ONLINE POLL
Do you read the Garnet & Black
p .magazine? Let us know at
rage 13 . www.dailygamecock.com.
Wednesday, April 6, 2005 Results posted Friday.
AMECOCK
EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR ASST. VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Michael LaForgia Patrick Augustine
NEWS EDITOR SPORTS EDITOR
Jon Turner Jonathan Hillyard
VIEWPOINTS EDITOR DESIGN DIRECTOR
Wes Wolfe Chas McCarthy
THE MIX EDITOR COPY DESK CHIEF
Jennifer Freeman Steven Van Haren
IN OUR OPINION
Gamecock basketball
fulfills year ’s potential
When Tarence Kinsey sank the last-second 3-pointer to push
USC past St. Joseph’s in the NIT title game, the win confirmed
the talent and ability of this year’s USC men’s basketball team.
Carolina’s inclusion in the second-chance tournament for teams
jilted by the NCAA Tournament seemed like a footnote to a
mediocre season. Head coach Dave Odom’s players had survived
the ups and downs of injury, close losses to conference opponents
and a seemingly season-defining
We can’t wait for ^ Kentuck^ However
next year’s run , , , , . . ,
at the NCAA , . . ,
Tournament, "S1*1" 5635011 PV was less than
stellar. USC threw away oppor
tunings fn srlvanr/* in rhf» fIFP TTniirnamfnr
This situation is even more disappointing considering that last
season the Gamecocks performed extraordinarily well, going from
being the preseason pick for last in the SEC to making the SEC
tourney semifinals.
While USC never really found a championship rhythm in the
' NIT, the team managed to play with the kind of intensity that
had previously been lacking in many of their pre-May outings. A
blowout against UNLV, close wins against both Miami and
Georgetown, coupled with the solid trouncing of perennial ACC
basketball powerhouse Maryland allowed the Gamecocks to show
what might have been if the team had built upon the gains of last
season. Still, Carolina failed to capitalize on opportunities to
increase its lead in most of the games by disappointingly missing
free-throw chances.
The game against St. Joe’s was a wholly different affair. Along
with playing with obvious drive from the opening whistle and dis
playing a flair that is atypical of the usually reserved USC lineup,
our Gamecocks stayed neck and neck with the Hawks. Up by as
many as five points during the second half, Carolina did its best to
let the lead evaporate, leaving fans to stomach the rollercoaster ride
to the win as regulation expired.
Our basketball team deserves Carolina’s heartiest thanks and
congratulations for an inspired victory after earning an appropriate
tide. We can’t wait to see what the returning players can do next
year during March Madness.
IT’S YOUR RIGHT W
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.
ABOUT THE GAMECOCK
cmmo I ” " n
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
Nick Esares
SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR
Katie Kirkland
PAGE DESIGNERS
Jillian Garis, Staci
Jordan, Jessica Ann
Nielsen, Megan Sinclair
COPY EDITORS
Jessica Foster, B.rindy
McNair, Daniel
Regenscheit, Jason
Reynolds, Katie
Thompson, Shana Till
ONLINE EDITOR
Ryan Simmons
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Jane Fielden, Katie Miles
CONTACT INFORMATION
Offices on third floor of the Russell House.
The Editor’s office hours are Monday and
Wednesday from 1 to 3 p.m.
Editor: 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
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
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.
TO PLACE AN AD
The Gamecock Advertising: 777-3888
1400 Greene St. Classified: 777-1184
Columbia, S.C. 29208 Fax: 777-6482
„ ^ 4
L.li!c
mm
CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS
Garnet & Black deserves respect
■ Student magazine
needs more support
to be worth investment
The Garnet & Black, USC’s stu
dent magazine, could be canceled
under a scenario the Board of
Student Publications is considering.
It would free up some money for
The Gamecock to be printed five
days a week. The board hasn’t made
a decision yet, but it’s something
members are considering. The Board
of Student Publications is made up
of faculty members, staff and stu
dents who oversee the three aspects
of student media: WUSC, the
Garnet & Black and The Gamecock.
Basically, all they do is hire station
managers and editors in chief and
approve budgets. They have zero ed
itorial control.
The Garnet & Black has long
been the weakest link of student me
dia. There’s little overlap among the
radio station and the print media,
whereas The Gamecock and The
Garnet & Black are identical twins.
Usually the only G&B staffer inde
pendent of The Gamecock is the ed
itor in chief, and that’s only some of
the time.
