Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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ONLINE POLL Have you registered to vote? Let us know at www.dailygamecock.com. Results posted on Friday. TH$%AMECOCK EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR Adam Beam DESIGN DIRECTOR COPY DESK CHIEF David Stagg Gabrielle Sinclair NEWS EDITOR VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Michael LaForgia Wes Wolfe THE MIX EDITOR SENIOR WRITER Meg Moore Kevin Fellner IN OUR OPINION USC stadium plan right for Gamecocks USC President Andrew Sorensen’s recommendation to the Board of Trustees that USC build its own baseball stadium was a good move for the University and its stu dents. For the past several years, the USC baseball team has garnered national attention for our College World Series teams and our SEC domi The decision to nance This has resulted in an build 3 new increased fan base in Columbia, baseball stadium as wel1 as the rest of the state was the right But while Sarge Frye Field has move for the USC history, it has little else. It’s too baseball team small and has none of the fea and its fans. tures that are expected from a top-ranked SEC program. The new stadium, which might be built next to the Colonial Center, promises to be an amazing complex for USC baseball and its fans. If it is built next to the Colonial Center, it will be an added benefit for students because of its closeness to campus. While the idea of a joint-use stadium with the city made sense, it didn’t work out. Columbia Mayor Bob Coble said the city just didn’t have the money to help finance the stadium. We do feel it is unfortunate that USC’s relationship with the city might be tarnished as a result of these negotiations. Just a few weeks ago Sorensen wrote a column on how he wanted to work with the city and make the stadium happen. But we feel that Sorensen was looking out for USC’s best interests, as he should. USC waited two years on the city to work out a deal, but unfortunately it didn’t hap pen and we feel USC is justified to go ahead and build its own stadium. ITS YOUR RIGHT L Exercise your right to voice your opinion Create message boards at www.dailygamecock.com or send letters to the editor to gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS On Friday’s Page 2, the picture of the day should have been credited to Jenni Dillard. On Friday’s front page, the picture of the pharmacy school should have been credited to Emily Sevins. The Gamecock regrets the error. If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu. 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 Erin Cline, Jennifer Logan, Chas McCarthy, Jessica Ann Nielsen COPY EDITORS Jennifer Freeman, Anna Huntley, Jason Reynolds, Jennifer Sitowski, Daniel Regenscheit, Steven Van Haren, Joel Wallace ONLINE EDITOR Brian Cope PUBLIC AFFAIRS Katie Miles, Jane Fielden TO PLACE AN AD The Gamecock Advertising: 777-3888 1400 Greene St. Classified: 777-1184 Columbia. S.C. 29208 Fax: 777-6482 2►^ 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 Lindenberg 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 a the publisher of The ^k Gamecock. The Department of Student Media is the newspaper’s parent organization. The Garfiecock 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. THE CHECHEN I jafaff1 CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Conservatism isn’t compassionate ■ Democrats, then and now, have led us down a baseless party path One thing the election suffers is a dearth of conservatives. President Bush has few strong issues save Iraq, and among them are radicalizing issues such as abortion and faith. As for his weaker issues, health care and education, Bush basically proposes to spend less than his opponent. This is after a projected $2 trillion Medicare bill, a wealth transfer to America’s richest income group by age. These past four years evince the legacy of compassionate conservatism, which isn’t conservative at all. Conservatism isn’t compassionate. “Compass ionate” describes the president’s domestic policy well: Bush pops new programs like pills, especially those that please evangelicals. Actually, compassionate conservatism is an argument to vote Democrat in disguise. So lest we forget why it is the Democratic Party that deserves the title of most compassionate and most odious, here is a reminder: Bom from every known corruption, last to embrace truth and first to leave old truths behind, it is good to hate the Democrats. Where, when should one start? And are there in fact any depths to plumb in the DNC, an ideologically craven, lazy fraud of a party? Their soul is Roosevelt’s, the pioneer court stacker, scheme maker, boondoggler, usher of patronage politics, source COREY °f every rADmnTT Democratic GARRIOTT idea since the FOURTH-YEAR New Deal, ECONOMICS which is to say, STUDENT that of choosing to whom to send the next transfer payment. The Democrats since flash by like pale shadows of Roosevelt, all ushers for the cult of the victim, smugly self-satisfied it is they who care for the poor because it is they who dole out the cash. Could this be class guilt? But the poor and the Democrats have nothing in common. No group in history, claiming to be philosopher kings, has been so concerned with what the rest of us think of their confounded, force fed at gunpoint, loudly-given-for maximum-impact charity. Practically the only one with any cojones was Kennedy, who cut taxes — the party of pocket picking is poised to grasp straws at the next election all over again. With practically the laziest candidate in history, John Kerry, whose discovered concern for the everyman is countenanced only by his affection for heiresses, all of whose campaign proposals he phrases in the negative (the better to contradict Bush), whose only merit indeed is that he isn’t Bush, why is this election so close? And lo, where does the Democratic Party stand today? It stands wherever it can assume the posture of better-than-thou (though never' holier-than-thou). It’s a party where anything can be done under the guise of “caring,” that ubiquitous, vague intention that rules over argument in Democratic territory. Should these whiners be let into power? Those who divide the world into winners and losers should be kept far away from presidential podiums, much less soapboxes. What new proposal have they advanced since 1964, besides to tax the rich and spend it to manufacture deficiency? Have they taken a hard stand <Sn any issue besides abortion, any issue at all that counterintuitively might not involve more spending? This gutless group couldn’t hold a line against terrorism or budget deficits any more than Clinton could hold the line of his zipper. Kerry doesn’t know what lines are. Today let us congratulate them only for embracing the disenfranchised and so dooming them to fail. This is their progressivism, and may it die. IN YOUR OPINION Fry’s letter shows misguided rhetoric Russell Fry (“Patrick’s liberalism ignores real truths,” Friday) took