments as in dorms - the apartment-style dorms set an expectation for behavior rather than a decree. Private rooms and full kitchens mean that USC offi cials, like housing administrators across the country, trust us to conduct ourselves on campus in mature manners. We recognize the value of the hall-bathrooms-and-roommates experience of many students’ freshman years, but most people have outgrown life in a fishbowl and need their own space by their junior years, if not earlier. We applaud USC Housing for recogniz ing this need and moving quickly to meet it. Straw polls waste of time, meaningless Following in Iowa’s footsteps, Alabama held its first-ever Re publican straw poll Saturday, and, somehow, national GOP front-runner Geoige W. Bush lost to talk show host Alan Keyes. Keyes garnered 29 percent of the votes, while Bush mustered only 25 percent, finishing third behind both Keyes and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. What does this mean for Republicans and the rest of the coun try? Absolutely nothing. Straw polls of any sort are unreliable indicators at best because they draw from extraordinarily small samples and aren’t necessari ly representative of the population at large. But the Alabama poll, held nearly 15 long months before the presidential election, is especially irrelevant, not only because it was a “pay-to-vote” event, but also because leading Republican candidates like Bush didn’t even show up. According to Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory Uni versity, “The only people showing up [to the straw polls] are the candidates with no chance of being elected.” Essentially, straw poll voters are paying to vote more than a year in advance for candidates who don’t show up or will not win. Thus, media and party leaders need to diminish their coverage of and emphasis on straw poll results. G.W. Bush already enjoys a considerable lead in national (respectable) polls, and if he loses, it’s not going to be to a talk-show host. About Us The Gamecock is the student newspaper of The University of South Carolina and is published Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the fall and spring semesters and nine times during the summer with the exception of university holidays and exam penods. 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 Department of Student Media is the newspaper's parent organization. The Gamecock is supported in part by student activities fees. Address The Gamecock 1400 Greene Street Columbia. SC 29208 Offices on third floor of the Russell House. Student Media Area code 803 Advertising 777-3888 Classified 777-1184 Fax 777-6482 Office 777-3888 Gamecock Area code 803 Editor gcked@sc.edu 777-3914 News gcknews@sc.edu 777-7726 Viewpoints gckviews@sc.edu 777-7181 Etc. gcketc@sc.edu 777-3913 Sports gcksports@sc.edu 777-7182 Online www.gamecock.sc.edu 777-2833 Submission Policy Letters to the editor or guest columns are welcome from all members of the Carolina community. Letters should be 250-300 words. Guest columns should be an opinion piece of about 600-700 words. Both must include name, phone number, profes sional title or year and major, if a student. Handwritten submissions must be personally delivered to Russell House room 333. E-mail submissions must include telephone number for confirmation. The Gamecock reserves the right to edit for libel, style and space. Anonymous letters will not be pub lished. F*hotos are required for guest columnist and can be provided by the submitter. Call 777-7726 for more information. I HE GAMECOCK Sara Ladenheim Editor in Chief Kenley Young Managing Editor Emily Streyer Viewpoints Editor Kevin Langston Brock Vergakis News Editors Clayton Kale Associate News Editor Kristin Freestate Copy Desk Chief Rachel Helwig EtCetera Editor Todd Money Sports Editor Sean Rayford Photo Editor Rob Lindsey Encore Editor John Hueitt City Desk Chief Student Media Ellen Parsons Director of Student Media Lee Phipps Advertising Manager Susan King Creative Sen/ices Director Betsy Martin Julie Burnett Chris Black Will Gillaspy Online Editor Corey Ford Asst. Viewpoints Editor Ann Marie Miani Asst. Etc. Editor Jared Kelowitz Asst. Sports Editor Casey Williams Asst.On-Line Editor Greg Farley Asst. Photo Editor Brad Walters Graphics Copy Editor, Editorial Contributor MacKenzie Craven David Clonninger Charlie Wallace Phillip Burt Senior Writers Kathy VanNostrand Creative Services Sherry Holmes Classified Manager Carolyn Griffin Business Manager Erik Collins Faculty Advisor Jonathan Dunagin Graduate Assistant College Press Exchange I (" REAP A\y UPS...” 7 Society Issues Too much