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Page 9 TPWPO VT Si D“™UVI?SS Monday, March 14,2005 | I J V V I \ / .1 I K y www.dailygamecock.com. 7 -■— f T w ~ ^ 1 Results posted Friday. TH] AMECOCK EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR , Michael LaForgia NEWS EDITOR Jon Turner VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Wes Wolfe THE MIX EDITOR Jennifer Freeman ASST. VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Patrick Augustine SPORTS EDITOR Jonathan Hillyard DESIGN DIRECTOR Chas McCarthy COPY DESK CHIEF Steven Van Haren IN OUR OPINION Gamecock baseball showcases best ofUSC While USC’s fall sports receive most of the attention from Gamecock fans, spring sports such as baseball prove time and again that they deserve allegiance from the screaming sports fans. Sarge Frye Field was the sight of USC’s come-from What is more American than watching an outdoor baseball game under the lights on a cooling spring evening? Demna win against i^iemson on Sunday, which marked the second time in as many days the Gamecocks defeated the Tigers. The baseball team faces our ugly, orange-clad neighbors from the north four times during the season, and it’s already halfway to a season sweep against one of the programs in America that approaches the abil ity of USC’s team. However, the highlight of the dual wins against Clemson is that USC improved to 15-1 for the season, while Clemson drops to 5-7. Now that Columbia is feeling more like a southern city with the return of spring-like weather, students have the per fect opportunity to go out and take in a home game at Sarge Frye> although with sold-out games abounding, we recom mended you get tickets ahead of time. What is more American than watching an outdoor baseball game under the lights on a cooling spring evening, savoring the smell of fresh-cut grass and the hollow ring of metal bats? Since we have a team that routinely makes its way to the col legiate playoffs, there is no excuse for failing to take advantage of the numerous chances to support baseball, and all our spring sports teams. Football has been nothing but a disappointment lately, both with its poor on-field record, and the myriad off-field infractions that seem to occur on a regular basis every semester. It seems as if USC has begun to recruit solely from reform schools rather than high schools. Instead of cheering for the latest wave of criminals to strap on a helmet, cheer for a team that excels on the grass, in the classroom and manages to make good personal decisions. The road to Omaha begins here. IT’S YOUR RIGHT ' 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 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 Michael LaForgia DESIGN DIRECTOR Chas McCarthy COPY DESK CHIEF Steven Van Haren NEWS EDITOR Jon Turner asst, news editor Kelly Cavanaugh VIEWPOINTS EDITOR Wes Wolfe the mix editor Jennifer Freeman asst, the mix editor Carrie Givens SPORTS EDITOR Jonathan Hillyard ASST. SPORTS EDITOR Stephen Fastenau SENIOR WRITER Kevin Fellner PHOTO EDITOR Jason Steelman SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR Katie Kirkland page designers Jillian Garis, Staci Jordan, Jessica Ann Nielsen, Megan Sinclair COPT EDITORS Jessica Foster, Brindy McNair, Daniel Regenscheit, Jason Reynolds, Katie Thompson, Shana Till ONLINE EDITOR Ryan Simmons PUBLIC AFFAIRS Jane Fielden, Katie Miles TO PLACE AN AD The Gamecock Advertising: 777-3888 1400 Greene St. Classified: 777-1184 Columbia, S.C. 29208 Fax: 777-6482 *-: CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. 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 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 MANAGFR Sherry F. Holmes PRODUCTION MANAGER Garen Cansler CREATIVE SERVICES Burke Lauderdale, Chelsea Felder, Laura Gough, Joseph Dannelly ADVERTISING STAFF Robert Carli, Breanna Evans, Ryan Gorman, Caroline Love, Katie Stephens, McKenzie Welsh 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 the publisher of The i 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 Student Media. fr TRAFFIC TicKeTS? 60 DOWN THE HALLToTHe 10 COMMANDMENTS MONUMENT(LUTHERAN VeRSiON) TiLL You REACH THe KoRAN DiSPLAY. TAKE A LEFT AND CoNTiNUe PAST THe BUDDHIST SHRiNe UNTIL YoU see THe lo commandments MONUMeNTCTEWiSH VeRSiON). Go RIGHT AT THe AZTEC SACRI FICIAL altar and on to-me ViSHNU STATUE, WHOSE THIRD ^ arm points to a door BeTweeN THE DRUID STONeHENGE RePUCA AND THe 10 COMMANDMeNTS MONUMENT (CATHOLiC VeRSiON). « THe MONK iNSiDe WILL DIRECT YOU FROM THERE. CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS IN YOUR OPINION Advisers not at fault for students’ woes I read Brandt Boidy’s column about advisement (“Carolina needs to change advisement system,” March 3), and have to ask, when does an individual finally take responsibility for his or her own life? Boidy assumes that his advisor “would show the way and guide me down the path of my degree.” Instead, he states that he sees his advisor “twice a year and rarely do I leave knowing more than I arrived with.” To me, the blame here lies with the student. It is your education, your future and your life. Are you willing to give someone else control of your life? As teenagers, we spend most of our time trying to take control from our parents; in college, we want"to give it back? I don’t think so. Most college catalogs are written in a fairly simple manner to follow. It isn’t written in such a way that even those that wrote it cannot follow it. Generally speaking, if you are aware of your major, you can crack open that catalog