I opinion
No more investment
in South Africa
The least the Oregon House of Representatives
can cJo to protest the system of apartheid in South
Africa is to pass the diluted version of House Bill 2772.
The amended bill calls for no new investment of
state funds in American companies operating in South
Africa, a country whose government practices apar
theid, the legalized separation of the races
The current South African regime segregates the
blacks into concentration camps, referred to as
“homelands” by the South African government. The
government refuses to allow black union workers to
strike or petition for grievances and maintains a cen
tralized police state.
South Africa is a country whose “time is running
out,” in the words of a conservative Rockefeller Com
mission study on the continued presence of the United
States in South Africa. The regime is rightly fearful of
the growing anger of more than 20 million oppressed
blacks against less than five million whites.
The U S. government, most state governments, and
numerous large corporations continue to support South
Africa because of important minerals and cheap labor.
The United Nations has imposed numerous sanc
tions against South Africa including an arms embargo,
boycotts, and a call for divestment of corporations and
financial institutions.
Massachusetts passed a bill calling for full divest
ment from South Africa last January. Connecticut has a
partial divesture plan. In 1977 Michigan divested their
higher education funds without any loss in revenue to
date.
In 1977, the Oregon State Board of Higher Educa
tion voted to divest its stocks from South Africa, but the
funds have not been withdrawn from the rest cf the
state investments.
The full bill called for the divesture of more than
900 million Oregon dollars invested in 140 U S. com
panies based in South Africa.
Oregonians for Responsible State Investment, a
statewide coalition working for divestment, suggested
the state reinvest those funds within the state of
Oregon.
The amended bill only calls for a halt to further
state investment in South Africa — hardly a showing of
our disgust for the blatantly racist South African
regime. But in light of the inevitable fall of the South
African government, not to mention the support our
funds represent, HB 2772 should be passed
Form filling
The University registrars office has designed the
first step in an advanced registration program for
students.
AM returning students for fall term are asked to take
part in the “Course Request Activity.” The “activity" en
tails students filling out a form with the classes they
would like to take next year and returning it to the
registrar’s office in Oregon Hall. Not exactly recreational.
The forms, along with a preliminary time schedule,
will be distributed in the next week to all academic depart
ments, residence halls, the EMU and the registrar’s office.
Students are asked to consult with their advisers or
academic advising and plan next year’s schedule This
could start a trend: academic goals.
The information will be tallied, probably by hand, and
for the first time in the history of the University the ad
ministration will actually have a rough »dea of the classes
students want to take.
"The University plans to adjust the course offerings
and increase classroom offerings in high demand areas."
according to page two of the preliminary time schedule.
We'll wait and see
Meanwhile, students should talk to their advisers, fill
out the form and return it to the registrar s office by April
29
This is not registering tor fall term.
But it will increase students’ chances of getting
those necessary or desirable classes It paves the road to
computer preregistration. The more students who par
ticipate the more accurate the information will be
So, tiff (Hit those forms
aleta zak
One woman’s El Salvador
One bumper sticker slogan hardly con
stitutes a grassroots political movement. A
single table set up by an activist group in an
EMU hallway will not cause President Reagan
to make an about-face on his foreign policy.
And yet, one woman, an ordained Baptist
minister from the tiny country of El Salvador,
has taken on the seemingly impossible job of
prodding Americans into awareness about the
situation in her country.
With all the problems facing Americans to
day, it's easy for us to overlook a small Latin
American country 2,000 miles away As
students, we are more worried about shrinking
financial aid budgets than about a skirmish be
tween guerrillas and Salvadoran soldiers.
Marta Benavides didn't look like a revolu
tionary to me She looked like my next-door
neighbor Somehow, in the wire reports and the
magaz»ne feature
stones, the image of
the Salvadoran
freedom figher had
seemed larger than
life
Benavides in
sists sne is not a
politician, though the
cause she worfcs for is
inherently political The groups she represents,
the United Committee o* Salvadoran Women
and the United Committee of Salvadoran
Unions, have chosen to oppose the government
rather than submit to persecution They have
chosen to resist and survive in the long run.
In El Salvador, people who speak against
the government are labeled “subversives" and
targeted for surveillance
Sometimes, said Benavides, these people
just quietly disappear Others are disposed of
m more graphic ways, such au the young girl
who was found with the head of her boyfriend
sewed into her mutilated stomach
Benavides choice must not have been easy
to make. It’s never easy to choose the way of
suffering and hardship that inevitably comes
from opposing the established government.
But considering the alternative — slow mass
starvation, Benavides felt she had little choice
“We are fighting a war for tortillas and
beans," Benavides told a handful of people at
the Wesley Center earlier this month. Her soft
Latin accent became sharp as her voice rose
with emotion. “We are accused of being
subversive, but my people don’t know what that
means. We are not communist. All we know is
that we are tired of starving to death and work
ing in the fields without shoes. We just want to
live."
Benavides has talked mostly to religious
groups. But she is expanding her audiences to
include students because, she said, we are the
“All we know is that we are
tired of starving to death and
working in the fields without
shoes. We just want to live.”
ones who will in
fluence policy deci
sions in the coming
years.
The Wesley
Center audience was
mostly students.
Benavides shook her
fist at the group and
told us we are are too
passive, that we are not allowing ourselves to
develop ethical standards.
Benavides challenged us to protest U.S. in
volvement in El Salvador by writing our
representatives, through the popular media,
through church organizations — in short, using
any and all means open to us to express our
views on the subject.
Perhaps even that won't be enough to stop
the course of events. In that sense, Benavides
will have failed in her mission. But at least a
small part of one American university now
knows who the real revolutionaries in El
Salvador are and why.
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