If the Garnet & Black disappeared
tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it. I think
most of the students wouldn’t no
tice it was gone. It’s not the editor.
Mary Waters is one of the most tal
ented individuals I have ever met,
and she works miracles with limited
resources. But her staff is just too
small. It’s two people, a designer and
a copy editor, who come to the pro
duction room after classes and work
all night, sometimes three or four
nights in a row, to fill up 30 pages.
They don’t
have commit
ted writers be
cause magazine
articles are
complicated
and hard to
write, which
usually scares
ADAM P^°Ple °f
beam ^’ecockThe
FOURTH-YEAR usually snatch
PRINT r
JOURNALISM , es UP most ot
STUDENT the good writ
ers and dumps
about five sto
ries a week on
them so they don’t have time to con
tribute to the magazine. And when
they do, it’s hurried, sloppily re
ported and doesn’t make sense.
1 can see why the Board of
Student Publications is considering
eliminating the magazine. It eats up
a good chunk of the budget and is
so much like The Gamecock it
makes sense to just give the money
to the publication that is prospering.
But that’s not what'I hope hap
pens.
1 hope this proposal will serve as a
kick in the pants to the thousands of
students out there who have the am
bition and the creativity to run a
great magazine. I’ve lost count of the
number of journalism students I’ve
met who snub newspaper work and
want to work for a magazine. Why,
then, are you not beating down
G&B’s door? I hope you all are read
ing this and realize you are in dan
ger of losing valuable experience that
can help you. If you want to ever
have a prayer of getting a job for a
magazine, you need to learn how to
write for a magazine. There’s no bet
ter place to start than the student
magazine.
But for the magazine to stay, there
needs to be some changes. For
starters, no more duplication. You
either work for the newspaper or the
magazine, not both. In fact, the
newspaper and the magazine should
be competing for stories.
Secondly, the magazine needs to
be printed on cheaper paper, have
less pages and come out once a
month. You can’t build a readership
when your readers only see you twice
a semester. They forget too easily.
The expensive paper is a holdover
from a former student media director
who wanted the magazine to be a
“keepsake,” like a yearbook. It’s not
a yearbook — it’s a magazine, and it
needs to be treated like one.
Finally, just as the magazine needs
a production staff separate from The
Gamecock, it needs an advertising
staff separate from The Gamecock.
The reason The Gamecock makes
money is because it has four or five
students who work their tails off to
sell ads to keep it going. The Garnet
& Black usually has one or two ads,
if any at all. The magazine can’t live
off student activity fees and dona
tions.
ir you, me suuuents, want me
magazine to stay, if you want to have
a prayer of ever working at a maga
zine, then stop being lazy and start
helping. The Garnet & Black can let
you experiment with design and sto
rytelling in ways The Gamecock
can’t.
So, please, keep the magazine, but
only if the students and the Board
of Student Publications are serious
about making it good.
IN YOUR OPINION
Good radio agitates,
educates students
It appears there is some
general confusion about why
exactly USC has a college radio
station (“WUSC broadcasts hit
or-miss radio,” Monday).
WUSC has two primary
functions. We serve as a
community resource, which is
why you hear public-service and
community-calendar
announcements rather than
commercials. We also serve as an
educational resource by playing
music that would not otherwise
be broadcast. These functions,
among others, are facets of our
obligations to Carolina, our
obligations to our listeners and,
from a legal standpoint, our
obligations to the FCC.
We have two types of shows,
specialty and free-format. Our
free-format shows are precisely
what the name implies. Many
DJs choose to play host to a
specialty show because they feel
either that a certain genre of
music is underrepresented or
that it just needs more
attention. In my case, I felt that
i MHHMV HHHIi
music by women, particularly
black and queer women, and
music of historical and social
relevance to women, needed
more attention. I host one of
two specialty shows that
highlight female vocalists,
musicians and composers. Other
DJs have felt international
music, goth, hardcore or folk
was underrepresented. Each one
of our specialty shows is
carefully planned by people who
really know what they’re doing,
and each show has an audience
that is appreciative of this work.
It is entirely probable there will
be a couple specialty shows that
certain listeners don’t like.
Switching to all free-format,
however, would be a lot like
getting rid of the Sports or,
better yet, Viewpoints section of
The Gamecock simply because
some people don’t read these
sections. It would be the same as
if, oh, I don’t know, almost all
The Gamecock was written by
upper-middle-class white boys.
