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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 12, 1978)
Letters Truth distorted On March 30,1978, there was a letter to the Editor concerning Bob Wood, who is running for Fourth District Congressman. David McTeague asserted that Bob Wood decided to run for Fourth District Congressman because of commitments in return for big timber and utility interest money. This is a total aberration of the truth and extremely unethical for a campaign worker of any candi date. I profess that Oregon has endured through clean, honest politics in comparison with other states and that any letter to any editor would be stated as an opin ion for which it is, or based on fact and supported by actual research and credentials. As a veteran campaign worker for Bob Wood, Dave McTeague should know that Bob Wood is the man who is committed to the public interest. He has been a working person since childhood, and in comparison to Jim Weaver, who was a land developer, has a much clearer understanding of problems common to the Fourth District. Valorie Wood Sophomore, Romance Languages VA rule clarified I would like to take the opportun ity to clarify the article that ap peared in the Daily Emerald re garding Veterans Benefits. In the Fall of 1976, with the pas sage of the new Veterans Law, a new rule was established which stated that veterans who were re ceiving benefits must make satis factory progress toward a degree. Due to the cumbersome manner which the Veterans Administra tion decided to implement this rule, institutions of higher educa tion stated their inability or unwil lingness to monitor the new re quirement. The Veterans Ad ministration relented and the new rule was not implemented. However, the Veterans Ad ministration has now restated its intent for the universities and col leges to monitor veterans' prog ress toward a degree. Simply, it works something like this: When a veteran, who as an under graduate has earned more than 13 credit hours of N or F, this fact must be reported to the Veterans Administration. The Veterans Administration will then terminate the veteran’s educational benefits and schedule the veteran for counseling. After counseling, the VA will decide whether or not to reinstate the educational benefits to the veteran. Unfortunately, the accumulative F’s and N’s must be counted even if the veteran satis factorily completes more than the minimum hours (12 for under graduate and 9 for graduate) of passing grades for any term. It should be noted that this pol icy is different than that for X’s, V’s, or I s, which do not have to be reported if the veteran has satis factory completed the minimum amount of passing grades. I would urge veterans who feel that they are in jeopardy as a re sult of this new rule to contact the Veterans Representative in Oregon Hall, Office of Student Services for assistance. Christopher Munoz Assistant Registrar Letters policy The Emerald will accept and try to print all letters and opinion col umns containing fair comment on ideas and topics of concern or interest to the University commun ity. Letters and opinions must be typewritten, using 65-character margins, and should be triple spaced. Letters and opinions must be signed, with the author's year and field of study (or faculty status) noted. Letters and opin ions will be run on a first-come first-served basis. __opinion -- Women’s Symposium lacking Submitted by Polly Davis, Polly Moak and Paula Backus of the Women’s Referral and Resource Service Women’s Referral and Resource Service (WRRS) would like to clarify our relationship to the Women's Symposium and our opinions about it. Donna Shepard, the coordinator of Women’s Sym posium, was Director of WRRS summer and fall of 1977. December 1977, WRRS was awarded a CETA grant which provided for a full time worker for us who would, as one of five responsibilities, serve as a staff person for Women’s Symposium. Since we were highly critical of the procedures through which Donna came to fill the CETA position, we decided to take no responsibility for supervision of her position. The University Personnel office then asked ASUO to take responsbility for her supervision. Except for sponsor ing two Symposium events, WRRS as an organiza tion has had no relationship to the Symposium. We want to make this clear because many people have the misunderstanding that we are the Symposium or that we are sponsoring it. Secondly, we want to make dear both our posi tive and negative criticisms of the symposium. One reason for our making this statement is to express our solidarity with minority/Third World women and their decision not to participate in the Sym posium. A second reason for our public statement is our conviction that speakers and participants in the Symposium should be aware that the Symposium does not have the full support of the University Eugene feminist community. Our third reason for stating our opinions is our belief that social change movements have much to gain from constructive criticism, and that this critidsm can be educational for more people if made public. The positive side to our criticism includes our unilateral support of the concept of an annual ASUO funded Women's Symposium! Such an event is in valuable in beginning to balance the scales toward making our university more human and less male. Within the Symposium schedule there are many events which we support and look forward to attend ing. We celebrate a week in which women can come together to learn and share experiences, insights and good times. Unfortunately, most minority/Third World women will not be participating in this year’s Sym posium due to reasons they have clarified in their public meeting and statement. We support and re spect their decision and hope that next year’s Sym posium coordinators wiH work with minority/Third World women to make it a Symposium for al I women. We as feminists believe women to be equal to men and would support workshops to educate peo ple on this subject but we do