Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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TT« • t Quote, Unquote % / -| ^\-|t T^i^v f\~ T Ol ‘Right now, I’d lay down in front of a bus for [the \l I l^\A/ I II I || fans] if I thought it would make a difference.’ '''Tr^y$ f I \ J f f _L U'kJ Lou Holtz, football coach Monday, Ss>tember 20,1999 lEllE 091TlCCOCk Page 7 Whc 0mecock Editorial Board Sara Ladenheim • Editor in Chief Kenley Young • Managing Editor Emily Streyer • Viewpoints Editor Corey Ford • Assistant Viewpoints Editor Brad Walters • Editorial Contributor Kiki McCormick • Editorial Contributor S.C. coast still target for hurricane damage hile South Carolina was spared the destruction of Hurri cane Floyd, the 1999 hurricane season still has nearly five weeks before it ends. The state must not let down its guard despite hurricanes Dennis and Floyd turning north and nail ing the coast of North Carolina. Ever since Hurricane Hugo devastated South Carolina in 1989, the region has seen a rise in the number of hurricane threats. South Carolina has been lucky that two major hurricanes, Fran and Bon nie, missed the state. Unfortunately, many citizens might take these misses for grant ed and let their guard down for the next killer hurricane to swing this way. The people, as well as Gov. Jim Hodges, should be on alert for hurricanes until October, when hurricane season ends. For coastal residents, preparedness entails maintaining the nec essary supplies, like plywood, nonperishable food and bottled wa ter for storms. For Hodges and the state’s emergency agencies, being prepared means monitoring the tropical weather forecasts to find out if any hurricane has an outside chance of making landfall here. Hodges and the agencies must also work to improve evacuation methods and find better evacuation routes for coastal residents. Undoubtedly, South Carolina is lucky that it did not take the full brunt of Hurricane Floyd. But the current luck could certainly run out because of the climatological increase in hurricane activi ty. South Carolina and its citizens must continue to be on the look out for major storms, because a repeat of Hurricane Hugo could be just across the Atlantic. Education stretches beyond classroom As full-time college students, many of us have had to learn to juggle classes, involvement with student organizations, sleep and a social life. Many have the pressure of jobs and rela tionships to add into the mix. We always hear about the students who party too much or don’t go to class enough, but less spotlighted are stories about the people who’ve sacrificed sleep and outside activities because they over loaded on the most diffucult classes or because of pressure to excel from family. With the beginning of the advisement process for some students just around the comer, now might be the perfect time for these stu dents to evaluate whether their life revolves too much (or perhaps too little) on classes. This might be a problem for freshmen, especially. In high school, studies weren’t as intensive, and social opportunities weren’t as plentiful, either. Remember that we’re paying to get an education in classes, but also remember that books will never teach us as much as life itself will. If you find that you’re having prob lems with time management, take a close look at which classes are being offered and try to strike a better balance between those and other aspects of your life. After all, when we look back on college, we don’t want our memories to be of nights without sleeping and days without leaving the room. 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 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 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 260-300 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. Photos are required for guest columnist and can be provided by the submitter. Call 777-7726 for more information. the 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 Rachel Helwig EtCetera Editor Todd Money Jared Kelowitz Sports Editor Kristin Freestate Copy Desk Chief Sean Rayford Photo Editor Rob Lindsey Encore Editor Student Media Ellen Parsons Director of Student Media Susan King Creative Director Kris Black Julia Burnett Betsy Martin Kathy Van Nostrand Creative Services Will Gillaspy Online Editor Corey Ford Asst. Viewpoints Editor John Huiett Asst. News Editor Ann Marie Miani Asst. EtCetera Editor David Cloninger Asst. Sports Editor Greg Farley Asst. Photo Editor Casey Williams Asst. Online Editor Brad Walters Graphics Editor, Copy Editor, Editorial Contributor MacKenzie Craven Charlie Wallace Philip Burt Senior Writers Lee Phipps Advertising Manager Sherry Holmes Classified Manager Carolyn Griffin Business Manager Erik Collins Faculty Adviser Jonathan Dunagin Graduate Assistant College Press Exchange FUNTwFUMT.nNO, mSORRV, > /IWEREfe NO _ >C FHJNTUSTED «s\ <=£jn^ft I —-ryropUMl MM SMILE, OrWREON I CANDID, LncwRtt Religious Issues Whole god too much for most God has final- | | ly met its § match. Not s the Christian god, | or any other faith’s I I god, but god in gen- _ —, eral. The very con- 'i cept of worshipping : ^ j| the one true god has been strewn about like cattle entrails across a slaughter- ®^resso house floor. Sorrv 's a senior to all who loved English major their ideas of god, ■ and writes every but we had to kill other Monday. He them. can be reached Gods are killed vja 777e because a livinggod Gamecocka{. isn’t satisfactory. gckviews@sc.edu