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INSIDE -V . ■ * 1 v.r' •■■■■■• :■! VIEWPOINTS 0 beautiful for spacious Jeeps Cars serve as a symbol of American liberty. PAGE 5 THE MIX Controversy hits boiling point “Fahrenheit 9/11” debuts amid cheers and jeers. PAGE 6 SPORTS Another season in the record books The Gamecock baseball team ends another stellar season. PAGE 9 INDEX Comics and Crossword 8 Classifieds 12 Online Poll 5 Quote of the Day 6 USC Police Report 4 Sorensen might testify BY JON TURNER THE GAMECOCK Although prosecutors said it was possible USC President Andrew Sorensen might be called as a witness, no further word has emerged concerning his possible association with the Alabama bid-rigging scandal threat ening former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, among others. Sorensen declined to comment on the case. The charges being leveled in the case include counts of wit ness tampering, wire fraud, making a false statement to the FBI and making a false state ment to the court. The core of the case, however, is the alle gation Siegelman and Paul Sorensen Hamrick, his chief of staff, con spired with Phillip Bobo, a Tuscaloosa doctor, to rig bids for a contract for providing mater nity services to Medicaid recipients, that is, conspiracy, healthcare fraud and theft from a federally funded program. The indictment de scribes a network of conspirators pressuring state officials to chance Medicaid contracting procedures but names only those three. “The competitive bid process used by Alabama’s Medicaid Agency in the Maternity Care Program was critical to ensuring the ♦ SORENSEN, SEE PAGE 2 Rock you like a hurricane PHOTO BY MELISSA WALLACE/THE GAMECOCK A severe storm Monday night damaged the USC campus. USC Spartanburg changes name Change could be sign of growth BY ELLEN TWEEDY THE GAMECOCK USC Spartanburg changed its name to USC Upstate on July 1 in an effort to regionalize and grow over the next few years. Whether the name change is an indication of what’s in store for USC Union, a two-year upstate campus, remains to be seen. Earlier this year, Gov. Mark Sanford suggested closing the Union campus as a way to save money. USC Upstate’s mission, which was approved by the USC Board of Trustees and the S.C. Commission on Higher Education, details a metropolitan university, which is described as “a university that acknowledges as its fundamental reason for be ♦ USC UPSTATE, SEE PAGE 2 Provost hopeful boasts physics experience BY STEVEN VAN HAREN THE GAMECOCK Uday Sukhatme_dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has been selected by USC officials as one of four candidates to replace Provost Jerry Odom. Before coming to Buffalo in August 2002, Sukhatme was head of the physics department and in terim vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was awarded the UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching through his work with faculty development programs, the promotion and tenure process and student retention issues. Sukhatme earned his bache lor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Delhi, and de grees in physics and theoretical physics from MIT. Through aggressive hiring, Sukhatme has increased the size of Buffalo’s tenured faculty by 13 percent in the past two years. At Buffalo, he was instrumental in the creation of two educational outreach programs for high school students: Cutting Edge, a lecture series, and the Poetry Contest, ♦ SUKHATME, SEE PAGE 2