Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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4 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, November 15, 2002 SOUNDOFF TTT^ITTTl/^T ATm C\ ONLINEPOLL Create message boards at I 1-4 B l\ I I JI I I \ I Are you happy with the results of the www.dailygamecock.com or I | 1 i B/ «/ I I II I L election? send letters to the editor to I I 1 W W I \ / I I BI Ik./ YES, I LOVE REPUBLICANS 55% gamecockviewpointsCaihotmail.com I I ^ V » I ^—S B A 1 —I— NO, I'M WAITING UNTIL 2004 33% HULK HOGAN GOT MY VOTE 12% IN OUR OPINION PETA’sfight is pointless So PET A has taken up its fight with USC — specifically, the gamecock mascot — once again. But this time, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has found a new angle: If the university won’t get rid of its mascot entirely, PETA says, will it at least get rid of its spurs? Fat chance. The point of a mascot is to strike fear in opposing teams’ hearts; take away the spurs, and the gamecock is just — well, a bird. As it stands, Cocky, the most visible manifestation ot tha USC mascot, hardly looks like a symbol of violence. In fact, with his friendly face and his chubby middle, he looks more like a mobile teddy bear than a fighting machine. And while it’s wise of PETA to realize that USC and its mascot are not likely to be twain, the animal-rights The point of a mascot is to strike fear in opposing teams’ hearts; take away the spurs, and the gamecock is just - well, a bird. group, with this compromise, is still missing an important point: There are more important battles out there, battles involving actual animals. A mascot is merely a notion; it’s not as if the football team gets pumped up with live cockfights. Yes, cruelty to animals is wrong, but a mascot is not an animal. PETA is wasting its time by continuing this pointless fight at USC when live creatures are suffering elsewhere. Gamecock Quotables “Recently, I said that the people from PETA ought to be put under a bus. Now that’s too good for them. Get a life. Who gives a damn about what’s on a mascot? These people need to have a greater mission than that.” MICHAEL WILBON CO-HOST ON ESPN'S "PARDON THE INTERRUPTION," ON PETA'S LETTER TO USC “I think it’s important to see what other people go through.” ENDIA SOWERS FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH STUDENT, ON THE OXFAM HUNGER BANQUET “Unfortunately, we live in a sex-negative, sex-repressed and sex-phobic society which has trouble talking about sex and which provides inadequate sex education.” JAY FRIEDMAN SEX EDUCATOR, ON OUR SEX-REPRESSED NATION “Leadership starts with the example you set, and I’ve always tried to set a good example by being a responsible steward of taxpayer money.” MARK SANFORD GOVERNOR-ELECT, ON BEING THE LEADER OF SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS In Kyle Almond's column Wednesday, he incorrectly referred to LSU wide receiver Devery Henderson as “Washington” on second reference. The Gamecock regrets the error. If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com. ABOUT THE GAMECOCK Editor in Chief Mary Hartney News Editor Adam Beam Asst. News Editor Emma Pitch Viewpoints Editor Chris Foy Asst. Viewpoints Editor Erin O’Neal The Mix Editors Justin Bajan. Charles Tomlinson Sports Editor Kyle Almond Asst. Sports Editor Matt Rothenberg Photo Editor Candi Hauglum Head Designer Katie Smith Page Designers Samantha Hall, Staci Jordan, Julia Knetzer, Sarah McLaulin, Shawn Rourk, David Stagg Copy Desk Chief Jill Martin Copy Editors Jennie Duggan, Tricia Ridgway, Holly Totherow, Karen Vaught Online Editor Bessam Khadraoui Community Affairs Ulron Qhah CONTACT INFORMA1 Offices on third floor of th Editor in Chief: gamecocl< News Desk: gamecockud< Viewpoints: gamecockvie The Mix: gamecockmixec Sports: gamecocksports<S Public Affairs: gckpublica Online: www.dailygamecc Newsroom: 777-7726 Editor’s Office: 777-3914 STUDENT MEDIA Faculty Adviser Erik Collins Director of Student Media Ellen Parsons Creative Director Susan King Business Manager Carolyn Griffin Advertising Manager Sarah Scarborough oiassmea manager Sherry F. Holmes Creative Services Derek Goode, Earl Jones, Sean O’Meara, Anastasia Oppert Melanie Roberts Advertising Staff Adam Bourgoin, Justin Chappell, Bianca Knowles, Denise Levereaux, Jacqueline Rice. Stacey Todd ION e Russell House. editor@hotmail.com jsk@hotmail.com wpoints@hotmail.com itor@hotmail.com >hotmail.com Ffairs@hotmail.com ck.com The Gamecock is the editorially independent 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 authors 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-activity fees. One free copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $1 each from the Department of Student Media. TO PLACE AN AO Thn Como/'nnl/ 777 OOOO j.400 Greene St. Columbia, S.C. 29208 Classified: 777-1184 ’ Fax: 777-6482 Chicago r^es To uyk im* ouh inpust&y Marijuana getting a bad rap CLAYTON KALE GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM * Ignore what others say about smoking pot. My friend and colleague Jason Rapp made the argument Monday that marijuana should never be made legal. I feel com pelled to respectfully poke holes in Mr. Rapp’s argument. In his column, Mr. Rapp as sumes that the effects of alcohol and marijuana are similar. It would be too simplistic to say that being high on marijuana is tantamount to being drunk. The chemicals in each substance that