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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1958)
® EMERALD The Parking Situation In that amorphous world of “who is re sponsible for what” the student parking situation seems to be a principal character. The student pays his money for parking -privileges, which more often than not don’t seem to exist. If the student has a com plaint about the situation, there seems to be little recourse but to suffer with it. At the present time the student has two avenues for recommendations. He can take his suggestions to the ASUO Parking Com mittee or to the Student-Faculty Traffic Court. These two avenues will lead to frus tration, as the student will soon discover. The ASUO Parking Committee is about as inert a committee as you will find on this or any other campus. It, at present, is not allowed to send a representative to the Campus Planning Committee, which, it seems, is the untouchable center of parking activities. A letter of recommendation can be sent by the ASUO committee to the Planning Committee, but the course it must travel seems to be littered with many cir cular files. The second recourse for recommendations is the Student-Faculty Traffic Court. Like •the ASUO organization it must use the im personal letter for contact, although As sistant Dean of Men Bruce Brenn, the ad visor, said that the Campus Planning Com mittee has smiled kindly upon Traffic Court recommendations. The ASUO Senate, aware of the above problems, posed four questions at the last Senate meeting. 1. Do students have an effectual say in the policies of the Planning Committee concerning parking? 2. Should faculty and staff pay for park ing stickers as do students? 3. What is the possibility of a joint fac ulty-student committee to make the parking policy? 4. Problem of publicity—couldn’t park ing rules and regulations be among the packets received during registra tion ? To the first question the answer is a definitive NO, as was explained above. The onlv possible solution to this problem is found in the answer to number three. While the possibility of student representation to the Planning Committee is not yet known, there is no doubt that there should be stu dent representation. A letter is an impotent method of pre senting your ideas or complaints. Only through student representation can an ef fective move be made to solve a problem that is just as much the affairs of the stu dents as the affairs of the faculty, if not more so. Most faculty members consider free parking a “fringe benefit.” and for this rea son it is unlikely that they will be required to buy stickers as the students do. Question four was posed as a solution to the great number of student violations. Yes. it is a good idea to include the parking rtdes in the registration packet, but better yet, wouldn’t it be wise to re-examine the present facilities and perhaps adapt them more to the existing problem ? Whatever the solution may be to the parking situation, it is hoped that the ASUO letter to the Campus Planning Committee concerning the four problems will not falter and fall into one of those circular files. Play the Congressional ‘Name Game’: Try Picking Liberals, Conservatives The terms "liberal” and “con servative” have always been thrown around in American poli tics pretty impressionistically. When a senator espouses more pay for postal workers, he is tagged “liberal." If a senator votes against a high dam at Hell’s Canyon, he is a “con servative.” When a senator like the late Walter George votes for foreign aid but against more government spending, persons are confused, and so the man be comes a “moderate.” In this latter category have landed Sens. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, former Secre tary of State Dean Acheson, President Eisenhower, and Vice President Nixon. These persons and many more are thought to be inconsistent in their political behavior, and they are a little bothersome since one can't fit them neatly into the liberal or conservative slots. Today a liberal is a person who doesn’t bat an eye at gov ernment spending and in general is one who fearlessly upholds the inherent rights of the “com mon man.” He is intensely in sympathy with all underdevel oped peoples and is the arch foe of nuclear testing. The conservative is for indi OREGON DAILY EMERALD The Oregon Daily Emerald is published four times in September and five days a wek during the school year, except during examination and vacation periods, by the Student Publications Board of the Univer sity of Oregon. Entered as second class matter at the post office, Eugene, Ore gon. Subscription rates: $5 per year, $2 per term. Opinions expressed on the editorial page are those of The Emerald and do not pretend to represent ;he opinion of the ASUO or the University. PHIL HAGER, Editor BILL BRYANT, Busin.ss Manager vidual initiative and consequent ly believes that big labor is bad, that the government shouldn’t meddle in the states’ affairs, and that socialism is around the corner. And it follows that those “foreign fellows” should look out for themselves. The curious thing about the “name game” is that the mod erates have generally been more succeasful politicians than either the liberals or the con servatives, and the most influ ential politicians have been moderates. The moderate is one who, un like the whole-hog liberal or con servative,* doesn’t particularly care to follow a set political philosophy and realizes that if he did, he would no longer be successful. He instead lives his political life more “by ear” than by heart. William S. White, po litical columnist, in his book about the U.S. Senate, Citadel, writes of the good senator: . . One cannot forever re fuse there to make any compro mise at all and remain a good, or effective, member . . . This is no place