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g THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, October 15, 2003 SOUND OFF TTT^TTTTl/^V VlTTlCi ONLINE POLL Create message boards at I 1-^ » \ / I i I % I V Should students be allowed to www.dailygamecock.com or I I 1 I ■/ >/ I ■ ■ I l grill out on campus? send letters to the editor to IIJWWI \ / 1 I k I www.dailygamecock.com. gamecockopinioip@hotmail.com —B ^ * * —■— S — ^.1 —I— Results published on Fridays. _ IN OUR OPINION Students deserve grills To grill or not to grill? On USC’s campus, this should not be such.a complicated question. Grilling out in the South is little short of a birthright. The Residence Hall Association has passed a resolution to change a Housing policy to allow students to keep and use small outdoor grills. Because of recent fires, it is understandable for Housing to take a “better safe than sorry” attitude and continue a ban on cooking with grills, such as George Foremans, inside residence halls. Indoors, they are fire hazards, liabilities and — with expensive and unnecessary visits from the fire department — a financial Housing should burden. trust students, Outdoor grills are not a if only to the tbreat when used on concrete, degree that they HousingshouMtrust do not need supervision when students',fonly t0 the degree cooking outdoors ,hat they d0 not need on concrete, supervision when cooking outdoors on concrete. Large, permanent grills, such as those outside the Towers and 820 Henderson St., should be placed around campus for students to use if the policy isn’t changed. Housing has been working hard to make residence • halls more aesthetically pleasing and safer. But they should also make efforts to build and foster a sense of community in residence halls, and letting students grill and hold cookouts would be a way to do that. Winners and Sinners s B EGYPTIAN TWINS After grueling 34-hour surgery, the boys are now their own persons. MOORE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Ranked in top 50 of Forbes best-buy colleges. ROBOT MONKEY Duke University researchers train monkey to move a robot arm with its thoughts, giving hope to the disabled. PARKING SERVICES Cripples what little parking we had left by giving tickets from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Surely the GPS system will save us. RODNEY KING Arrested for punching his girlfriend. Irony abounds. OBESITY Government predicts 40 percent of Americans will be obese by 2010. GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS A brief in Wednesday’s paper should have said one USC student, not three, is part of the National Science Foundation funded undergraduate chemical-engineering research program in Japan. A front-page photo of the USC-Kentucky football game in Friday’s paper should have been credited to Johnny Haynes. The Gamecock regrets the errors. If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockopinions@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 Gabrielle Sinclair The Mix Editor Meg Moore Sports Editor Brad Senkiw Asst. Sports Editor Wes Wolfe Photo Editor Morgan Ford Head Page Designer David Stagg Page Designers Justin Bajan, Samantha Hall, Staci Jordan, Philip Whitehead Slot Copy Editors Amy Genoble, Alyson Goff, Tricia Ridgway Copy Editors Mary Waters, Steven Var Haren, Jessica Foster, Alicia Osborne Online Editor James Tolbert Public Affairs Kimberly Dressier CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. Editor in Chief: gamecockeditor@hotmail.com News: gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Viewpoints: gamecockopinions@hotmail.com The Mix: gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com Sports: gamecocksports@hotmail.com Public Affairs: gckpublicaffairs@hotmail.com j Online: www.dailygamecock.com Newsroom: 777-7726 Editor’s Office: 777-3914 STUDENT MEDIA Director Scott Lindenberg Faculty Adviser Erik Collins Creative Director Susan King Business Manager Carolyn Griffin Advertising Manager Sarah Scarborough Classified Manager Sherry F. Holmes Production Manager Amber Justice Creative Services Whitney Bridges, Robbie Burkett, Sean O’Meara 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 The Gamecock 1400 Greene St. Columbia, S.C. 29208 Advertising: 777-3888 Classified: 777-1184 Fax: 777-6482 I'M ON ^ IT/ CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Get to know the 3rd parties WES WOLFE G£ MECOCKOPINIONS@HOTMAIL.COM Candidates make up a true buffet of lunatics. So you thought there were only nine Democrats running for president and that ol’ George W. was the only Republican running. Well, you’re wrong. According to Project Vote Smart, there are 58 Democrats and 17 Republicans, along with five trying for the Green Party nod, five running for the Libertarian nomination and 39 independents. And that doesn’t count all of the third parties that already have nominees. Have you