Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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SOUND OFF ' ONLINE POLL „ , , Are you satisfied with the Create message boards at RusseU House,s textbook www.dailygamecock.com or reservation system? send letters to the editor to www.dailygamecock.com. gamecockviewpomts@hotmail.com - Results published Monday. __ IN OUR OPINION Vote Cocky 2003 mascot I Make sure you log on to www.capitolonebowl.com this September. USC’s own Cocky is running for Mascot of the Year. You know Cocky as the manic rooster who struts down the field at football games, but Cocky deserves a vote for more than keeping the crowd home to roost. USC’s Gamecock mascot provides a symbol for the university and its student body. Students who identify with USC don’t call While hundreds of schools bill themselves as lions, tigers or bears, just * one Division I university founds its reputation on the colorful fighting rooster. themselves University of South Carolina students — they call themselves Gamecocks. And what puts USC’s garnet gallus a chicken leg above schools such as Clemson is his unusual species. While hundreds of schools bill themselves as lions. tigers or bears, just one Division I university founds its reputation on the colorful fighting rooster. Cocky keeps birds of a feather together because he sets us apart. The easily identifiable mascot also helps the university brand itself. Putting a rooster on its sports teams is one thing; if USC becomes a first-tier research university as Sorensen plans, the Gamecock symbol could become a feather in our cap and USC’s signature for quality. And that’s not to mention he’s good business. Our bird of rare breed makes for some pretty identifiable running shorts — visible from, yes, a bird’s eye view. Winners and Sinners USC POLICE The guys in garnet don’t get much credit. They deserve some for their fall safety plans. HOUSING They got every one of the seniors on the wait list an offer for a room. CAROLINA DINING The Russell House looks great, guys. Who needs the Blue Marlin? COMPREHENSIVE ADMISSIONS PLAN USC admissions was race-blind — why are we switching back? TEXTBOOK PRICES ...and, while we’re at it, let’s name all the other usual suspects: parking, classes and the RIAA. U.N. If you can’t take the heat, don’t abandon the desert. Peacekeeping isn’t fun and games. 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 Charles Tomlinson I Managing Editor Adam Beam News Editor Michael LaForgia Asst. News Editor Alexis Stratton Viewpoints Editor Corey Garriott The Mix Editor Meg Moore Asst. The Mix Editor Brian Ray Sports Editor Brad Senkiw Photo Editor Morgan Ford Asst. Photo Editor Trisha Shadwell Page Designers Justin Bajan, Samantha Hall, Staci Jordan, Shaw Rourk, David Stagg Slot Copy Editor Tricia Ridgway Copy Editors Alyson Goff. Gabrielle Sinclair, Mary Waters, Corey Garriott Online Editor James Tolbert 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 Creative Director Susan King Business Manager Carolyn Griffin Advertising Manager Sarah Scarborough Classified Manager Sherry F. Holmes Production Manager Patrick Bergen n Creative Services Derek Goode, Earl Jones, Sean O'Meara. Anastasia Oppert Advertising Staff John Blackshire, Adam Bourgoin, Ben Sinclair, Jesica Johnson, Ryan Gorman. Laytoya Hines 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 PUCE AN AD ^ 1400 Greene St. ' Columbia. S.C. 29208 Advertising: < < i-oooo Classified: 777-1184 Fax: 777-6482 SORRY FeUAS-JUST STCPPet> our TDTH6 LiTTLe BOYS' ROOM. A WHAT'D I Lii fi MiSS?. u rMs \ CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS N. Y. school helps gay youth ELIZABETH CATANESE GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM The 20-year-old school works on real problems that homosexuals face. Imagine that every day, you enter an environment rife with harassment, taunts and threats of physical violence — not be cause of what you do, but be cause of who you are. Peers see you as morally abhorrent. You are treated as a second-class citi zen. Some people may, under the guise of kindness, advise you to change. But the spot won’t rub out, and your hands will never be clean. Or you hide yourself. You as sume a mask, go through the mo tions, pretend that if you pretend well enough and often enough, you can change yourself. You be lieve that you can become who you are not because you are afraid of who you are. So you lie because truth carries its own harsh consequences. In the midst of this, people ex pect you to pass calculus. Every day, gay high school students across America face these two scenarios. According to