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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 6, 1978)
Vol. 79, No. 114 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Monday, March 6, 1978 Feldman, Lemman discuss wages By CAROLYN BEAVER Of the Emerald ASUO Pres. Gary Feldman and William Lemman, state system vice-chancellor for personnel administration, met recently to discuss what factors the State Board of Higher Education should consider in its ex amination of student minimum wage demands. Representatives from the University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, Southern Oregon State College and the Oregon Student Lobby prompted the board’s Finance Committee to ask for staff research of the issue. That research will probably be presented to the board during its March 24 meeting in Portland. Feldman says Lemman told him he r What’s a student worth? “wanted the facts there to look at,” includ ing the number of student employees, work-study students, the number paid below minimum wage and costs of meeting the minimum wage for all student workers. The figures will be compiled both for indi vidual institutions and collectively. Although Feldman agrees the numbers involved need consideration, he thinks the board should look at the issue from a philosophical basis also. “I think there has to be an additional examination in regards to the worth of the student worker. What is the demand for them? How necessary are they? That you can’t statistically determine very well,” he says. Representatives asked the board to in clude minimum wage payment in their 1979-81 budget projection and to request emergency board funding for minimum wage for the current biennium. Feldman says he doesn’t “see any reason why they shouldn’t include it in their budget for the next biennium.’’ He adds that from his knowledge, legislative support of student minimum wages is good. The board, as Feldman sees it, has three options: to decide in favor of paying stu dents the minimum rate, to decide against it or to leave the decision to each school. “The option I hope they don’t take is to say they are against paying students minimum wage,’’ says Feldman. If the state board decides not to support minimum wage, “it would be very destructive in terms of efforts that could be achieved on indi vidual campuses,” he says. Ray Alley of the Oregon Institute of Technology, first decided to bring the issue to the state board. Although Feldman sup ports Alley's move, he does “have some concerns” since the board might decide to reject minimum wages for all student work ers. The board is “very interested in reviewing the matter and that’s a first step,” says Feldman. “I’m looking for the state board to make sure institution’s budgets will have enough resources to meet the minimum rate,” he says. Photo by Pat Sullivan Abstract eye No, it's not Big Brother peering down on you. This piece titled Rites of Passage" was sculpted by James Rappa, a master's candidate majoring in sculpture. Rappa says the piece took 72 hours to put together and "a lot of help from friends.” Gorham helps Eugene quest for civil rights By KRIS BANVARD Of the Emerald When Kent Gorham says he believes in equal opportunity, he means it. “I’d like to see a handicapped person compete for my job,” Eugene’s recently hired human rights specialist says. “Because if I were handicapped, I’d want that same right.” Gorham, 34, started work in November, and now spends about a third of his time working with the city’s commissions on the rights of the handicapped and minorities. For the handicapped, Gorham says, equal opportunity is a matter of education—of both handicapped and non-handi capped people. People who aren't handicap ped need to learn that handicap ped people are the same as everyone else, he says, except that they may be blind or in a wheelchair. Along with architec tural barriers, Gorham says, “at titudinal barriers” discourage the handicapped from fitting into soci ety. The handicapped them selves need to be educated, he says, beyond the vocational “re habilitation" that people associate with them. “There's no reason that someone who is handicapped is not able to be an attorney, a psychiatrist or an economics pro fessor.” Gorham researches rights and discrimination issues facing his commission to help those vol unteer groups stay abreast of their issues. Eugene has three other rights commissions — on women, youth and aging — which are aided by the city's two other human rights specialists, Andy Clement and Betsy Merck. These five commissions, along with Gorham, Clement and Merck, are Eugene’s check on discrimination and enforce city or dinances prohibiting discrimina tion on the basis of sex, race, age, religion or handicap in housing, employment and service. It might appear to be time-consuming, but the city has received only one ac tual discrimination complaint in the four months since Gorham has been on the job. “I spend more time answer ing questions about the laws,” he says. Business people, for exam ple, call him to ask about their chances of receiving government aid to make their buildings acces sible to the handicapped. Why are there so few com plaints? “I’d like to think it’s because everybody has been given equal opportunity,’’ Gorham says. But the answer, he says, is probabaly that discrimination has gone un derground. "It’s more subtle now,” he says. Few people are still denied a job, for instance, solely on the basis of color, sex or handicap. Now discrimination is more likely to occur in decisions of promotion, transfer, pay and giving a worker more responsibilities with no in crease in pay — in ways that are not quite so visible. (Continued on Page 3)
