Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Page 6 Friday, November 19, 2004 - . - . ■ .■!■■■-.— ;.-.■■■..: -7g?---T=rrrr7^=r-n-.. ■ —■ ... --■ I > •_ NICK ESARES/THE GAMECOCK Frank Dunham, a lawyer who represented accused U.S. enemy combatants, spoke to USC students and faculty members Wednesday night about the flaws in the U.S. justice system. Lawyer questions U.S. justice system By JON TURNER THE GAMECOCK Frank Dunham, the lawyer who represented U.S. citizen and suspected enemy combatant Yaser Hamdi for months before the pair even met, extolled the importance of habeas corpus to a crowd of about 75 students and faculty members Wednesday night. A writ of habeas corpus demands a detainee’s case be brought to a timely trial. Hamdi was held without trial in a naval brig in Charleston for nearly a year without charges brought against him in a formal court or given a chance to argue his own case. He was released to return to Saudi Arabia with his family on Oct. 11. The presentation was sponsored by the USC Walker Institute of International and Area Studies. Institute director Gordon Smith said he was delighted with the presentation. “It seemed like the audience was very engaged,” he said. “They heard a story that I think is a very important story, that, unfortunately, not enough Americans know about. We had a nice audience, but I wish we could have filled Williams-Brice Stadium.” Smith said the Walker Institute has helped coordinate several international student exchange and research programs, as well as speakers. He said he found the Hamdi case extremely relevant to students. “I think every American citizen has a vested interest in making sure that our fundamental freedoms are preserved and the government has to use due process in all of its dealings with American citizens,” Smith said. “That’s what the Hamdi case was all about.” Dunham spoke mainly about the Hamdi case, which, he said, “not only reaffirmed some core principles fundamental to the liberty of all Americans” but “charts a future course.” He said the Hamdi case had evolved into a more significant one than he had first imagined, “a second coming of John Walker Lindh.” Lindh and Hamdi were captured by the Afghan Northern Alliance — “a bunch of drug dealers,” Dunham said. “There was no way the government could prove a case against these guys,” he said, saying both were initially denied habeas corpus. Throughout his presentation, Dunham recited the history of due process, punctuating his arguments with jokes and parables. The overall tone of his presentation, however, reflected the sobriety of the topic at hand, the possibly unjust containment and isolation of U.S. citizens in a time of national crisis. Dunham said the behavior of the federal government regarding the detainees in Charleston raised serious questions about citizens’ rights. “Did the president have the uncheckable power to grab any citizen off the street in the U.S. and hold him indefinitely in a military brig without charge, or process, or access to council, or letters from home, or the ability to telephone a relative?” Dunham asked. “No newspaper, no television, no nothing? You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know when you’re ever going to get out.” Durham is also representing “dirty bomb” suspect Jose Padilla, who is being detained in Charleston. During his speech, Durham railed against Padilla’s detention before personalizing the lesson for his audience. “If they can hold Padilla, they can hold any one of you, right?” Dunham said Padilla was “swept up off the streets of Chicago,” continues to be held by authorities, presumably for intelligence he may or may not be able to offer them. When he was appointed to represent Hamdi, Durham said, he had no way of contacting his client. Durham repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for “throwing away the rule book (of the Geneva Convention),” but he added that, in “I think every American citizen has a vested interest in making sure that our fundamental freedoms are preserved and the government has to use due process in all of its dealings with American citizens.” FRANK DUNHAM PERSON’S TITLE HERE retrospect, the move might actually have helped Hamdi, since the circuit court judges seemed to take issue with the fact that Hamdi was never offered a chance to argue his case. “If they had followed Geneva ... the district judge would have merely looked to see if that little procedure there was fair, and if it was fair that would have ended it, and I don’t think the Supreme Court would ever have heard the case,” Durham said. “What got the Supreme Court to hear the case was having a guy without any process whatsoever.” Dunham’s audience was decidedly anti-administration. During the question and answer session subsequent to his presentation, a high school student in the audience asked him why President George W. Bush had not been impeached for such gross violations of civil rights; the question drew almost unanimous applause. USC law professor Don Wedlock offered a brief counterpoint, but abdicated the floor in the interests of the event’s timely conclusion. “I’d just like to applaud you,” Wedlock said, “for standing up and for civil liberties on a professional level.