heard of the Christian Falangist Party? Well, they’re here and they have a pres idential candidate. Party founder and nominee Kurt Weber-Heller is running to “defend Western Christian Civilization and de stroy the ‘Forces of Darkness.’” They say the “Forces of Darkness” are radical Islam, com munism, the “New World Order,” ,■ the New Age movement, Masons, radical homosexuals and pomog raphers, among others. Of course, the extreme right doesn’t just have fascists like these Falangist characters. There’s also that Roaring Twenties hold-over, the Prohibition Party. The Prohibitionists are run ning with Maj. Tom Reed this go ’round. Upon reaching the presi dency, they promise to abolish sales of alcohol and other drugs as well as gambling, abortion, gay rights and pom and vow to return Bible reading to public schools. Of course, the last time the Prohibitionists scored big with a presidential candidate was when John Bidwell tallied 271,111 votes way back in 1892. The winner that year, Democrat Grover Cleveland, received 5.55 million votes. If you thought the Pro hibitionists were the only blast from the past on the ballot, there’s also the Federalist Party, whose last serious presidential contender lost in a landslide to James Monroe in 1816. Mary Cal Hollis, the 19% presi dential and 2000 vice-presidential nominee of the Socialist Party, is making another try at the top spot. Ohio Socialist Party Chairman Geoff Braasch is competing for the Socialist Party’s nomination, leaning on his two master’s de grees for leverage. Braasch has a master’s in divinity and another master’s in public speaking along with being a PhD. candidate in cultural anthropology. One must consider the great ness of the candidate’s name. The best name in the crowded presi dential field is MUADIN. That’s it. MUADIN. All caps. MUADIN is the founder and nominee of the E-Democrat Party and is trying to help foster the unification of na tions and save the environment. Still, American Tradition Party candidate Maximus Englerius comes in a close sec ond in the name department with his Romanesque moniker. There’s also many strange peo ple running for Democratic and Republican nominations. Republican Bruce Gidner is mak ing his first run at the presiden cy since the ’70s, while former Washington, D.C., mayor Yehana Joan Malone is looking to become the first GOP black female nomi nee in a party notorious for being overwhelmingly white and male. One Democratic candidate, though, really caught my eye. Sanderson Beck, a Californian running as a Democrat, says he’s for “universal peace, justice, and love.” Who could beat a man with a message like that? Wolfe is a fourth-year public relations student. IN YOUR OPINION Holt’s new’ ideas aren’t that edgy Let’s give it up for Ryan Holt. One day long ago, some agent of Satan interrupted his long winded, evangelical attempt to save a sinner’s soul, and now he hates tolerance. Well, good for him. We need someone like that. With his vigilant eyes watching over the slippery slope, neither Pol Pot nor Hitler will ever be able to rise from the dead and terrorize America be cause, hey, tolerance and ter rorism go hand in hand, just like Osama and Saddam. And that edgy “new" toler ance he proposes is nothing at all like what true modern tol erance is, right? I mean, that “not having to agree with ev erything people say but letting them say it anyway” thing is a fresh, respectable idea. I, for one, can say that I had never considered it before. Okay, then, let’s have one more round of applause for a true master of rhetoric — inci siveness, thy name is Holt. MITCH FRYE GRADUATE STUDENT IN CREATIVE WRITING Students are liable for their computers I am a graduate student in Computer Science department and PhD candidate specializing in information and network se curity. I just wanted to share my thoughts with you all. The university computer net work is havingmany problems. The solution is not going around and helping out every one. The solution is proper ed ucation. Everyone who wants to connect his or her computer to network should know how to ' maintain the computer. Let us compare the situation with driving a car. Person A owns a car. Does that entitle that person to drive the car any way. he or she wants? Everyone is re quired to have a license and there is a ticket system if they do not obey traffic rules. Similarly, when a person owns a computer, he or she should not be entitled to rights of connecting to a network. If the computer is do not main tained properly, legal (if your computer is being used to attack others, you might be account able) and network availability problems are created. Thus, we need a system that licenses users to connect their computer to network. This also means that everyone needs to take a system administration course in high school or during freshman year. The College of Engineering and Information Technology