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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1972)
Loveys: ‘We are servants of the students ’ By JOHN PIPER < If the Emerald About live minutes after our scheduled meeting, Fred Loveys buzzes into the Friendly Mall parking lot with his bright red 1968 Fiat two-seater, and an Emerald photographer and I climb in. It's spring the sun is shining. Loveys the number two man m tiie ASUO Executive Office- is smiling It’s rare when he’s not. Even when doing verbal battle with his most vociferous Senate opponents, he usually manages to come out with that little-boy grin that belies his 29 years. He used to have a beard, but clipped it after announcing his resignation after one and a half years in the ASUO Senate. He said he’d rather be a lover than a politician but he didn't keep his word We stop at George’s 19lh and Agate Market before heading for Loveys’ small house on Columbia Street He picks up a six-pack of 1’abst Blue Ribbon, some (’Incken in a Bisket, yogurt, and a lew oranges and bananas for our trip to the quickly agreed upon interview site near Hendricks Park Loveys' roommate is former ASUO president lain More a Scotsman who Fred says has been "half mv education here at the University.” The house is cluttered with books and other things; a lireplace More made himself sits m one corner of the living room and the kitchen is painted several bright colors Fred’s room is just large enough for his muscular T>'4” trame it appears to be a con verted closet and pictures of mountaineering dot the walls I ,o\ e\ s stalls the car once on a corner as we head for a quiet spot near Hendricks Park, but we lay out a tarp in the sunshine on a grassy slope and turn on the lain’ ireorder He appears to be enjoying the interview , and shows no fear of Photo by Svea Bogue Fred Loveys the microphone or the photographer shooting from all angles. The words flow on and on frequently interrupted by “you knows”—as the man who owns the house above mows his lawn. Fred Loveys is an Englishman, all right, but many of his at titudes have changed since he came to the University in August of 1970 He spent six years teaching physical education at Swindon, a city of lOO.(KK) about loo miles west of London. Outdoor activities and youth leadership were his special in terests, as they still are today. A friend whom he met while at tending Oxford came to the University in 1964 and Loveys saved for six years to make the trip to Oregon. Within five days after reaching the States, he spent three days in the Three Sisters “on a solo— without food and without shelter " “This was some kind of clearing house between England and the States,” he says, “1 kind of cleared my mind, as it were.” "It certainly was a totally new experience for me It was really remarkable I've never been in such really beautiful country at such a hot time I was really impressed with Oregon, Eugene and the pretty area where I'm living the trees and the peacefulness was so beautiful in the summer when I came over.” Loveys holds no love for Oregon rain, however, but he admits it does have its good qualities I guess it had to happen,” he savs "If you want to have pretty things m the spring you’ve got to have a lot o! ram to get it there.” F«ew siaccn^ Indian IGU^ICPfS 818 Willamette 343 7522 Maxican Imported Clothing s Middle East It’s obvious just how important outdoor activities are to Loveys after listening to him rap about Northwest Outward Bound. Oregon doesn’t really make it compared with the North Cascades, where he spent last summer: “I've never been in such wild and natural kind of country. I mean Oregon is pretty desolate compared to the grandeur of the North Cascades, I think. It’s just great up there.” He likes the out-of-doors so much, in fact, that he spent his only free weekend spring term on a trip with some of his former mountaineering students. For him, it has a deeper meaning: “Every time I go away for a weekend I sit amongst the green stuff,” he says, pointing at the trees lining the hillside. “You can’t change the color of that. That’s reality, that’s where it is. Whereas people put on these airs and graces and this sophistication and this plasticity and it's very hard to get beyond it unless they want you to get beyond it .” He gets turned on by "the kind of naturalness of the hills and the naturalness of the personality— when 1 see that personality growing and perhaps reaching out at something." Outdoor activities are also important to I,oveys in terms of Ins studies in the I’ E depart ment an area of physical education he says is being neglected at the University. "What I'm concerned with is the kind of experiences that I am able to offer people who enroll in the undergraduate or service program in mountaineering and rock climbing these kinds of experiences should be offered to the profi ssional l’ E teachers as w ell " He feels P E students in this country should be trained to teach more than the traditional sports, such as football and basketball 1 was trained at Oxford as a P K teacher but also with an emphasis in outdoor activities, to use all aspects