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VIE WPOINTS II EDITORIAL BOARD Editor MICHAEL LaFORGIA News Editor STEPHEN FASTENAU Asst. News Editor JUSTIN CHAPURA The Mix Editor ALEXIS ARNONE Sports Editor JONATHAN HILLYARD Viewpoints Editor BRINDY McNAIR Copy Desk Chief STEVEN VAN HAREN Design Director chas McCarthy IN OUR OPINION Earthquake victims need help desperately We hope that the U.S. will respond to the desperate situation in India and Pakistan with every bit as much support as foreign countries showed us in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A 7.6-magnitude earthquake on Saturday leveled entire vil lages in Asia, killing an estimated 20,000 and trapping thou sands more beneath rubble. In terms of destructive force, this disaster has already com pletely dwarfed hurricanes Katrina and Rita — which killed an estimated 1,200 people across the Gulf Coast. Consider also that those storms struck the most wealthy, technologically advanced nation in the world, and did so with at least a day’s notice. Now imagine Hurricane Katrina striking with zero notice, trapping whom it didn’t kill immediately, unleashing utter pan demonium. Imagine how, the situation would unfold if our gov ernment didnt have resources like a Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond or National Guardsmen to keep peace. The situation in Asia is worst case scenario now, in nations that don’t necessarily have the resources needed to respond swiftly on a large scale. The tragedy Americans so recendy experienced at home should underscore the importance of helping out a wounded nation in need — especially since this earthquake caused death and devastation on a scale all but unfathomable to the people of the U.S. First, we hope federal authorities will continue to lend aid to India and Pakistan — and we’re sure that, presented with an opportunity to help out in a region so close to where our nation’s popularity is flagging, they will. But more importantly, we hope students will pitch in to help out any way they can. We hope to see renewed efforts like the canned food and clothing drives that cropped up on campuses nationwide following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We hope stu dents will return the consideration of an international commu nity that reached out to us in our time of need. The situation in Asia is worst-case scenario now. 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 s 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 Editor MICHAEL LaFORGIA Design Director CHAS MCCARTHY Copy Desk Chief STEVEN VAN HAREN News Editor STEPHEN FASTENAU Asst. News Editor JUSTIN CHAPURA Viewpoints Editor BRINDY McNAIR The Mix Editor ALEXIS ARNONE Sports Editor JONATHAN HILLYARD Asst. Sports Editor ALEX RILEY Photo Editor NICK ESARES Sports Photo Editor KATIE KIRKLAND Page Designers MIKE CONWAY, JESSICA ANN NIELSEN, MEGAN SINCLAIR Graphic Designer LAURA-JOYCE GOUGH Copy Editors CHELSEA HAOAWAY, KRISTY LAUBE, MELISSA MAULDIN, KATIE THOMPSON, JAMISON TINSLEY LIZ WHITE Online Editor RYAN SIMMONS Creative Services JOSEPH DANNELLY, LAURA-JOYCE GOUGH, MARGARET LAW, MEGHAN WHITMAN STUDENT MEDIA Director SCOTT LINOENBERG 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 Advertising Staff BREANNA EVANS, RYAN GORMAN, KATIE CUPPIA, APRYL ALEXANDER, MARY RACHEL FREEMAN, MCKENZIE WELSH, DEIDRE MERRICK CONTACT INFORMATION Offices on third floor of the Russell House. The Editor’s office hours are Monday and Wednesday from 1 -3 p. m. Editor: gamecockeditor@gwm.sc.edu News: gamecocknews@gwm.sc.edu Viewpoints: gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu The Mix: gamecockfiatures@gwm.sc.edu Sports: gamecocksports@gwm. sc. edu Public Affairs: gamtcockPR@yahoo.com Online: www.dailygamecock.com Newsroom: 777-7726; Sports: 777-7182 Editor’s Office: 777-3914 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 o/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 1400 Greene St. Columbia, S. C. 29208 Advertising: 777-3888 Classified: 777-1184 Fax: 777-6482 SUES PERFECT PEWGREEfiX THESUPREME COURT... VB5...BUT SSHE TRAINED RIGHT? Cartoon courtesy of KRT Campus Do the math: Attendance should not count Students pay to learn, test knowledge, not to lose points for absence You know the feeling. You roll over, bleary-eyed and half dead, gamely struggling to read the alarm clock that is a foot away from your face. Then panic sets in. Somehow that 10-minute nap to regain your composure, or that blackout that just kind of overtook you, has degenerated into a power coma that made half a day disappear. You know you have a class at noon and the clock says 11:50, but is that a.m. or p.m.? You curse yourself for being too cheap to buy a digital alarm clock and try to get dressed. While attempting to eat a piece of toast and put on your socks, you accidentally put both legs into one pant leg of your jeans. Falling over, you tear the sheet that keeps your room in a tomb away from the window. Bright sunlight streams in and now you really start to get worried. You do the hurried math in your head. How many times have I skipped this class? Is this one of the classes where I can miss five periods or only three? For that matter, what day of the week is it? You dash down the street, pushing your way past the Zipsheet guy who seems to clog all crucial university pedestrian arteries at the worst possible moment. Or maybe you just say “what the hell, wait, how long has it been since I’ve eaten?” and go JACOB to the GMP for DAUIS bwt. , hither way Th/npear you skulk into journalism class late and student assume your normal position in the back row. Sometime around the time you regain full consciousness, the class ends just in time to have thoroughly woken you up and you know it will be nearly impossible to go back to sleep. Now, let’s freeze and total what happened. I’m on in-state tuition and my total bill for the year is still over $10,000. You subtract the various fees and miscellaneous charges the university adds and I figure I’m still paying a good $500 $750 per class for the privilege to sit in class and learn. Now depending on when I get to class, and how cognizant I am when I get there, I probably just cheated myself out of roughly $20-30. Was that stupid of me? Well, depending on how much fun I had the night before and