They just roam about, grazing. * They look at us vacantly as we drive by the church. Occasionally gods get spooked, and, in a crash of thunder, all within their blindly chosen path are stomped into the dirt. That doesn’t happen very often now. We have ways of containing god. The fences of science, philosophy and social theory make sure that gods aren’t to blame when we find bone fragments and finger nails pounded into the topsoil. Gods aren’t to blame anymore. It was pressure, a neurosis or the weather that made good old Harvey Halfkiltered stroll into the house of gods and harvest seven of their attendants. God had nothing to do with it, right? We jumped the aforementioned fences in order to see god - to find out if it did have anything to do with Harvey’s harvest. Gods proved too lazy and stupid to have influenced Harvey. We also realized that a full-grown god is useless. Before the gods could figure out what we were up to, we had leapt over the fences and screamed, “You will not do!” Thirty minutes later, we stood on the fence with a sledgeham mer and bashed in gods’ heads while their attendants were in the bam prepar ing for the weekly milking. It was quick, clean, and we didn’t feel a thing. Gods were nice to look at and a chal lenge for theologians to wrangle with, but we could never get a whole one down our throats. That’s why we had to start killing them so many thousands of years ago. Now. we’ve distorted gods so much that you wouldn’t even recognize any of them. All people add personal spice to gods to fit their tastes. Some, like the Catholic Church, preserve their god. They jerked 10 billion tons of god and left it on a shelf. Catholics the world over ate this jerked god for about a millennium until the 1960s, when the Vatican had to jerk another 10 billion tons - this time, with a less Latin tasting blend of spices. Muslims only eat one kind of god, but usually don’t mind if you eat your own recipe. Baptists con sider it against FDA regulations to eat any god not found in their church’s meat aisle. Jesus Christ is a ripe target for can nibalism, strange god-man that he is. He’s really popular here in the Bible Belt, and finding a whole Jesus Christ down here is a maze of difficulties. You might be sitting at your dinner table and thinking, “This roast god is the only truly unadulterated god. I eat the one and only god.” I’ll admit, you might not have added much to your god, but are you eating the whole god? I doubt it. .That hunk of god sitting on your table used to be connected to some innards now held in a can of dog food. What about the tongue, the stomach lining, the hooves - are you going to eat all those, too? Now do you see why we have to kill god? Killing god isn’t bad, it’s just what we need to do in order to consume palat able god in a civilized manner. Could you imagine consuming a live god? First of all, it would overpower you. Second, you wouldn’t be able to digest it properly if you did manage to get a bite. Third, eat ing god alive is socially unacceptable. Peo ple don’t like to see others eating god that didn’t pass through somebody else's hands for the purposes of butchering and/or preparing. So don’t feel bad that your god is dead; just sink your teeth in and enjoy the unique taste of your own god. Note to vegetarians: You might be offended by the extended cow/god metaphor, but believe me, this version works a lot bet ter than the one where I compared god to a head of broccoli. "" " 1 .. Letters Suicide column found Insensitive, blameful To the Editor This letter is in response to Paul Blake’s “Suicide a selfish act” column (if that’s what you want to call it) of Sept. 13.1 was really upset and shocked by the sar castic nature and mocking tone of almost the entire passage. He begins by making a sweeping gen eralization that every suicidal person is de pressed and sending off so many signals that the people around them must con sciously choose to ignore this. This is not true. If Paul had ever lost someone close to him like this, a friend, parent, or broth er, which obivously he has not, judging from his blatant insensitivity, he might stop to think that the loved ones of people who did commit suicide would give anything to be able to go back and see the signs, so that maybe something could have been done to prevent it and save a life, and our selves the tragedy and the grief. Some people aren’t depressed; they may have a mental illness like schizophrenia, a sickness as real and sometimes incurable like cancer. So besides accusing and in sulting everyone who has lost someone to the saddest of all possible things of care fully ignoring the problem , he spends 75 percent of his column mocking the grave act of suicide with ludicrous scenarios and jokes. This was by far the most insensitive, rude, and offensive so-called repsonse to a “society-issue” that I have ever read. If this is Paul’s way of addressing what to me and many unfortunate others is a painful and sad memory never to be shaken then please keep him away from solving soci ety’s other issues. Burgess Mauldin English senior Campus safety Issue Important to everyone To the Editor I would like to start off by saying that I am very pleased with the amount of at tention The Gamecock has placed toward warning the USC community about safe ty concerns on campus. In the past week, I have seen numerous articles dedicated to these issues concerning better safety on Greene Street, asking for more call box es and