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After lowest score possible, GMP gets perfect mark Tuesday ■ GMP Continued-from page 1 ceiling tiles and vents, and dirty floor tiles. “At no point was there any danger of food becoming contaminated,” he said. Both Zeigler and Scheffres attributed the disrepair to disorganization at the start of the school year. “This is the time of year where we have the greatest demand for our facilities,” Zeigler said. “There is a several-week adjustment period at the start of the semester where we need to hire an adequate number of staff, make sure everything meets DHEC requirements, among other things. The things we were marked off for weren’t emergencies.” “With a large facility like the GMP, which serves 5,000 people a day, there are a lot of chances for little problems to go by. It’s absolutely easy to lose points in an inspection,” Scheffres said. Second-year public relations student Kyle Bohman said he was aware of the C rating the day it was given. “1 had to go in the back of the GMP to get ice for the organization fair in August,” he said. “It was really cluttered.” Bohman declined to give details about the GMP’s condition. However, he was confident in the GMP’s ability to improve the rating. “Sodexho is the largest food distributor in the world,” Bohman said. “I doubt they would let their ‘showroom’ for our campus have continual problems.” Sodexho is contracted for food service to all of the university’s dining halls. After the initial inspection, Scheffres said a follow-up ' inspection was requested immediately. “We spent the night of the first inspection fixing everything we could find — replacing floor tiles, ceiling tiles, stopping the leak in the dish machine, cleaning vents,” he said. Other dining facilities in the Russell House have consistently higher scores, Scheffres said. Catering Services was recently rated a 93, Einstein’s Bagel Company a 93 and Pandini’s a 99. Third-year business student Lindsey Adair was employed at Pandini’s in spring 2003. “Even though the GMP changed its appearance, I think the food at the GMP did not change at all,” she said. “As for Pandini’s, 1 think the 99 score shows that they have made more improvements since they opened. That happens to a lot of JENNI DILIARD/THE GAMECOCK Chicken on the grille at tne Grand Market Place Thursday night. The GMP, USC’s largest on-campus dining facility, received a C rating earlier this month. The rating is now back to an A. new businesses.” No representatives for DHEC or the Richland County Department of Health were available to comment on the inspections. DHEC temporarily suspends the food service license of a facility scoring below 70, which forces the facility to close until a follow-up inspection finds improved levels of sanitation. After inspection, a scorecard is placed by DHEC in visible area inside of the facility. The GMP’s scorecard is located on the wall next to the leftmost cashier. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknews@gwm.sc. edu Audrette Morris helps Damian Ward after his vehicle overturned in Birmingham, Ala., as Hurricane Ivan hit the city. BUTCH DILL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ■ PATTERNS Continued from page 1 harm’s way.” Hurricane Ivan caused evacuation requests in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Two million people fled the states. Officials found it impossible to evacuate the 100,00 people without transportation stranded in New Orleans, La., which is below sea level. Cutter said she thought Hurricane Frances was handled well, and as soon as people are back to “normalcy,” the team will begin its survey. The hazardous research team usually does not start surveying people until about six weeks after the disaster. The team surveys a random sample of people whose zip codes are in the evacuating area. “The main thing we want to answer is the. ‘why’ question,” Cutter said. This question is answered by finding out who stayed and left, where they went, what prompted them to leave, how long it took to get there and the route, also how many cars were taken. “You learn something new every time there is an evacuation because every time is different,” she said. “There is no such thing as a perfect evacuation.” The HRL team focuses mainly on the South Carolina coast, especially the Myrtle Beach area, where most of the hurricanes are headed, Cutter said. While Hurricane Charlie came close to hitting the coast, Hurricane Floyd ravaged the coast in September 1999. According to the team’s survey of data for Hurricane Floyd, 59 percent of people surveyed evacuated the disaster zone. Most people reported that it took seven hours or more to reach outlying areas, including Atlanta, Columbia and Greenville. With no alternate routes, time was delayed for many people leaving the area. Twenty-five percent of people used more than one vehicle during the evacuation, adding to the congestion problem. Also, some people did not use a map to plan their evacuation route. The HRL team’s data ia given to the state emergency management agency to let them know what the difficulties were and to suggest possible solutions to problems.' Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockneTvs®gwm.sc. edu ■ SG Continued from page 1 first-year computer information systems student appointed to the council. Throughout the year, Freshman Council members will focus on projects that can better serve first year students. First-year business student Sean McDevitt said he had been considering several projects he would like to propose. “I was thinking about something that could help unite the class, especially since so many kids are from out of state. Maybe cleaning up an unused area on campus and setting up some picnic tables and volleyball nets, and then kind of designating it as a freshman area. That way, freshman could have a place to come hang out with other freshman,” he said. Sean said he had several traits he thought might have helped him stand out from the rest of the applicants, including a stint in Ireland while in high school as an exchange student and a member of the Junior Statesmen of America, a debating organization. “So maybe that caught their eye and made them want to interview me,” he said. First-year journalism student Hilary Dyer said she thought her experience with interviews in pageant circles helped her with her council interview. “I’m pretty confident in that setting. I don’t really get nervous, so that might have given me an advantage,” said Dyer. She also has ideas to present when Freshman Council meets for the first time. “Projects to get us familiar with Columbia, like community service, are a good idea. I also think maybe another event, like First Night, could help to unite the class. We should be united because we are going to be here the next four years, and we are the future of Carolina,” she said. Freshman Council is basically autonomous and can set its own agenda. In the past, Freshman Councils have engaged in everything from campus beautification projects to painting murals. Students’ position on Freshman Council also allows council members to observe and learn from various student leaders and administrators from different departments at USC. “Historically we’ve seen that many of the student leaders on campus have gotten