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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 29, 1966)
OREGON DAILY EMERALD Opinions expressed on the editorial page are those of the Emerald and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the ASUO or the University. Opinions expressed in signed columns are those of the writer. LOUIE ABRAMSON Business Manager LARRY LANGE News Editor CHUCK BEGGS, Editor BOB CARL Managing Editor PHIL SEMAS Associate Editor WILBUR BISHOP, JR. Advertising Manager MAXINE ELLIOTT Associate Editor I’aee 6 University of Oregon, Eugene, Friday, April 29. 1966 A Final Word It is with some nostalgia that I now must relinquish the editorship of the Emerald to my successor, as scores of editors have done before me There is perhaps nothing so final for a journalist as knowing that he is writing his last words for a newspaper which has become part of him. a publica tion which he has lived and breathed, as the editor of a daily newspaper must. Such is ray case. During the five years I have spent on the University campus some remarkable changes have taken place. The old “party school’' reputation has largely faded into oblivion. It has been replaced with a seri ousness about the task of educating oneself in a complex society. The campus is no longer an ivy-covered enclave, a pastoral retreat for quiet contemplation while the test of the world batters its way through life's joys and trials. The campus is now the world A troubled mankind is looking to higher education for help and encourage ment And. indeed, higher education is looking at mankind as it never has before. This is the change that has come about at the University, a change that will reap only good. Students still go to proms and throw each other in the Milirace and drink beer on Friday afternoons. But they also sponsor conferences on poverty, they ac tively campaign for politicians, and they speak out and assert themselves on critical issues such as Viet Nam and civil rights. This spirit of change is reflected best in Steve Goldschmidt, easily the finest stu dent body president I have seen at the University. It was lie who provided much of the drive that brought life to issues this year that had gathered only passing interest in the past. The Emerald has been an integral part of this change at the University. Things have not been all rosy, to be sure. I have criticized a good many people this year for what I felt were unjust and short-sighted actions. In turn. I have been both praised and damned. I have insisted on attempting to cover and report on meetings which have never been covered by the pres^ before. In some cases I was victorious; in others I lost. This is the journalist’s fate. The editorship of this newspaper, despite the headaches and pressures, is one of the most rewarding available to a student. In a university as large as this one. communica tions are vitally important, and the Emer ald plays a vital part in those communica tions. In the end no amount of platitudes, however, will justify the newspaper’s per formance, or lack thereof. It must speak for itself. On Monday another editor will move into the office in Allen Ilall and assume the responsibility he has chosen to take upon himself. For a year he will live with the Oregon Daily Emerald and with the com munity that it serves, sacrificing his indi viduality to that most incisive friend and foe of the newsman, the reader. Then he will likely make his exit, as I do. with some nostalgia, but no regrets. CHUCK BEGGS _ jk(£ - ( f itftttfYIf tO trlflC lEtdltOT* MWIMMNM Do Something Emerald Editor: I would like to know what Mr. Sinniger proposed to do about the evils he described in his letter (April 26). It is very easy to sit hack and whine about the evils of America: Qod knows there are many. It is very easy to look at an American who “serenely smiles and plops into a shiny tin car" and make value judgments about him. It is very easy to complain, to criticize, to condemn. But where are your proposals, Mr. Sinniger? Ameri ca needs your ideas, not your carping. Do something, Mr. Sin niger, but quit crying about your aching guts. Barbara Truax Junior, Anthropology Get Out Emerald Editor: Hamlet chiefs and local ofli rials tied up by the thumbs and disembowled; children tied to stakes and every bone in their small bodies methodically brok en; pregnant women with their stomachs slit open: barbaric, sadistic terrorists under the guise of a National Liberation Front. Have you failed to no tice Viet Cong atrocities, Mr. Sinniger (April 2(1), or do you believe that their propaganda is the absolute truth? Freedom of speech is a won derful privilege, Mr. Sinniger, and I would be the last to deny your right to speak Hut how much would your life be worth in North Viet Nam if you were to criticize the actions of the Viet Cong? I would suggest that you recheck your blessings anti add up the score. And if your "guts” still ache then get out. And I for one would be inter ested to know if you have the strength in your convictions to do just that. Louis Larson Senior, General Social Science No Thanks Emerald Editor: When you, the editor, decided to turn your paper into a vehi cle for threatening