Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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www.dailygamecock.com _WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1,2003_ }liLg£i£ Activity-fee surplus sparks planning More students, leftover funds lead to $190,000 in extra money BY ADAM BEAM TIIEIiAMKCOCK Greene Street lighting, a Global Positioning System for USC shut tles and a two-year newspaper readership program are all pro jects Student Government execu tive officers hope to fund with the help of nearly $190,000 they didn’t know they had. • SG President Katie Dreiling, ice President Zachery Scott and Treasurer Ben Edwards will pre sent a bill to the Student Senate to day that will allocate $189,500 in ex tra funding they say will help im prove university life. According to the bill, the mon ey will be divided into three sec tions: $49,000 for safety issues, $39,500 for parking issues and $101,000 for campus issues. The extra money comes from what student organizations didn’t spend last year. In the past, unused money allocated from SG to stu dent organizations simply rolled over to the next year. Director of Student Life Jerry Brewer said that policy changed last year, and the unused money distributed among USC’s more than 300 stu dent organizations was swept into another account and forgotten by SG. The money also came from the recent surge in student enroll ment. Because the university has accepted more freshmen than usu al during the past two years, the projections for the student activity fee were too low, and Student Life was left with a surplus. When SG moved out of its office in the Russell House basement during the spring, it was charged with a fee of more than $1,000 for moving the furniture. As SG was scrambling to find a way to pay for this, Edwards asked around about the money that had been rolled over. What he found was nearly $190,000 sitting in a bank account. According to Student Senate rules, Dreiling, Scott and Edwards cannot formally present legislation to the senate. But the three officers — the only officers elected by the entire student body — put the bill together, and Sen. Lara Bratcher, a fourth-year anthropology stu dent, will officially present the bill when the senate convenes at 5 p.m. today in the Russell House Theater. Dreiling, Scott and Edwards have spent the past month and a half trying to figure out how the money should be spent. The offi cers say they already have the ap proval of the administration and only need the senate’s approval to make the project a reality. While senators will have the chance to make amendments to the bill, they did not help determine how the money would be spent. Scott said they did not participate for the sake of speed. “When you get 35 people in a room and give them a subject, it’s the nature of democracy that it just takes longer,” he said. “This is by no means going over their heads.” Keeping with Dreiling’s desire to give students a “tangible” SG, the trio decided to use the money to try to improve student life. Safety For safety, $30,000 will go toward installing streetlights on Greene Street going into Five Points. While the Russell House is swamped with streetlights, the area of Greene Street running toward Capstone and into Five Points has been a hot issue with students for years. It’s an issue Dreiling has been working on for the three years she has been involved with SG. Dreiling said she has talked with USC President Andrew Sorensen, and the two plan to go before the Columbia City Council in November and ask for lighting. Dreiling said the approval would depend on the neighborhood asso ciation, of which Sorensen is a member. “If we can get lighting for Greene Street, It won’t not happen because the university doesn’t have money for it,” Dreiling said. $14,000 of the safety money would go toward SHARE - Sexual Health and Rape Prevention. SHARE would use the money to re establish the “safe space” program, in which certain people are identi fied as counselors for gay and les bian students who are feeling dis criminated against. According to Scott, the program was around in the mid-1990s before being cut. Signs would be placed outside the doors of professors or students who would have some form of counselor training. ♦ FUNDING, SEE PAGE 3 The unofficial start of fall rnuiu bt lylUnuArJ fUKU/ l nt UftivitouLn «st one day before the fair, the fairgrounds In front of Willlams-Brlce stadium are alive with activity. The fair opens Thursday d will feature the Gravltron ride, elephant ears and roller coasters. ♦ FOR FULL STORY, SEE THE MIX, PAGE 5 A second look at history Beloved statesman John Calhoun comes alive in cache of documents Senate chambers on his own.” Wilson knows nearly every de tail of Calhoun’s life. He is the ed itor of the last 19 volumes of the Papers of John C. Calhoun. The 28-volume collection has been a research project for USC history professors for more than 55 years and has concluded this month with the publication of the final volume. Since the project’s inception, researchers have analyzed more than 55,000 documents found in libraries and collections in many parts of North America. The doc uments include Calhoun’s schol arly writing, personal corre spondence, Congressional floor speeches and other political no