That wouldn’t be very
representative of the entire USC
population, would it?
Also, a lot of hard work has
been put into filling out our spring
schedule, and at this point in time
we only have two time slots
throughout the week that are not
covered. That means that WUSC
is on the air 164 hours out of 168
every week, so if you’re hearing
dead air when you tune your radio
to 90.5 FM, it’s probably a result
of user error.
So, in conclusion, I’d like to
thank Graham Culbertson for his
somewhat ambiguous
compliments that he directed
toward WUSC and to remind him
that diversity is one of our assets
rather than faults. If the staff at
WUSC did not put forth the effort
that we do to accomplish this, we
would not achieve our objective of
both representing and educating
the listeners.
JORDAN JENNINGS
Third-year sociology 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.
Schiavo case
represents
ideological
opportunity
■ We shouldn’t exploit
unfortunate woman to
push political agendas
The fifth minute of the ninth hour
of March 31, 2005, marked the end
of a bitter dispute about the political
life of Terri Schiavo. It all began with
□ a cardiac arrest
in 1990 that left
her severely
brain-damaged.
Most people
would have
given up then,
but not Terri.
She seized the
I opportunity
CURTIS and took a
CHOW prominent role
in politics,
FOURTH-YEAR „„ „„„
ECONOMICS though no one
STUDENT was sure of her
exact stances.
Being unable to
communicate
presented a problem as far as
interpreting her intentions — did she
want to breed a culture of life? Was
she a proponent of the right to die?
Unable to communicate with her
directly, the American citizenry relied
on the next best thing — personal
opinions and subjective research.
Within a few years, Terri had become
a champion of all causes including the
pro-life movement, the pro-choice
movement, Taiwanese independence
and the constitutional ban on gay
marriage.
For the sake of human decency, I
sincerely hope that 1 am not the only
one who has been disgusted at how the
tragedy that befell this unfortunate
woman has been reduced to a political
mud-slinging match. Both sides,
regardless of their true motives, have
equally been maligned and marred by
politics, and in the eye of the public, the
object of their dispute has become just
that — an “object” stripped of human
dignity and individuality. The death of
Terri Schiavo, whether it was in 1990 or
2005, is nothing less than a tragedy.
This isn’t to say I disagree with the
government’s involvement with the
case. Terri Schiavo was an American
citizen, and as such has been conferred
certain rights under the law. It is the
duty of the governments (state and
federal) to protea the rights of its
denizens. The point of dispute in this
case was which rights to protea. There
is the issue of a right to die, as well as her
civil rights as a disabled American. The
state and federal judiciary have ruled to
defend the former, basing their decision
concerning her wishes largely on hearsay
and thin evidence.
What I find to be disturbing is the
unwillingness of the federal judiciary to
even consider a rehearing of evidence —
their decisions were based solely on a
review of the history of the state court
findings. In a case literally involving life
and death, the federal courts did an
American citizen a tremendous
disservice with their refusal to hear the
current evidences both sides had to
offer.
bull, what 1 hnd yet even more
disturbing is the ardent insistence by
many that the late Schiavo must die —
not based on the context of her specific
circumstances, but rather on the
argument that in such a condition,
death is intrinsically good — life is not.
The right to die in Schiavo’s case
became somewhat of a vehement
obligation to die — even to the extent
that Judge Greer ruled that
rehabilitating physical therapy would
not be provided, and later that
sustenance was not to be provided even
orally in spite of affidavits of caretakers
that she was capable of doing so. This
philosophical predilection for death is
deeply disturbing to me.
Let us respect the life of Terri
Schiavo by honoring her as a person in
our memories, and considering the
ethical and metaphysical questions that
can yet affect the lives of others in the
future.
WINNERS AND SINNERS
HUNTER S. THOMPSON The late journalist’s
ashes are to be “blasted from a cannon mounted in i
w 'W: a 53-foot-high sculpture of the journalist’s‘gonzo |
fist’ emblem."
ROY WILLIAMS The storied college basketball
coach claimed his first national championship
when North Carolina beat Illinois on Monday.
t * I
BRITNEY SPEARS The proposed reality series on
UPN featuring the pop singer and her husband Kevin
Federline, a la “Newlyweds,” seems destined to fail.
GAS PRICES Remember back in 2000, when then
Gov. George W. Bush said he’d “jawbone” OPEC
and the oil companies? Gas prices in Columbia hover
around the $2.20 mark.