Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1968)
<3 <2 £ ZU Z ZZJ Joe College is an Uncle Tom. One of the materials the orientation leaders jsed in an attempt to stimulate discussion was i reprint of “The Student as Nigger” by Gerald Farber of Cal State L A. The article effectively compares the student of today with the “colored people” of yesterday. The subservient “colored folk” are gone now and in their place stand proud, determined Afro-Americans. The Black man took a look at his situation, hated what he saw, changed it and today continues to change. It seems the student is just now slowly getting around to seeing where he's at. Hopefully the student can learn from what the Black man has accomplished. What Black people want and to some extent have gained is control over their own lives and destinies. When the opportunity was available they took it by taking public offices and jobs. When the oppor tunity was absent, by boycott and demonstra tion, they united to create it. This is what the student is beginning to realize. He must take the opportunities available to him to influence his education and, when those opportunities do not exist, he must open them. Maybe — hopefully — in an academic en vironment these steps can be taken through means less forceful than Blacks have been forc id to employ. A community of highly educated people should, it seems, be able to develop and implement reasonable solutions to mutual pro blems through non-violent means. The first step, of course, is to take the fullest possible advan tage of the opportunities which students now have to make their voices heard in the decision making processes affecting their education. T he SEARCH program is only one example of what can be done if enough effort is expended through presently available opportunities. t I I --.--41 —- __ i • ' f 9 to rg, ■ ■ s' / Change is going to come in all levels ■of the academic community, student governments and organizations, facul ties, and administrations. The nature, course and swiftness of the change depends on the amount of student support and the means toward which that support is directed. Resistance to change is present also in all levels of the academic community and in the taxpayers. Rememher that some still consider the presence ' of controversial speakers on campus a debatable subject. It is as odd as it is true that academics in gen eral are noted for their conservatism regarding IhEit ... .1. in ..I . ;L.m and ndncalional methods and practices. It took years for the Fa culty Senate to open its door even to the press. It was only two weeks ago that the faculty final ly opened its meetings to the public. There, of course, is a perennial faculty-admin istration argument used, as the occasion re quires, to stifle student approaches to the realiza tion of community government. It is provided here as a refresher: “The student has no business participating in the policy formulating processes of the University. The student spends only a short time at the University and has no real in terest in long-range decisions while the faculty and administration, on the other hand, will be making their careers here.” This is usually sup plemented by reference, explicitly or implicitly, to the student’s “subordinate role” and his in herent “immaturity.” The concept of community government is not particularly new at the University, but it still is little more than a concept. The idea proposes that it is feasible that the University—students, faculty and administration—function as a com munity. The premise is that this community of equal members with three basic role distinctions (student, teacher, administrator) could govern itself with one government and one set of rules to the benefit of all and particularly to the bene fit of education.
