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> TPlIfPri VTTQ ON£EltS?.* PageS IPjVVI \ I \ l LI wwwdailygamecock.com to Monday, August 30,2004 B B ^ f f B V_>/ _ l. i B rVy vote. Results posted on Friday. AMECOCK EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR Adam Beam DESIGN DIRECTOR David Stagg NEWS EDITOR Michael LaForgia THE MIX EDITOR Meg Moore COPY DESK CHIEF Gabrielle Sinclair VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Wes Wolfe SENIOR WRITER Kevin Fellner IN OUR OPINION On-campus changes must reflect students For seniors, the Russell House is barely recognizable from their freshman year. The bookstore is different, the GMP actually has enough tables and the fast food choices upstairs have doubled. And it’s just the beginning, according to USC officials, who reached a deal to bring Marble Slab Creamery on campus and are renovating some third-floor office space for business use, reportedly for a financial institution. Future Russell House additions should include more affordable, inclusive options. More on-campus eating options is definitely a plus, but we hope USC officials will focus on affordability rather than concept. College students are poor, plain and simple. Bringing more on campus eating options only to gouge prices defeats the purpose. No matter how hungry stu dents are, they won’t pay exorbitant prices for food. If on-campus restaurants want to attract students, maybe instead of raising prices to match those off campus they should keep prices low to keep students from driving off campus to find cheaper food. But the Russell House is more than a place for students to eat. Thanks to Columbia’s downtown serving as a buffer for USC northward expansion, the Russell House has become the center of campus. For students who aren’t 21, the entertainment options within walking distance of cam pus are limited. We feel USC officials should consider this when thinking about expansion projects. Why not bring in a bowling alley for bored students on the weekends? Why not make the Russell House a fun place to be rather than a hangout at mealtimes? Overall, we’re happy with the changing Russell House, we just hope the students will continue to use it. IT’S YOUR RIGHT Exercise your right to voice your opinior Create message boards at www.dailygamecock.com . or send letters to the editor to M gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu ^ GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS In Monday’s News, Sonam Shah should have been listed as being named to the Russell House Advisory Board. In Friday’s News, a headline should have read that two planes crashed in Russia. A front-page teaser on Wednesday should have read that residents of Preston College have a separate meal plan. The Gamecock regrets the errors. If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu. i----—--1 ABOUT THE GAMECOCK EDITOR Adam Beam DESIGN DIRECTOR David Stagg COPY DESK CHIEF Gabrielle Sinclair NEWS EDITOR Michael LaForgia ASST. NEWS EDITOR Jon Turner VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Wes Wolfe THE MIX EDITOR Meg Moore SPORTS EDITOR Jonathan Hillyard ASST. SPORTS EDITOR Daniel Kerr SENIOR WRITER Kevin Fellner PHOTO EDITOR Jason Steelman SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR Katie Kirkland PAGE DESIGNERS Chas McArthy, Staci Jordan COPY EDITORS Jennifer Freeman, Anna Huntley, Jason Reynolds, Steven Van Haren, Joey Wallace ONLINE EDITOR Brian Cope PUBLIC AFFAIRS Katie Miles, Jane Fielden CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. The Editor in Chief’s office hours are Monday and Wednesday from 3-5 p.m. Editor in 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; Sports: 777-7182 Editor's Office: 777-3914 STUDENT MEDIA DIRECTOR Scott Linden berg FACULTY ADVISER Erik Collins CREATIVE DIRECTOR Susan King BUSINESS MANAGER Carolyn Griffin ADVERTISING MANAGER Sarah Scarborough CLASSIFIED MANAGER Sherry F. Holmes PRODUCTION MANAGER Patrick Bergen CREATIVE SERVICES Burke Lauderdale, Chelsea Felder, Laura Gough,Joseph Dannelly, Kristen Williams ADVERTISING STAFF Robert Carli, Ryan Gorman, Caroline Love, Jesica Johnson, Katie Stephens 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 •he 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 I Student Media. TO PLACE AN AD The Gamecock Advertising: 777-3888 1400 Greene St. Classified: 777-1184 Columbia, S.C. 29208 Fax: 777-6482 tjli-1 /V\ieJUT£CUNICS/ P£(M0|M6 <?UICK /^pl^AU CAZ£, Wiu g£6lN OP6WIM6 IN TAfi6£T STQfgg5_ aft^p yovoer ypuR > AFF^NQlX OoT MggT Mg' IN Kfrcn£MM*ftF. K 0(< C>fc£S5g5 / 7 •) TARGET ^ MlMOT&CUtJlC =z=-r' i -'l CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Bush out of touch with economy ■ The president needs to address the issues of poverty and lost jobs Turn on the TV news this week, and chances are that you’ll see little else other than coverage of the Republican