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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 22, 1973)
ASUO President Greg Leo talks with voung visitors to the student govern ment offices on the third floor of the EMU. Leo met with parents, too. when the ASUO Child Care and Development Center lobbied to maintain funding for next year. Kids, parents protest Day Care decision The sign on the door of the ASUO read Day Care Annex no. 1. And that’s just what it became as over 80 children and their parents from the ASUO Child Care and Development Center lined the ASUO executive office and the third floor hallway of the EMU, Monday af ternoon, to demonstrate against the ASUO budget recommendation to cut off ait funds for the Child Care and Development Center. By MARIANNE RINALDO Of the Emerald According to Bill Schaub interim ad ministrative assistant to the Leo and Barnett administration, “only one side has been heard. For IFC to complement funds with federal funds, the funding should already be there. The funding should come from state and federal levels.” Presently it costs $1,140 to finance a child for one year. $200 per child would come from incidental fee monies. Schaub said that the past executive recommended that Day Care not be funded because, “they were opposed to sup plementing, as in the past. To support this program is the primary responsibility of the federal, state and community governments.” Schaub stated that to “allocate day care 20,000 dollars would be futile because day care can not make it without federal and state funds and the money is not going to be there. If they get ours where are they going to get the rest.” Schaub sees as a viable alternative the incorporation of a drop in day care cen ter—a place to leave the kids while you’re in class. This would only be temporary, and not operate with all the facilities that the day care center now offers. “You have to look at the issue in an overall perspective of limitations oc curring with state and federal funds drying up mainly because of the federal point of view, which down on Day Care. Someone in the executive is not out to do in day care,” Schaub added. Jeff Jefferson, a member of the In cidental Fee Committee told the Emerald that “the federal government dumped on students in terms of not only day care but financial aid as well. Many of these marginal mothers won’t be coming back not only because of day care but federal cut backs as well.” As Greg Leo talked with parents in the crowd, Debbie Barnett stated “Bill Schaub is defending last years ASUO and not representing the present executive. Greg and I have not fully discussed the day care issue.” The decision to recommend the funding of day care will come from the Incidental Fee Committee. The recom mendation then goes to the ASUO president who may veto the IFC’s decision. If the decision is vetoed, it then reverts back to the IFC. Once in the hands of IFC, they may override the executive decision by 4 to 1 vote. mHistorian claims hiring bias in field™ By APRIL APPERSON Of tiie Emerald Barbara Westman, a charming woman with a ready smile and laugh and the only mediaevaiist at the University, commutes to Los Angeles each weekend where her husband works in the UCLA history department. Although it means a 900-mile DAIRY—ANN 343-2112 1810 Chambers* Breakfast served anytime Dinners and Luncheons Homemade pies and soups j| 33 varieties shake | and sundae flavors rJ?> Best burgers in town! 5:30 a.m.-10:00 p.m. seven days a week “Where there's all-ways quality." A Nice Place To Go -3l flight each week Westman ac cepted a one-year contract at the University because, “after looking for a job in Los Angeles for three years without success, I decided there was no hope and I would take anything that was within commutable distance. So I fly down to L.A. every weekend or my husband comes up here. It was worth it to me professionally . . . to have a job.” Actually, Westman said, the flight itself is “not as bad as people might anticipate. It’s just something you might not want to do on a long term basis.” The need for her to commute, instead of working in Los Angeles with her husband, may stem from the problem of discrimination against women in her profession. “I can honestly say that there is discrimination against women in the historical profession . . . unquestionably,” stated West man. “I’ve had department chairmen say to me, ‘We’ve never hired a woman,’ and in fact they haven’t. Another said to me, ‘We don’t hire wives of UCLA professors.’ No, there is a tremendous amount of discrimination.” Westman has, she said, run into a “certain amount” of discrimination at the University. “I can only say that the depart ment does not have a woman on the permanent staff.” Westman said she believes “very strongly in the need for equal employment, in equal opportunity.” Once having achieved that, she feels “a little less strongly about preferential treatment, a little less strongly about child care. “I feel that if I go into something, I will go into it fully as a career. If I become a historian, I take all the breaks of the game . . . If I take time off to have a baby, that’s my concern. A man may take time off to have ulcers or a heart attack. But, we must have equal opportunity.” It was because of the discrimination she ran into in applying for jobs, Westman said, that she became interested in the feminist movement. “It radicalized me.” But her interest in the movement lies in the side that directly involves her. “I don’t subscribe to Ms., but I do participate in the historical profession.” This participation includes involvement with the Women’s Studies Center on campus. Westman feels that the center provides an excellent experience for those who participate in it. She has been particularly im pressed, she said, with the ‘‘ability of the women to work together in a particular professional way that I haven’t found in mixed groups or those that are predominantly male.” The women, she said, “criticize the work, but save the person’s ego. And this will very often not be the case in a more open srramhle ” The lack of equal opportunity for women in the historical profession has also played a part in the many miles Westman has travelled from her home town. She grew up in New Jersey, a continent away from her present home. After attending Douglas College, a branch of Rutgers, she went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan. Then she lived for two years in England while doing research for her dissertation on the female felon in the middle ages. She has since been back to England to do some more research, the result of which was an article entitled, “The Female Offender.” A closely related subject, the problem of in terfamilial crime (family co operation in crime) during the middle ages formed the basis for another article. Her research, Westman said, brought to light an interesting fact—the number of crimes performed by women as com pared to men today is just about the same as it was during mediaeval times. “There are, however,” she said, “a lot of things we consider felonies that were civil cases in the middle ages,” such as prostitution and assault. But the basic ratio of the amount of crimes performed by women to Barabara Westman the amount performed by men has stayed almost the same. She quoted different arguments which tried to explain this situation. These claimed that women conceal their crimes better than men, or that they tend to play a more subordinate role, and so might tend to be less aggressive in terms of criminal behavior, or that women are simply very different in their psychological make-up, and not as prone to criminal behavior. This is, she said, very hard to prove. One thing that history has shown, she said, is that men have a particular attitude toward women when they come to a trial situation. This is apparent in both the ratio of the number of women brought in and the number in dicted, she said. It is also ap parent in the acquittal rate for women when compared to the rate for men. In both cases, the tendency is toward leniency for the women. Westman has continued her interest in this general field in a course she taught this quarter at the University, “The History of Mediaeval Women.” At first, Westman said, “I was skeptical as to how many people it (the course) would attract. After all, it is very, very specialized. And I was over whelmed by how many people signed up to take the course.” The course involves “trying to break down certain areas of the history of mediaeval women, and emphasize that there really isn’t very much written about mediaeval women.” Because of this lack of in formation, the course becomes a creative effort for the students, she said. “They must do their own original research.” The opportunity for students to take part in this creative effort, or indeed in any studies involving mediaeval history, ends this year when Westman leaves. The University will not have a mediaevalist next year, a decision Westman feels is bad. “Well, I think you lose,” she said, “You can hardly dismiss a millenium of our history and say ‘So what?’ ” Westman’s own future is un certain since she is unemployed. She does, however, want to continue research on women in the middle ages and to continue writing her book on crime during the same era.