create the “altered” state are as different as night and day. Alcohol is a toxin. Tetrahydrocannabinol, the psy choactive substance in marijua na, is not. THC is found naturally in the human body in tiny amounts, and it can also be found in comfort foods, such as choco late. Our brains are born with the ability to process and accept THC molecules, which is why — no matter what they told you in DARE—marijuana is not physi cally addictive. And the argument that “it would be too easy for children to come in contact with drugs” de feats itself. When reading Mr. Rapp’s column, we are asked to assume that if pot is legalized, the sale of it would still be in the do main of drug dealers. That wouldn’t be legalization; it would be decriminalization. If weed were truly made legal, the government would regulate it the same as cigarettes, beer and meat. If this were the case, it would be harder for a 14-year-old to score a nickel bag. If only one out of every 10 store owners card ed people for buying marijuana, it would be a 100-percent increase over the number of kids who are carded now when they buy it in a park or from their brother’s friends. Drug dealers never card. Legalizing marijuana also would help alleviate the “gate way” problem associated with ' the drug. Two factors go into this: 1. Marijuana is a gateway be cause it puts people who are drug-free — other than their smoking pot — in contact with so-called “hard drugs.” Black market pot dealers are likely to know how to get cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy or LSD. Therefore, they would be able to introduce these hard drugs to the public. If mari juana were regulated and sold in the corner store, or even only in specialty shops, the contact be tween young experimenters and hard drugs would be lessened. 2. Marijuana is a gateway drug because of such programs as DARE. Drug Abuse Resistance Education, while admirable, goes too far in scaring young children away from drugs. The program makes no distinction between a joint and a vial of crack. Drugs are drugs, the resource officers say, and all of them can kill you. But the reality is, marijuana is noth ing like crack, LSD or any other drug. And when children who were brainwashed by the DARE program do experiment with mar ijuana (and they do), they are li able to say: “That wasn’t so bad. DARE was wrong about weed. What about (hard drug here)?” Why are we wasting cops’ pre cious time and resources dealing with pot smokers, who, if they’re hurting anyone, are hurting only themselves, when there are ter rorists blowing up buildings and men shooting people from parked cars? The damage a pothead does to society is slight compared with what terrorists want to do to us. Imagine if the resources spent on the “war” on drugs were spent on the war on terrorism. One more thing, Mr. Rapp. “Most people don’t drink to get drunk, but people who blaze up do it to get high.” That’s true. But if I’m a pot smoker and I’m not crashing my car into carloads of children or hitting my wife for burning the chicken or getting in fights over a football game or con tracting sexually transmitted dis eases from having sex with a stranger, what’s it to you? Kale is a fifth-year print journalism student. IN YOUR OPINION Support those who fight for freedom It’s been a back-and-forth battle so far this semester be tween anti-war protestors and those who back the president. If the Pickens Street bridge could talk, it would be spitting chalk at those who write on it. This past weekend, we cele brated Veterans Day with a pa rade down Main Street, special recognition for the military during halftime of the football game and Monday’s national recognition. I look at these men and women who wear the uni form, and I realize these are the same people who were ready to respond when we were so bru tally attacked on 9/11. someone a wnue DacK 1001 ishly called our president “The Fuhrer.” That is a name I would never wish any American to be called. A year ago, our president sent the greatest fighting force in the world to Afghanistan to find those responsible for 9/11. In the end, we freed a country un der a government that support ed terrorism and gave no rights to women. I have the greatest respect for the men and women who fight for our freedom—the same freedom that allows you to protest war against a tyrant who wants to see Americans die by his chemical weapons. You don’t have to back President Bush, but back our brothers and sisters who fight for the red, white and blue. Someone at the Pickens Street bridge wrote, “War is useless.” Tell that to the Americans who died for you at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Gettysburg, Antietam, Pearl Harbor, Normandy, Midway, Korea and Vietnam. God bless America, and God bless our fighting soldiers. RICHARD WARD FOURTH-YEAR HISTORY STUDENT Columnist’s point is lost in ignorance I am writing in response to Jason Rapp’s column (“There’s no need to make pot legal”) in The Gamecock on Monday. I find Mr. Rapp’s comments to be both ridiculous and poorly in formed from the beginning, when he compares the debate over decriminalization and le galization to the debate over whether USC’s mascot should be changed. Furthermore, I don’t see how it is “extremism” to oppose a college mascot that glorifies a barbarous, cruel and long-outlawed practice. Second, the debate held in the Russell House included both pro- and anti-decriminalization speakers and, as a