National Convention in New York and the resulting protests. More interesting, though, is what will be conspicuously absent from the George W. Bush love-fest that the Big Apple is becoming. A few days ago, the Census Bureau released new data showing that both the poverty rate and the number of Americans without health insurance rose for the third straight year, a change that directly contradicts the president’s contention that his tax cuts have been enough to stimulate an economy that has been bleeding jobs since 2001. A consistent theme of the Bush Cheney re-election bid has been securing a bright future for generations of Americans yet to come, an idea that recklessly assumes that equality of opportunity currently exists in the United States. This is unsurprising, considering that Republican campaign strategists know their base intimately, and realize that depressing talk of job losses in the American South will do little to bolster their cause. Also, the machine behind Bush’s bid for a second term is fully aware that conservative middle-class voters that comprise its demographic care very little about the plight of the urban poor in this nation, preferring to PATRICK worry about AUGUSTINE FIFTH-YEAR children and POLITICAL mortgages. SCIENCE T , STUDENT 1 n e president’s own commerce secretary, Donald Evans, dismissed the new data, saying that it “looked backward in time at an economy that was substantially weaker” than it is today. Comments of this nature from a leading executive branch official show that our current administration has no interest in seeing a change in the reality that 35.9 million Americans living below the poverty fine face on a daily basis. At no point in either this campaign season or the last has a notion of poverty and inequality even entered the lexicon of Mr. Bush. Particularly interesting are the implications for the South, which if you believe the census numbers, has been the region hardest hit by the economy’s slowing. While average pay kept up with inflation last year in most of the nation, it failed to do so in states like South Carolina. The Washington Post reported that the number of Americans without health insurance rose to 45 million, and that “white adults, primarily in the South, accounted for most of the increase.” Yet, S.C. Republican Senate candidate Jim DeMint was quoted as saying that people need to “stop whining about job losses” in the state, on top of last week’s news that South Carolina has dropped to 50th in SAT scores. Since we know that poverty is the greatest barrier to educational success, the saddest piece of data to emerge from the census report is that by the end of 2003, 12.9 million children lived below the poverty line in America. The future for our state, and indeed the nation does not look bright if we continue in the direction we are currently traveling. This is not to say that the Democratic Party has done a better job during this campaign cycle. Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry said in response to the new census data that “we need a president that stands up for the middle class,” again letting political pragmatics prevent him from championing the cause of the American poor. We have yet to see if vice presidential candidate John Edward’s rhetoric on the “Two Americas” will become a part of the Democratic platform or if it will get lost in the clatter of sound bites between now and November. IN YOUR OPINION Culbertson insults himself with column One would hope that writers for The Gamecock would have some sense of school pride and respect the university at which they are enrolled. Graham Culbertson (“New students learn hard lessons,” Wednesday) not only showed a lack of respect for USC but also managed to stereotype and insult the majority of the students on this campus. My opinion is that if Mr. Culbertson is so pessimistic toward this university then he should have transferred out long ago and saved us all the trouble of reading his column. I have to ask why it is assumed that as students grow older they “learn not to care” when the opposite is true for the majority of students. If we didn’t care we would have flunked out long ago and wouldn’t be taking the opportunity to write letters such as this one. If Mr. Culbertson believes that the women of this university are future homemakers and/or alcoholics then he should ask one of the Christian groups he insulted to pray that he either finds it in himself to better the community he seems so thoroughly disgusted in or learn that if you use your literary talents to condescend to your fellow students then you are the one who should be “dung shoveling” for the zoology department since you have already seemed to master it with your pen. The only lesson learned from this obnoxious column is that The Gamecock needs to find better writers who don’t use the newspaper as a medium