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* &l ^ ' Quote, Unquote The great players are the ones that you walk back to ( the locker room after practice and say, “did you see k what he did today?’” I J w ' Coach Lou Holtz on running back Derek Watson’s performance this season Page 6 'Che (59111 CCOCk Monday, September 18, 2000 Whe (damecock Serving thJ Carolina Community since 1Q08 Editorial Board Brock Vergakis • Editor in Chief Kevin Langston • Viewpoints Editor Nathan White • Asst. Viewpoints Editor Patrick Rathbun • Editorial Contributor Brad Walters • Editorial Contributor SG narrowly rejects discriminatory bill Student Government on Wednesday narrowly rejected a reso lution that would have given parking priorities in Bull Street and Blossom Street garages to on-campus students who live near them. Had student senate passed the resolution, it would have set a disturbing precedent of granting on-campus students special privi leges while discriminating against those who live off campus. If anything, students who live off campus deserve parking pri orities in garages, because they’re the ones who have to drive to get to class. besides, at night, there are plenty ot garage spaces to go around, particularly in Bull Street garage. The real issue has been, and will continue to be, the safety of the garages themselves at night. Passing the resolution would have given students a false sense of security in walking alone. Students who park in garages should still travel in groups, no matter how close they’re parked to their residence halls. It’s scary to think that, had one vote swung the other way, the resolution would have been passed and on its way to President John Palms’ desk for approval. Thankfully, a majority of voting senators remembered they were not elected to represent the wishes of on-campus students - they were elected to represent the wishes of their respective colleges. We’re glad they voted the way they did. The current lottery system - while not flawless - is the best way to ensure fairness in doling out garage spaces. - Price for goalpost piece ridiculously inflated e are three games into the football season, and already we have more to celebrate than we’ve had in the past two years. We’ve seen two streaks end and and two sets of goalposts come down. Some of our fellow students are not only sei7;ng the moment, but they’re also trying to make a profit from it. A 13-inch piece of goalpost taken down during the Georgia victory is selling on www.cBay.com, a popular Internet auction site, for more than $150. We don’t doubt other pieces are going for similar prices around campus. Why? These mementos are not going to be worth any thing in the future. It might be of some personal value, but weren’t there pompoms at the game? They were free and serve as a similar reminder of the game. While we endorse team spirit and the preservation of such a memorable victory, we don’t under stand the high price they’re asking for these goalpost pieces. There will be no monetary value applied to these pieces, so why pay so much for them? It was a clever move by the students to sell these pieces while they’re still in demand, but they are obviously taking advantage of these students. We should probably expect this from a university that boasts one of the finest business colleges. 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 newsoaoer's Darent 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 803-777-7726 Editor in Chief gamecockeditor@hotmail.com University Desk gamecocudesk@hotmail.com City/State Desk gamecockcitydesk@hotmail.com Viewpoints * gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com Spotlight gamecockspotlight@hotmail.com Sports gamecocksports@hotmail.com Online www.gamecock.sc.edu 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 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 and should be sent to gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com. The Gamecock reserves the right ti 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. The Gamecock Brock Vergakis Amy Goulding Editor in Chief Sean Rayford Brandon Larrabee Photo Editors University Editor John Bailey John Huiett Asst City/State Editor City/State Editor Charles prashaw Kevin Langston Amanda Silva Viewpoints Editor Asst. University Editors Jared Kelowitz Nathan White Daytime Sports Editor Asst Viewpoints Editor *yl* , MacKenzie Craven Night Sports Editor „ .... _ Meredith Davis Jason Harmon Asst. Spotlight Editor Brad Walters Martha Wright Miranda LaLonde Copy Editors Ann Marie Miani Design Editors Student Media Erik Collins Robyn Gombar Faculty Adviser Melissa Millen Ellen Parsons Brantley Roper Director of N.co e Russe Student Med.a Adverting Staff Susan King fean De Luna Creative Director ,odd Hooks Melanie Hutto Carolyn Griffin Emi|ie Moca Business Manager Martin Salisbury Sherry F. Holmes Creative Services College Press Exchange # sw-^,=i£'r*L't,eV (a'Us— I Jr -v«u&v(rier ^ rA-StnA •"1^ > /“■ ■ ■ translation: Colon, care, is HIGH ON TttE GOVERNORS LIST OF HEALTH PRIORITIES. 