Letters
Grade mixup secondary
Those headlines which flashed: "Instruc
tor leaves for China without giving grades"
left me wondering about the substance of
the Emerald once again. Only a rag would
actually feature the grade mixup instead of
Frank Dufay’s trip to China. Perhaps the
Emerald can yet be convinced that his first
hand information of that third of the world
we know so little about, is more newsworthy
than the hassle involving a class full of stu
dents, and will consent to an interview with
the instructor.
By the looks of things, Dufay may even
lose the opportunity to conduct his unique
Search course on the Political Film. Such a
content loss to the college community
would mark the unfortunate triumph of con
siderations of structure. Apparently,
Roberts and Kenslerfeel that the “incident”
is more important than the class itself.
Cora Fisher
B.S. Sociology
Film-making for IFC?
Free movies at last! The ASUO has con
sented to give us free movies at last.
Previously, the policy was no free movies
(except during Gay Pride Week) and no
money to people with murky pasts (except
the Oregon Prisoners Coalition) and no in
crease in incidental fees (except if the stu
dents persist in buying lettuce).
I was surprised, then, to read that the
IFC had given the Art Ed Dept’s bete noire,
Frank Dufay, "some money” for his trip to
China “so I could make a film of it for them
(the IFC).” This film is apparently in lieu of
recent ASUO “Why No Hunger in China"
satire, which was cancelled when the
scheduled speaker got sick.
I might mention that I myself had been
planning to revisit the Soviet Union this
winter, but was a bit short of money.
Perhaps the IFC would like to invest in
some on-the-spot coverage of that country
too. Although the Russians have fallen be
hind in pest extermination, at least they
speak an Indo-European language and
none of this ludicrous “yang bong ching
wing wong.”
Of course, I'd expect more than the
minimum wage the ASUO, that champion
of the low income worker, pays its emp
loyees who wash dishes or scrub office
floors. I’d want just as much money as
Frank got.
Remember that if I have to buy all that film
equipment, I probably won't have time to
finish up my muckraking series of articles,
now in its last draft. Otherwise, let the pres
ses roll! Warning: the first article of the
series is tentatively called “Our Labor Is
sues Experts Try to Add Numbers, or...
Whoops!" Danger, the concluding article is
called “From Liberty to Bernau."
P.S. Next time, send a woman to China,
because they’re funnier when they come
back and report there s no prostitution
there.
Mike Sylwester
Chairman
US-USSR Friendship Association
City should not appeal
I strongly object to the incredibly stupid
decision of the City Council to use city funds
to appeal the court decisions with respect to
the Skinners Butte Cross.
While many of us enjoy having it there,
this should not prevent us from understand
ing that it was put there illegally — that the
city's actions in granting an ex-post-facto
building permit and in defending the cross
in the first place were of very questionable
legality'if not clearly illegal—that the vote to
convert it from a religious symbol to a
memorial of man’s inhumanity to man was a
shameful exercise in public hypocrisy and
disgusting religiosity which had nothing to
do with real religion and was certainly no
tribute to any veteran or war victim.
The city has no legitimate business get
ting into this kind of action on either side, no
matter what the proportions of citizens who
favor or disfavor it.
If a private firm or individual erects an
illegal object on public property, the dear
obligation of the governing body is to make
them remove it — certainly not to spend
public moneys to defend it. If it is to be
defended, this is the obligation of those who
wish to do so — not the city. Neither side
has any right to make those on the other
side of such an issue help pay for their
litigation.
Had the courts declared it legal the city
might, with good grace, let it stand, but this
is not the case. Wasting taxpayers' money
illegally for an illegal object, in these hard
times, is certainly not "keeping faith with the
voters."
Bayard H. McConnaughey
Biology Dept
Ice cream dehumanized
(The following is an open letter to Mr. Bill
Gandy, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Store,
1365 Villard St.)
Dear Mr. Gandy;
We are writing to inform you that we no
longer intend to patronize your ice cream
stores despite being long-time Baskin
Robbins ice cream lovers. This decision on
our part is a direct result of your manage
ment policies.
Ice cream is and should be a treat, and
getting there is half the fun. Eating ice
cream is universally recognized as an act of
love and joy. Part of ice cream's public ap
peal is its image as a light-hearted retreat
from the “real world."
At your stores, however, it is business as
usual. You have managed to mechanize
and dehumanize ice cream You weigh
each scoop and/or make them as small as
possible (perhaps you might be able to de
sign a computerized scoop to replace your
only human hirelings), charge extra for
plastic spoons for use with cones (surely
you understand that by intermittent use of a
spoon a parent can greatly reduce the mess
a child makes with a cone), limit flavor com
binations for pints and quarts, and refuse to
give tastes of certain flavors of ice cream as
advertised — anything to maximize your
profits. We also object to your practice of
criticizing your employees in front of cus
tomers which further detracts from our
pleasure and we note, as a possible effect
of this practice, a high rate of employee
turnover. You have made us feel like cogs
in an assembly line, thereby destroying the
fun of ice cream.