tations. “We don’t have everything he v< ever wrote, but it has been a ter rific search,” Wilson said. Perhaps South Carolina’s most recognizable historical figure, Calhoun served in public service from 1809 until his death in 1850, holding such offices as congress man, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state and vice presi dent of the United States under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. “He was really more than the sum of all those of fices,” Wilson said. “He was a great thinker first.” One of the first prominent up state politicians from what is now Cherokee County, Calhoun was a spokesman for a unified South to fight for the sovereignty of states like South Carolina through doc trines of states’ rights and nulli fication. Wilson has been an editor on the project since the fourth vol ume was published in 1969. Since then, he and a staff of editors and I • graduate students have tried to publish a volume every year and a half, covering Calhoun’s life chronologically. The final volume is the publi cation of Calhoun’s essays, “A Disquisition on Government” and “A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.” “Disquisition” is an analysis of politics as seen through a rela tionship between individual states and the nation. “Discourse” is a study of constitutional history ♦ CALHOUN, SEE PAGE 2 Committee’s merger report not ready yet BY ADAM BEAM THE GAMECOCK • The committee studying the possible merger of the College of Liberal Arts and the College of . Math and Science did not have its report ready by the Tuesday deadline. The committee had said it was supposed to get the report to USC President Andrew Sorensen, but according to co-chairman Pat Maney, the committee is still tweaking the report and doesn’t have a final draft ready. “It’s not like a term paper,” Maney said. “We are almost done with it, but it’s still September. We’ve got until midnight, technically.” Madilyn Fletcher, co-chair woman of the merger committee, confirmed the report is almost fin ished, but said.Sorensen is the one who will make the announcement once the report is ready. She said the committee has talked with Sorensen and has no plans to meet again. “It’s really up to him to an nounce or inform the community about the report,” Fletcher said. USC spokesman Russ McKinney said Sorensen has met with the committee and did not know for sure when he would an nounce the recommendation. Maney said the report could come as early as Friday. Sorensen created the commit tee in July and asked its mem bers to do research and give a recommendation either for or against the merger. If the com mittee recommends the merger, it will also give some steps it says must be taken for the merger to happen. The committee has spent the past several weeks interviewing USC administrators such as Provost Jerry Odom as well as ad ministrators from universities that have combined colleges of arts and sciences. If the merger takes place, it will reunite two of the largest colleges at USC, creating a mega-college that would encompass nearly 40 percent of the student body. The two colleges split in 1973 so that the College of Math and Science could take advantage of the science grants available at the time. In the early 1990s, when John Palms began his tenure at USC, a committee investigated the possibility of merging the two col leges again, but did not give a fa vorable recommendation. Faculty members have voiced their concern over the merger at two public forums at Gambrell Hall and Calcott College. Proponents of the merger say it will increase interdisciplinary re search and help students take classes in both disciplines. Critics say the merger will take an enor mous amount of work at a time when the university is struggling because of budget cuts. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Index Comics and Crossword _7 Classifieds_ 10 Horoscopes 7 Letters to the Editor_ 4 Online Poll 4 Police Report 3 Weather TODAY THURSDAY & # High 77 High 72 Low 53 Low 46 v In This Issue ♦ NEWS New York Times columnist speaks at USC. Page 2 ♦ VIEWPOINTS Lauren Adams says USC, after putting the kibosh on “Cocks," should look to destroy other trends on campus.Page 4 ♦ THE MIX Indie-pop group Dressy Bessy releases a sweet new album. Page 5 ♦ SPORTS The USC basketball program receives a high-profile commitment. Page 8 BY KEVIN FELLNER TIIK liAMKCOCK USC history professor Clyde Wilson says that South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun is of ten misrepresented in reference books. He says the most accessi tke image of Calhoun is a portrait painted when he was 67 years old and only a few months away from his death. Wilson’s mental image of Calhoun, he says, matches the many small portraits of Calhoun lining the walls of his Gambrell office. “He was a charming, dynamic individual with a sense of humor in his youth,” Wilson said. “The last few months of his life he was too weak to even walk into the -■-|-->■<-!»-'■ GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY SHAWN ROURK/ THE GAMECOCK 2'- 4" H&illlilSSH sg executive officers plan to use the $200,000 in _extra activity ■ fee money to improve student life on One of their plans calls for the placement of 14-foot-tall signs with maps of USC's campus. The signs cost $6,000 each.