the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States, developing a sexual self concept is a key developmental task of adolescence. Discovering that your sexuality falls within the marginalized 10 percent of homosexuals adds more tumult to an already tempestuous time. Even if a gay teen is comfortable with his or her sexuality, others often are not, and will go to extra mile to tell them so. “You wear makeup,” one boy was taunted, in a private school outside of Orangeburg (he didn’t). Another boy in the Columbia suburbs had bricks hurled through his car. In Ohio, a girl found her car smeared with rotten eggs, her tires slashed and the words “burn in hell” keyed into her paint. This vandalishi occurred on school grounds. Unfortunately, few high school administrators deal effec tively with these hate crimes. “They told me there wasn’t enough evidence to do anything about it,” said Jess, the Ohio teen. “I was jumped three times as well, once on school grounds, and they told me the same thing.” Though only 6 percent of gay teens report suffering physical assault, 46 percent are verbally abused and 86 percent frequently hear homophobic remarks. Thirty-six percent hear those re marks from faculty members. It comes as no surprise that gay students’ most frequent com plaint is marginalization by the administration. Just as damaging, and almost wholly invisible, is the discon nection plaguing gay teens across America. Gay students suffer acutely from isolation dur ing their formative years. Since many gay students stay in the closet, it’s difficult for gay teens to find emotional support from their peers. The lack of tangible role models also hampers their developments; few homosexual adolescents enjoy a close rela tionship with a gay adult who has “been there.” Most teens feel that they are the only ones on earth with their problems. Gay teens feel the sting of adolescent isolation even more. Gay, straight, black, white, yellow or blue, all students have the right to thrive in an environ ment free from fear and abuse. In ♦ HARVEY MILK, SEE PAGE A10 IN YOUR OPINION Keep your eye on Columbia’s future Fall semester is here, and a record number of incoming freshmen are arriving. For many of them it will be their first time away from home, in a new and strange' place. Many of them may be asking the question that I at tempt to answer here: What is this city, Columbia? •To me, Columbia is the fa miliar that once was unfamil iar; a few years ago, though I grew up only 100 miles away, you could have dropped me off almost anywhere in the city and I would have been com pletely lost. Gervais Street, Huger Street were names that meant very little to me. Assembly Street. Harden Street. Now they make up the verv backbone of my life’s ge ography, orienting me to the lo cal and the far-flung, as Columbia’s main streets are laid out in a grid with Main running directly north and south. In Columbia, I can point to anywhere on the globe. The people in Columbia are a good representation of the population of the South as a whole. Someone recently char acterized it as a “New South” city, meaning that it tends to hold on to its traditions while accepting the new. This may not be entirely inaccurate. Gangs, drugs, “real news” — we have these things, but not to the extent of other, larger places, due in part to our cul tural backwardness. Hence the sometime fanaticism of the con servative South, which trea sures the status quo above all else, though the liberal com munity continues to grow and become more vocal.' Columbia is the best place to watch the times change for the South; sure, Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta have more people, more money, and more influ ence — but by these very quali ties they have lost the distinctly Southern aura that envelopes our city. They have been forced by their economic growth to conform, whereas in poor Columbia, we don’t have that problem, as much as it seems we’d like to. Still, we make our way to ward the future with one eye closed, from the hangover of last night, the hangover from history, from wars and slavery and poverty, one Hummer, one college degree, one trip to San Francisco at a time. J. TYLER LEE JR. FIKST-YEAH II,SC SCHOOL OF LAW STUDENT Carolina Center alienates students Ah, I love South Carolina, where it seems that they can never get anything right. The situation seemed sim ple. The WWE was returning to the Carolina Center on Sept. 15 for a broadcast of their RAW television program. Fans were excited, especially after the great Smackdown show they had put on last November. Tickets were going on sale Saturday, Aug. 16, at 10 a.m. Our vigil to ensure front-row tickets