that you received as a freshman (yes, you did receive one of those; for those students who threw their’s away, most college catalogs are also available online these days), find your college, then your major and the requirements for that major will be listed clearly. How much more simplified can it get? If I, a person not trained or qualified to advise anyone, can read and figure this out, why should USC hire people trained to do this in a full-time capacity? Boidy claims, “Too often students are taking the wrong courses, unknowingly missing deadlines, unaware of opportunities and requirements because of lack of advisement.” Are you saying that you are incapable of locating these deadlines and opportunities yourself? Posted flyers, snail mail or e-mail notices of advisement and other deadlines, and the school calendar are great places to start looking for this type of information. Seeing the Master Schedule of Classes in front of every major building on campus was a good sign that something important was about to happen — though I’m sure they’ve done away with those paper copies by now. Are you asking USC to employ full-time advisors so they can chew up, spoon-feed and somehow digest this information for you? I really hope that USC does not take action on your suggestion, because that would do students a disservice, and it would do a greater disservice to students like Boidy who think this way. What a rude awakening those students will have when out in the real world. You’ll be lucky to find a boss who will remind you of a deadline, much less help you plan out each day so that you may successfully meet that deadline. Yeah, right. Good luck with that! My suggestion to Boidy and other students who feel the same way is to start thinking for yourself and be responsible for your own life, which includes your education. Somehow, I managed to change my major three times during my college career, and still graduated in four years with a Spanish major and a Business minor. To be honest, I only needed nine hours my last semester (if I hadn’t overlooked part of the requirements for my minor, it would have only been six), and had to take an unnecessary elective to remain fulltime for financial aid purposes. Sure, I have my advisors to thank for that. But my 10-minute meeting twice a year with my advisor was because of my preparation and understanding of the field I chose rather than an advisor who was too busy. Maybe I was lucky, but if I were you, I wouldn’t let that busy advisor get the best of me. Figure it out for yourself and be proud of that, rather than looking for someone else to blame. SHANNON OWENS Class of '98 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. Let Americans choose their poison ■ Activists shouldn’t take away the right to make choices in U.S. In an attempt to curb childhood obesity in his state, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced that he supports a bill that would ban the sale of “junk food” in California’s public schools. If passed, the bill would require schools to remove the usual snack food items from their vending machines and replace them with milk and fresh fruits and vegetables. The actual success of such a program is rather unlikely, though. Since California would only be banning the sale of junk food in its schools, not the possession of it, it’s to be expected that a student-run black market would develop, as it did in Austin, Texas, under similar circumstances, according to the Austin-American Statesman. However, the bill’s proposal itself represents a larger trend in America: Far too many Americans these days see nothing wrong with taking away an individual’s freedom to choose what he or she thinks is the best way to live. This includes, but is not limited to, their choice of what foods to eat, what beverages to drink and whether they want to smoke cigarettes. The Center for Consumer Freedom reported in 2002 that a New York City attorney, Samuel Hirsch, had filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and KFC, on behalf of his client, an obese maintenance worker named Caesar Barber. Barber, after suffering a heart attack, was warned by his doctor in 1996 to a ■ py stop eating fast food, but Barber HARPER ignored the FIFTH-YEAR recommendations ENGLISH and refused to STUDENT change his diet. As a result of frivolous lawsuits like the Barber case, fast-food restaurants are having to change the items on their menu to make them more idiot-proof, all in spite of the fact that millions of Americans obviously like fast food the way it is. Because some people cannot control themselves, the responsible individuals who can are being denied the freedom to occasionally eat food that isn’t exactly diet friendly. As CNN.com reports, San Francisco attorney Stephen Joseph recently sued McDonald’s for $8.5 million because the food firm has not yet removed trans fatty acids from its cooking oils. Trans fats are found in hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated cooking oils and, though they are considered unhealthy, they are responsible for giving foods like french fries their crunch. So McDonald’s french fries, which have been extraordinarily popular for some time, are going to be altered all because of one activist attorney in California. The above three cases of food policing would never be possible if there were not a large group of Americans who think they know better than you do how you should live your life and who don’t mind forcing you to see things their way. And they’re only going to become more intolerant