TV, not enough lit Poets are - damned but they ; are not blind, ; they see with l I - the eyes of An gels” is a state- | ment made by William Carlos ' Williams in his moving intro- I duction to Gins- DlPresso berg’s poem is a senior “Howl.” Every English major reading of that and writes every poem sends me other Monday. He through a flur- can ^ reached rying gamut of via The rage, despair Gamecockai: and, finally, , . _ T, , gckvtews@sc.edu peace. That ° man did see with angelic eyes. His poetry moves me as no movie ever has. I have never cried at a movie, but I do remember crying once after read ing that poem at the end of a night of Dionysian revelry (binge drinking). I don’t know many people who share this passion for literature. I know some, but I’d prefer that some be many. It’s rather disheart ening. America seems to be on the path to becoming an illiterate society. Many of my peers questioned the intense reading regimen I had placed myself on during the summer. Most would just shrug and give a blase “OK.” The notion of reading for enjoyment’s sake didn’t register; it was seen as a chore. I believe that modem tech nology has played a part in this by making entertainment too easy. TV, movies and their ilk rely on lazy, passive involvement that reading does not allow. The result has been that many people tend to regard read ing as work and try to avoid it. This trend has had many consequences. The most devastating of these have been covered by many top authorities, but since I’m on the “immigrant farm worker” rung of the authority ladder, I’ll choose some thing more humble. The consequence I will address is the lack of good bar talk. When you go out to the bar, the music is so loud that you have to scream to be heard. Why is this? I think it’s because we really don’t have anything to say. What will you hear people saying at the bar? Chances are, you’ll see a bunch of drunken people shouting, “Get in my belly!” Sure, one of those people could be me. I think that the second Austin Pow ers movie has a lot of things that are real ly funny to say over and over again. The problem is that that’s all you’re going to hear there. It makes me miss the friends from days gone by and the crackpot talks we used to have over sludgy pints of Guin ness. Now I let those words loose and in stead of an even more outrageous and thought-provoking response, I get strange looks and requests to “shut up.” I can on ly come up with two conclusions: Either most people’s minds are too lazy to bother or I’ve been spending the days gone by with madmen. Such is the effect of the moderniza tion of entertainment. We let all the oth er people do the thinking and thus rarely have interesting things to say when getting sloshed. It’s a tragedy. Even scarfer is the academic legitimizing of film. You can find scholarly criticisms of film now. Scorcese and Spielbeig taken just as seri ously as Petrarch (whom I’ve never read) and Proust (didn’t read any of his stuff ei ther)? What’s next? Academic criticisms of video games? I can hear a quote from a seminar now: “Yes, and the way Player X fired that thermonuclear holocaust mis sile directly into his opponent’s posterior is an obvious act of repressed homosexu al tendencies and suggests hatred toward his parents for not loving him enough.” As Chaucer said, “If gold shall rust, then what of iron?” I’m not trying to put down modem entertainment; I enjoy it immensely. I just believe that literature has been ignored too much. If anything, literature will usually enhance your appreciation for life and its pleasures rather than detract from them. I like to read “Charge of the Light Brigade” or a section of “Beowulf ’ the morning be fore a rugby game. It pumps me up. Try reading some of Coleridge’s works while you’re chemically altered - he probably was when he wrote them. The next time you’re about to turn on the television, stop and read a book instead - you might re ceive a pleasant surprise. Washington Post 'SORRY, SWEETIE, BUT WE'RE DOWNSIZING YOUR DEPARTMENT' - ■ Vxt . Xv. (Hcrblock i;s on vacation} Distributed b\ CREATORS SYNDICATE. INC i I Questions & Answers What are the differences between an editorial, an arti cle and a column? Editorials appear in the box on the left of the Viewpoints page and are written by the editorial board, the members of whom are listed above the box. The editorial board discusses an issue, forms an opinion and then one or more of the members writes the editorial. Editorials represent the opinion of the paper. Columns and editorial cartoons on the Viewpoints page represent the opinion of the columnist or the