began At 9 a.m. on Friday. In addition to our ex citement, we dragged our cool ers and lawn chairs out to the pavement in front of the Carolina Center ticket window, prepared to wait out the night for our coveted prize. We wait ed through the evening rain that is a daily occurrence in Columbia lately; we talked about everything and anything, but es pecially wrestling. The news showed up in the morning, when WIS came down to sponsor a doughnut-eating con test. The prize? Front row tick ets. But none of us needed to en ter because we had ensured our spots in the front row with our 25 hours of waiting. So we thought. Unfortunately, there was a small piece of information that none of us knew that' rendered our overnight labor of love a vain pur suit. Before tickets even went on sale, the best 42 seats in the house (the front row seats with most camera exposure) had already been given to radio and television stations to give away as prizes. To add insult to injury, the Carolina Center ticket windows were a little slow getting going on Saturday morning. By the time the first people in line were al lowed to purchase tickets, they had been on sale on Ticketmaster.com for five min utes or more. Needless to say, all of the front-row seats were now gone. This whole incident leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those of us who sat all night — we feel punished rather then rewarded for our dedication to WWE. HEATHER CARPINI FIRST-YEAR GRADUATE STUDENT IN HISTORY 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. Watch out for the USC pitfalls ALLYSONBIRD . GAMECOCKVIEWPOINTS@HOTMAIL.COM Don’t get skin cancer or dump your ID card out with your GMP tray. The GMP looks like the inside of the Ritz-Carlton, though the only gift shop I see still just sells textbooks and a lot of plastic stuff that says “COCKS.” But other than that, nothing has really changed. I still find it amazing that no one ever walks on the grass in the Horseshoe, but . instead they follow all the little brick walkways even.if it adds time to the trek. And don’t tell me you do it for sanctity of the grass, because I see all of you in the springtime parking your sweaty butts on it all day. Now that’s sanctity. And I really don t understand why all Southern college students don’t have cancer from extreme exposure to roach repellent be cause it’s amazing how few cock roaches we see in the dorms and apartments on campus. Spotting a roach always ends in an excla mation of shock and disgust, though anyone who lives in-state has learned the principle of coex istence until “the bug man” comes. The college decor is the same. Highlighter-filled beer bottles and band posters never change. Even the bands on the posters never change, but so what if we haven’t seen the Dead or Marley? We’ve seen the cover bands; fair enough. That said, this article is for the freshmen. Since not much ever changes, just watch the college movies, and you’ll know what to do. Don’t be disappointed when the real life characters don’t look like they have hair stylists and make-up consultants because they get ready in the same low pressure showers and dim lights that you do. Try new things because even if college details never change, one of those details is experimenta tion Itself. Last year, I went with a few people from my dorm to Goth night at New Brookland Tavern. Even though we had to correct each other when we started smil ing, I still won one of the door prizes, and I can’t understand why it seemed to make the sad faced party goers even sadder. But I’m sure I’ll find occasion to sport that giant rhinestone spider ring someday. Take a class you never thought you would take. My roommate, my suitemate and 1 all took fenc ing spring semester just for fun. And who wouldn’t want to walk to class in tapered sweatpants and put on those cool crotch-grabbing white suits and alien masks once we got there? Do something that you’ve al ways wanted to try once. I crowd surfed at Fallout last year, just to say I’ve done it, but I’ll never do it again. I even called my mom af terward to tell her of my exploits, but it kind of lost its novelty when I had to explain what crowd-surf ing was before getting yelled at. Not to get off-topic, but be care ful with your Carolina Card be cause if you carry it on your din ing tray — you will throw it away. You will dig through the trash to get it, and you will be sitting next to a table full of the opposite sex with a front-row seat to watch you do it. I guarantee it. Within limits,.just make your own rules this year — and don’t give me that look if you see me walk on the grass. Allyson Bird is a second-year journalism student.