opinion__
ours_
Lane County fumbles CETA program
CETA: The federally funded Com
prehensive Employment and Training
Act program has fallen on hard times in
Lane County.
The expensive program was de
signed to encourage creation of new
jobs in which the long-term unem
ployed could be trained and subse
quently absorbed into the private
economy.
Instead, under the administration ot
the Lane County Board of Commis
sioners, the program has become a
political football, carried all too often by
CETA employees into dead-end low
level jobs that ease the budget prob
lems of government and traditional
non-profit agencies.
In past years, CETA funding has
supported growth in Eugene’s
dynamic, but chronically underfunded
artistic community and innovative en
vironmental projects
Chief architects of CETA's new de
sign are county commissioners Archie
Weinstein and Bob Wood, and like
minded members of the Employment
and Training Advisory Committee who
supported their own mainstream agen
cies at the cost of the “alternative”
proposals.
CETA thus has ended up as an ex
pression of Weinstein's contempt for
what he identifies as ‘‘hippy” ideas,
Woods own political projects (particu
larly an economic-development group
to replace the Lane Economic De
velopment Council) and their mutual
interest in financing county jobs with
federal dollars.
The answer to these problems is
clear, but difficult to implement:
oroaueumy memuersnip on c i mu ana
giving administration of CETA to a
more open-minded agency. Possibly
an outright ban on government use of
CETAs should be implemented.
The City of Eugene has indicated in
terest in taking over administration of
the program, but encountered difficul
ties in meeting federal standards for
sponsoring agencies.
Hopefully, they will continue efforts
to qualify for the task. It’s clear the pre
sent sponsors have fumbled CETA, to
the detriment of Lane County.
One more time
“There's no accounting for taste,” a venera
ble aphorism assures us, but Jackson County's
legal officers substituted their own cinematog
raphic tastes in place of students at Southern
Oregon State College recently.
Using a vague legal suggestion that trans
lated into a clear threat of action, the district
attorney's office this week squelched an Ashland
campus showing of the X-rated “Deep Throat.”
How long, O Lord, how long?
Despite the movie's explicit and almost unin
terrupted portrayals of sexual congress (the true
body politic?), which some viewers find more clini
cal than erotic, the film offers a bit of light-hearted,
social satire usually absent in the traditional,
grainy X.
And even if “Deep Throat” had been filled
solely with the unrelieved tedium of couplings that
haunt run-of-the-mill, hard-core porn, the Jackson
County DA — a self-appointed protector of morals
— should fret over more substantial matters than a
discreetly shown skin flick.
The University of Oregon has endured sev
eral screenings of the same film — to sell-out
crowds — several times over the years without
suffering any noticeable decline in moral stan
dards.
But the broader issue remains a constitutional
one : Little effort is required to realize that display
and admission-only attendance at a movie, how
ever prurient, must be considered private rights
protected by the First Amendment.
Jackson County’s legal protectors — and
their counterparts everywhere — should resist the
political allure of suppressing pornography for
more substantial legal issues.
Picture imperfect
Here's a scary tidbit brought to you from the
office of Lane County’s misanthropic commis
sioner Archie Weinstein.
At a Tuesday night organizational meeting of
persons supporting a Weinstein-recall campaign,
a volunteer from Weinstein’s office showed up and
photographed several speakers and the audience
in general.
Since some of the campaign backers are
county employees, the threat to their jobs seems
scarcely veiled. Even if no direct use is made of the
photos, the chilling effect on a legitimate political
activity remains obvious.
Weinstein's chief aide had no comment for
reporters on the purpose of the picture-taking.
Weinstein himself rarely answers questions from
the press.
This McCarthyesque scare tactic represents
just another example of Weinstein’s political style
that prompted the recall effort.
The Emerald has supported and will continue
vigorously to support the campaign to rid the Lane
County Board of Commissioners of its biggest lia
bility: Archie Weinstein.
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yours
Be forthright
with sexual titles
The new non-discrimination policy
statement of the university includes the
nebulous clause “extraneous consider
ations." In 1971 there was faculty legis
lation which set forth a non
discrimination policy prohibiting dis
crimination on the basis of political be
lief, sexual orientation, and other areas
now covered by Section 504 of the Re
habilitation Act. It was all coined under
the term "extraneous considerations '.
It seems inconsistent today that sex
ual orientation be closeted within that
term and not be specified precisely. If we
are trying to provide seme protection
from discrimination for gay people as
well as others, it can’t be done by con
tinuing the silence surrounding such
terms as homosexual, gay, sexual pre
ference. or sexual orientation.
It is the subject still so delicate that we
must not jar the sensitivities of the stu
dents, employees, and employers on
campus?
Maintaining silence over the subject
merely continues to inhibit gay people
and others from participating in the
academic freedom and freedom of
academic inquiry to which they entitled.
How many gay people feel free to dis
cuss gay issues in class, write term pap
ers or give talks on gay topics relevant to
their courses? How many gay master's
and doctoral students would write their
thesis or dissertation on a gay subject?
How many straight people are comfort
able discussing these issues? How is
Johnson Hall going to provide this
freedom for everyone if the adminis
trators themselves seem to be so hesit
ant and fearful of even putting the term in
print in their policy?
I think that one way of helping to break
the silence barriers is by getting the
words out of the closet and written into
the policy statement. Gay people are
here and many will not be silent any
more. Many will not just lay back and
accept a crumb when they deserve a
whole loaf.
Placing “sexual orientation’’ in the
closet term “extraneous considerations’’
is the same as telling gay people to stay
in the closet themselves. This doesn't
sell well any more.
Yvonne Parkinson,
Equal Education Specialist,
Affirmative Action
Anne Harbaugh,
Administrative Data Processing
Spirit of the hunt
I’m sorry Greg Wasson has left his
“hippie days’ and his resentment of the
hunting season behind him. (Tabled In
definitely, October 3) My own example is
not a vegetarian one: I still resent this
annual sporting event, but if there’s a
good buy on ground beef at Safeway i’ll
grab it.
I
“Carnivorous behavior," Wasson
writes, “requires a certain amount of ar
rogance: My sustenance and/or eating
pleasure must be worth another
creature's life."
He misses the point.
The very nature of the world consists
of living things using up other living
things to bear forth the whole unknowa
ble process of evolution. Creation and
destruction, over and over again.
I'd like to suggest, however, that the
act of taking to the woods to shoot down
a deer is the truly arrogant act, since
one’s weekend sporting pleasure must
now be worth another creature’s life.
Whether this act is accomplished by a
native of the wilderness whose protein
source is these animals or by a visitor
who just digs killing his meat and eating
it, too, is far from an academic point. The
former, I submit, is within the Tao; the
latter is not.
Personally, I find great joy in simply
being in the woods without a target to
hold my civilized attention.
Something more is definitely at issue
here than the pros and cons of eating
dead meat, as beautiful a lifestyle as
vegetarianism might be in this day and
age. The issue concerns our spiritual
path.
And even the most eloquent rationali
zation by the hunter does not alter the
fact that he (or she) remains a hunter —
be it of deer, whales or other humans.
David Grober,
Junior, Journalism