to offend its readers. JOLIE CONNOR Third-year advertising student Put this student fee increase to a vote Why should students be forced to fund the on-campus newspaper readership program (“Funding solution found for program,” Wednesday)? The New York Times and USA Today newspapers can be viewed for free on the Internet. Almost every building at USC has computer access so it is ludicrous for us to fund the deterioration of the environment by cutting down even more trees. This is a perfect reason why any increase in student fees should be put to a referendum. JUSTIN TYE Fifth-year engineering student THE GAMECOCK NEEDS EDITORIAL CARTOONISTS IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE E-MAIL GAMECOCKOPINIONS @GWM.SC.EDU 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. Anonymous letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777 7726 for more information. COLLEGE QUOTE BOARD THE CRIMSON WHITE Jjfgaifc UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA Let’s play the SAT word-association game. Kerry is to Vietnam as Bush is to2. the Texas Air National Guard. Every time Vietnam is mentioned in tfiis campaign, we, presumably along with a great deal of the country’s voters, cannot help but think of Bush’s skirting of overseas service. So, it does the president no favors to keep events of 30-plus years ago in the news. THE BREEZE : JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY The term sellout is used to pretentiously write off a band when it does something that seems to be in its best interest. People who do this fail to rec ognize that the music industry, as well as all art regardless of the ideals it is held to, is just that — an industry. A band should certainly be involved in its music and enjoy what it does, but the same holds true for every job. I ' ; STAFF REPORTS President’s war time legislation justified m Millions of liberated Iraqis have benefited from Bush’s Iraq policy There has been a lot of Bush bashing in the Letters to the Editor section lately. Come to think of it, I’ve heard some Bush bashing in a few of my classes as well. But what’s new? Frankly, we could allow the vitriol to continue into another Bush administration and I don’t DVAKI think it would unir phase our commander in SECOND-YEAR POLITICAL After all, STUDENT President Bush went to Washington to cut taxes so Americans or an types could have more money use at their discretion and not at the government’s whim. Instead, he accomplished much more. If the president loses in November, I don’t doubt he will be content to return to his Texas ranch, a place in a great state that I too call home. Bush would be satisfied with the simplicity of life that entails cutting down cedar trees, setting fence posts and talking about life with those he holds dear. The point is, President Bush, whether or not you like his policies, is a good man who seeks to do what is morally right on a regular basis. For this reason, I think the President needs no defense and could probably handle the recent ire on his own. But I’m going to defend him anyway, because like any rational person I know that despite the problems in Iraq, what the United States did there was a good thing. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, you know that the president has been taking heat mainly for launching a war on Iraq. Perhaps the largest facet of these complaints is constructed through the griping and whining about the lack of weapons of mass destruction even though largely unreported evidence shows that indeed, WMDs were present in Iraq. The Iraqi Survey Group reported that they had “discovered dozens of WMD related program activities,” and noted that without the intervention of the Bush administration, the Hussein programs “would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km.” Also, at a NATO Summit in June of this year, the Polish defense minister noted that his troops had encountered more than a dozen warheads equipped with sarin and mustard gas. It that is not enough to exonerate the president from accusations of his lying, perhaps the fact that 14 top members of the opposition party have all acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was fostering a WMD program (if you’d like two-and-a half pages of quotes substantiating my claim, e-mail me). So where does this bring us today? While the naysayers continue to lambaste the Bush administration, more than 25 million people are living in freedom. Is everything perfect? Of course not. It would be irrational to expect a democracy after only a year. I could go on and on about why our entry into Iraq was a good idea, but I’ll save that for my next column. However, I must say that when you go to the polls in the coming months, remember to think of those 25 million people and reflect on whether or not their independence from tyranny is something worth fighting for.