the faculty with general riot, all in the name of the undergraduate's right to remain ignorant, 1, for one, did not protest. You are, after all, an under graduate and may be presum ed to speak for some undergrad uates, however few. Hut 1 fail to see what business you have with the graduate language re quirement, unless, perhaps, you are planning to get a graduate degree, and thus feel as a per sonal affront any intellectual requirements in academia what ever. You come in with an air of righteous innovation, but you have been anticipated. A meet ing of nationally known schol ars last year recommended that instead of two languages, badly learned, graduate schools should require a thorough knowledge of one language, plus a strong minor related to or necessary for the graduate study, say French and history or philoso phy for the English graduate. Some graduate students will not approve of this program; it would require real scholarship and might delay entry into the big money. Some graduates will object to learning any languages at all, however poorly, on the grounds that knowledge of a language is not useful, is not practical. These scholars, so . called, will be certain to dis like the new proposal, for it is more difficult to learn one lan guage and a minor field well than to learn two languages poorly. It was on tne grounds oi im practicality and uselessness — that is, on the ground of the in convertibility of one’s knowl edge into hard cash—that the undergraduate degree became, at many institutions, a formal ized fraud, attesting to little more than its owner’s ability to maintain respiration during four consecutive years. Considering your perform ance this year, it is not surpris ing to find you joining the at tempt to make the graduate de grec woriniwi, wn. But thunk you, no thank you. Some of us do not wunt your kind of aid. We do not want bi weekly threats of riot. We have no use for tears on the Free Speech Platform from politi cians seeking an issue. We do not require the kind of distort ed reporting and editorializing that has brought, during your editorship, more complaints of misrepresentation than during the entire preceding four years of the Emerald’s publication. The change in the language re quirement will come, is com ing, without your dubious aid. When the strong swimmer is nearing shore, for the love of Pete, resist the impulse to throw him your solid lead life preserv er. It. 8, Behar Graduate, English Editor’s Note: The present editor of the Emerald, Chuck Heggs, is a graduate student ill journalism. Big Bare Emerald Editor: Controversy over whose feet of what academically inclined foreign group danced on .stage at the International Festival has reached the stage of open pro test. It is time, it seems to ate. for an agonizing reappraisal by all right minded and humorless members of this academic com munity. Is it not the (iod given right of all people in the Great Society to put our collective feet in our collective mouths upon any and all occasions of fering opportunity thereto? Does not an Emerald reporter have the right to inflate an inci dent in the interests of news paper popularity? Should we not do as our exemplary State Department does in dealing with peoples ahroad, and alienate our overseas brothers and sisters with our own bumbling kind ness. fomenting anger, indigna tion. and revolt because we have tried too hard to please? Nay, it is our right: let us do it Now speaking seriously for a moment, it is true that the Em erald reporter did a poor job of reporting. I’m certain she has been castigated, if not public ly lashed with scorn and con tumely, and no doubt will be more careful about counting feet and degrees which dance before her eyes in the future. What arouses my considera ble laughter and disgust is the reaction to this piece of poor journalism. One native Ameri can demands we should apolo gize publicly; native African students adopt a pose of suffer ing martyrdom over Miss Bor enstcin's inocuous report; and I expect some fine afternoon to find hand printed signs being paraded outside the Emerald offices demanding that we free (bare) feet from fetidaldom, or some asininity. My composition class decided the report would have aroused no comment if the wording had been modified: ’“African stu dents dance on stage barefoot,” instead of "Barefoot African students dance on stage.” The implication being that the use of both ‘ barefoot” and “Afri can" in such close proximity in evitably conjures up pictures of a past which apparently the Africans would rather deny ever existed I submit that the African students and their humorless supporters should try walking around without those large, unsightly chips on their shoul ders and see if we aren’t all more friendly and tolerant than they at present suppose us to be. Robert L. Stallman Inst., English Oregon Oaily Emerald Ratidc Wilrnarth, Sports Editor Nomi Borenstein, Assistant Managing Editor David Brown, Religious News Editor Shota Ushio, Photo Editor Steve Dimeo, Entertainment Editor Editorial Board: Chuck Boggs, Bob Carl, Larry Lunge, Phil Sernas, Maxine Elliott, Pam Bladinc, Gene Sokolski, Nomi Borcnstein, Scott Bartlett, Vance Welty, Robin Tuttle, Bob Holmes.