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocbiews@gwm.sc.edu USC, Clemson students fired up for rivalry game By TAYLOR SMITH STAFF WRITER Nearly 6,000 college students more than 200 miles apart participated in faux animal brutality Thursday night in an annual tradition that started more than a ceptury ago. At 6:30 p.m., both Clemson and USC held their annual pep-rallies that involved burning a fake gamecock in the Upstate and a fake tiger in the Midlands. “This is just one of those things that brings everyone together for this good state rivalry and this Thursday has kicked it off,” said Adam Hammond, Clemson student body president. The equivalent of USC’s Tiger burn, Clemson’s Big Thursday started in the 1940s and continued throughout the 1950s, but stopped and did not resume until 2002, when Hammond was a second-year student. USC’s tiger burned in effigy is papier mache. Hammond said he couldn’t fully describe the materials that made up the make-shift Cocky beyond a dummy-like material and some feathers. “We just recently brought it back,” Hammond said. “Even though we have only done it twice, everyone can really feel the excitement.” Big Thursday starts when a procession for a deceased version of Cocky is paraded into the Clemson Amphitheater and The Right Reverend Sandy Edge gives a spoof eulogy and sermon complete with “hallelujahs” and “amens.” “It is totally over the top,” Hammond said. Shortly after the reverent speech, the mood changes to aggression when Cocky is taken out of the coffin and thrust in to a barrel where the USC mascot is lit aflame and Chic-Fil-a sandwiches are passed out aptly named “Gamecock sandwiches.” Once the ceremony has concluded, Hanwnond said that the ROTC unit, which started beating a drum at the “This is just one of those things that brings everyone together for this good state rivalry and this Thursday has kicked it off.” ADAM HAMMOND CLEMSON STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT beginning of Big Thursday, then moves to the perimeter of Memorial stadium where they stand guard (beating the drum) until kickoff Saturday. “It was ridiculous, I have never seen it this big before,” Hammond said after the ceremony. “This is the second time we have really brought it back, so we have had to educate but I think we had a really good turnout.” Hammond said he thinks the energy felt by the 3,000 people who attended Thursday night will carry into the weekend and result in a Clemson victory. In Columbia, about 3,000 USC students gathered in the Colonial Center parking lot to continue the 102-year-old tradition of the Tiger burn, which started when the day following the 1902 victory over the Tigers almost ended in violence. USC Archives confirm that after the 12-8 victory, a banner that was created by a local Columbia Tobacco merchant, was going to be carried in the Elks parade the next day. The banner depicted a crowing gamecock over a battered tiger and infuriated Clemson students to the point of 400 assembling and marching onto the parade in effort td steal it. Deviating slightly from tradition, Thursday’s Tiger burn featured speakers student affairs and alumni services Vice President Dennis Pruitt and Student Government President ♦ Please see TIGERBURN, page 7 TOPPER ARCHAEOLOGY DIG MARY ANN CHASTAIN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS University of South Carolina archeologist Albert Goodyear holds a "chisel-like" tool which was found at the Topper dig site in Allendale County, S.C., after he spoke about the dig at a news conference in Columbia, S.C. Researchers at the University of South Carolina released results Wednesday of radiocarbon dating on a charcoal-like strip of soil found deep at the Topper dig site. Dig site yields prehistoric evidence By MICHAEL LaFORGIA THE GAMECOCK Discoveries at a USC archaeological excavation might mean a radical overhaul for scientific theories relating to man’s origins in North America. Test results from charcoal discovered at the Topper site, USC’s archaeological dig in Allendale County, suggest that humans lived in North America at least 37,000 years before conventional theories have held, USC archaeologists say. Some scientists have said that man first arrived in North America 13,000 years ago; but radiocarbon dating, performed by the University of California at Irvine, revealed that a streak of charcoal unearthed near what USC archaeologist Albert Goodyear says is a cache of stone tools is at least 50,000 years old, and possibly older. “The absolute age is not known,” said Tom Stafford in a news release. Stafford’s laboratory in Boulder, Colo, also tested the charcoal samples. Goodyear has said that if the stone shards prove to be primitive tools, the discovery would rock the archaeological community. “Topper is the oldest radiocarbon dated site in North >^merica,” Goodyear said in a news release. Goodyear began digging at the Topper site in May 1998 and has since made several key discoveries disputing traditional archaeological theory. The archaeologist, who specializes in America’s earliest inhabitants, has won national recognition for his work in Allendale County. A group of journalists and scientists, including specialists from the Smithsonian Institution, toured the site on July 22 after Goodyear discovered what might have been an ancient fireplace several feet beneath the ground. International archaeologists will converge on USC next October for a conference and will travel to. the Topper site. Goodyear said the test results will likely spark debate among archaeologists as they attempt to reconcile the discovery with traditional theory. Other scientists have remained incredulous despite Goodyear’s announcement, and some have told The New York Times that the stone tools USC scientists claim to have found are nothing more than naturally occurring rock shards. Comments on this stoiy? E-mail gamecockneivs@gtnn.sc. edu