not support the inclusion of women on the panel who deny this basic tenet. In addition, we support lesbians and gay men and are highly critical of the participation in the Symposium of women who are actively opposed to gay rights in Eugene (and elsewhere). We share the feminist con viction that individual women should make their own decisions about when /if to bear children and do not support the inclusion of abortion and birth workshops by groups who seek to discourage women from a free choice. It is our understanding that University of Oregon is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer but that Affirmative Action does not apply to ideas expressed within a Women’s Symposium. In the future, we hope Women's Symposiums will learn from these criticisms and integrate them into action. nmn inn ESC: what role to play at University? Submitted by Paul Hamilton Graduate Student, ISIP program Co-Director, Environmental Studies Center As a Director of the University Environmental Studies Center (ESC), located in rooms 11-12 PLC, I would like to offer some comments concerning the ESC and Environ mental Studies at the University of Oregon in general. In so doing I hope to stimulate some discussion and debate of the role of the ESC within the University and of the broader role of Environmental Studies as an academic pursuit in relation to this University and the needs of our community, state and culture as a whole. Some background information about the Environ mental Studies Center is in order here to better under stand the context of the broader question mentioned ear lier. The Center was formed in the early seventies after much study and debate by faculty, students and the ad ministration. With an initial budget of approximately $13,000 from the President’s Fund, the Center was headed by Professor Stan Cook of the Biology Depart ment who managed the Center while retaining full time duties in that department. The original intent of the Center, as I understand it, was to serve as an information center and resource refer ral service for a broad spectrum of environmental con cerns and to form a base which could be incorporated into a University Environmental Studies Program when addi tional funding became available. The Center was originally placed administratively in the Graduate School, but has since been transferred to the College of Arts and Sciences. After Cook’s departure no new faculty Director was appointed. Additionally the PaffA /i An A Center lost the services of the V2 time secretary assigned to it, which also meant that our budget was cut substan tially. The initial budget included a one-time commitment of funds for establishing the Center (such as office equip ment, shelves, etc.). With the termination of the V2 time secretary in May of 1972, our budgetary capacity has been in the $2,300 per year range where it presently rests under the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Currently our staffing arrangement is through one work-study position and student and community volun teers. As a result of this arrangement the operation has all too often in the past been unstable and irregular, leading to questions about the legitimacy and need for our opera tion to continue. Considering the overall instability of the Center, both from the budgetary and practical operations perspectives, such questions can be considered reason able. It is for this reason that we have been endeavoring during the term past to develop the internal and institu tional supports necessary to improve the consistency and quality of our operations. These efforts have included attempts to “keep the doors open” on a more regular basis (with a goal of a minimum of forty hours per week) to improve the kinds and quality of the informational re sources available at the Center, to work actively with other campus environmental groups through the recently formed Campus Environmental Council to promote En vironmental Studies at this University, to develop faculty involvement in the Center through a proposed Environ mental Studies Advisory Board, and to obtain additional funding for the Center by the formation of a proposed Environmental Studies Center Development Fund. We hope that by developing a sense of initiative and environmental professionalism from within the Center while striving to develop institutional or structural sup ports we may begin to recapture a portion of our original intent — forming the basis for a University Environmental Studies Program — which has been eroded over the years as we have struggled to keep the Center alive, making its very survival the only issue. It is in this broader arena of Environmental Studies, which has gained significant acceptance as an academic pursuit nationally and internationally, that this University desperately needs to advance its involvement and com mitment. Many of the students and faculty I have come into contact with through the Environmental Studies Center have voiced, at least privately, a similar view. Universities generally, and the University of Oregon in particular, can do much to facilitate solutions and be liefs which have caused them. As Russell Train has pointed out, "If universities are going to work effectively in communities on a wide range of environmental problems, they must use comprehensive, interdisciplinary ap proaches that in turn may require some radical rethinking of their own institutional arrangements.” (“The Role of Foundations & Universities in Conservation, 1967, p. 17). From my perspective this is precisely the case at the mversity of Oregon. With dwindling enrollments and credit hour loads being the problems they are here, En vironmental Studies offers a possibility of performing a function of stabilizing some departmental and University enrollments while performing a desperately needed and positive role in the local community and the state. The need for a renewed and continued support for Environ mental Studies and the Environmental Studies Center Should become a Univfirsitv nrinritv