Baskin-Robbins makes a large wall
poster showing a lion with a B-R milkshake
and the caption: “At Baskin-Robbins, the
customer is king.' At your stores profit is
obviously the king and the customer is only
there to supply that profit. We intend to take
money, appetite, and ice cream love else
where.
We shall encourage others to do the
same by word of mouth and by releasing
copies of this letter to all local news media
outlets.
Jack Love
Bob Newell
Richard Patton
Dave Piper
John VanLandingham
Pete Wells
Law
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—opinion
Institutions, not officeholders, responsible
for public timidity via government surveillance
By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
WASHINGTON (KFS)—Richard Helms and Henry
Kissinger cling to public office, the last of the big
names accused of violating the constitutional rights
of others to protect the national security. Like
Messrs. Nixon, Mitchell, Liddy and the others who
have been made to walk the plank, theirs is a peculiar
place in history, for great anger has been directed at
this set of public officials who proceeded with the
greatest leniency, constitutional punctilio and legal
niceness against what was seen, truly or not, as
disloyalty in war time.
Mr. Kissinger is accused of ordering a dozen or
so illegal wiretaps; but Secretary of State Seward
once ordered carloads of people thrown into jail and,
when complaints were made, President Lincoln sus
pended the writ of habeas corpus. Nor was it first
under Mr. Nixon that a court heard a representative
of the Justice Department cop the I
was-only-acting-under-higher-orders plea. That
came up in Boston in 1920 over the government’s
arresting politicals without a warrant and holding
them in jail without bail. “Any citizen with a know
ledge of Americanism should resign when given
such instructions,” Judge George W. Anderson re
plied from the bench.
As badly as Mr. Nixon treated Daniel Ellsberg, it
was Mr. Truman’s Department of Justice which, in all
probability, framed and murdered Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg. The Vietnam war seditionists made
idiots out of their prosecuters and walked away free,
but Mr. Truman imposed his loyalty program on the
country and made it stick.
Compilations of enemies lists didn’t originate
with Mr. Nixon either. By 1920 the General Intellig
ence Division of the Justice Department had files or.
over 200,000 purported subversives. In those days
they didn’t sit on the dossiers, content to have the
IRS torment a relatively few on the lists. On Jan. 2,
1920, government agents arrested between four and
five thousand people in their homes and places of
work because of their opinions and associations.
The use of agent provacateurs and plants in
left-wing organizations was so common then that the
same Judge Anderson, cited above, remarked, “It is
perfectly evident to my mind that the government
owns and operates at least part of the Communist
Party.” Political burglaries, opening mail, suppres
sing opposition newspapers was conducted on a
scale that would impress Indira Gandhi. Hundreds of
periodicals were wiped out; even “The Nation” had
an issue suppressed in 1918 for an article critical of
Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation
of Labor, a man who played the same pro-war, con
servative role that George Meany does today.
Mr. Nixon's winking encouragement of a few
hard-hat mobs beating up peaceniks is as nothing
compared to the vigilante organizations let loose
under Woodrow Wilson: the American Defense Soc
iety, the National Security League, the American Pro
tective League, the Home Defense League, the
Knights of Liberty, the American Rights League, the
Anti-Yellow Dog League, the American Anti-Anarchy
Association, the Boy Spies of America, the Sedition
Slammers and the Terrible Threateners. With chap
ters in 600 towns and cities and a membership of
250,000, it is estimated that the American Protective
League snooped, harrassed, spied and compiled
dossiers on as many as 3 million people. The League
was an official arm of the Department of Justice
which issued badges and identification cards to its
members bearing the words “Secret Service Divi
sion.”
You can use these bits of history to show prog
ress in civil liberties, but it's more plausible to argue
that the restraint of the Johnson-Nixon years is a
reflection of the opposition's weakness In the early
part of the century the government was taming a
fractious, independent population. There was large
scale and well-organized opposition to the dominant
ideology at least into the 20 s. But by the time we
came to Vietnam, the opposition was of a temporary,
fleeting kind, forming and reforming in an ad hoc!
fugitive sort of way and, because it was built on one
issue and not a fully thought-out political program, it
vanished with the end of the shooting.
The past 60 years have seen the perfection of
better governement devices for social and political
control than the American Protective League. By
most indications we have been made into a more
docile, tamer and timid people who think and act in
the approved ways, not by threats of jail but because
we want to please those above us or because it is
enough to know the government has our number,
usually our social security number, and has put it into
a computer.
The fear of governmental power grows apace
with the knowledge of it, but, when it comes to limiting
it, we kick the computer or blame those temporarily in
charge. The history of official social and political con
trol, however, argues it’s not the officeholders as
much as it is the institutions they run that we should
be looking at. Until 1870 there was no Justice De
partment, but by 1907 the Department had started a
national dossier file; by 1909 America had a Federal
police force; and, ever since, institutional behavior
has been the same regardless of who was President.
Copyright, 1975, The Washington Post-King Fea
tures Syndicate