University of South Carolina Libraries
10 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, February 12, 2003 SOUND OFF ONLINE POLL Create message boards at Will you be doing anything www.dailygamecock.com or special for Valentine’s Day? send letters to the editor to www.dailygamecock.com. gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com' Results published on Fridays. IN OUR OPINION Patel shouldn't control CSJC For nearly a semester, Ankit Patel has pursued major changes in the Student Government constitution. Although a new constitution has been needed for a while, one of his proposed changes is dangerous: new executive control of the Carolina Student Judicial Council. Under Patel’s proposal, people from outside the CSJC, who have poor knowledge of its inner workings, will determine the organization’s makeup. ■ n . .. The CSJC is the students’ under Patel s . , proposal, people Judge andjury-If a student who have poor violates tbe university’s code knowledge of conduct and requires due CSJC’S workings process, he or she will go will be the ones before the council. deciding the Now, the council itself selects organization’s the next year’s members in an makeup, intense interview process, and current members go through weekly training. If Patel’s changes to the constitution pass, only two council members would be included in a six-person group that would choose CSJC’s future members. The rest of the selection committee would comprise the Residence Hall Association’s president and vice president and—surprise—the president and vice president of Student Government. It is evident that Patel is trying to concentrate power around SG’s executive branch, and he is using strong arm methods to do it; if he gets enough signatures, his proposal will bypass the Student Senate entirely. If Patel continues on this road, he could seriously distort the balance of power among student-body leaders. Winners and Sinners VALENTINE’S DAY The holiday of chocolate and Cupid is here, striking fear in the hearts of many unprepared boyfriends. ’ DAVE CHAPPELLE “Blackzilla” tour rocked the Roger Center last night. Columbia will never be the same — but it’ll never be D.C. E-MAIL FILTER Columbia is the first city to offer residents a porn-free e-mail account. Qtie69 will have to solicit business elsewhere. BEN CURTIS Former Dell commercial actor was recently arrested for drug possession. “Dude, you’re gettin’ a dime bag." JIM HODGES For spending most of the Governor’s Mansion budget and leaving the poor Sanfords to cook for themselves. “JOE MILLIONAIRE” We already know he’s not rich or smart. But Fox has another surprise for viewers — Evan Marriott is really a woman. GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS 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 Jill Martin Managing Editor Charles Tomlinson News Editor Adam Beam Asst. News Editor Wendy Jeffcoat Viewpoints Editor Erin O'Neal The Mix Editor Corey Garriott Asst. The Mix Editor Meg Moore Sports Editor Matt Rothenberg Asst. Sports Editor Brad Senkiw Photo Editor Johnny Haynes Asst. Photo Editor Morgan Ford Head Page Designers Sarah McLaulin, Katie Smith, David Stagg Page Designers Justin Bajan, Samantha Hall, Staci Jordan, Julia Knetzer, Shawn Rourk Slot Copy Editors Crystal Boyles, Tricia Ridgway, Emma Ritch Rim Copy Editors Alyson Goff, Mary Waters Online Editor Bessam Khadraoui Community Affairs Kiran Shah CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. Editor in Chief: gamecockeditor@hotmail.com News: gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Viewpoints: gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com The Mix: gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com Sports: gamecocksports@hotmail.com Public Affairs: gckpublicaffairs@hotmail.com Online: www.dailygamecock.com 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 Classified Manager Sherry F. Holmes Creative Services Derek Goode, Earl Jones, Sean O’Meara, Anastasia Oppert Advertising Staff John Blackshire, Adam Bourgoin, Bianca Knowles, Denise Levereaux, Jacqueline Rice, Stacey Todd The Gamecock is the editorially independent student newspaper of the University of South Carolina. It 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-activity fees. One free copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $1 each from the Department of Student Media. TO PLACf^ AN AD The Gamecock Advertising: 777-3888 1400 Greene St. Classified: 777-1184 Columbia. S.C. 29208 Fax:777-6482 i | &A5oubj£ P#\c£s owners To &q qp rvfjfa* CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS How to avert V-Day disaster PHIL WATSON GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Nothing says “be mine” like discount lingerie. Valentine’s Day, or, as I like to call it, V-Day, is here again, and I can hear guys from all over the world sarcastically thanking Hallmark under their breaths. But it doesn’t have to be a complete catastrophe, like your senior prom. No sir, this V-Day doesn’t have to end like that, with you and a drunken hillbil ly sharing a jail cell in some two-bit town 40 miles down the river and