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Just play Starcraft GABRIELLE SINCLAIR GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Play Starcraft and you will go far in college I'm a junior ancl I’ve lived. You can trust me. I'll tell you this now: there is more to college life than student government, Internet piracy and reefer madness. Don't be mislead by cheap im itations As-Seen-On-TV. It's a new year and it's under standable you're looking for ad vice, searching for your own Dr. Phil. You want an easy answer and that just happens to be what I specialize in. You ve completed orientation and are now equipped with all the necessary literature aimed toward programming you into the college mold. "Getting involved, making new friends and going outside are essential to the True College Experience," the pamphlets cry. Yeah, I've read all the propa ganda, all of which can easily be addressed and dismissed by first blowing it off as some sort of communist conspiracy, then not ing that making friends is what graduate school is really about and third noting that you are, in fact, not a tree. College is about developing passion; or, more specifically, evolving chronic obsession. In fact, I'll just say it: college is about the search for a means to forestalling homework, ratio nal thought and adulthood, in definitely. And with that, I give you Starcraft. That’s right, Starcraft. The Real Time Strategy (RTS) game that will see you through your freshman year and keep you sailing smooth for the entire > duration of your college career. No, don't thank me. You are, after all, our future. I speak from experience. My love affair with the Zerg, Protoss and Terran (species of alien one can select to play as, each defiantly set on control of one unnamed planet) began in nocently enough. Acting on an impulse to reaf firm my worth as the girlfriend of a self-proclaimed geek, I took that leap into this sprawling two dimensional macrocosm. Further spurned by rampant nay-saying misogynists wield ing unproven claims of female gamer inferiority, I felt behold en to continue on my chosen path of online domination. I did not yet know the magni tude of influence this so-called "game” would have on my emo tional, spiritual and pathologi cal development as a human be ing. I must have played over a hundred times and never won, but that's not the point. My innate, overly sensitive idealism prohibited me from the chaos. I remember nobly building up my villages; a SimCity with siege tanks and missile silos. And then I pressed on, undeterred by fa talism, waiting patiently for these three sets of strangers to somehow find a way to see past their overwhelming differences and finally get along. If a swarm of massive insects and glowing balls of destructive light could make peace and work together, surely hope for the Israelis and Palestinians to fig ure themselves out is not so very in vain. Vespean gas depletion will be pertinent in your daily life and your choices in your freshman ' year. You will have dreamt in pix els, and wish for a world less overwhelmed by this place and its ever-present third dimension. For your freshman year, you don’t want to overreach yourself. Get back to me in a semester or three and we'll talk about the anime club and the wonders of all-night spades. Until then, take my advice. Keep it simple and don't leave your room. Sabrielle Sinclair is a third-year orint journalism student. Gay high school a poor idea WESLEY DONEHUE GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM New high school should not be taxpayer-funded Last week I got a paycheck for $400, of Gourse only after the gov ernment took its cut. I could not believe that they ' stole $80 worth of my hard work. I was completely pissed. This anger grew more intense when I turned on the news to hear of a new high school in New York paid for with taxpayers' money. The city of New York is mak ing history. Controversial as it might be, the city is opening a public high school for teenagers practicing alternative lifestyles. Supported by $3.2 million of taxpayers' dollars, Harvey Milk High School will specialize in teaching 170 gay, lesbian, bisex ual and transgendered students. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims the school will be a safe haven for homosexual students, protecting them from harassment and physical abuse. I believe that this is a gross misuse of our money and a viola tion of the United States Constitution. Whether you realize it or not, your hard-earned money is going to pay for this school. Harvey Milk High School will be run by the New York state ed ucation system, which receives funding from the federal govern ment. That money comes from your paycheck, although you might personally not even agree with homosexuality. Also, this school comes at the expense of other students. The state is in a budget crisis, much like South Carolina and is faced with the necessity to slice its funding to many public schools. All the while, they are giving $3.2 million for the benefit of only 170 students. Even if you could argue that alternative students receive an unfair and unsafe amount of ha rassment, what about all of the other groups of students who face this same harassment on a daily basis? Should every clique get their own publicly paid-for school? Following this thought, we will need to use every cent of our paychecks to building public schools all over the nation for fat kids, small kids, nerds, athletes and countless others. If you don't feel like you fit into any of those groups, you can just build your own public school with taxpay ers’ dollars just for you. Since this is such a great idea, why haven't we seen these new fine institutions popping up all over our hometowns and down town Columbia? We all know the answer, which is that the Constitution provides equal protection for all individuals, not segregation. Neither the federal govern ment nor any state government can treat people differently, even if they choose to be separated. I will always believe that the government should not be able to meddle in our