how well I’m doing in the class, that’s a judgment call I’ll make when I get there. The point is it should be my call. I’m paying for the class, I’m responsible for learning the material, and I should be held accountable if I don’t sufficiently display a command of the knowledge required for the course. However it boggles my mind how I could have my grade docked, or even not receive credit for a course, because I cheated myself. If I’m disruptive in class, if I don’t know the material, fine, those are reasons I shouldn’t get full credit. Attendance? The transaction is simple, I’m going to give you a bunch of money and then you’ll give me tasks to assess my knowledge of a given subject area that you are teaching. If I pass enough of said tasks, I get a nice framed piece of paper to show the world I know my stuff. Attendance has no part in a class where I’m paying hundreds of hard-earned dollars to sit and get the chance to prove my knowledge. This isn’t high school and there is no “cutting class.” If I don’t go to class then I don’t learn that day’s material, and subsequently I am not as prepared as I possibly could be for my next class. Guess what? I’m paying you to be able to sit in the class! If you don’t pass because you were too lazy to ever go to class and learn I have no sympathy for you. But if you’ve ever been denied credit for a class, or lost points on your grade for attendance, the university has effectively robbed you. IN YOUR OPINION Miers well qualified to replace O’Connor Mr. Cooney, if you truly believe your recent article in The Gamecock, then you deserve for your intelligence, or lack there of, to be insulted. Mr. Cooney, you fail not only to accurately portray Mrs. Miers and her accomplishments, but also the history of Justices on the court. I encourage ypu and everyone who reads this article to visit the White House website and review Mrs. Miers accomplishments and compare them to past nominees who have been confirmed to the court. Everyone, including Mr. Cooney will be impressed. Now, no one doubts Roberts’ nomination, for good reason. Roberts is perhaps the most brilliant legal mind that this country has ever seen, Mr. Cooney. If we held everyone to the “Roberts standard,” then we might as well throw out the remaining eight justices because they do not compare to Roberts. In all fairness to Mrs. Miers, when Roberts’ name was first mentioned, no one knew much about Roberts either. Through the hearings, we understood his stance. The same fairness and judgment should be reserved for Mrs. Miers. Mr. Cooney, you may call it “cronyism,” but I call it intelligence. For some reason, conservative presidents have had a habit of nominating judges, who at the time, seem very conservative but turn into activist judges. This cycle happens because presidents have no personal relationship with their nominee. President Bush is very aware of this and does not want this cycle to keep repeating itself. It is that simple, Mr. Cooney. You nominate on the condition of who you know will keep your judicial philosophy. He obviously feels she will. By the way, you make strong accusations about the President, but you also fail to support your thoughts with examples of how he has somehow lowered the honor of the Presidency. EVERY administration appoints individuals to positions in exchange for getting them elected. This cycle happens regardless of whether you want to admit it or not. Also, I believe that the honor of the Presidency could not get any lower after President Clinton. After all, China is naming a condom after him. MICHAEL JOHNSON Third-year political science 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. _www. dailwamecnck. com Another fine example of our leaders intelligence Use of Miss Cleo-style psychic to nab Saddam doesn’t surprise me It seems that the good ol’ United States of America had a secret weapon in finding Saddam Hussein. Now I’m not B talking about global posi tioning satel lites or even x ray vision, oh no, this was BRnnDT ,much moje BOP dangerous. It seems that in Fourth-year ordef find elementary education Husseins exact student location the U.S. relied on, you guessed it, a psychic friend of Dionne Warwick. In Brazil this week a man by the name of Juscelino Nobrega da Luz is appealing a court case that the U.S. owes him $25 million in reward money for assisting in the hunt for Mr. Hussein. I absolutely love this story. I can see it now. Dubbya is sitting at home in the White House. At about 4 a.m. and several cases of Bud Light into the night, while flipping through the channels, President Bush stops on an enlightening psychic infomer cial. Using his Yale education, Bush immediately wakes up Laura to explain a wild and fascinating idea. What if we call a psychic to find Hussein?! Behold a plan that would involve several letters from Da Luz apparently detailing the exact hole in Iraq where Hussein was hiding. Obviously one must ask, why don’t we ask this dude where Osama is hiding? According to the psychic, he simply sees the future. Therefore, he predicted the U.S. would capture Saddam Hussein in a certain little hole in Iraq. Was it the future because of this psychic’s letters detailing the location, or was the psychic able to have the visions because it was the future anyway? Apparently this Brazilian does n’t see us capturing Bin Laden anytime soon. Either way, I still love psy chics. In fact I love them so much that from time to time, I’ll watch that damn Montel Williams just because he has that weird Sylvia Browne lady. C’mon, you know you think she’s funny. What about John Edwards, the guy who chats with dead people in his spare time? He’s funny too. America is obsessed with psy chics and their nonsense gen eralities. From the new show “Medium, “to daily horo scopes in the very paper I’m writing in, we all want the future rold to US. Well my friends, I have a lit tle secret for you, I myself know the future. I talked to Juscelino Nobrega da Luz yesterday and he told me that he does, in fact, see Osama Bin Laden in his visions, dis guised as a dark and evil fig ure, one of great mystique and lunacy. The great prophet Juscelino Nobrega Da Luz revealed to me that Osama in fact goes by the name Thomas Bowden. Haha, Go Cocks! Don’t worry I already contacted Homeland Security about this matter.