cartoonist. A column by a particular writer usually appears at the same time and place each week and might or might not contain an opinion if on the Sports or etCetera pages. Readers may express their opinions by sub mitting a guest column or writing a letter to the editor. Articles contain the facts and are written to be as unbiased as possible. They do not reflect the opinions of their writers. Do you have questions about anything on campus? E mail us here at GCKVIEWS@sc.edu or bring a letter to Russell House 333, and we ’ll answer your ques tions. -- We can't print phone conversations. If you want your opinion heard, write a letter to the editor. Send it to gckviews@sc.edu or bring it to Russell House 333. Include your year, major and phone number. L—> Society Issues Smokers rude and ignorant As a child raised in the tobacco heartland, I never realized how many South Car olinians supported the state’s power ful cash crop. For I mostofmychi'd- JerefnyTouzel hood, I lived with . • , is a senior math my mother and brother, neither of ma*or and guest whom smoked. columnist this Unlike most kids, week. He can be I never had one of reached via The those tough-guy Gamecock at friends who gckviews@sc.edu sneaked out to the neighborhood hide-out and lit one up. Aside from an uncle in Tennessee ' and the occasional redneck Little League baseball coach, I never really came into contact with any smokers. In youthful naivete, I was under the impression that the only people who smoked were un dereducated rednecks who didn’t know any better. Since then, many things have changed, and I’ve realized that smokers aren’t just misinformed simpletons: They are ignorant, inferior idiots. Cigarettes are just a litmus test for Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection: Smokers are just a defective batch of nature’s handiwork who will soon be replaced by intelligent, strong-willed beings like myself. Some might ask why I take such a harsh stance, but a basic analysis of a nicotine-infected mind explains my point of view. First, let me establish some obvious facts about the effects of a life with tobacco. Smoking is addictive. It is expensive, even for those with a mild addiction. And no matter what kind of crack-head statistics the lobbyists in Washington produce, I still believe that smoking leads to lung cancer. So why don’t smokers quit? I think that smokers aren’t bom with the willpower possessed by normal human beings. Others want to quit but can’t be cause they’re afraid of being ostracized from their exclusive clique of friends. They’re so concerned with being “Kool” that they’re drowning in their own su ■ perficiality. These invertebrates are socially shal low and mentally weak. I’ve spoken to strains of single-celled bacteria with higher cognitive capabilities than the av erage smoker. Not only do smokers exhibit mini mal signs of brain activity, but they’re al so quick to show off their reprehensible manners. They intentionally light up in places that will inconvenience the maxi mum number of nonsmokers. For example, smokers love to hang out in doorways. One day last week, I was trying to enter the LeConte math building, only to find all three entrances blocked by the Disciples of Nicotine. In such situations, what can be done to. stop these low-class, parasitic boneheads? Lawmakers today have neither the spines nor the intelligence to realize what needs to be done. What we need is a leader with the testicular fortitude to tell these jabronies to know their roles. We need someone who will give us back our clean air. We need someone ... well, someone like me. One day, when I call the shots (which will be the greatest day in the history of this pathetic country), I will pass legislation banning all smoking in public. There will be no smoking any where outdoors. My no-smoking laws will ban smoking in restaurants and pri vate residences. Smoking will be banned at all sporting events and conceits. In fact, there will be no smoking anywhere in the country. However, the morons who don’t quit will be allowed to smoke in one and only one type of establishment: bars. There, they will be joined by countless other groups of mentally incompetent hea thens, where they will eventually choke on the morbidity of their useless exis tence. Then, and only then, will the law makers of this country pull up their pants and quit bending over to the tobac co lobbyists who stain our country like the cancer they sell. So until then, if any of you idiots want to simultaneously kill yourself and your bank account, give me a call, and I’ll gladly do it for half the price.