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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1979)
Onion Out of the trough and into the future tense Let's face it: all God's children got money problems, and where those children gather together — in sororities, in schools, in institutions of every Kind — these problems gather and swell, backing up like bile in a hepatitic liver Our case in point is the University. Caught amidst inflation, the dwindling student population and FTE-dependent revenue formulas, fiscal technicians of every level and factional persuasion carve away at our budgets like podiatrists at tacking the gout. In this process University programs are not so much modified as maimed The motive is futile (or feudal, one forgets just which): a foredoomed attempt to preserve a bit of the carcass for every club of cannibals But University budgeting (and , therefore, program priorities) needs surgery instead of first aid; not rhe torical anesthesia but sharp scapels will serve best Students deserve a consistent approach to decisions about program funding that utilizes criteria attuned to the real world of post graduate endeavor and not the fad ing nostalgia of academicians seeking to replicate the education of their distant youth Hoary tradition must give way to present fact and the fact is that students don't give a skinny hoo haw about the past subjunctive of Latin, but are intensely interested in the future perfect of their lives Today's college students need — and want — to gain professional skills from which they will wring the professional salaries of their post educational afterlife They want to get down to business, which is Business They don't want to know about Hunter S Thompson, but J. Walter Thompson; Literati It's a big-money world we re living in and much of the so-called educa tion foisted upon us at the University represents just so much anachronistic junk to clutter up the rationalism of a modern mentality. So. the Immorald wants to identify which of the academic areas we believe could be eliminated and which maintained in the best interests of the University and its students: • SOCIOLOGY — This soppy pas tiche of undigested populism and left-leaning effluvia only masquerades as a useful discipline Possibly the only redeeming aspect of the department lies in small-group dynamics: how to manipulate employees, colleagues and superiors to ease your path to the top • HISTORY - As traditionally presented, this academic ' dis cipline" encourages a sense of pathetic longing for the supposedly preferable conditions of another era. usually inadequately understood or represented The dynamic of sequential time leads us inexorably into the future and so should our training George Santayana? Never heard of him • POLITICAL SCIENCE Another of the wet-brain fields that generally breed frustration and counter-productive speculation The only useful sub-area in political science would be public administra tion, i e , how to maintain a produc tive and comfortable interrela tionship between business opera tions and public policy-making • FOREIGN LANGUAGES - Let them learn English • bUtNCfc — it you can apply It to the production process, of course, computer sciencos. media tech niques. creation of labor-saving technology deserve the lion s share of research funds • ATHLETICS — Encourage major sports (football, basketball) that at tract endownments and ticket purchasers Also (in Eugene) track, because the activity encourages sales of Nike and Osaga running shoes and paraphenaiia. thus enriching local enterprises The prime criterion for maintain ing and funding University opera tions should derive from individual program's success rate in placing graduates in jobs If the programs can't cut it in the arena of the marketplace, they should be cut out . period It's time we woke up The dream of a classic, well-rounded education doesn t put any pizza in the pantry The invigorating dislocations of some faculty firings and the shed tears of a few pansy art or literature students shouldn't stand in the way of our march toward destiny If history passes these archaic students and professors by. the race (human and rat) will be better for it liliteraii Gay literature Reprinted from April 10 Oregon State University Barometer We wonder what Mei Ferguson's mother would think of his signing requisitions for books with titles like "The Toilet,” New Lesbians,” 'Vaginal Poliltics," or "Liberating Masturbation?" Titles of the books listed above were on book lists submitted with purchase orders to the ASOSU by the Students for the Advancement of Women (SAW). The purchase orders were approved by Mel Ferguson, ASOSU president and Rob Larson, ASOSU treasurer About 10 percent of the $741 in books purchased last spring term were about gay lifestyle, which brings up several questions First, is the study of gays a legitimate concern of an organization supposedly aimed at advancing the cause of the women s movement? We den t unders tand the relationship between the feminist and gay movements Secondly, should student fees be used to purchase things like gay litera ture7 SAW received $1,100 in student fees last year, and $1,500 the year before Thirdly, did our student leaders scru tinize the requisitions before they were approved, and did their decisions represent the attitudes of their consti tuents7 It's our opinion that the majorith of OSU students would using any student fees to buy material such as the listed above We hope the next set of student leaders to be elected know how to handle special interest groups and their funding requests, however sensitive, with their constituents in mind RS Grlvfc T*-fe. kufVOS VAY Vigilaites ‘No law enforcement’ Please foreward if necessary to Right Man. I could HAVE a card & booklet in the air around 1924 on my folks property & a typewriter Dear Sir I would like to say something should be done in sofar as law enforcement as to a husband (he smoked) not allow me to tell my daughter (younger) what to do around the house etc This man gets by with more & more in life & did & does in this town & will more if something isn't done about his behavior — language or not language, money or not money — individual There was no law enforcement in this town in 1957 and still isn't — no trusteeship — language or not lan guage — money or not money — individual. Other mothers were allowed to tell their daughters what to do — no law enforcement for a divorce — man would commit with his language Man has everything figured out not to miss to die & die — language or not language — money or not money. I would appreciate some law enforcement — no Pastor or individual, or Priest could or can work with any one here to have done otherwise to tell or handle Page 4 Section B this man (smoked) husband is this town & he gets by with more & is going to be much more evil, deadly, dangerous way of living — lena Rivera (Bronski) graduate, undeclared Checkers Count! Haves, Agreeing, Trusteeship? Elena Still continue not to do one or other with Dyed Hair — Smoke-Liquor Cards, Stage with Hares (Right), Agree ing, Trusteeship — no one knows how to do - die, everything goes blind etc Elena ‘Notenda delenda est!’ Every pedant understands that some students remain more obtuse than others, no matter how repe titive the drill or comprehensive the instruction However, your journal s insufferable obstinacy In Ig noring my advice regarding its miserable grasp of lan guage perplexes me, nevertheless. I will try again The heading "Notenda" in your arts and entertain ment section represents a callous bastardization of the pellucid language given birth in Roma. (In fact, I can't understand shy your publication persists in using an obscure, vulgate dialexct derived from the crude mouthings of our northernmost province, Brittania.) The term you should use for that weekly listing if events is, of course, fasti memores. Have you forgotten your Horace? Hve you forgotten your Ovid or (horribile dictu) your Cicero? Your other section headings could do with improvement as well: Sports, per exempli, is a vapid substitute for ludi athletae and your opinion page's tripartite divisions (although a droll "take-off" on Caesar) use frivolous, linguistic popularizations. Nos trorum, Vostrorum and lllorum are just the words for you Or, as the sittier among our learned youth are wont to say: Q E D. Mod Lingua professor, contemporary classics Tuesday, April 13, 1979
