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USC student makes USA Today academic team BY GINNY THORNTON THE GAMECOCK Fourth-year marine science and mathematics student Brandon Fornwalt has been named to USA Today’s second team in the annual All-USA College Academic Team program. Fornwalt, from Hilton Head, was one of about 600 nominees from four-year colleges in the United States. The newspaper selected 20 students each for the first, second and third teams. Information about team members appeared in the Feb. 27 edition of USA Today. “I view this award as a great ac complishment for the university and for all my advisers who provided me with so much along the way,” said Fornwalt, the son of Jack and Linda Fornwalt. “I owe every thing to those who have helped me get here.” Fornwalt said the award isn’t tied'to any future activities or events. “I don’t know what it will bring, but I imagine it will lead to something along the way,” he said. A Carolina Scholar, Fomwalt is a student in the Honors College and was named a 2001 Goldwater Scholar. Last year, he received the American Meteorological Society’s Ethan and Allen Murphy Memorial Scholarship, one of only nine awards given nationwide by the society; USC’s Jeong S. Yang Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mathematics; and the USC mathematics department’s Outstanding Undergraduate Student award. Fomwalt said he thinks it’s im portant for USC students to apply for honors such as the academic team so that they can prove they have what it takes to compete against students from other colleges. “I feel like this award is a cul mination of everything my edu cation has given me,” Fornwalt said. “I hope that’s what it means. It’s sort of what it means to me.” A member of the competitive Putnam Mathematics Team, Fornwalt received the EPSCoR Summer Research Fellowship, was named to the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research program, and was a student fellow at the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution this past summer. He also received a Marine Biological Laboratory Summer Fellowship in 2000 at Woods Hole. “The big picture, as far as that research is concerned, was work ing on underwater vehicles that are being developed to collect large amounts of oceanographic data,” Fornwalt said. A teaching assistant for Discrete Mathematics I at USC, Fornwalt has presented research findings at meetings of the American Geophysical Union and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography Aquatic Sciences. Fornwalt plans to apply for the Peace Corps, but doesn’t know where he wants to be sent. “I’d like to keep it open and see what they offer me,” he said. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Pick-number lottery games start Thursday First game will offer up to $500 to lucky players BY AMY GEIER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS COLUMBIA — The studio is be ing built. The TV personalities have been selected for the draw ings. And despite technology prob lems and threats of delays, the South Carolina Education Lottery plans to start its first number-pick ing game Thursday. “We think that will be a signa ture date in the history of this state,” Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue says. The numbers games will begin gradually starting with the Pick 3. About 2,600 retailers will sell the tickets initially, said Tony Cooper, the lottery’s chief operat ing officer. By April, all of the 3,100 retailers should be online, he said. Lottery officials hope to add four or five numbers games — and possibly a multistate game such as Powerball, pending legislative approval — during the next two years, Cooper said. Lottery players can win up to $500 with the Pick 3 game that starts Thursday. No matter how many players pick and win a cer tain set of numbers in one draw, u — .... the lottery cannot pay out more than $3.5 million because of a lia bility limit, Cooper said. The numbers will be drawn dai ly at a studio on Main Street at 6:59 p.m. and broadcast on television stations WLTX in Columbia, WCBD in Charleston, WSPA in Spartanburg and WPDE in Myrtle Beach. Security will be tight during the drawings. Three different draw ing machines and different sets of balls will be randomly alternated to ensure integrity, lottery secu rity director Tom Marsh said. The balls will be weighed every night and stored in sealed cases. When not in use, the balls and machines will be stored in a secure area with sealed doors and limit ed access, Marsh said. Positive identification through a finger print system and key cards are the only ways to enter the studio, he -said. Last week, lottery officials chose eight people from around the state to draw winning num bers on live television. The TV personalities, who will work on rotating schedules, range in age from 21 to 62. They include black, white and Hispanic men and women and will be paid $100 plus mileage for each event. The individuals are: Jeffery Black of Manning, Julie Bokinac of Myrtle Beach, Judy DuBose of Hanahan, George Godfrey of Columbia, Whitney Kigos of Isle of Palms, William “Don” Munson of Simpsonville, Deborah Rioz of Lexington and Jeneen