and forceful if the rest of America lets them. The anti-choice crowd has already shown how intolerant it can be with its campaign against cigarettes. A good example is the “Fashion Eye for the Smoking Guy” commercial, where three girls browbeat a male smoker in front of his friends and tell him how ridiculous he looks and how bad he smells. Replace the cigarette in the guy’s hand with a McDonald’s bag and the girls’ complaints about how bad he smells with predictions of heart disease and diabetes, and you have a good idea of what’s to come. Now, I’m not saying that people quitting smoking or reducing their caloric intake isn’t a positive thing. But these are choices that individuals should be allowed to freely make on their own. These choices should not be forced on them. And just because you might not smoke or eat fattening food doesn’t mean that you won’t be affected. Anti choice activists are Utopians. They aren’t satisfied with small gains. What may seem like a relatively benign indulgence to you today may become the next fast food and tobacco tomorrow. Being sick made my vacation disastrous ■ Cancun has nothing on the illness that put me in bed all week long I’m a senior. And furthermore, not only am I a senior, I’m actually graduating this semester. Yes, yes, I know, you’re all shocked. And so, to celebrate my final spring break of my final year at USC, you can only imagine that I planned an exciting spring break for myself. Cancun, maybe? GRAHAM lhe n F1°rida CULBERTSON ^ °r i*rhaPs something FOURTH-YEAR entirely different ENGLISH and more exotic, STUDENT i-i r i- «• like free-climbing Mt. Vesuvius or windsurfing with John Kerry? Nope. My plans for spring break, while the rest of you were off vomiting Everclear out of Myrtle Beach hotel windows, included working my regular schedule at my job and writing my senior thesis in my spare time, as well as the time freed up by not having class. So, considering that virtually everyone I’ve ever known was off having a good time during the week that’s supposed to be the culmination of fun for the entire four years that I’ve been spending at college, my plan for spring break was pretty much the lamest one I’ve ever had. No one could believe how lame it is. People I didn’t even know would stop me while walking to class and say, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who’s going to spend his entire spring break not only in Columbia, but in Columbia working his regular job and doing homework j whenever he’s not working? Man, can I get your autograph? It’s not everyday that I get to meet the lamest student at USC.” But just when I thought I’d planned the worst senior spring break activity in the history of the SEC, everything changed. No, I didn’t win the lottery. No, I didn’t win an all-expenses paid trip to the Smithsonian. No, I didn’t comer and arrest various larcenous members of our gridiron bandits to receive the everlasting respect and friendship of Steve Spurrier. I just got sick. I didn’t g£t sniffly, go about your day as normal but feel sorry for yourself sick. Nor did I get deathly, go to the hospital flu type sick. I just got some sort of crappy cough, sneeze, lay around moaning, and run a fever of 101 while eating nothing but some combination of apple sauce, saltine crackers and chicken soup for the entire week of spring break of your senior year sick. That, my friends, is noi a gooa Kina or sick. In fact, it was the worst kind of sick! It was legitimate, have a fever sick, the kind where you can go into the health center and be certifiably unable to attend class. Sure, laying on a couch watching the same SportsCentet approximately 14 times every day because you don’t have the energy to find out whether Comedy Central is showing SNL (yay) or MAD TV (boo) isn’t fun, but its better than going to class. But I was already missing out on that fabulous Cancun vacation to sit around Columbia and work, and then I missed out on the opportunity to do that. And although you can miss classes and then just do a little bit of makeup work, I don’t think you can do it with your thesis. ’’Mr. Culbertson, this thesis is only seven pages long.” “Oh, yes ma’am, you see, that includes the 37 pages that I would have written if I had been healthy over spring break.” That’s a recipe for one more semester in the City Constructed Directly Above Hell. Anyway, the point is, after a spring break of misery and despair, the only thing I have to show for it is this sorry-ass column. I hope you enjoyed it, Gamecocks — I certainly didn’t. COLLEGE QUOTE BOARD THE PARTHENON MARSHALL UNIVERSITY Who can say no to Girl Scout cookies? More importantly, who wants to? The) linger at the door of every grocery store and Wal-Mart. Samoas in all their gooe) coconut glory; Sweet chocolate thin mints; Tag-alongs full of the goodness that i; known as peanut butter. All calling out to be bought. What makes it even mor< difficult to say no is the 8-year-old in a Girl Scout uniform so innocently asking il you want to buy a box of $3 cookies so she can go on the spring trip to King’s Island You have to buy at least one. OREGON DAILY EMERALD I UNIVERSITY OF OREGON President Bush’s latest action in his quest to antagonize every country on the globe came Monday when he named John Bolton as his ambassador to the United Nations. Jesse Helms has described Bolton as “the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at the gates of Armageddon.” We are not sure what that means, but we do know that Helms might get a chance to do just that, if Bolron i has his way. HHH