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< www.dailygamecoch.com ■ WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 2004 Since 1908 • ... . USC Republicans leave convention I Differences in vote numbers prompt leaders to leave state confederation BY MICHAEL LAFORGIA THE GAMECOCK ,USC’s College Republicans withdrew from the S.C. Confederation of College Republicans Sunday following confederation elections at the State College Republican Convention in Charleston. USC’s withdrawal came after a disagreement over how many seats USC’s delegation would be allowed under the confederation’s newly enforced credentialing sys tem, which checks a school’s re ported membership to prevent cas es of fraud. After having as many as 62 votes in the past, USC was as signed two votes after the confed eration’s Credentials Committee found problems with USC’s mem bership lists, including 32 dupli cate names. Clemson received 44 votes in the confederation, while Furman and the College of Charleston received 26 and 10, re spectively. These votes count when the confederation votes on new officers and amendments. According to the credentialing system, a college gets two votes for having a constitution and anoth er vote for every 10 members. USC’s delegation reported that it had 480 members by the March 1 filing deadline, which would give them 50 votes in the confederation. But according to Austin Weatherford, former state chair man of the confederation, the list former USC College Republican chairwoman Kendall Robinson turned in was incomplete. He said Robinson told Credentials Committee members that she pur posely filed the credentials incor rectly to spite USC College Republican Adam Piper, who was running for state confederation chairman. “We were told by Kendall that she sent in the lists improperly be cause she did not want Adam to win,” Weatherford said. J.K. Chaney, a USC College Republican and former state sec retary for the confederation, said he didn’t attend meetings where the credentialing lists were dis cussed but indicated that the way the credentials were filed may have had something to do with the confederation’s decision. Robinson refused to comment on the withdrawal. “There’s no story here,” she said. Her term ended last week, and Randy Dargan was elected chairman on Wednesday. He was out of town Tuesday night and could not be reached for comment. Piper would not comment.. Chasity Grooms, USC College Republican vice chairwoman, said Robinson followed all guidelines and turned the credential lists in on time. “They were pretty much trying to mess up College Republicans here at the University of South Carolina,” she said. But Weatherford said the con federation told Dargan about ♦ REPUBLICANS, SEE PAGE 3 PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Paul Bliem photographs a wall of graffiti. Bliem, a fourth-year media arts student, tracks graffiti artists around Columbia. One student’s defacement is another student’s photogenic phenomenon ^ COREY HUTCHINS SI’KOIAL to tiik oamkoock r~ -» heap, broken whiskey bottles llhad washed up trom uie street. Sixteen )unce beer cans and pieces of tattered cardboard reeked with the smell of urine and cigarette butts. None of this bothered fourth-year media arts student Paul Bliem as he touched a painted image on the side of a concrete support block beneath the Blossom Street Bridge. t“This is beautiful,-he said. Bliem has been tracking graffiti artists >und Columbia for more than three months. “It started as just something to look forward to or something to do, but now it’s all I think about,” he said. Since the beginning of the school year, Bliem has taken several hundred photographs with his 35-mm camera, capturing images from the darkness of sewage drain pipes to the glare of downtown city lights. The most beautiful work he has seen, Bliem said, has been in places no one will ever see. To him, that is the essence of art. rne tiling about pnotograpn ing this graffiti is that I am mak ing art from other people’s art,” he said. Hundreds of film canisters lit ter his apartment, and his walls are plastered with glossy prints of painted walls and train cars. He has seen decades of artwork through the lenses of his cameras, and yet not a single time has he captured the act in progress. “It’s been like a game,” he said. “There’s 20 years of paint on these walls, and yet I’m all alone down here.” Plans to publish a book on Columbia’s graf fiti art drive the 24-year-old media arts student to spend his