Totten of Charleston. Black, a former television an chor and reporter, said he has two children in public schools. “I just feel like the South Carolina Education Lottery is a wonderful thing and is going to provide some additional resources for our young people,” he said. Munson, who also has a broad casting background, said he was excited to have the opportunity to participate in the state’s first lot tery. “It’s a pleasure to represent this state and to be a little piece of history,” he said. But despite these smiling faces, the new games kick off under a cloud of problems. It began when telecommunica tions giant AT&T said it couldn’t meet the March deadline to build the network needed to link ticket retailers to the central lottery com puter. The network is unnecessary for scratch-off tickets, which went on sale Jan. 7 and had esti mated ticket sales of $123.7 mil lion as of Feb. 24. But numbers games such as Pick 3 can’t start without the communications network. Faced with a daily fine of up to $250,000 for any delays beyond Wednesday, the Alpharetta, Ga. based Scientific Games con tracted with BellSouth to use Internet technology to connect the main lottery computer with about 2,000 of 3,100 retailers. AT&T will connect the remain ing retailers. Then last month, the Greenwich, R.I.-based GTECH Corp. filed a petition with the South Carolina Procurement Review Panel, seeking an inves tigation of how Scientific Games was awarded the contract to set up and run the number-picking games. GTECH officials said there were irregularities in the procurement of the online con tract. GTECH asks that the state re pay at least $500,000 it put into the bid and its lawyer’s fees. However, the petition “does not appear to affect the launch of the games,” Cooper said. “We will move on. We have to,” said Commissioner Paula Harper Bethea. “That’s a contract issue. Lottery players will not notice any effect.” And glitches are to be expected with any new startup, Harper Bethea said. “I don’t think we’ve encoun tered any more challenges than other lotteries,” she said. “We knew all along when we went to online games that it would require more due diligence.” Bornemann CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 ing wrong except for sending an e-mail to a university listserv. He said it was “an honest and in nocent mistake.” Vergakis, who voted against most of the infractions the com mission handed down, said it was inconsistent to label the incidents as infractions without saying they gave Patel an unfair advantage. “I think it’s just too close, out of 26,000 students, to say that these things didn’t have an im pact on the election,” he said. Musgrave disagreed, saying, “Yes, the election might have been tainted one way or anoth er, but I guess that’s the purpose of the campaign.... You’re sup posed to influence voters.” Bomemann’s campaign said Patel’s staffers had gone from door to door to solicit votes and had watched students vote in an effort to intimidate them. Patel denied violating the pol icy and said his campaign only visited people they or their friends knew. He also said no one was intimidated, even if staff members watched them vote. “If that did happen, we didn’t hold a gun to their heads. They chose to vote right then, in front of one of the staff members; that’s their decision,” he said. Stauffer countered that hold ing a gun to students’ heads was wasn’t necessary. “It didn’t take a gun to # a head to make these people vote; it took a knock. We’re talking about students at Carolina, y’all; we all know what they’re like.” CHRISSY STAUFFER BORNEMANN CAMPAIGN MANAGER “It didn’t take a gun to a head to make these people vote; it took a knock. We’re talking about stu dents at Carolina, y’all; we all know what they’re like,” she said. Patel questioned the timing of the infractions’ filing. “If these people saw these things happen on Thursday, I just want to know why it wasn’t/ filed until Friday,” he said. “That’s real convenient — that we can wait for the elections re sults, find out what those are, and then file them the next morning.” The Bomemann campaign said it wasn’t told about most of the in fractions until after the election. After the appeal was denied, Patel appeared relieved. “I’m just glad that we were able to re solve the issue,” he said. The next appeal will go to SG Attorney General Brian Hunter. Hunter said on Sunday that he hadn’t received anything written from Bomemann. He said he hopes to rule on the matter by Tuesday. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com It’s time for the BIG Winning Wednesday Finale. On Wednesday, March 6, at 7:00, not only will the USC baseball team take on William & Mary at Sarge Frye field*, but the Winning Wednesdays final ists will compete to win their FIRST CHOICE OF HOUSING and other great prizes. Be there to cheer on your friends and your baseball team, but don’t forget to wear your button, you could be one of three lucky winners chosen to be an instant finalist! This is your last chance to win BIG so show up, be a proud Gamecock and wear your button! University Housing Designing Communities for Living ami Learning 'Located behind the Roost residence hall.