opinion
Ed is good for ed
The University needs all the advocates it can get It got
one more last weekend when Sen Edward Fadeley, D
Eugene, was voted Senate President
The University already has a friend in House president
Gratten Kerans, D-Eugene
Both these liberal, Eugenean, University alumni
staunchly supported higher education during the past few
years of cutbacks and special sessions. Their combined
record on higher education reads like a green light
Fadeley's compromise election to the Senate pre
sidency, following weeks of liberal vs conservative conflict,
is a sign of the senator’s ability to work with both factions —
rural and urban — in the Democratic party
A certain amount of compromise will be a necessity if
anything solid for higher education or the whole gamut of
state institutions, for that matter, is going to survive Salem
this session
While campaigning, Fadeley mentioned to the Emerald
that he favored base-budgeting higher education plus about
$70 million during the next biennium This sounds su
spiciously close to the Governor s budget proposal for
higher education. This sounds good for the University
We ll see whether Fadeley had to compromise too much
on committee appointments to garner his presidency. The
key chairmanships to the Senate Revenue and Ways and
Mean's Human Resource Committees should be announced
today
Regardless, it's better to have friends than enemies in
high places. The University now has two it is counting on.
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World of the blue-collar student
By Alice Alfonsi
Shut down
My father says to my mother,
“Well, I'm on the schedule
again this week. For now, it
looks like I still have a job "
When my father started work
harry esteve
Faculty reflects changing times
“When I was 18 my father was so stupid I
couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him.
When I turned 20. I was amazed at how much the
old man had learned "
Mark Twain said that At 25, I've noticed this
little bit of old-fashioned wit applies to teachers as
well
I consider myself one of those "children of
the sixties" who can still recall the banner head
lines when John Kennedy died Our memory of
Bobby's death is clearer; Jim Morrison's, vivid
I remember how stupid our teachers seemed
My ninth-grade science teacher with the
flat top haircut barred me from class when I
showed up wearing a black arm band to protest
Nixon's decision to mine the Gulf of Tonkin
I was suspended from football practice the
same day for the same reason I didn't miss much,
though The team had to leave the field early,
choking on tear gas fumes that had spread from a
nearby demonstration
Jerry Rubin told us not to trust our parents, to
despise our teachers. We listened and obeyed
The message was to reject authority, any
authority And all the authorities we knew were
teachers and parents — so we gave them grief
We got into shouting matches with our high
school teachers over trivial issues We refused to
write on only one side of the paper in order to save
the trees We publicly burned our report cards to
rebel against the "oppressive American educa
tional establishment." We caused teachers to
sweat, principals to stutter
Now I'm in college.
In my social psychology class last term, a
student decked in full ROTC regalia called male
nurses "faggots A business major in a coat and
tie scorned the women s equal pay movement
Funny thing was, the only person to offer
much opposition to the statements was the
teacher The rest of the class was either silent or
in agreement
My political science professor became exa
sperated as he tried to convince the class of the
abuses the Pentagon wreaked on the American
public during the Vietnam era. I believed him —
I've been believing that sort of rhetoric for years
A lot of students in the class did not
I've noticed this phenomenon in several other
classes The professor expresses the liberal view
and the students fire back caustic comments
Some of the strongest pleas for nuclear
disarmament I've heard have come from faculty
members Lately, the most radical and beguiling
ideas I've been exposed to have been from my
professors, old and young
It leads to a strange kind of ambivilence on
my part. I now feel a certain solidarity with a group
of people I had earlier renounced as Orwellian
mind police, while the ideological distance
between myself and my peers widens
I would be as foolish as my junior high school
science teacher to condemn the students' point
of view I can only acknowledge that Dylan was
right: The times were a changin', they changed,
and now they're changing again
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lean Ownbey
ing at U S Steel's Clairton
Works in 1948, his badge still
said "Carnegie Steel."
J.P. Morgan bought out An
drew Carnegie's dynasty in
1901 for about $500 million, part
of which Carnegie used to build
the Institute of Technology, now
Carnegie-Mellon University.
I guess that's why old Andy's
cold steel eyes run through me
every time I pass his portrait in
Baker Hall. In his rags-to-riches
rise to the top, Carnegie lived in
both the blue-and white-collar
worlds So he constantly pokes
my ribs to remind me what got
both of us here
He reminds me that I owe a lot
to my father He reminds CMU
that it owes its existence to
blue-collar work and that these
workers cannot simply be
pushed aside when another
new technology takes over
Mill work is my father's
livelihood My life is back there
with the two televisions, the
bowling league and the neigh
borhood bar
My father, my uncles, my
cousins have all worked in the
mill "The time passes without
you even knowing it.'' they
warn When you start, they say
you II only stay a few years, but
before you know it, it's been 10
years on the job Yeah, and 10
years' seniority don't mean
nothing anymore "
In 30 years as a millworker.
my father can't remember a
whole mill shutting down Now
Clairton Coke Works has been
down since July Other mills —
Duquesne, Homestead, McKee
sport — have been wholly or
partly down even longer
So my father waits for the ax
to fall and cut him down to an
other statistic in the morning
papers
“If you don't take academics,
there ain't nothing,” said my
father, patting me on the head
and thrusting me into CMU with
the others His own background
is a Clairton High diploma, but
my father wanted my sister and
me to attend college, and he
was strict with us during our
childhood.
When I'm told by a white-col
lar classmate that her "daddy's
company doesn't like unions,” I
don't hesitate to tell her that my
"daddy” works in an area where
the air's so bad people drive
with their car windows up That
my "daddy” has friends who
have been crippled and killed by
job accidents. And that my
daddy” belongs to a union
It's difficult to explain a blue
collar world to an unsympathe
tic professor When a professor
confides, My God, even steel
workers make as much as I do,”
then I know to dress preppy for
his class Blend in His wife
doesn't worry about him getting
lung cancer from pollution, or
wait by the phone when a fur
nace blow-up is reported
Blend in Professors of this
type cannot or will not hear a
blue-collar student's views
As I go to classes. I realize I
am leaving my father's blue
collar past for my professor's
white-collar future I worry
about becoming what my father
and I have always disliked
EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece is
taken from the Associated Press
wire service Alice Altonsi is the
editor of The Tartan, the student
newspaper at Carnegie-Mellon
University in Pittsburgh Her
story appeared on the opinion
page ol the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette
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