[ Commentary
Henry Richmond - Part II
Student power Naderstyle: OSPIRG
Henry Richmond is chairman of the legal
committee for OSPIRG and is a third year
law student.
How will OSPIRG work? What is
OSPIRG’s connection with higher
education? How car. students participate
in OSPIRG?
It is important to understand that
OSPIRG is a State-wide student
organization. All seven State System
schools are participating: Portland State;
Oregon State; U of O; Oregon College of
Education at Monmouth; Southern Oregon
College at Ashland; Oregon Technical
Institute at Klamath Falls; and Eastern
Oregon College at La Grande.
Willamette, Reed, I.ewis and Clark,
University of Portland, and Pacific
University represent the private schools.
Portland, Lane, Clackamas, and South
western Oregon represent the Community
Colleges. All other private colleges and the
eight remaining Community Colleges will
be encouraged to join OSPIRG in the fall.
That is one of the big jobs to be done this
summer.
The schools which will be formally
part of OSPIRG this June have nearly
75,000 students. More than half these
students have give specific approval of
OSPIRG either by petition or by vote.
Each of these campuses will have an
OSPIRG LOCAL BOARD. The 24 OSPIRG
candidates on the ASUO general election
ballot are running for the 9 U of 0 Local
Board positions.
The students elected to these 9 Local
Board positions will have an important
role: (1) hold regular campus hearings so
that students and other citizens can
propose and discuss issues for possible
OSPIRG action; (2) inform students of
state wide OSPIRG programs; (3) select
representatives to OSPIRG’s state wide
student Board of Directors; (4) administer
the quarterly refund procedure (any
student not wishing to participate merely
has to present his student card at the
OSPIRG Local Board office; he will
receive a no-questions-asked $1 check);
(5) maintain communication with student
government, the ASUO Senate Fiscal
Committee, President Clark (who has
been extremely helpful to OSPIRG), the
Emerald, Register Guard, and the general
Eugene-Springfield community; (6) find
students and faculty who will contribute
their time and talent to OSPIRG projects;
(7) distribute OSPIRG’s periodic
newsletter; (8) conduct OSPIRG elec
tions; (9) work on projects of a local
nature.
A project of a "local nature”
Here’s one example: Many apart
ment-dwelling students have trouble
getting cleaning deposits back, even if
they have done a reasonably good job
cleaning up when they leave.
The problem is most students aren’t
really able to stop their landlord from, in
effect, tacking an extra month’s rent on
the lease. You’re frazzled from finals,
have a summer job or a plane to catch 300
miles away the next morning, and you
have to pack and leave right now.
Solution: students who have troubled
with cleaning deposit refunds can assign
their rights to the deposit to a law student
on the OSPIRG Local Board. Just before
the student leaves town, pictures can be
taken and affidavits obtained. Over the
summer the law student gets the cleaning
deposits back. When students return to
school in the Fall they have a beer-money
check waiting for them. And the law
student probably gets three units toward
his degree.
Each participating campus will have
one Director representative for each 4,000
contributing students. Thus, U of 0, OSU
and PCC will have 3, PSU 2, and all the
others one apiece. All Directors will be
members of Local Boards. The State
Board of Directors eventually will have 25
30 members, depending on how many
schools join OSPIRG.
State-wide student Board of Directors
The State Board will control
OSPIRG’s money, and will control
OSPIRG’s professional staff. By a vote of
two-thirds, the Board will adopt “direc
tives” which specify state-wide en
vironmental or consumer issues, and
which declare why OSPIRG is concerned
about these issues. These “directives” will
be the basis of the staff’s work. The Board
will elect officers and meet once each
month.
The heart of OSPIRG is its small
professional staff of lawyers, ecologists,
engineers, financial experts, doctors or
media specialists, etc.
Public issues are not decided by moral
zest, or by private mutterings over the
morning “Oregonian.” What is necessary
is continuously accurate, hard-hitting,
high-quality research, investigation,
memoranda, legal briefs, proposed
legislation, proposed city ordinances,
proposed administrative rules and
regulations, news releases, television
appearances, and reports to the public.
This kind of student approach to
Oregon’s state wide environmental and
consumer problems would be impossible
without a hard-working, high-quality
professional staff. Likewise, there would
be no OSPIRG staff without a unified,
state-wide organization of students to
finance, control and support it.
The OSPIRG staff, together with the
rest of the OSPIRG program, will begin its
work in September.
How can students be involved in
OSPIRG’s efforts next fall, in addition to
serving on Local Boards, or on the State
Board?