of P E to provide an educational offering to students through the physical, if you like, and that doesn’t happen here " lbs courses in mountaineering and rock climbing are popular with students, as is evident by sorting through the class reaction reports he asks students to fill out after completing a class Initially 1 view Kred I/neys as an asshole.” one student wrote "but after two (field* trips I know better He's just a damn Englishman, and more importantly, lies just Kred I n\ i'\s I ovevs prides himself on his teaching—or non-teaching methods. “My kind of courses get me into the students more than anybody else . . we expose these students to a different environment— sometimes a hostile en vironment—but an environment that they can be creative in and find their own thing in. . . . We expose them to something else and to something that’s really beautiful.” As for Loveys’ social ad justment at the University, it is clear that no one had more effect on his life than his roommate, lain More. “The first year I really didn’t socialize at all,” Loveys says. “It was really amazing to be with Iain. You know, I saw more young ladies before breakfast than most people. Iain has been half my education over here, he really has. "Normally I just would have concentrated on my studies and stayed there and done the usual things English people do when they come to Oregon: played their soccer, gotten their Grade A's and this kind of thing and socialized amongst themselves. Hut I think being exposed to so many different kinds of lifestyles through living with Iain has been educational to say the least." l.oveys also became involved with the Senate, More’s old playground, until he moved up to the Executive suite. And although student politics and politicians have at times been harsh on him, he says he is glad he got involved, because “it exposed me to so many different lifestyles and attitudes.” “I get really upset with the Senate because 1 see so much potential completely screwed around every time. And yet there's so many good people in there ” He says his belief that elected rulers are servants of the students is viewed in a different light at the University than it is in England "We are servants of the students, we have been elected to sen e the students It's something I d be quite content to admit to in a private conversation but to admit to the Senate that I am now a servant of the students which is how I see my role as vice president is laughable and they would just laugh me out of the Senate I m not sure 1 understand —ome senator s' animosity." he continues I can't see that the things 1 \e boon advocating are anti-students \mong the attitudes Loveys questions after spending a year and a half at the University are lus heliols about Christianity and n .in lage Hes.ivs lie used to talk about Christianity in his classes in England, and “I was pretty convinced the kind of values I held over there were the ultimate ones, the ones that I was going to go all the way through with. Now I'm not so sure.” As for marriage, he says he was ‘‘pretty idealistic” about the subject when he taught personal relationships (sex education) to school children. He now feels a relationship can be good without marriage—“if it’s responsibly done and not selfishly entered into. And that’s a kind of ex perience or idea or concept that I never would have gotten into if I had stayed in England. That’s why 1 value the kind of ex periences I’ve had over here.” As an example, he mentions a scene in the movie “Cabaret,” in which Liza Minnelli offers herself to an Englishman in his bedroom. “The Englishman responds: Well not before breakfast, dear, it’s just not done,’ and I thought how British.” “To my mind I was able to laugh at that—I used to live it before,” he says. Loveys—who returned to England during last Christmas vacation—says he doesn’t want to go back for at least five or six \ ears. "I was really shocked at how slow they are in terms of developing, as 1 feel I’ve developed in my year and a half here. I was almost a totally different person. I’ve had to question a lot of the values I had.” He says jobs are scarce in Kngland and the pay doesn't compare with the money teachers are paid in the United States or Canada. He went through six years of savings in his first year at the University. Uoveys would like to find a job which would allow him the luxury of traveling to Canada, Australia, South America, Africa, etc. He doesn't like to stay in one area more than six years because "it’s too easy to be comfortable in that kind of situation where everybody isreinforcingthe kinds "f things you are doing and everybody is expecting you to keep doing them. In a few years. Loveys will probably move on to another challenge. It really doesn't matter where "I think it’s in reaction to people that I grow,” he says. "That’s why I didn't want to isolate myself by going back into my studies and by going back into my shell because I think it is in joining with other people in challenging one’s self and meeting challenges that you tend to achieve a lot " V it < \en at 29- Fred Uoveys mm > a lot ol grow mg in his luture.