1 IPPING ETHICS Tipping for the passive-aggressive For too long, 1 have stum bled, in my own passive-aggressive "'ay, through the social custom of tipping. I imagine that many, like me, have attempted to master the ritual of tipping with out a suitable guide or compass to the act. With this in mind, I have in vented a guide to tinniiej — with the peripheral help of some friends (hereafter called the Commune). Fotgi ve the bul leted catalog - consid er it a journalistic attempt at Walt Whit man’s interminable lists. Scenario One: Condescension. This is it problem when you’re in college. You go to a restaurant, and based on your mien and perceived socioeconomic status, the wait staff decides you don’t belong there. Henceforth, your drink refills are pri oritized after the plentiful wine orders of the bourgeois couple to your right. As a lip, I suggest the lowest possible amount - for me, that’s 5 percent. Con descension is the gravest of all wait staff sins, but Pm too passive-aggressive to leave nothing. Scenario Two: The Dinner Theater Conundrum. A real-life tipping ordeal oc curred with the Commune and me in Gife and Then Some in Greenville, S.C. We had enjoyed the show - laughing and crying in appropriate places. Yet, when the bill came, we had this question: Do we tip our waiter for only the food he served, or for the cover charge as well? Ultimately, we decided to exclude the cover charge, seeing as he had not per formed with the grace and subversive wit of the Cafe and Then Some Players. Scenario Three: A flirty waitperson makes sport of your dining companion. There is no good way to deal with this sit uation. If you blame the waitperson, you’re being passive-aggressive, refusing to ac cept it was your significant other, who took a vow to you, who has really blundered. Your inclination is to repeatedly slam the waitperson’s fade against the table as he or she gives you your check. This is not only illegal, but also immoral. Nor would 1 suggest physical violence against your significant other. Again, I suggest the passive-aggressive route - tip well, but remember this meal for your next blow-out fight. Scenario Four: Your waiter has a swasti ka tattoo on his hand. Strange as it might seem, this happened at an all-night diner in Seneca, S.C., my hometown. The Commune was in partial atten dance that night - Joe and I were eating together, looking for late-night Belgian waffles. As soon as the waiter put our or der on the table, we noticed there was a swastika branded on the fleshy skin be tween his thumb and index finger. Wfe made eye contact - looking at one another silent ly as he arranged our silverware with ex pert flair. He was a good waiter - therein was the root of our problem. Had he been a bad waiter with a swastika tattooed on his hand, we would have no questions regarding our course of action. We also wondered if he were making some attempt at that often-abused con cept: irony. He was Latino - Nazi sym pathies are evil enough when found in one of Hitler’s chosen, and further self-de feating when found in ;ui ethnic minority. We didn’t know what to do. Liter, my brother suggested we should have left seven pennies in a swastika for mation on the table, so he’d not only get i bad tip but also know why he got it. At llie time, we had no such clever ideas and left our usual percentage: evidence of our need for assertiveness training and not pos sible neoNazi sympathies. Jennie Lightweis is a senior English major. She writes every Monday. She can be reached at gamecockview points@hotmail. com. L E T T E R s Opening Greene Street gates not risky To the editor Your section is the reason I pick up The Gamecock every day it is published. It’s not really a good reason, though; to be more specific, I read Viewpoints be cause 1 am virtually guaranteed to see a piece that makes me angry. Today, Sept. 15, was no exception. Since it was deemed necessary to have a second editorial on the Greene Street gates, as if the first wasn’t useless enough, I de cided to take special offense to this one. - The danger of removing the gates dur ing the day is much less than the editori al states. Since whomever wrote it obvi ously didn’t know, the proposition to open the gates carried along with it a reduced speed limit, perhaps as slow as 5 mph. As anyone who has crossed the street at around 3:45 would know, since they open the gates early now anyway, it’s not really feasible logo any faster than that down Greene in the middle to late afternoon. Why not open it during the day? No one will use it anyway. Ami as for where to put carnivals, bands and the like, 1 seem to recall a courtyard behind the Russell House that would serve nicely and did. in fact, serve on