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Show 72 Monday, Nov. 7,2005 797-1762 statesman@cc.usu.edu www.utahstatesman.com Utah Statesman Memorial service will offer closure Today's memorial service is expected to draw about 10,000 people in attendance. Tribute will be paid to the nine men from the Utah State University agriculture technology program who were killed in the tragic van crash of Sept. 26. Leaders from the LDS faith (to which all nine men belonged) will speak, music will be offered by the world renowned Mormon Tabernacle {EdlfdriaJChoir and members of the USU administration all also offer comments. All of these events will pay fitting homage to those whose were lost. But the most important tribute will be your attendance. The decision by USU's leadership to not only hold the memorial service, but to place high enough priority on it to cancel class, is one that should be commended. Not all students attending USU knew the eight students and one teacher killed personally, but all were affected by the tragedy. While the candlelight vigil offered students an immediate outlet for their grief, the memorial will allow students the opportunity to understand who these men really were. This is the university's chance to find closure. We invite all students to participate in today's memorial in the Spectrum. The service begins at 1:30 p.m., but students have been asked to find a seat by 1 p.m. There is really no excuse not to. And there is no more fitting offering for students to extend to the families and friends (many fellow peers) of the victims than attendance in the Spectrum today. RAPUNZEL, RAPUNZEL, Staff LETDOWN Editor in Chief Brooke Nelson YOUR HAIR! News Editor Aaron Falk Assistant News Editor Marie MacKay Features Editor Our View Values matter, too WASHINGTON -Thus sayeth the high priests of far-right conservatism: To be worthy of appointment to the Supreme Court, a nominee must be scholarly, a great intellect and a possessor of sterling conservative credentials. In addition, the nominee should come equipped with a well-established constitutional philosophy, experience in constitutional law and the ability to divine what the Constitution means through analysis of its words and structure. In addition, they say, the nominee must have a proven ability to write clearly, argue incisively and have well-known opinions on judicial philosophy. Unspoken, but well understood, is that to be short-listed it certainly doesn't hurt to be white, male and straight. By those standards, what kind of men would have found favor with the high priests? Consider John W. Davis, the dean of constitutional lawyers of his day. Davis had the proper grounding: He graduated from the Washington and Lee University law school, participated in more than 250 Supreme Court cases and argued 140 cases before the court. An appellate lawyer without peer, Davis was a former congressman from West Virginia, served as the U.S. solicitor general and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1924. Davis entered the Brown v. Board of Education case on behalf of South Carolina. This constitutional giant and lawyer of enormous analytical powers stood before the Supreme Court in December 1953 and argued that racial segregation was not only constitutional but also better for blacks. Defending the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, Davis proclaimed to the justices: "Somewhere, some time, to every principle there comes a moment of repose when it has been so often pronounced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance." Fortunately, the Warren Court, examining the Constitution, saw otherwise and in 1954 outlawed segregation - Davis' legal brilliance notwithstanding. Davis' team of lawyers also consisted of men who could easily pass the litmus tests of conservatism's high priests. There was James Lindsay Almond Jr., Virginia's attorney general and a former judge and legislator from Roanoke. A University of Virginia law school graduate, Almond went on to become governor of Virginia, where he put his segregationist sentiments to full use. Joining Davis and Almond was the District of Columbia's own Milton Korman, who defended racially segregated schools in the nation's capital. Korman also had the kind of background today's conservative connoisseurs of fine legal minds would embrace. A graduate of Georgetown University's law school, Korman had served as the city's chief legal officer, or corporation counsel, before joining the school desegregation case on the side of those not wanting white children to attend school with African American children. Korman contended that only Congress could deal with segregated schools, that Washington D.C. was beyond the reach of the Supreme Court and that D.C. schools were segregated not out of racism but out of concern for black students wno otherwise would have been forced to attend classes in a hostile environment. The Warren Court found Korman wrong, too. But we don't have to go that