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Local talent to join USC in black-history events BY MELISSA CHANDLER TIIEIIAMECOCK USC’s Black History Month cel ebration will feature more local talent this year with the partici pation of professors and commu nity leaders. “We wanted to get more USC professors and local artists this year,” said Michael Goodwin, co ordinator of USC’s Multicultural Student Affairs Office. Carolina Productions and the NAACP’s USC chapter have also helped plan Black History Month activities. : Making community involve ment a priority, Goodwin hopes the local talent will attract stu dents. Goodwin said planning lec tures and concerts for this February has been a great deal of work, but that he is happy to or ganize the activities. “These events are things that people from all cultures and back grounds can enjoy,” he said. - Several USC professors will of fer free lectures on different as pects of black history. Bobby Donaldson, a professor of history and African-American studies, will lecture about African American influences on USC. He will speak in the Russell House Ballroom on Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. Willie Strong, director of USC’s Center for Southern African-American Music, will lec ture on Feb. 18 at St. Peter’s Catholic Church at 1529 Assembly St. His lecture, which will begin at 6:30 p.m., will be fol lowed by a concert of USC’s University Chorus, as well as choirs from Benedict College and St. Peter’s church. Performing with the Jazzology Quartet in the Russell House Ballroom on Feb. 27, local jazz artist Skip Pearson will also pro vide a lecture on the origins of jazz music. USC’s Black History Month cel ebration will also bring lecturers and entertainers from across the nation. Bryant K. Smith, the director of multicultural affairs and inter national student services at Millikin University in Illinois, will deliver a lecture titled “Black Not Blind” in the Russell House Ballroom on Feb. 6. Comedian Dave Chappelle will perform his stand-up act at the Koger Center on Feb. 11. Known for his roles in movies “You’ve Got Mail” and “Blue Streak,” Chappelle also stars in his origi nal Comedy Central series, “Chappelle’s Show.” His perfor mance will start at 7 p.m. and is $7 for students. Commentson this story? E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Shuttle CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the older tanks is left, he said. O’Keefe emphasized that the space agency was being careful not to lock onto any one theory too soon. He vowed to “leave absoj lutely no stone unturned.” For a second day, searchers scoured forests and rural areas over 500 square miles of East Texas and western Louisiana for bits of metal, ceramic tiles, com puter chips and insulation from the shattered spacecraft. State and federal officials, treating the in vestigation like a multicounty crime scene, were protecting the debris until it can be catalogued, carefully collected and then trucked to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The effort to reconstruct what is left of Columbia into a rough outline of the shuttle will be te dious and painstaking. When a shuttle piece was locat ed this weekend, searchers left it in place until a precise global po sition satellite reading could be taken. Each shuttle part is num bered; NASA officials say experts hope to trace the falling path of each recovered piece and learn when in the fiery re-entry it came off of the spacecraft. The goal is to establish a se quence of how parts were ripped off Columbia as it endured the in tense heat and pressure of the high-speed re-entry into the at mosphere. At least 20 engineers from United Space Alliance, a key NASA contractor for the shuttle program, were dispatched to Barksdale for what is expected to be an a round the-clock investigation. Other experts, including met allurgists and forensic medicine specialists, are expected to join the investigation. Their focus will be on a microscopic examination of debris and remains that could elic it clues such as how hot the met al became, how it twisted and which parts flew off first. Evidence from the shuttle’s takeoff, including whether any protective heat tiles broke loose during ascent, also might become a focal point. In addition to NASA’s investigation, O’Keefe named an independent panel to be headed by retired Navy admiral Harold W. Gehman Jr., who pre viously helped investigate the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole. Gehman’s panel will also sift through the Columbia wreckage, and come to its own conclusions about what happened. Joining Gehman on the commission are four other military officers and two federal aviation safety offi cials. Officials used horses and four wheel-drive vehicles to find and recover the shuttle pieces. Divers were being called in to search the floor of Toledo Bend Reservoir, on the Texas-Louisiana border, for a car-sized piece seen slamming into the water. Some body parts from the sev en-member astronaut cre\y have been recovered and are being sent to a military morgue in Dover, Del. Columbia came apart 200,000 feet over Texas while it was streaking at more than 12,000 miles an hour toward the Kennedy Space Center. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Schedule of Events Mandatory Info Session - Monday, February 3 @ 6:00pm Russell House room 322 Open Rush - Monday, February 3,7:00pm - 9:00pm McBryde Quad/Greek Village Open Rush - Tuesday, February 4,7:00pm - 9:00pm McBryde Quad/GreekVillage Closed Rush - Thursday, February 6,7:00pm - 9:00pm McBryde Quad/Greek Village ’Transportation will be provided between McBryde Quad and the Greek Village* Any Questions please call the Office of Greek life - 777-3506 ATTI (T'lON FGI8HMOI AKO FIRST SEMESTER SOPHOMORES If you earned a 3.5 GPA last semester, you are eligible for membership in Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society. If you meet the required GPA, but haven't recieved an invitation to join, bring $30 cash or check (which will grant lifetime membership) to our office in 345 Russell House (Office of Orientation & Testing) before: ».. February 7,2003 The USC Chapter of Alpha Lambda Delta consistently wins top honors, including most outstanding chapter, and our most active members earn graduate and undergraduate scholarships. Alpha Lambda Delta inducts between 400 and 600 new freshmen each year representing USCs largest honorary. New fitness center almost set to open PHOTO BY SILVIA MARTINEZ/THE GAMECOCK The new Strom Thurmond Fitness and Wellness Center has four full-length basketball courts with drop-down dividers to separate them. The center’s grand opening is set for March 1. — Ranking CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 sity right now,” Woodward said. “We had a lot of positive momen tum going into these tough eco nomic times, so we had a reputa tion to build on. In addition, of course, we’ve had the generosity of people like Darla Moore and others who have given to this school and supported our pro grams and our students.” In addition to the financial sup port, the school has moved through a restructuring process in the last year to develop a new version of its International Master of Business Administration. So far, the results appear positive, with the average GMAT score up 25 points from the previous year and extensive corporate recruit ment of the program’s students. “This all leads to better job op portunities for our graduates,” said Joel Smith, the business school’s dean. The new program is a consolidation of several MBA programs to focus more on the in ternational side of business ad ministration, which has been the school’s strength in recent years and usually garners national at tention. “Even though we had a strong program going into the consoli dation, we know we’ve got to keep changing because the com petition is very fierce, as you can get a sense from the rankings,” Woodward said. Management professor Wil liam Sandberg agrees and said prospective students tend to pay more attention to the rankings when looking at graduate schools. “I think most professors have a fairly clear idea of the quality of the school based on their teaching and other experiences here,” he said. “I also think that most of us would rather be ranked higher than lower in these rankings, and professors do make use of these rankings to promote their school.” The business school has more than 3,400 students in its under graduate, master’s and doctoral programs. It’s USC’s second largest college, after Liberal Arts. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Marijuana CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 chologist for CHD. All students, both undergrad uate and graduate, are eligible for 12 free sessions after a free as sessment. Stricklin-Parker has also wit nessed a recent increase in mari juana-related incidents. “We have seen an increase in the number of students who are actually coming in for alcohol or marijuana use. Whether it’s be cause they’re actually drinking more or using marijuana more or they may just be getting caught more. I don’t know,” she said. From the standpoint of both # assessment and counseling, each student’s case is individual. But “a marijuana allegation and an alcohol allegation run very simi larly,” Lewis said. Stricklin-Parker said that while alcohol is often the focus of on-campus campaigns, drug use is usually ignored. “A lot of advertising has been centered on alcohol abuse. We need programs around marijua na abuse as well. That seems to be overlooked,” she said. But according to Felicia Law, coordinator for Alcohol and Drug Programs, “comparing last year’s numbers (of marijuana-related incidents) with this year’s num bers, there has been a slight in crease. But it still doesn’t com pare to alcohol.” Alcohol and Drug Programs brings prevention programs to campus like Late Night Carolina and the Great Gamecock Tailgate parties, which provide substance free activities for students. Law said marijuana .use is not necessarily on the rise, but in stead is getting more attention. “Sometimes when we see things in the paper, we think the problem is bigger than it really is. Yeah, we have seen a slight in crease. It is a problem, but it’s not the big problem,” Law said. Stricklin-Parker said that, based on an annual campus-wide survey each fall, the big problem is alcohol. This spring the survey will be repeated. Lewis said USC is “in-line or below average with colleges across the country” when it comes to drug- and alcohol-abuse statistics. “We’re considered na tionwide to be on the cutting edge, We were one of the first uni versities to do drug testing and one of the first to tie GPA to com munity service and probationary status,” he said. But with that in mind, those who violate policy are in for a rude awakening. “The law is a separate system. They judge you as a student in South Carolina. We judge you as a student of USC, a Gamecock. The standards are high,” Lewis said. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com You an cordially invited to attend a swing sorority information session on Thursday, Tehruary 6,2003 at froornn (Russeff douse 322/326 Tor any questions caCC 777-3506 ■ ■' P ■ r