your date on the back of his best friend’s Harley Davidson, speeding down the in terstate in a mad dash for Van Nuys, Calif. But enough fuzzy memories. Here’s the best way to make sure this potentially volatile day doesn’t turn into an all-out, Burt Reynolds-style, high-school prom disaster. Use caution when buying gifts. Lingerie might seem like a good gift idea, but it can easily turn into the gift that keeps on giving a guilt trip all year long. Get the goods one size too large, and she’ll be as mad as Rosie O’Donnell in front of a mir ror in a Gap fitting room. But if you get it too small, she’ll think you’re trying to tell her some thing. This can be even worse than getting it too large. “So you think I’m fat, huh?” Now there’s a question that will kill your V-Day buzz. Besides, what guy who doesn’t hum show tunes while he takes a bubble bath wants to go into Victoria’s Secret alone? Well, Victoria’s Secret isn’t the only place you could buy your valentine lingerie. Kmart, Wal-Mart, Goodwill and even Dollar General sell unmention ables. But this might not be your wisest option. For some reason, girls don’t get too excit ed over bras bought at a thrift store. I wish I had known this before my disastrous senior prom, but again, I’m getting off the subject. Tickets to a sporting event al ways make for a romantic gift. But if sports aren’t her thing, there are other options, such as monster-truck rallies and David Allen Coe concerts. Nothing sets the mood for a romantic evening like a smokey bar filled with drunken hillbillies starting fights while the lyrics of Coe’s “Long Haired Redneck” drift through the air like broken beer bottles just before closing time. Oops, I’m digressing back to my senior prom yet again. “Johnny Cash helped me get out of prison, long before Rodriguez stole that goat. I’ve been a rhinestone cowboy for so long I can’t remember, and I can do you every song Hank Williams ever wrote.” If those Coe lyrics don’t make your valentine’s heart melt like butter on a burnt piece of toast during breakfast in the Bamberg County Detention Center, I don’t know what will. Which brings us to our final topic, V-Day dinner. Don’t take your valentine to any restaurant with the words queen, king, shake, waffle, buffet, Oliver Gospel Mission or Maurice in its name. Sure, these places are great for dates on Christmas, birthdays and Thanksgiving, but for V-Day, step it up a notch. Might I suggest something a lit tle classier, like a candle-lit din ner at Church’s Chicken? Watson is a fourth-year print journalism student. IN YOUR OPINION New constitution presents problems Student Body President Ankit Patel is seeking 1,500 sig natures for a petition to get a new constitution passed and put to an online vote. I applaud Patel for seeking to better rep resent the student body through a petition signing, but I disagree with his stances on some issues related to this new constitution. I support all of these changes, except one. Most of the changes are not only necessary, but make it easier for SG to go about representing the student body. But the new constitution would add this clause to the election of executive officers: “Candidates for President shall nominate a candidate for vice president of the student body whose name shall appear on the ballot with the presidential candidate.” This new balloting clause presents two problems. First, it forces presidential candidates to pick a vice presidential can didate to run on a ticket with the Presidential Candidate. With this clause, I see a reduced chance of SG outsiders being able to win such an election. The last thing we need is one more barrier in a student’s pur suit of an executive office. The second problem is the that of timing. The problem with timing is that the proposed con stitution is being pushed to be signed before the upcoming elec tion at the end of March. The Elections Commission, the gov erning body for elections, has al ready set the dates for this year’s elections and ironed out most of the specifics. So what is the Elections Commission going to do if this change goes ahead as planned? A radical change like this would take more prepara tion than might be expected. The proposed constitution would also add two new posi tions to the ballot — Attorney General and Secretary. If the proposed changes are passed, whether by petition or by a vote of the Student Senate, they should not take effect this year. It is unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game. It is important to read over the proposed constitution be fore signing the petition. The best way for the students to be represented is for each to take an active role on campus, and voice his or her opinions to the Student Government. TYLER ODOM THIRD-YEAR POLITICAL-SCIENCE STUDENT Affirmative action isn’t un-American After reading The Gamecock’s editorial a few weeks back and viewing its anti-affirmative-action cartoon on Feb. 5,1 feel impelled to ask this question of the editors: Do you see any social policy as be ing more important than the parochial rights of the individ ual in society? We hear all the time from our political