columnist Kim Patrick to task for absorbing and repeating the “rhetoric that the Democratic Party spits.” Given that his letter is composed in such an overdramatic and pretentious style, one can only find it ironic that he should accuse Patrick of employing empty rhetoric. For example, Fry describes some terrorists’ “draconian tactics of brutality.” This phrase comes off badly for several reasons: It’s redundant, it’s formulated to sound sophisticated but actually conveys no specific information and some of the words have been chosen with regard only for their obscurity, i.e. “draconian.” One could assert that the use of this word in reference to terrorists is absurd in that “draconian” refers at least in part to a body of laws (Seventh century, Greece) whereas terrorism is characterized not by codified behaviors but by its lawlessness and unpredictability. Of course, one would have to be perusing one’s dictionary rather than thesaurus to realize this point. That’s only a brief example of the number and the nature of rhetorical sins Fry himself is committing. I can’t help but assume that the current administration’s preoccupation with certain words and phrases — glib descriptions such as “weapons of mass destruction” and “enemies of democracy” and so on that ultimately confuse real meanings — must • be informing Fry’s style. The intentional obscurity, the generality and above all, the repetition of these catchwords and slogans fog points and clog arguments. Put simply, if one is telling the truth, one doesn’t have to use such tactics. CAT BAAB Class of2004 New stadium means even worse parking Parking spaces are slowly disappearing. We are forced to pay $40 a year for a parking sticker that does not guarantee a place to park and sometimes we still have to feed the meter. Whenever one complains of parking they are told to park at the Coliseum and catch a shuttle. The shuttles are a nice necessity but you can’t ask 800 people to park at the Coliseum and shuttle to their destinations and only offer 500 parking spaces for the shuttle takers and people who attend class in the coliseum. Not to mention that if there is an event at the Colonial Center or the Roger Center we are forced to leave before 5 p.m., pay a $5 parking fee or find someplace else to park. While watching the local news, I recently discovered that the gravel parking lot in front of the Colonial Center would be used to build a baseball stadium. The only thing the news presented as a problem was the fact that the Bombers would no longer have a place to play. No one even considered the fact that this would add to a problem that already exists. When construction begins, where does that leave us? Where will people who use the parking lots at the Coliseum, as suggested by so many when we complain, park when these lots are gone? RAFAYELE O’BANNER Third-year Technology Support and Training Management 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. Anonymous letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777 7726 for more information. COLLEGE QUOTE BOARD I __ THE OBSERVER I ITY OF NOTRE DAME | Su consider yourself a man, and you choose to drink, you should drink in the manliest way possible. Real men drink beer, and not carb-ciStsdous fake beer beverages like Aspen Edge and Michelob Ultra. Low-carb beer is about as manly as two guys sharing a large floral umbrel la. Particularly in college, the unique flavor of a Natty Light or Keystone should not be undervalued. i ■V THE SHORTHORN UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT .ARLINGTON While voters might get a general idea of a candidate’s platform based on speeches, to know where someone actually stands on issues — we must look to voting records, debates and previous actions. What a politician says to fellow party members in front of TV cameras and crowds of thousands isn’t necessarily their plan of action. Many times, it isn’t even a template U-WIRF. Rebel flag has no place at Carolina m GameDay display of controversial symbol shames the university I watched ESPN College GameDay broadcast on SportsCenter on Friday, and 1 got heated when the entire nation saw a r Confederate flag flying in the sea of garnet. A live, national broadcast was not the time, if there is one, to fly the rebel flag. The student who TERENCE flew that flag WASHINGTON JJ^TTs SECOND-YEAR school, ELECTRONIC conditioned bv JOURNALISM conamonea Dy STUDENT the state of South Carolina, which remains blissfully ignorant of racial issues. Confederate flag defenders say it warrants public display because of its place in Southern history. By displaying the flag, advocators say they are recalling the South’s heritage and the Confederacy’s fight for states’ rights. They must have forgotten that the South fought for the states’ rights for the sake of slavery and at the expense of the freedom of the 4 million African slaves who America stole. When you fly the Confederate flag, you support a state’s right to exploit an innocent race of people. The crowd at the GameDay broadcast was supposed to be there to cheer on the home team. Every student there represented USC. When the Confederate flag stood without opposition in a crowd of USC students, it said, regardless of whether the bearer meant it, that that crowd of USC students and the university had closed their eyes to the display of that flag. On national television, USC condoned the celebration of a culture that thrived on tne enslavement or innocents. Whoever flew the flag undoubtedly did not consider the implications when he hoisted it above the crowd. The fact that he did not think about his actions is not entirely an insight into his own conscience but more a testament to South Carolinian complacency with the state of race relations here. I ask why: Why didn’t we learn in high school about the Middle Passage, where the black holocaust occurred? Why isn’t “Roots” part of high school and college curriculums? Why weren’t we taught what apartheid was, or who Nelson Mandela is? Why is it that, knowing that the NCAA won’t allow South Carolina to play host to postseason games until it’s removed, our legislators leave the Confederate flag on the State House grounds, also knowing that this state needs the revenue from those games? Why is South Carolina’s racist history more important to them than the state itself? Black people: Why don’t we feel disrespected? We should be colorblind, but even the colorblind see black and white. Black natives of the South are used to seeing symbols of the Old South raised to iconic status. While white South Carolina denied it, we knew Strom Thurmond had black lads, and we don’t appreciate that his family didn’t want to put Thurmond’s black daughter’s name on his statue in front of the State House. As you fire up your computers to try to defend your state, 1 just want to say, in the amended words of Malcolm X, I didn’t write this to condemn South Carolina. I wrote this to tell the truth, and if the truth condemns this state, then it stands condemned.