The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, November 05, 2003, Image 1
'f
aaffisaf" WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5,2003
Lieberman presents
higher-education plan
Democratic presidential candidate
unveils policy at Benedict College
BY WES WOLFE
THE (iAMECUCK
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of
Connecticut, the second Demo
cratic candidate to visit Columbia
in four days, unveiled a major pol
icy address on higher education
at Benedict College on Monday.
. In front of a crowded room at
f .Benedict's Business Development
Center, which included Benedict
President David Swinton and S.C.
Rep. John Scott, Lieberman out
lined his plan, which included
helping families in affording col
lege, making sure students are
ready for college and implement
ing a system to test colleges and
school districts on student readi
ness and graduation rates. The
senator also talked about giving
assistance to historically black col
leges and universities.
“With Congressman Clyburn,
I’ve been working and succeeding
at obtaining $50 million from the
federal government to rebuild
buildings at HBCUs,” Lieberman
said. Jim Clybum is the U.S. repre
sentative for the 6th Congressional
District in South Carolina.
The frequency of the recent
Democratic debates might have
taken a toll on Lieberman’s oratory
—when pointing out his problems
with the state of American public
education, he said, “There are two
school systems in America: one for
the haves and one for the have
nots.” Another Democratic candi
date, Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina, says the exact same thing
in his campaign speech.
Lieberman led his discussion of
making college more affordable by
first talking about what he says
President George W. Bush has
done wrong with federal financial
aid policy, including Pell grant re
ductions by the federal
Department of Education and the
proposed elimination of the
Leveraging Educational Assis
tance Partnership Program.
“Those cuts, for the upcoming
fiscal year — this is what the
President proposed and negotiat
ed with Congress — would mean
more than 375,000 fewer college
students would get federal student
financial assistance,” Lieberman
said.
The Pell
grant is the fed
eral govern
ment’s largest
grant program
for students,
and the
Leveraging
Educational
Assistance Partnership Program
is a collaboration between states
and the federal government to pro
vide grants to students with ex
ceptional financial need.
Lieberman’s plan would in
clude raising the maximum Pell
grant award from the $4,050 per
academic year to $7,760 per aca
demic year by the 2008-2009 term.
According to his campaign litera
ture, the senator would also pro
vide tax credits to families that
have children in college.
Lieberman said his goal is to by
2020 have 90 percent of Americans
go to college or vocational school
or into the military after high
school and have 90 percent of col
lege students graduate within six
years. Lieberman then proposed
additional tund
ing for colleges
that have in
creased enroll
ment and grad
uation of low
income and mi
nority students.
Liebennan
answered 14
questions from the audience of stu
dents and teachers. The questions
ranged from reparations for slav
ery to Iraq to school prayer. When
answering a question about Social
Security, Lieberman harkened
back to the policy debate between
A1 Gore and George Bush in the
2000 election. (
“Remember in the 2000 cam
paign, they were arguing about
♦ LIEBERMAN, SEE PAGE 2
“If you’ll allow me to say
so, George W. Bush has
made the lockbox into a
cookie jar.”
JOE LIEBERMAN
U.S. SENATOR AND DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATE
PHOTO BY KATIE KIRKLAND/THE GAMECOCK
Sen. Joe Lleberman spoke to a crowd of students and teachers
at Benedict College on Monday afternoon.
PHOTO BY JASON STEELMAN/THE GAMECOCK
General Motors Is now working with USC on fuel cells to cut
back on the amount of pollution from cars.
•2 businesses
help fund USC
fuel cell center
BY JON TURNER
THK (lAMKCOC.K
Two more industrial sponsors
joined with USC on Friday to help
fund its state-of-the-art research
Renter for fuel cells.
9 On June 16, the National
Science Foundation selected USC
as the site of an NSF
Industry/University Cooperative
Research Center for Fuel Cells, the
only one of its kind in the country.
Over the next three years, NSF
will provide a total of $210,000 in
funds for the new center.
USC President Andrew
Sorensen said he is proud of the
progress the university is making.
“The selection of USC to house
the National Science Foundation’s
Industry/University Cooperative
Research Center for Fuel Cells
marks the beginning of an impor
tant era in research at USC.
Today, leaders in science, busi
ness, industry and government
will recognize what we have
known for a long time: that scien
tists at the University of South
Carolina are among the best in the
United States,” Sorensen said in a
news release.
Fuel cells are an essential part
of the transition to a “hydrogen
economy.” The National
♦ FUEL, SEE PAGE 2
New office to link USC to businesses
BY LAURA MOSS
THE GAMECOCK
USC has established
BusinessLINK, an office of eco
nomic development, which will
make its resources more accessi
ble to businesses both locally and
nationally.
The BusinessLINK program
was announced Thursday at a
meeting of USC faculty and busi
ness leaders from throughout the
state. It will offer one point of con
tact between five university of
fices to make it more efficient for
businesses and developers to use
university resources.
This is the first time the uni
versity’s business-development
and research resources will work
collectively.
Anthony Boccanfuso, manag
ing director of the USC Research
Foundation, will oversee
BusinessLINK.
“Combining these offices will
make them more efficient in how
they work together since they can
use each other’s assets,”
Boccanfuso said.