private lives. Brown v. Board of Education happened for a reason, which is to solidify the reality that all Americans are and deserve to be treated equally. Be gay if you like, but grow up and live with the choices you have made. Don't expect me or any other taxpayer to pay for your lifestyle decisions. Wesley Donehue is grad student in the School of Liberal Arts. Regime change needed in 2004 RACHEL EDWARDS GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Bush’s voodoo economics continue to harm U.S. economy If you read the newspaper or listen to the news, you will proba bly hear about the appalling state of the U.S. economy and the huge deficit. President Bush does not seem to have an answer to this problem. Instead, he just seems to I ignore it and continues giving tax breaks to the wealthy. The Bush administration has managed to accumulate more than $930 billion in debt in just two years. In an attempt to "fix" the re cession, Bush has been throwing money at the problem. The combination of tax cuts and increased spending after 9-11 con tributed to this problem. It is understandable that there will be deficits in a recession, but the tax cuts Bush has pushed through Congress will continue long after the economy finally gets going again. But the problem doesn’t end there. State and local governments might actually be worse off be cause they cannot run a deficit like the federal government. If a state government cannot bal ance its budget, it must slash spend -1 ing and make cuts throughout its budget. State governments all over the country are suffering from the Bush administration’s gross mis management of federal funds. South Carolina had to lay off over 6,000 teachers last year. Many other state agencies are short-staffed as well. How much more can these agencies cut back before the services they provide really begin to suffer? Bush's mandates have in creased state government spend ing in a time when they ’are pinching pennies. The "No Child Left Behind" mandate did not come with extra money to get it going. Instead, the federal gov ernment just seemed to assume that state governments would find the money somewhere. Homeland defense has also strained state budgets. In a crisis such as this, the federal govern ment should be helping states weather the storm, rather than adding to their problems with un funded new programs. If the federal government ran like a privately owned and pub licly traded company, investors would be calling for Bush's head an a platter. He would have al ready been asked to step down and let someone more competent take over. No private company would tol erate this type of obvious mis management. In the private sec tor, when a company is in crisis the CEO is usually the first per son the investors replace. Boards of directors know that in order to get confidence levels up a new per son must be brought in. Hopefully, the American peo ple will turn out in record num bers and remove Bush from pow er in 2004. This country might not be able to handle another four years of Bush's budget cuts and reckless spending. Rachel Edwards is a third-year orint journalism student. Some things don't change ALLYSON BIRD GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Your friends always know who you really are They call Charleston the Holy City. And while it's no New Orleans, it sure ain't holy either. Charleston is one of those taste ful tourist cities where by night you see the local punkers sitting on the John C. Calhoun statue and the tricked-out imports cruis ing past Saks. And that's where I went home for the summer, fully aware as I was packing up my stuff that I'd just be packing it all up again in just a few months. So, I dumped it in my room, un changed since fourth grade, sure that I'd hold to those promises to call all of my college friends reg ularly over the next few months. But I didn't, and they didn't call me, either. Maybe your situation was sim ilar, and you found yourself won dering who you were going to hang out with now that you’d have to get in the car, rather than just walk next door or across the Horseshoe, every time you want ed to go see a friend. And maybe you too found that leaving your life of independence on campus for a few months at home was, surprisingly, a hell of a lot of fun. I already wonder where it went. It was good times in Charleston, even when we were just out walking around the city, like the night we met the local with the foot fetish. Apparently I was the only one in town who wasn't aware of his obsession as he groped my size-10 foot on a busy street while my two friends who knew better snapped a photo of my shocked face from behind his back. Somewhere in between screaming "boo!" out the window at ghost tours, going to the beach at 1 a.m. and taking pictures with each group of uniformed men we passed, I learned my first summer home from college that you have to do more than take a few classes to move away from real friends and your real home. You can't grow out of the peo ple you grew up with, because even if you do, they've still got the blackmail. Think about after the prom your junior year in high school. And while people get married or overweight or depressed and all the little details of our beings seem to change over time, some things never really do. Some things are always there to be picked up where they left off. That said, a new year starts here. Welcome back. Allyson Bird is a second-year print journalism student. Dorm Room Carpet Choap! EXAMPLE: 12x9 room = $63.72 COGDILL Carpet Mill Outlet OPEN MON-SAT 9AM TO 6PM www.cogdills.com • E-mail Address: flooring@cofldIlls.com Where you Create the Magic Unique Giftbaskets With Items From Caswell Massey, Joseph Schmidt Chocolates, Tyler Candles, and More... (803) 256-0043 io.-oo-7:00 pm 1219 Lincoln Street Saturday Columbia, SC 29201 , 10:00- 2:00 PM We accept major Credit Cards. QoAfadt AN HISTORIC RESIDENCE Efficiency $505 One Bedroom $565 Two Bedroom $600 Rent includes all utilities and cable TV. All rates quoted are month to month. 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