far back to discover that something vital is missing in the list of attributes that conservatives hold so dear. Consider the example of Robert H. Bork, the conservative icon whose defeat for a Supreme Court seat in 1987 by a 58 to 42 Senate vote still causes conservatives pain not to be borne. By their lights, Bork had it all. Certifiably conservative, intellectually audacious and thoroughly schooled in constitutional law, he had a seasoned and tested legal career starting with the University of Chicago law school and going on to partnerships in major law firms, the Yale law faculty, service Nat'l View ^VALUES See page 13 Steve Shinney Assistant Features Editor Emma Tippetts Sports Editor Andrea Edmunds Assistant Sports Editor Bryan Hinton Diversions Editor Matt Wright Copy Editor Lindsay Kite Photo Editor Michael Sharp Assistant Photo Editor New shirts unnecessary From the creators of the Homecoming Stomp and the not-so-True Aggie night, a new, original ASUSU idea has emerged: new game-day shirts! A new shirt was unveiled with all the fanfare of five people hopping around on the floor at halftime of Friday night's exhibition game against Occidental College. In case you missed it, the shirt has a block letter "A" in the center of a circle on the front. The back has "Meet the Challenge," a picture of the "Meet the Challenge" bull and a Western Athletic Conference insignia, in case you forgot what conference we're in. But apparently, no one told ASUSU that not all of the sports at USU are in the WAC. Gymnastics competes in the Western Gymnastics Conference and were nationally ranked last season and But what they don't tell you is that students have as many choices as a presi-' dential election in Cuba: Kevin Nielsen & Bryonflinton one. The Circle-A shirts are the only ones being made and advertised. In a joint effort between ASUSU Athletics Vice President Rosie Strong, a designer and the Utan State University Bookstore, a new shirt was made to "replace" the old ones, but they don't say that. Soapbox Now they would rather see an A in a circle. In no way is that psychologically tions and unions without the damaging. Granted, the noise initials W.A.C. So the new from the students itself makes shirts are only for the major things difficult and the AggFe" varsity sports. Blue Book pamphlet passed The new Circle- out at the game Friday did say A shirts aren't supposed to just to wear blue, not to wear replace the old A-game shirts, the A-hole shirts exclusively. but they're supposed to give the students a choice of which shirt to wear since two years •SHIRTS see page 13 tends to damage shirts. the club teams on campus are all part of various associa- Evolution is a hard, scientific concept and hard for some students to grasp Tuesdays andThursdays are usually days of the week that I wouldn't mind Adam Strong skipping. With three classes beginning at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 1:20 p.m., my body doesn't usually begin fully functioning until the sun fully rises, the caffeine reaches my brain or the canyon wind blows my eyes open. But last Thursday, something else got my blood pumping. It was class number two in the gauntlet, as I like to call it, and my biology class began created all life, but this life discussing the topic of evolu- was completely separate from tion. man, and now this junior This scientific theory says high science teacher was tryall living things descended ing to tell me my ancestor from one common ances- was an ape? Needless to say, tor. We all started from I had many questions. one beginning and evolved Well, I took these questions through natural selection into to the most reliable source the species that exist on the I could find ... my peers; earth today. My mind won- other seventh graders who dered, as it usually does in seemed to have everything the early hours, back to the figured out. When ! tola them days of my early education. what I had learned earlier, the The days of junior high in the laughter that followed was city of Bountiful. The concept shocking. Imagine us being of evolution was introduced descendants of apes. So I in my seventh grade biology shrugged it off, went to gym class. I remember being con- class and rarely questioned fused about the whole situ- my origins again. ation. I have always learned that God created Adam and Eve in his own image, who. • EVOLUTION then reproduced. He also see page 13 Jessica Alexander Editorial Board Brooke Nelson Katie Ashton Aaron Falk Bryan Hinton Marie MacKay Michael Sharp Steve Shinney ' About letters • Letters should be limited to 350 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic oriented. They may not be directed toward individuals. Any letter directed " ' to a specific individual may be edited or not printed. • No anonymous letters will be published. Writers must sign all letters and include a phone number or email address as well as a student identification number. 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