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5 Hnlinp Pn!l sii “#»so touched bythe re' Ul Mil IC.rUi! fcponseof Clemson. There’s no What do you think of Mel better place to have your house Gibson’s new film, “The burn down.” Passion of the Christ?” EMILY MANNING www.dailygamecock.com. clemson student left homeless At a fire in Results published on Friday. AN apartment complex next to cam®, on V J SUPPORT FROM THE CLEMSON CQMMUNfTY. f In.Our.Opinion Advice to the new president r Dear Zachery Scott: Congratulations on winning the SG presidency. You ran a good campaign against worthy opponents and came out the victor, and we think that it bodes well for the future of Student Government. We’d like to offer a little advice as to the direction SG should take over the next year, and the things that need to be accomplished under your leadership. Your goals during the campaign were realistic, and can be accomplished — it is good to build on the thought to be unattainable. Among the priorities you outlined in your platform is the Readership program and the lobbying organization that brings together student governments of S.C.’s colleges and universities. The readership program has been a success for SG and benefits Carolina students as they try to stay informed about the world. While Clemson has been lobbying the General Assembly for years, the lobbying association will ^.combine the leverage of the state’s higher learning "establishments to push for more funding. Perhaps the biggest success ot your term, it you are able to push it through, would be to ensure the student representative to the Board of Trustees has a vote. In effect, this would help to correct the lack of a say students have in decisions that effect them. SG must continue to prove to students it is effective through better communication and thus encourage them to vote. Turnout for SG elections, while increased, is still far below what it should be. Finally, have fun — don’t forget that the job isn’t life and death, but a learning experience. Don’t ^forget to be a student, like the ones you represent. successes ot tne past, but leadership is more than that. The best leaders in history are remembered for their ability to inspire greatness in people, especially when it meant reaching for goals that were Zachery Scott’s campaign goals are . realistic, but true " leadership requires more than building upon the successes of the past. SOUND OFF Create message boards at www.dallygamecock.com or send letters to the editor to gamecockoplnlons@gwm.sc.edu Gamecock.Corrections If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu. AboutThe.Gameeock Editor in Chief p^ Adam Beam Copy Desk Chief Gabrielle Sinclair Design Director Shawn Rourk Asst. Design Director Staci Jordan . News Editor Michael LaForgia Asst. News Editor Alexis Stratton Viewpoints Editor Patrick Augustine The Mix Editor Meg Moore Asst. Mix Editor Jennifer Sitowski Sports Editor Wes Wolfe Asst. Sports Editor Jonathan Hillyard ^ Photo Editor ■ Morgan Ford Asst. Photo Editor Johnny Haynes Page Designers Erin Cline. Brad Senkiw, Mary Pinckney Waters, Chaz McCarthy Copy Editors Allyson Bird, Jennifer Freeman, Jessica Foster, Steven Van Haren Wire Editor Z’Anne Covell Online Editor James Tolbert Senior Writer Kevin Fellner CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. Editor ih Chief: gamecockeditor@gwm.sc.edu News: gamecocknews@gwm.sc.edu Viewpoints: gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu The Mix: gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu Sports: gamecocksports@.gwm.sc.edu Public Affairs: gamecockpr@yahoo.com 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, Burke Lauderdale Advertising Staff Robert Carli, Kate Femino, Latoya Hines Carolina Love. Jesica Johnson, David Weatherford Public Affairs Kimberly Dressier 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 The Gamecock t. 1400 Greene St. Columbia, S.C. 29208 ‘ Advertising: 777-3888 ? Classified: 777-1184 Fax: 777-6482 CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS English gets me in trouble The English Language and American Social Culture: If there’s one thing that gets me in trouble the most, it’s my mouth. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been at a crucial mo ment in my life and decided to say something so asinine even Howard Stern would have apologized. DAVID STAGG Like the Third-year time you tell a media arts woman she student could stand to part one in a lose a few six part series pounds. , Like the time you tried to pla giarize the Bible in a take-home exam by using Genesis 1:1 as your introduction. Like the time you decided to write your college application es say using an extended metaphor about getting kicked in the balls. I’d like to pretend I’m a smart man. I’d like to pretend I have a grasp on words, that I can put them together in a fashion that would woo people instead of make them throw coffee on me or call the police or drop the baby they were holding. Would it help if I spoke a dif ferent language? If the very res onance of the syllables, diction, syntax, larynx, head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes) were different, would it sway me into saying different things? I don’t think so. I think that I have an inher ent penchant for saying the worst thing at the worst time. What can I say? I’m a boy, and we tend to be wrong 95 percent of the time; the other 5 percent, we actually choose to keep our mouths shut because we’re play ing video games. Oh, language, your words are like knives with sharp edges that you never actually use to stab someone in the heart as a metaphor would have but rather you use to cut up a bad steak which you would then serve to someone who would eat it and come down with a mild case of salmonella. What a lament! There are so many bad things associated with words: plagiarism, mid term essay exams, bad poetry, Nicolas Sparks, Fefe Dobson. By even talking, I’m associating myself with the main propagan da device employed by Satan to tempt-Jesus. I understand the argument is flawed. There are also a million wonderful things that are asso ciated with words: Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prizes, “Sex and the City,” Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld,”. and the two words that have probably saved me most, Hot Pockets. This language is almost as perplexing as a woman. How many times have you heard, “Can’t live with them, can’t con jugate them to form a sentence because your participle dangled late one night with an object over a preposition?” Despite all our qualms with a language where the word “qualms” actually means some thing, we all know syllabic pat terns of speech are the greatest thing to happen to civilization since Britney Spears and the re mote control. So, in honor of language that has made me the most joyous and has incriminated me most of my life, I’m starting a six-part series to explore its nooks and crannies, its balls and chains, its apples and oranges. Join me as we dis cover the most overlooked item in everyday, well, um, speech. Next Week: Words I Love. In.Your.Opinion Wolfe was right to call out Bush flaws Apparently, Wes Wolfe’s col umn (“Unifying to get an idiot out of office,” Feb. 11) has caused quite a stir on the ^ight, mainly because objectors seem to have a problem with his lack of cita tion, which is almost impossible in a column like his. They also overlook the fact that their “re assessments” of the Bush ad ministration contain no facts and are only misinformation. Andrew Fadale (“Wolfe should stick to sports report ing,” Feb. 20) says unemploy ment is at its lowest point in the past two years, without citing that it’s at its highest point in the past nine, and, that Bush is the only administration since Hoover where no jobs were cre ated and, in fact, close to three million have been lost. Now, while the word is still out with economists on who cre ated this bad economy, the fact that Bush has done almost noth ing about it — and recently downed his forecast of job cre ation for the next year—says a lot to someone who will be vot ing in the upcoming elections. Let’s move away from the economy and take a look at some of Bush’s other issues. The highly touted “No Child Left Behind” act—which is patently ridiculous because it offers pun ishment for schools in the form of cut funding for lower test scores when they really need in creases and good teachers to make the scores rise—has been under-funded by the adminis tration, even with it being called repeatedly a “key issue.” The point is that Bush has done nothing but feed the American public lie after lie since being selected into office by a court, not elected on his merits as Fadale suggests, and for this there needs to be some sort of answer to the masses, which I think we won’t get. He’s taken more vacations than any other president, has spoken less publicly than other presidents, and has, above all, completely ruined the American economy, which could, and should have, been turned com pletely around by now. Instead we have soaring unemployment, inflation, a record deficit and a president that doesn’t seem to know what to do with it all. And don’t even get me start ed on foreign policy. MBA from Harvard or not, it sure looks like it would really take an idiot to mess up everything the way Bush has, impending recession at the time of his election or not. MATTHEW SMITH SECOND-YEAR HISTORY STUDENT Culbertson needs more book