Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Monday, August 25, 2003 5 SOUND OFF TT?TT7'Or\TATrriO ONLINE POLL Create message boards at I B—4 B / B / B fl B B I B Do you use USC’s antivirus www.dailygamecock.com or B B 1 i B / B / B B B B I B l - software or your own? send letters to the editor to B B J W W B 1 F I I 1 B k. J >. www.dailygamecock.com. gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com —IB ■ ^ B^—S —■— A l ■ !■ rv—/ Results published on Fridays. IN OUR OPINION USC is on the up and up £ USC President Andrew Sorensen aims to make USC a top-tier school, and it looks like he has the ammunition. U.S. News and World Report just ranked our undergraduate international business degree No. 1. in the nation. The Moore School of Business moved up four spots to No. 39. This is in addition to our graduate international business program, which has maintained a warm spot in the top two for the past 14 years. It also named our first-year programs — university 101 and the freshman experience — a national model, listing it with 32 other colleges and universities under the heading “Programs to look for.” The Moore School’s latest accolade will grab the attention of the diverse international crowd that already comes here for the graduate school. 2003’s freshmen class is considered the best yet, and more applicants from more places would make it even easier to select the cream of the crop. USC already has top-10 schools in journalism and engineering. Last year we won the largest research grant in our history, and this summer we signed a research deal with Intel. Pending approval from the Commission on Higher Education, Sorensen wants to break ground on a research campus in November that will double USC’s size. USC might soon be a a national rising star and the Southeast’s school to beat. USC might soon be a national rising star and the g Southeast’s " school to beat. College Quote Board KANSAS STATE COLLEGIAN JESSE LOEWEN. KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY “Tuition is up. Housing costs are up. Student loan limits have stayed the same. “Last year, I paid roughly $1,600 for 15 credit hours ... This semester 1 shelled out $2,300 for the same servic es. "Granted, I am taking classes in x>th engineering and business, the two departments that had the largest tu ition hike, but to me this amounts to a 43 percent increase.” DAILY EGYPTIAN LENIE ADOLPHSON, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY “When teaching at an American col lege or university, all professors and lecturers should be required to speak fluent English.... “Nevertheless, the reality is that there are classrooms in which students struggle because of the lack of oral proficiency in English by the professor." GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS An article about Cocky in Thursday's paper contained an error. Jacksonville State in Jacksonville, Ala., is also a Division I school nicknamed the Gamecocks. 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 Managing Editor Adam Beam News Editor Michael LaForgia Asst. News Editor Alexis Stratton Viewpoints Editor Corey Garriott 1 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, ^ Shawn Rourk, David } Stagg Slot Copy Editor Tricia Ridgway Copy Editors Amy Genoble, Gabrielle Sinclair, Mary Waters. Alyson Goff 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 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 PLACE AN AD i ne bamecocK 1400 Greene St. Columbia, S.C. 29208 Advertising: 777-3888 Classified: 777-1184 Fax: 777-6482 "WHY ARe YoU LooKinG AT WE.??,,,. CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Bad job makes sweet return ANNA LAKE GAMECOCKEDITOR@HOTMAIL.COM Sometimes the school year can be a vacation. I can’t hpgin to describe how happy I am to be back at USC after my sum mer break. Don’t get me wrong - sum mer is a great time for getting sun, playing on the lake and learning what you don’t want to do for the rest of your life. But it didn’t take me long to learn that I never, ever want to work ing in banking. God bless the souls of those who do. I just wanted a nice summer job. I wanted to work weekdays from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. I realize that I am a jour nalism major and may never have the opportunity to work normal hours again, so I wanted to take advantage of it while I still could. Banker’s hours seemed like the perfect solution. I not only worked from 9 to 5,1 got an hour for lunch every day, and I had the weekends and holidays off. It seemed perfect. It didn’t take long for me to realize how much I loved school and that I wanted to be a college student for the rest of my life. I hate working with the public. Most of the people in the general pub lic do not understand big words and phrases like “deposit your check.” No, all they can say is, “Cash this check for me.” Except the word “cash” is pronounced in the most nasal, red neck way possible. And for goodness’ sake, don’t mess anything up on those big checks because these people only have 10 fingers and 10 toes. If the check is for over $20, they’ll just have to trust you, the friendly neighbor hood bank teller, to get it right. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There were some customers who defied the image. There was the occasional cus tomer who came in and made my time at the bank worthwhile. One day, a man walked in and made me laugh like never before. He had short gray hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He had on neat khaki pants with a brown belt and a tucked-in, blue-collared shirt. I deposited his money into his bank account and, like a good bank teller, asked him how he was. He responded: “I can’t get 'Ice Ice Baby’ out of my head. It’s been stuck in my head for two days now. It gets old after a while, you know?” I excused myself to the back room, where I exploded with laughter. There were other days. Days where so many crazy things happened that I wanted to run far, far away from banks and money and never come back again. One day, for some reason, these people decided to walk their dog in the pouring rain through the drive in. And on its way across the drive-in, the dog had to go. So, it did — in my drive-in. Later that day, a kid threw up in the lobby. And so his dad bought him a candy bar. The insanity of this bank is utter ly amazing! I