Not all of OSPIRG’s work requires
lawyers, ecologists, or other specialists.
Students can help in research, gathering
evidence, interviewing government or
business officials or preparing reports.
Or if OSPIRG needs work in, say, a
broad question of coastal zoning, a
professor could offer a course in that
subject and divide the necessary work
among the class.
Or a student could prepare a study
entirely on his own and ask the OSPIRG
staff to help him implement its proposals.
Credit can be given for this work.
This kind of student participation in
OSPIRG not only contributes to the
solution of public problems—it also im
proves higher education. Extending the
learning process from the “ivory tower” to
the “real world” is an education concept
endorsed by blue ribbon educational
commissions. Student OSPIRG work is
also a means of applying the role
resources of academia to the problems of
society.
More importantly, student par
ticipation in OSPIRG is the kind of
educational technique which can help
improve the common understanding of the
way our complex, fast-changing,
technology-driven society actually works.
Unless we are prepared to abandon the
premises of democracy, that is the only
way average Americans are going to
regain control of the direction of their
country.
mEdwin L. Colemon //■
I'dwin I,. Coleman II is a counselor in the
office of academic advising.
I used to wonder
About living and dying—
I think the difference lies
Between tears and crying.
I used to wonder
About here and there—
I think the distance
Is nowhere.
lilt* month of May is a month of
remembrance and reflection. We
celebrate the birthdate of Brother
Malcolm X and the death of Brother
I-angston Hughes. We have already wit
nessed Brother Malcolm’s day earlier this
year (February); now I feel that Hughes,
the "Black Poet laureate,” should have
special recognition.
Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in
Joplin, Missouri From there his life was
packed with inspiration for and devotion to
his people Although he wrote two
autobiographies (The Big Sea and I
Wonder As I Wander) they described only
the first half of his life. Interestingly
enough, the last half of his years saw an
even greater variety in his writing. His
direction and aims remained constant,
however "I document the feelings of our
time in relation to myself and my own
people, and, of course, the problems of our
democracy,’’ he told an interviewer in
19tvt
It was his poetry that first made him
known, and his poems are still the root of
his reputation although he ventured into
many other forms of writing—plays,
music scores, fiction, Black history He
wrote more than twenty plays, operas,
musicals and gospel pieces He wrote
books (Hi jazz, childrens stories, rhythms,
on the West Indies, on Africa.
In
memorium
Hughes lived in many countries during
his lifetime, which include, Africa, Russia,
France, Mexico and Spain. He spoke the
language of each fluently. He received
many top literary honors both in the U.S.
and abroad. With all that, his life was filled
with financial hardship. Unlike many
white writers, Hughes never had a lucky
break. None of his plays was a smash hit
on Broadway, nor were his books swept up
as best sellers and sold to Hollywood for
fantastic profit. If he had been so lucky, he
probably would have given the money
away to friends and down-and-outers—he
was that way.
Langston Hughes’ lack of literary
recognition was common in America—
because he was Black. The neglect he
suffered at the hands of literary powers is
evident. All Black poets (up until a few
years ago) have been ignored by the
makers of anthologies of American
Poetry Time and time again we see the
evidence of white anthologists' view of
Black writers as being invisible. There
was not a single Black poet in The Oxford
Kook of American Verse,, in; Modern
Poetry, in The Pocket Book of American
Poems, in 100 American Poems, in A
Complete College Reader, in Best Liked
Poems, in An .Anthology of American
Verse, in Modern American Verse. (Some
academicians still question the validity of
Black Literature!) On the other hand,
Kenneth Rexroth has observed that
Hughes was, “for an American, an ex
traordinarily sophisticated writer, which
is probably why Americans took his ap
parent simplicity at its apparent face
value. In France, where such striving for
the greatest possible simplicity is com
mon, his work was probably more ac
curately judged.”
Langston Hughes was probably the
forerunner of the use of “Soul as we know
it today. In his early poem, “The Negro
Speaks of Rivers,”—
...I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns
were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it
lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the
pyramids above it.
I heard the songs of the Mississippi when
Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all
golden in the sunset . . .
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Hughes again refers to “Soul” in the poem
“My People”—
The night is beautiful
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
Hughes is just an example of the many
Black heroes who lived-died without
proper recognition. It is this writer’s hope
that the next time I mention the name of
Langston Hughes to a Ph D. in English
from this University or to any university
student, the reply won’t be “. . . Langston
who? . . never heard of him.”
Hughes died at ten-forty on Monday
night. May 22, 1967—Alone!
PEACE