BusinessLINK will combine
the Small Business Development
Center, the Industrial
Agreements Unit, the Center for
Manufacturing and Technology,
the USC-Columbia Technology
Incubator and the Intellectual
Property Office.
“Traditionally, we have pro
vided the business community of
the state with many services, and
now we can make it much easier
for both small and large busi
nesses to gain access to us,”
Boccanfuso said.
USC President Andrew
Sorensen said the USC
BusinessLINK program is a radi
cal change in university opera
tions. “We want to aggressively
market these offices, their re
sources and the talents of our fac
ulty and students to business and
industry and put them in touch
with the specific research and re
sources here on our campus,” he
said in a news release.
Boccanfuso said the new office
of economic development would
provide both faculty and students
with new opportunities in busi
ness. Many USC students have al
ready worked with local busi
nesses in the private sector, and
the BusinessLINK program is ex
pected to result in similar oppor
tunities by opening up communi
cation between new businesses
and the university.
“From this point forward, USC
BusinessLINK will help the uni
versity bolster economic devel
opment, enhance public-private
partnerships, strengthen com
munity relations and increase ex
ternal funding,” BoccanfUso said.
Comments on this story?E-mail
gamecockudesk@hotmail.com
An enduring brotherhood
Minority Greek organizations
thrive in post-Civil Rights period
BY KEVIN FELLNER
THE GAMECOCK
Rodney Hollis’ high-school
friends told him he should be
come a member of the Kappa
Alpha Psi fraternity because he
was often wearing its signature
red-shirt-and-khaki-pants com
bination.
Even though Hollis, a Florida
resident, knew little about the fra
ternity, especially regarding its
presence at USC, he sought and
gained membership to the frater
nity, .one of four campus frater
nities composed predominantly
of minorities.
The concept began with segre
gationist atti
tudes on college
campuses during
the first half of the
20th century.
Schoolteacher
Elder Watson
Diggs received
Kappa Alpha
Psi’s first laurel
wreath at Indiana
University in 1924, signifying the
fraternity’s official inception, al
a time when he wouldn’t have
been allowed to join any of the ex
isting fraternities.
University officials nationwide
have questioned the role of mi
nority fraternities, as well as pre
dominantly white fraternities,
during the post-Civil Rights era
as possibly ere
amig i aciai ui
vision on cam
puses.
“I think it’s
just a reflec
tion of the re
cruitment pro
cess and the
number of mi
norities on
campus,” said Hollis, a fourth
year public relations student and
president of Kappa Alpha Psi. He
said his fraternity is unique in
■
that it doesn’t actively recruit
any of its members, thus making
its racial composition impossible
to control.
Phi Beta Sigma President and
fourth-year management and
marketing student JaRodd Webb
said he was instantly attracted to
his fraternity when he arrived at
use.
“The brothers on campus
seemed to be so friendly and close
with each other,” Webb said.
“They didn’t act like they were
better than us; they were down to
earth.”
Webb said he had notjualms
about joining a minority frater
nity because he knew little about
♦ MINORITY, SEE PAGE 2
Index
Comics and Crossword 12
Classifieds ~ 15
Horoscopes ^_ 12
Letters to the Editor 9
Online Poll 9
Police Report 3
Weather
today tomorrow
High 81 High 85
Low 62 Low 54
In This Issue
♦ NEWS Bush visits sites of
California wildfires and
consoles victims. Page 3
♦ VIEWPOINTS Julie Cook says
instant messenging is a way of
life. Page 9
♦ THE MIX Voices are raised
during Opera at USC’s fall
performance “Don Pasquale.”
Page 10
♦ SPORTS The USC football
team must bounce, back to take
on Arkansas. Page 13
HI)..I.
McKissick to put collections on Web site
BY IRA KLEIN
THE GAMECOCK
USC’s McKissick Museum re
cently received a federal grant
to help pay for the creation of an
interactive Web site that will al
low anybody anywhere to access
the museum’s diverse collec
tions on Southern and South
Carolina folk life and material
culture.
The $90,985 Learning
Opportunities grant from the
Institute of Museum and Library
Services was only one of the 169
museum grants presented this
year, totaling over $15 million.
According to Saddler Taylor, cu
rator of folk life at the museum
and director of the Web site pro
ject, it will probably take about
three years to complete the pro
ject, and an introductory version
should be available toward the
end of the second year. The Web
site will contain several audio
clips, particularly of traditional
Southern music; image and photo
galleries; video clips from the
museum’s film projects; and vir
tual exhibits.
In developing the Web site, the
museum plans to use a combina
tion of university programmers
and resources, as well.as inde
pendent companies from the
community. A technical com
mittee made up of several USC
students and faculty members as
well as a group of technicians
from ETV are working On the
project.
“What we’re planning to do
here at the university is to use
this project as a training ground
for graduate assistants and in
terns who are interested in au
dio and video editing and digital
media. Hopefully, they’ll be able
to gain important experience
and will be contributing to the
university, while learning a
great deal in the process,”
Taylor said.
According to Taylor, the idea
for the Web site didn’t come from
any one source. Instead, the idea
was based on feedback from mu
seum visitors as well as on a gen
eral feeling of having to “keep up
with the times.”
♦ MUSEUM, SEE PAGE 2