has already enforced such li censing system for accessing their network for remote access. Duncan Buell, chairman of the i Computer Science and En gineering Department has also recommended a similar system, with fines for violations. It’s time USC Computer Services follows the trend. VAIBHAV GOWADIA (HIAUIIATE STUDENT IN COMPUTER SCIENCES Parking Services needs an overhaul Parking Services earns their horrible reputation. While I was filling out my appeals for tickets received over fall break, employees at Parking Services read a Gamecock article and made jokes about the “stupid student” who moved her car around meter to meter. Unlike Columbia city meters, you can refeed USC meters. Then a woman with USC Media Relations came in. She had gotten tickets as a result of switching ve hicles around because of mal function. The staff/faculty coor dinator, without any outside veri fication or confirmation, dealt the tickets. I hadn’t even finished fill ing out my appeals. In my opinion, Parking Services’ attitude towards the stu dents at this University is despi cable. Everyone, from Derrick Huggins on down, should be fired and replaced by a staff that can at least show some respect for the students at USC. And, when my appeals are denied, I’ll know why — at least they read the Gamecock. CHRIS COYLE FOURTII-YEAli POLITICAL SCIENCE STUDENT GOT SOMETHING TO SAY? WE WANT TO HEAR IT. §*an GAMECOCKOPINIONS ©HOTMAIL.COM m® ojy mm w@o©§ J§@ 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 gamecockopinions@hotmail.com. Letters will be edited. Anonymous letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777-7726 for more information. We can’t all be brilliant experts DAVID STAGG GAMECOCKOPINIONS@HOTMAIL.COM Let everyone solve their own problems anyway. With perpetual worries about the economy, with judges trying to block the Do Not Call registry and with the Chicago Cubs still in the playoffs, you know something is wrong with this world. And when there’s a problem, it always feels like there’s a simple solution — especially to you. Therefore, if my math serves me correctly, who better to solute the problem than yourself? Things al ways seem so easy to fix when you don’t have the responsibility of fixing them. Heck, my own per sonal motto is, “If there’s a prob lem, yo, I’ll solve it; check out the hook while my DJ revolves it.” Witness my examples; Brilliant Example One: When there seems to be some kind of is sue between your friend and her boyfriend, the answer is obvious. FRIEND THAT’S A GIRL: Tommy told me he was planning on taking me out this weekend. ME: Dump him. GIRL: What? All he wants to do is get some food. ME: Dump him. He’s no good. GIRL: How on earth would you know? ME: JUST DO IT! Even More Brilliant Example Two: As a male, I am required by law to make anything in the house that breaks not only work again — but work better. As a testament to my ingenuity, the other day, my roommate and I realized our dryer was not working properly. We’d throw our wet laundry in and two hours later it would still be damp. In a moment of epiphany, after pulling a Dexter’s Laboratory and dismantling the dryer to try and fix it from the inside, we decided to reset breakers in our house, which managed to rupture any electronic device in our apart ment, losing saved information on computers, halting the earth from turning and causing California to break off and fall into the ocean. All this to realize that the ini tial problem was that the dryer was set on “Air Fluff.” Brillianter Example Three: Leading economists have argued about the right way to deal with recessions for thousands of cen turies, when Alan Greenspan was still Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Being of noneconomist per suasion, I can, naturally, solve the problem. I propose Staggitalism, a simple solution to the America’s economic stagnation. I would im plement these standards: ♦ The word “stagg” would be put before every economic term in recognition of the fact that my surname makes for a clever pun. Along with “stagnation” and “stagflation,” we would soon add the “Stagg Street Journal” and the aforementioned Staggitalism. Stocks would become known as staggs and will heretofore be re ferred to as such. ♦ All stagg dividends would be returned to consumers in giant checks as if we’d all won some thing from Publisher’s Clearing House because, well, who wouldn’t want a humongous check that couldn’t be more unwieldy, harder to fit in your wallet and advertise to the world exactly how rich Staggitalism has made you? We should all take a chill pill and let people figure out how to solve their own problems. Like the old adage goes, “Catch a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish, and he’ll vomit for his lifetime because seafood is gross.” If you still need help, give me a call. I’ll be dismantling my dryer. Stagg is a third-year media arts student. r