leaders how personal sacrifice is the cornerstone of our republic’s strength. Somehow, this notion gets sub merged when the issue has to do with racial and class politics in this country. In other words, The Gamecock editors are falling for the overly facile and transparent argument made by the Bush administration that af firmative action is un-American. The Gamecock editors should spend more time dissecting the issues of racial and class poli tics in this country and less time parroting intellectually lazy and clearly partisan views against af firmative action. Your failure to point out the rich irony evident in Bush’s own history of benefiting from unearned privilege in his own educational attainment — that is, a self-admitted C student getting admitted to Yale and after getting C’s at Yale, somehow get ting admitted to Harvard Business School—is curious. Aside from arguments regard ing the clear salubrious effects of a diverse student body, the truth is, this country has the resources for both assisting minority can didates while taking into consid eration the needs of the vast ma jority of nonminority candidates for slots in its public universities. These slots are determined through fiscal, political and his torical decisions, not set-in-stone policies focused merely on limit ing entrance to the so-called de serving. So, if three students failed to get into the University of Michigan because they claim personal discrimination because of racial preferences, Lord knows there are literally thousands of other options at their disposal — as well as the option of lobbying for the university itself to expand its offerings. You might ask why should they have to? My re sponse: to do their part in help ing forge a better society. ROBERT STOKES ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE 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 letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777-7726 for more information. Getting to know Iraq in 3 steps DAVID STAGG GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM I’m an expert when it comes to Saddam. Being that it’s nearly Valentine’s Day and love is in the air, I can’t help but discuss the true love affair of everyone’s life: Saddam Hussein. Yes, the Arab sex pot himself, after having tak en himself out of the public eye for a few years, is back on the dat ing scene and is ever coveted. CNN wants him, Geraldo was spotted exchanging numbers, and even Fox News sent a reporter into one of his palaces dressed as Sean Penn to try to, and I quote, “hook it up.” As a journalist, however, it is imperative that I not only have an opinion on his personal dating life, but that I also have an opin ion on his foreign affairs. Further, I must also assume that I know more about the situation than the common reader does and try to use this wealth of knowledge to solve the world’s problems in 500 words or less. nuuw me iu uuo oiau uu uj telling you everything I know about Iraq, cleverly outlined here with ones, twos and threes, for your reading convenience: 1) I know he is connected to Kevin Bacon through six degrees. What’s more, however, is that it does not even take the full six de grees, but rather three (yes, a mere three degrees!) to separate everyone’s favorite dictator and Mr. Bacon himself. Here we go: Degree No. 1: Saddam had a starring role in “Saddam Hussein: Defying the World — A Visual Biography,” released in 1990 and also starring former president George Bush. Degree No. 2: Bush No. 39 had a part in the documentary “The Last Party,” about the Democratic national convention in 1992, also starring Sean Penn. This is not to mention that Saddam tried to as sassinate Bush, and I think con ducted a war against him at some point in time. Degree No. 3: Sean Penn, who also recently visited the fertile soil of Saddam’s Fun Park, will be in the upcoming Clint Eastwood film “The Mystic River,” set for release Oct. 3, also starring Kevin Bacon. Yes, Saddam, even you can’t es cape the ever-witty culture of the United States. 2) It is impossible to oro nounce the country’s name cor rectly. if you are on cable televi sion or a news anchor for the ever-respected and ever-so trendy MTV, you must pro nounce it “eeh-rock.” If you are a human being living in America, however, you pro nounce it like the rest of the Western world: “eye-rack.” If you are from anywhere else, it is com monly referred to as “The Land of a Thousand Dictators,” where the national anthem consists of one phrase: “Na, na na na nah, na na na nah, nuh-nuh na nuh nuh na, nuh-nuh-nuh na.” For review, let’s use these in a sentence. MTV: “Yesterday, Bruce Springsteen played a sellout per formance in New York. ‘Eeh rock’ed the house with material from his new CD, ‘The Rising.’ ” Western world: “I went skiing for the first time last week. ‘Eye rack’ed myself on a tree.” 3) Honestly, those two things are all I know about Iraq. I felt like three was more of a round num ber, and people usually assume that if you can come up with three bullet points for a presentation, you are an expert on the matter. Stagg is a second-year media-arts student.