money on film, cameras, develop ing and editing materials, tripods and lenses. “Of all these artists,” he said, “there are only two that really impress me: Klever and Sour. Those are their tag names.” A “tag” is a graffiti artist’s sign of author ship and ownership of the work. “The busses on the comer of Huger and Lady streets are my favorite work here,” Bliem said. Two old tour buses sit behind a chain-link fence, the sides covered with the words Klever and Sour. The buses look like they were paint ed professionally. “This isn’t pop culture — this is a lifestyle. It’s a badge of honor to throw your tag on a building, or a train that crosses the country,” he said. “I’d like to meet these people.” “Down the line, I’d love to do a documentary on their art, on the way they live and the way they do it,” he said. “The problem is, I always show up two days late. I want to shoot them painting.” Bliem doesn’t know when his project will be finished, or if it ever will be. “Until you completely master something, until you can go no farther, your goal is to just get better. I strive to be the best at what I do, the same as these kids who strive to be the best at what they do,” he said. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocknews@gwm.sc.edu Gibson’s 'Passion’ provides context for lectures BY Z’ANNE COVELL THEHAMECOCK With Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” stirring .up conversations across the country, a renowned Jesus scholar will speak at USC this week about the •°vie’s portrayal — although ®t’s not what he had planned. J°hn Dominic Crossan, pro fessor emeritus of religious stud ies at DePaul University in Chicago, said he isn’t changing his lectures, but Gibson’s movie provided godd context for the dis cussion. “I had not planned these lec tures because of Mel Gibson’s movie,” Crossan said. “These are my standard lectures, and I could have given them without men tioning Mel Gibson.” Crossan will speak at USC’s ninth annual Nadine Beacham and Charlton F. Hall Sr. Lectureship in New Testament and Early Christianity on Thursday at 8 p.m. and Friday at 10 a.m. in the Russell House ball room. ♦ CROSSAN, SEE PAGE 3 □ Police expand crackdown on illegal drinking BY ASHLEE RICKARD THE GAMECOCK You might want to leave that fake ID at home. LRADAC, the Behavioral Health Center of the Midlands, announced Monday night the third expansion of the underage alcohol enforcement into Richland School District Two. The underage alcohol en forcement effort was expanded in September 2003 to include the downtown area, specifically Five Points and the Vista. The Richland County Sheriffs Department and USC Police Department are part of the team. LRADAC has organized four teams that span Lexington and Richland counties courtesy of grants from the U.S. Justice Department. Three of those teams focus on local school dis tricts. From September 2003 to March 2004, the enforcement team conducted 186 compliance checks in the downtown and Vista areas, resulting in 58 vio lations. From 98 on-premise checks, the officers found 107 vi olations. And recently, 28 tick ets were given in only two hours. Jack Claypoole, executive di rector of LRADAC, urges under age drinkers to think twice be fore using a fake ID. Even if your fake ID fools the bartender, he said, it will not fool the officers, who are often undercover. The teams usually show up at bars and parties where under age drinking could occur. They have also been showing up at sorority and fraternity parties where alcohol is present. If the officers see someone drinking who appears to be un derage, they ask to see two forms of identification. Then, using a new state-of-the art ID scanner that reads a bar * ALCOHOL, SEE PAGE 3 Perched for Push t I ' K’tAfL : _ flit* Xijti.vt.ii ( )utr.-.t. «t *'! I ‘ PHOTO BY MORGAN FORD/THE GAMECOCK Members of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity sit on a scaffold on the Russell House Patio for their Push America fund-raiser. USS MORE SEE PAGE 6 clothes are all aboutcolo. FOR MORESEE EE ♦ DAY TRIPPER Spend a Saturday PAGE 7 exploring the many sides of Charleston. ♦ BIG ORANGE Tennessee sweeps USC FOR MORE SEE PAGE 6 softball in doubleheader. FOR MORE SEE FOR ♦A BRIGHT IDEA Spring and summer PAGE 10 Index ~ The GaraeoocKfSprmted on Comics and Crossword_9 Online Poll _6 recycled p*per. Classified 12 Police Report _ 2 Horoscopes 9 Entertainment News 2 .. _. - ——--- -- Visit us online at Letters to the Editor 6 USC Calendar 2 . .. „ . www.dailygamecock.com