learning Graham Culbertson (“Library, labyrinth of doom,” Monday), in his humorless and boorishly undergraduate style, managed one valid observation: The Thomas Cooper Library makes a wonderful shelter. You rarely encounter anyone like Culbertson between the lone lier stacks of the third floor where such complete strangers as. Thomas Merton and Grace Metalious share shelves. The library staff has been helpful to me. I remember a long afternoon on the mezzanine spent poring over the galley proofs of 1993’s “The Best « American Short Stories,” search ing with the aid of a patient li brarian. it wasn i ior a class, u,ui just for fun, and the librarian helped me just the same. And further, I didn’t have any trouble find ing a computer when I came to the lab this evening to write a history paper. There are ample facilities. Perhaps Culbertson should di rect his critical eye toward a field or an issue where greater dis cernment and better taste aren’t as necessary. CAT BAAB FOURTH-YEAR ENGLISH STUDENT 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@gwm.sc.edu. Letters will be edited for space, possible libel and style. Anonymous letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777 7726 for more information. USC has things to give up for Lent Here we are in day three, and the first Friday, of Lent. While the smell of our Valentine’s roses has since faded to fond memories, it’ll surely be replaced today with a pungent fish odor emanating from our dining halls. Lent is the 40-day preparation for Easter in which Catholics ab stain from meat on Fridays (and historically eat a lot of fish instead), and Christians alike give up some practice they value in a show of sacrifice. In keeping with the com plaining spirit of a college newspaper and the sacrificial spirit of the Lenten season, glgp I ve compiled a „ , list of some print things USC journalism ■ should collec student tively give up this year. Fast No. 1: The variety-less music played on Greene Street. I live on Greene Street, and I love the block-party feeling of having my apartment vibrate at least ev ery other day while some orga nization promotes something or ganizational. I ask only for di- • versify in the songs. I ve started having night mares where people chase me with sharp objects while yelling “Hey Ya” in high-pitched voices; the word “Beyonce” now gener ates the same response from me as the phrase “internal bleed ing.” Fast No. 2: Eggs. I witnessed the GMP making scrambled eggs a few weeks ago and felt com pelled to tell everyone I knew to avoid this “food” at all costs. As I waited for my chicken sandwich, I saw a man pour a bottle of or ange liquid onto a grill. Thinking this was a cleaning solution, I watched it get chunkier and chunkier. Approximately seven minutes later, it looked just like eggs. But I knew the truth. Just as it was being plopped on some one’s plate, I cringed from be hind the glass barricade and re leased a plaintive “No!’'—but it was too late. Fast No. 3: Pigeons. My apart ment has a unique feature: a large brown plastic owl with beady orange eyes that hangs di rectly above our front door to scare away those flying fecal fac tories. But I imagine it keeps away more than just the pigeons. Fast No. 3.5: And while we’re at it, let’s consider squirrel re duction as well. My life flashes before me in a streaking furry blur each time one of those little suckers pops out of a trash can like it was just waiting to freak someone out. If you’ve ever real ly watched them, then you’ve no ticed that nervous twitch that makes them look like they’ve gotten a hold of Rush Limbaugh’s meds. They’re up to no good, I tell you. Fast No. 4: Parking cops. Because the most efficient branch of the USC bureaucracy really needs a vacation. Fast No. 5: Fire alarms. Is there really anybody who doesn’t know what to do by now? If you hear the loud noise, then you leave the freakin’ building. Do you get it? By God, I think they do get it — now let us sleep. And though it would be nice to get rid of SLED’s presence in Five Points, tuition hikes and ex ams in general, our sunny state of South Carolina has unjustly deemed some things to be above our religious prerogative. So while I look into that lawsuit, y’all get to fasting. Online.Poll Is the GPS system being installed in USC’s buses wasteful? Yes 67% No 23% What's GPS? 10% “Yes, I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s a waste of money.” NIKKI CAMPBELL THIRD-YEAR POLITICAL SCIENCE STUDENT H“No, because it happens every day that people are waiting on shuttles.” “I don’t know much about it.” FAITH ISREAL FIRST-YEAR PHARMACY STUDENT MATTHEW WRIGHT THIRD YEAR COMPUTER SCIENCE URJHRH STUDENT RESULTS FROM WWW.DAILYGAMECOCK.COM — THIS POLL IS NOT SCIENTIFIC