counted down the days until I could come back to school, where peo ple seem a little more normal and I don’t have to spend every second wor ried about getting robbed. I’m glad I got to use my summer job to find out exactly what I do not want to do for the rest of my life. It’s a good incen tive to study hard. Anna Lake is a second-year journalism student. IN YOUR OPINION • -V . .. ■ • . . ■ . " ' J How to change the world In one step It was on a Thursday in mid July. I walked upstairs during my freshman orientation to see how WUSC operated. I wanted a job at WUSC express my opinion on Columbia, the University of South Carolina and the Steve Miller Band. I wanted a job with the radio station so I could reach out to the students and a nationwide audi ence, since the station now has a Web stream. But I accidentally walked into the production room of The Gamecock student newspaper and found an old copy of the Garnet and Black. I read a letter by Katie Smith, the previous edi tor, that said a great way to ex press yourself is by working for The Gamecock. So I am hereby applying for a job as an employee — a designer, perhaps. The. Gamecock needed more staff, I thought. You too can apply, they said, by walking up to the Russell House room 333. I left them my resume and a filled-out application with great hopes that I can change the world. PHILIP WHITEHEAD THIRD-YEAR JOURNALISM, ADVERTISING AND GRAPHIC ARTS STUDENT Greek life Is from a galaxy far, far away If I were a spaceman, I would wear a space suit. Silver and shiny, with corrugated tubing. If I were a rock star, I would wear Bjork-esque big cool dress es with feathers and a fake swan head around my neck. If I were a creamsicle, I would wear a drippy, sugary, orange exterior. But if I were a student at the University of South Carolina, what would I wear? A tube top dress with spiked heels? A full suit and tie? Last Thursday was the first day of school, and I woke up an hour before my first class so I would have plenty of time. Maybe I would even get there five to 10 minutes early. Bring my new pens that write really well and my new glorious-smelling note books. After my shower I put on my normal daily wardrobe of jeans and a T-shirt. I mean, it’s 9 a.m. But as I was walking through the Horseshoe and toward LeConte, I saw many many girls dressed up in cocktail attire and boys clad in khakis and polo shirts. Now, I know there is freedom of expression in a person’s clothing choice. But they can’t be going to a stuffy, early lecture in stiletto heels. They can’t be taking a math class wearing that cologne. I was thinking that maybe there was a flrst-day-of-class party, and everyone else got the memo I did n’t. “Today is the first day of class. While Caitlin is going to statistics, every other student is invited to a super-secret breakfast disco dance party. Dress swanky” Passing the lavatory mirror af ter class, I looked in the mirror and smoothed out my hair. CAITLIN COKER SECOND-YEAR JOURNALISM. STUDENT Got an opinion? The Gamecock’s Viewpoints section seeks intelligent writing on local and state issues, humorous writing and anything you think the university community needs to discuss in an open forum. E-mail gamecockeditor@ hotmail.com 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. Classes - • should require projects COREY GARRIOTT GAMECOCKEDITOR0HOTMAIL.COM USC should train skills as well as academics. People learn best by doing. We re member history outlines and foreign languages by repetition, calculus by working equations and journalism by writing. And the journalism school, ranked in the top 10 in the nation, makes its journalists write. In its senior semes ter program, the Carolina Reporter, students work what is essentially a full-time job for a semester. Papers look for experience when they hire, and the Carolina Reporter provides it for our journalism stu dents, but what about our English ma jors, economists, financiers and psy chologists? wmie journalists wont in uus well-simulated newsroom and are left to run it themselves, a lot of schools don’t offer any sort of practice. They offer a merely academic exercise. The practice of an economist, in the university or the corporation, is to apply a complex theory, but most of the papers our economics students write repeat the theory rather than apply it. Our English students are not sent to a workshop to practice their craft, but they do become experts in the offi cial interpretation of Western canon. Even Honors College students only complete a self-motivated project dur ing their senior year. Engineering stu dents begin design projects as early as the sophomore year. USC, like most universities, shunts students through a four-year process that only proves they can stay awake in class. The bachelor’s degree is so ubiq uitous today that it’s meaningless ex cept as a screen for basic intelligence. A professional school for fashion merchandising opens its doors to the world and forces its students to buy for a hypothetical store, plan its budg et and execute some of its finances. I can think of many similar ways that the university can connect the ideas it teaches with the world they came from. Business students could run a hy pothetical business apart from their “writing and presentation” projects. Psychologists might be forced to interpret the data USC professors col lect in class or collect it from one another over a long period. The fundamental point is that a book isn’t important unless it talks about something people care about, and people primarily care about ac tion — even in the realm of philoso phy, academic philosophers are ex pected to produce, produce, produce volumes of new and original ideas. This isn’t usually stressed in an un dergraduate program. There are plenty of undergradu ate philosophy journals starving for submissions just like The Gamecock wants writers. But because no one communicates to the students that they will need proof of their abilities to get a job, even in the ivory tower, both institutions often use the same writers every year. In fact, it often perplexes me why more journalism students don’t write for The Gamecock. They ought to know that actual practice doing the things studied matters more to their future employers than a good grade in their classes. Corey Garriott is a third-year philosophy and economics student.