whole, strove to be unbiased in tone — hardly something one would expect from a group that could be char acterized as “Cheech, Chong & Co.” Third, if marijuana were le gal, it would be a taxable busi ness like any other and would most certainly be regulated; this is the major argument for full legalization, as opposed to simple decriminalization. Rapp then changes the sub ject from marijuana to drugs as a whole, as many opponents of decriminalization and legal ization do when their arguments begin falling apart. Illegal drugs are sold differently than legal drugs are for one reason: They are illegal. I agree with Mr. Rapp that the American drug-enforcement sys tem is flawed and we should fo cus on rehabilitation instead of incarceration. But this argument is irrelevant when one discusses cannabis, which has been shown to produce mild, if any, symptoms of physical dependence, as op posed to alcohol or nicotine. As far as his closing comment that “alcohol... hasn’t made us a nation of drunks,” I suggest he think about the number of Alcoholics Anonymous groups in our state alone and ask himself where all the Marijuana Anonymous groups are. There is not one in the entire state, ac cording to the organization’s Web site. I don’t know whether Mr. Rapp will considered me a “bitter letter writer” _ frankly, I can’t believe such an antagonistic remark would be printed in a publication that claims to welcome such let ters in the interest of intelligent discourse — but I am willing to take that risk to refute this terri ble column in case, God forbid, someone took it seriously. TYLER LEE FOURTH-YEAR ENGLISH STUDENT Submission Policy Letters to the editor should be less than 300 words and include name, phone number, professional title or year and major, if a student. E-mail letters to gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com. Letters will be edited. Anonymous 'etters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777-7726 for more information. The joys brought by work in retail ROB SEAL GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Some stores bring in a variety of customers. Retail in America is a beautiful thing. I’m not talking about little mom-and-pop retail. I mean corpo rate-giant-chain-store retail. Where else can you go and see a real cross section of American society? I work in a bookstore. Not just any bookstore, but one of those huge, corporate bookstores that sell everything from fancy coffee to Ozzy Osborne bobble heads. In this type of store, you get to see ev ery type of consumer imaginable. Our store is huge. In fact, it used to be a Wal-Mart. Every day, hundreds of people come through the door in search of books, toys for the kids or magazines. An un fortunate side effect of working in this kind of environment is that you start to classify people by their purchasing quirks. While I was working at the reg ister the other day, I saw a man get in line holding a few magazines. The man, who was wearing a busi ness suit, looked respectable; I im mediately suspected he was going to pull the old pom-sandwich trick. The porn sandwich is a method used by middle-aged men to con ceal the fact that they are purchas ine a Domoeranhir- mara7inp They come to the register with their porn of choice carefully con cealed between two innocuous magazines. This man had slipped his Penthouse between a Southern Living and a Home and Garden. The funniest thing about this type of customer is the look of satisfac tion on his face when you slip the pom into the bag, still sandwiched between, the other magazines. These customers look like they’ve just thought up and pulled off the cleverest trick in history. Little do they know this trick is used in the store at least once every day. The discount demons are an other personal favorite. These are the customers, usually middle class, who strive to save every cent on a purchase. I had a customer who purchased a book on sale for 99 cents and drove home. Two hours later, she showed up at my register again, demanding an ad ditional 10-percent refund because the book was damaged. She had driven all the way from Chapin. Despite the fact that bathroom humor is looked down upon in many elitist circles, the general i public still seems to embrace it. Just the other week, someone thought it would be hilarious to defecate in the bathroom trash can. To those of us who work in the store, it’s an old joke. Bathroom graffiti still abounds. My favorite is a caricature of Osama bin Laden that was drawn on the bathroom wall next to the toilet. The caption underneath it reads, “Osama yo momma!” I’m sure Mr. bin Laden would be greatly agitated to know he had been so viciously mocked by an American squatting in a pub lic restroom with a Sharpie. Above the drawing of bin Laden, there is a more disturbing piece of toilet humor. Someone of great sophistication smeared fecal material on the wall, drew a circle around it with pen, and included the message “My poop!” next to it. , Whoever did that was proud of his or her intestinal accomplishments. For those such as myself who are forced to work crappy retail jobs, allow me to offer some advice to the purchasing public. Please do not enter a store, find the nearest employee, then demand that he help you find a red book written last year by a guy whose first name is Bob. This kind of request is known to cause spontaneous aneurysm in retail employees. Seal is a'fourth-year print 1 journalism student.