for the man who has ONLY principle; for every genu ine political fanatic is simply awash with principle as he un derstands the term.” Other qualities he mentions are: “A concentration upon the coher ent and important and an avoid ance of the diffuse and doubt ful. A deep skill in sensing what may and may not be done.” This advice holds true for more than just U.S. Senators. The political idealist, the lead er of movements is only occas ionally successful and although he may become a famous man, he never rises very high in real influence. A moderate defies neat de scription because he has what (Continued on page 3) Letter to the Editor Emerald Editor: Aside from the fact that we lost the game last Saturday, there was much else to make the day a miserable one. The first was the fact that there were so many students of the University who had to sit in thii’d rate seats out in the rain, while the “general admission’’ people sat in the cover of the grandstands. We were of the impression that the University of Oregon opposed the kind of “big business’’ in athletics that goes on in the Southern Cali fornia schools. This impression has been changed. It seems that Oregon too now has more regard for the dollar than for the stu dent when it comes to athletic events. Maybe this is one of the pitfalls of a winning team. Be cause there is no way to waive athletic event charges in the tuition price, the athletic depart ment feels that we do not have to be treated like “paying guests.” For the hundreds of students who had to sit in a cold rain while the "paying crowd” sat in comfort, the University should be truly ashamed. Seconds, we are appalled by the tactics and the manners dis (Continued on page 3) Suspicion Confirmed in.—____ Trr "MasT^RIU-V WRITTEN 5NARF—IT'6 56U*>W/V\Y PLEASURE TO 5FP A TEST WITH SOAAANV fiMHOOUS QUtSUO** 'Politeness at Oregon Varies; It Can Even Replace Learning (Editor'* Note: Stanley R. Maveety hat been a memlier of the University'* English Department since 195.5. He teaches classes in both Eng lish composition and liie erature, and his educational background includes under graduate work at Northwest ern and graduate study at Co lumbia and Stanford, where he received hi* I*h.I). in 195(1. After three years of eontact with Oregon'* student*. Mr. Maveety has some definite— and interesting — impression* of them.) . By Stanley R. Maveety Three years ago, after a very short exposure to Oregon stu dents, I answered a question from an older faculty member with the observation that Ore gon students seemed quite po lite. I believed it then and meant it as a favorable comment; I still believe it, but I don’t mean it now as an unqualified compli ment. When I think of the politeness of Oregon students something that really sets them off a bit from others I’ve encounteded — I think first of some slightly baffled comp, student leaving the office after a wrestle with the complexity of dangling verb als, or an earnest but confused attempt to see just what it is that’s wrong with the passive voice. At the door he turn* and says wearily, but a* If he meant It, "Thank*.” He says It a* If the struggle had taken a bit of my time and energy too. Now this i* good, partly for the simple rea son that it happen* to 1m: true. And this much of the Duck spirit of politeness I wouldn't change. But I can think of another side. Let me conjure up the image of a sweet young thing who answers some comment of mine with, "Oh yes! I certainly think that Shakespeare has a lot to offer.” I agree, but I’m bothered by the sneaky suspicion that although she’s edging to ward the door, it’s not for a quick dash to the library. Now I don’t mean that she’s an apple-polisher; we've all met him (and her). An apple pol isher is trying to confuse the teacher, and he’s not confused himself. But this young lady (let me have my way about thin for the nuke of the point) wan not being hypocritical; she wan herself a bit confused. Just at that moment, and for the dear sweat sake of Oregonian polite ness, she really half-believed that she did favor the good old Hard. She recovered, I'm sure, its soon as she got out into the fresh uir, but she’s likely to have a relapse If she falls into conversation with anyone from the Knglish Department. I niler the anesthetic s|sdl of good manners she may even imagine for the moment that she's be come fond of Chaucer! This young lady Duck couldn’t possibly have said, "I really don't like what we've been read ing in Lit.” That would have been rude, and it might have jarred the poor old teacher; but (and this is my point) I believe that it would have been worth being rude (on these terms) in order to have been talking hon est good sense. It might even have led to »n honest discussion of what, in her opinion and In mine, was good and what was bad a taint a cer tain assignment or series of assignments. Who knows (a shocking thought), the Instruc tor might even have learned something from the student. I recall being jarred once, by a very different sort of stu dent, who obviously was not typically polite; he told me straight that he studied part of the quarter’s work thoroughly because he liked it and that after a small taste he Ignored an other part. He even went on with this heresy of honesty to say that he was aware that his attitude would not be good for his grade. Don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t hold him up as a per fect model any more than I’d turn the classroom into a scene of argument for the sake of argument. I’m convinced that what he tasted and left alone was worth his trouble. But there was something in his attitude worth noticing, for its novelty if nothing else: he seemed to have the idaa that it was his course, in fact his education, simply becauffc he was paying for it a rather curious way of looking at it, don’t you think?