tighter security. I just want to re mind USC that it is important to walk in large groups when walking on campus and Greene Street, especially at night. Un fortunately, if an assault should occur, there are no bad judgment calls when it concerns your life. Though risk-reduction strategies include using a call box, screaming for help or just surviving the ordeal, whatever way a victim instinctively reacts to the situa tion in ordeal to survive is the best defense. Hopefully, with all the attention that has been given toward these safety issues, maybe we will begin to see better lighting, more call boxes and more police cars pa trolling our campus and Greene Street. Jennifer Mackie Advertising Senior Entertainment section Ignores local talent To the Editor I am writing to express my disdain of the new so-called “entertainment”section in the Gamecock. Not one article in the entire, spifly, full-color front, pullout sec tion contained information on local film, theater, art or music. No reviews, no cal endar and no interviews. There are so many wonderful things going on around the cam pus and local community; unfortunately, I have never been able to find out what they are. I never know what movies are playing at the Russell House, what plays are going on, if any seniors are showing their artwork or what symposiums are com ing in various departments, until after it is all over. I would expect a local paper to help me out, but instead all I saw was a lazy “cut-and-paste” pullout that did noth ing except re-affirm my belief that this community does not take any pride in their local talent. DebiSchadel Geography graduate student Express your Viewpoints with a letter to the editor or guest column. Bring submissions to Russell House 333 or gckviews@sc.edu. Include your phone number, major and year. State Issues Hurricane tracking still off » Forecasters - ■ and meteo rologists at the National Hurricane Cen ter are patting themselves and their computers on the back for the “accuracy” of their predictions during Hurricane Floyd, getting emotional over their satellites, storm planes and spreadsheets. With all the self congratulation this past week, you’d think The Weather Channel head quarters is nothing but a big keg party these days. leu mar 10 me more man juu.uuu South Carolina residents who were a part of the largest, and most unnecessary, peacetime evacuation in history. Tell that to the poor bastard who got snarled in evacuation traffic for 15 hours on his way from Charleston to Columbia. And, while you’re at it, you’d better tell Gov. Jim Hodges how good the new equip ment is because I’ll bet he’s still thinking about the exorbitant amount of money the state lost for every mile of coastline he evacuated. The truth is, weather tracking is no more a guarantee nor any less a guessing game than it was 10 years ago. Sure, the equipment is more sophisticated and the satellite pictures are prettier. But even Pentium processors are no match for Mother Nature, who will alter a storm’s course and fake out your weatherman just because she can. And meteorologists, particularly lo cal meteorologists, live for this kind of thing. Outside of hurricane season, the most exciting thing they cover all year is a cold front moving in from Vancouver. But when a near-category 5 hurri cane the size of Texas approaches the mainland with near-catastrophic winds, Joe Weatherman gets all flustered and ■giddy, turning cartwheels in the news room and searching for a bathroom be cause he’s about to wet his pants. Some where in all the ruckus, the hurricane gets billed as “the storm of the century.” As a result, Hurricane Floyd was as overhyped as “The Phantom Menace,” and that’s exactly what it became for South Carolinians. In many respects, forecasters are as clueless about a hurricane’s destination as is the average citizen; the only thing they can tell us with any degree of cer tainty is that a storm is indeed present, moving and headed in our general direc tion. Sometimes, watching a weather fore cast is much like reading a horoscope or calling 1-900-PSYCHIC. It provides you with information that is universally ap plicable and that, with a little research, you could probably figure out yourself: “As you can see in our ‘projected path’ diagram, the storm is moving northwest and will probably make landfall some where on the East Coast in any one of these seven states.” Really? You mean Kansas will be spared? Thank God. But listening to The Weather Chan nel seems to be a better option these days than listening to the governor. Ac cording to studies conducted by USC’s Hazards Research Laboratory, when de ciding whether to evacuate during a storm, people are more likely to use their own judgment based on media in iormauon anu less iiKeiy to neea ponii cians who order “mandatory” evacua tions. In fact, the S.C. Emeigency Preparedness Division claims that people, can’t even be penalized for not leaving during emeigency evacuations. So when the governor tells us to leave, we stay. When the media tells us to leave, we might stay. But when Hurri cane Hugo tells us to leave, it might be too late. Fortunately, according to an article in The Stale on Wednesday, the USC Hazards Research Laboratory and the state’s emeigency preparedness division are working together to make future evacuations “more credible... less sweeping and more geographically spe cific.” If only they could do the same thing for weather reports, we’d have nothing to worry about.