their first taste of involvement through Freshman Council,” Scott said. The Freshman Council also has the opportunity to speak before the Senate if they have an issue they feel they want to bring up. When they meet, the council will divide into committees, each with its own chairperson who is accountable to the council, just like any other organization. Half way through the year, if the council is not satisfied with the chairperson’s performance, he or she can be held accountable and replaced by the group. “Since freshman come in after the voting, Freshman Council is really a way for freshmen to have their voices heard,” Scott said. Historically, once it has formed committees, the council will send out e-mails, seeking mentoring help from various aspects of campus life. “Be it someone in Greek life or someone in the Cabinet, they look for people who are willing to take a freshman under their wing and teach them the system, show them the ropes,” Scott said. The council will be meeting at the Russell House on Tuesday for a welcome reception. This will be their regular meeting time and location for’ the remainder of the semester. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknevts@gwm.sc.edu ■ IVAN • Continued from page 1 threatened up to 15 inches of rain and flooding across the South, already soggy after Hurricanes Charley and Frances over the past month. And more danger could be on the horizon: Tropical Storm Jeanne is tearing through the Caribbean on a path that could take it into Florida early next week as a hurricane. More than 2 million residents along a 300-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast cleared out as Ivan, a former 165-mph monster that killed 70 people in the Caribbean, closed in on an unsteady path. Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores Beach, Ala., around 3 a.m., but it was the Panhandle _ squarely in the northeast quadrailt of the storm, where the winds are most violent _ that took the brunt. Ivan spun off at least a dozen tornadoes in Florida, while creating a storm surge of 10 to 16 feet, topped by large battering waves. A portion of a bridge on Interstate 10, the major east-west highway through the Panhandle, was washed away. Insurance experts put the storm’s damage at anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion. Hurricanes Charley and Frances had combined estimated insured damages between about $11 billion and $13 billion after striking Florida in the last month. The death toll included 14 in Florida, two in Mississippi and two in Georgia. In Louisiana, four evacuees died after being taken from their storm-threatened homes to safer parts of the state. Many of the millions of Gulf Coast residents who spent a frightening night in shelters and boarded-up homes emerged to find Ivan was not the catastrophe many feared. New Orleans, especially vulnerable to storms because much of it lies below sea level, got only some blustery winds, a mere two tenths of an inch of rain and only some downed tree limbs. Mobile, Ala., a port city of 200,000 that had been in the bull’s-eye of the storm, got a break by an llth-hour shift to the east. ■ President Bush plans to visit Alabama and Florida to survey the damage on Sunday, the White House said. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power, including 90 percent of Gulf Power Co.’s customers in Florida. ■ SHARING Continued from page 1 campus network. If officials decide to proceed, the university would consider all the options on the market from the popular Sony Napster to Apple iTunes, which boasts more than 1 million songs. Both services are priced at 99 cents a song. He said Student Life and USC Housing need to collaborate with his office on the project but that officials could decide in three to four months. USC would facilitate an option between vendors and the student users, while collecting a semester fee expected to be about $25 or possibly more if premium services are included. USC would have to monitor the network’s capacity but wouldn’t be responsible for maintaining a music library or considerable support, Hogue said. “We would probably need to buy extra capacity from our vendors,” he said. College campuses are catching on to a trend of providing music file sharing mainly because court decisions in recent years have reduced the number of legal options for file sharing, which now requires a subscription fee on all services. “If it’s something where we could do legal instead of illegal things with these services, then this is something the university would be interested in,” Brewer said. Network managers at universities and corporations are known for disallowing access to file sharing sites for the concern of flooding capacity. However, some legal and illegal sites still escape detection. “I could still go to Bearshare or Limewire and just get it for free,” secohd-year electronic journalism student Alexis Jones said. However, she said she would be inclined to try a system supervised by USC for its safety features. “I would trust it more from the university for it being free from viruses,” she said. Brewer said he hasn’t met with any potential vendors but that their representatives have promoted services among administration officials in the past. “There are some who have been on campus before,” he said. “Basically they’re like sales calls. We haven’t been in .negotiations with any of them.” Officials said the next step is to get feedback on the idea from students, most likely starting with discussions with Student Government. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecock.ie'ws@gwm.sc.edu ■ TICKETS Continued from page 1 of distribution. “So they had ample time to get tickets,” he said. If students don’t scan their card at the beginning of the semester, they can scan it at any time during the season. “The table (of tickets) is set out and students just mark through their names and take their tickets,” second-year law student Adam Bach said. The law school has received block tickets for the past five years according to Joanne Heiting, the student services coordinator for the USC Law Center. It took the school about three years to obtain it. Undergraduates got their tickets the same way until the program was changed because it was “ineffective,” Student Senate athletics chairman Chris Floyd said. “Groups would get block tickets and hope to sit together, but it just didn’t work, so we ended the program,” he said. Massaro said the purpose of the program was to allow law and medical school students who might have problems getting tickets in 775 of the 11,000 allotted student football tickets are reserved for USC Law and med school students who don’t have to wait in line. the distribution line to still be able to attend sporting events. “We also try to take students with special needs like student teachers and students from the office of disabilities,” Massaro said. “So it is a broad group of people.” Comments on this story? E-mail gameeocknetvs@gwm.sc. edit The Old and the New” . Guest Lecturer: JAMES CARROLL Author and Boston Globe Columnist 3:00 pm Symposium “The Misuse of Religion for Political Ends’ 8:00 pm Lecture 'Anti-Semitism: The Old and the New" USC School of Law Auditorium 701 South Main Street : Columbia, South Carolina SOuiH(p6uNA FREE and Open to The Public