several occasions when I was a freshman. You people might want to do more re search in the future, since it seems to me that misinformation is a trend in the edi torials iuitl some of the columns. Or don’t; bad editorials are much more fun tc read. Wally Altman Junior, Math Major Maurice Bessinger still a racist To the editor Maurice Bessinger is no less a racisi today than he was in the 1950s and 60' when he refused to serve black people ir his restaurants. One afternoon back then my younger sister and I had been shopping downtown in Columbia and were waiting to catch a bus home. The Ku Klux Klan in full regalia, came marching up Mail Street. It was so frightening and intimi dating that we quickly went around the comer and took a taxicab. Klan support of Bessinger’s white su premacy had a powerful impact on me and greatly increased my awareness of racism. I didn’t see any people of color that day, but my own reaction to such a show of white-hooded menace was so strong that I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like for the black community. My husband and I do not buy Piggy Park barbecue, and we share our concerns with numerous friends and out-of-town guests. We worked to remove the Con federate flag from our State Capitol. Since Bessinger is now flying this flag at his restau rants and selling literature to justify slav ery, we arc now taking our concern to an other level. We are calling on managers and customer relations people of grocery stores where we shop and risking they re move Bessinger’s products from their shelves. Join us and ask your grocer to stop selling racism in a bottle. Rebecca Burgess Rogers Chairperson, Carolina Peace Resource Center ---——1 Get published in ®7?f (SttJTlCCOClu Bring your letters, sample columns and editorial cartoons to Room 333 in the Russell House, or write us at: gamecockvieivpoints@hotmail.com USC Football ^ Improving the USC football experience As I’ve been re flecting on how we’re 3-0 in football and our school is awesome and all that jazz, I started thinking about things that could make USC football games even better. First, that whole cheer thing going down in the student section has got to go. There were several factors last game that led me to this conclusion. The first mid most terrifying was the unexpected (mid un necessary) return of the creature they (■ call Ace. I brought my three-year-old niece to .the game for the first time, mid when Ace started gyrating on that dumb stage, she started crying. That made me mad because 1 remember crying the first time I saw him when I was a freshman. Ace, go away! Second, that cheerleading wanker who thinks he’s The Rock has got to go. Hey, buddy, you’re a tool. Can you smell what I’m cookin’? Just do your cart wheels and fling those 60-pound beau ties in the air. No love for you, either. Third on the hit list is the hot babe who has replaced Ace. She doesn’t have to go - quite the opposite - but her (f microphone privileges are done. Here’s why: Late in the fourth, she was cheer ing for a score while we were punting, but I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt mid put 100 percent blame on the microphone. I’ll call it “The Mi crophone of Incoherence.” Whoever speaks into it immediately becomes dumb. So the microphone and its cor rupting influence on our female fan sup port coordinator has got to go. She stays. In place of cheering there will be lots and lots of jumping. And speaking of jumping, the wooden stage will be replaced with a trampoline. I got three words for you: The Man Show. 0 Yes sir, it’ll be USC’s version of The Man Show’s sophisticated and articu miv Tliere are otlier tilings I would change as well. I would have the police grab by the hair people who plop on the stairs or walkway ;irca to watch the game and then haul them to the end zone, shoot them and toss their aircasses in the lietkres for fertilizer. You people suck. When I have to piss, I don’t want to fight my way to the restrooms for 40 minutes. The troughs are bad enough -1 need all ** my strength when I get there. I don’t have eneigy to waste on you tools. Another thing I would get rid of is the whole “ticket system.” I don’t much like tickets, and I suffer from turn ; stileaphobia. If you want to watch the ! ‘Cocks play, you shouldn’t have to have a ticket. No more tickets. They got to go. Profits, schmofits. If the Athletics Department wants to make some mon ! ey, set up a collegiate sports betting ring. I know plenty of folks who’ll get in on that. I’ll set you up with some of my people in the Caymans. If these changes arc made, I guaran-w tec the games will be a lot more enjoy able for all of us after that, especially for my thrcc-yca--old niece. She loves t-ram po lines. Nathan White is a senior politi cal science and history major. He writes a column every Monday. He can be reached at gamecockview pointsOhotmail. com.