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Oregon daily
emerald
Thursday, May 12, 1983
Eugene. Oregon
Volume 84, Number 152
ROTC verdict ignites student protest
By Frank Shaw
Ol the Emerald
More than 100 students
gathered Wednesday outside
Johnson Hall to protest the
University Assembly's deci
sion to kill a motion forcing
the campus ROTC program in
to compliance with University
affirmative action guidelines.
Carrying signs reading "UO
faculty — Teachers or
Sheep?” and “UO — listen to
your students — they are your
conscience”, the students
shouted slogans and sang
songs for 40 minutes on the
steps of Johnson Hall.
Last week the Assembly
“postponed indefinitely"
philosophy Prof. Cheney
Ryan's proposal that would
have forced ROTC either to
allow gays into the scholar
ship program or discontinue
the campus program. Many
demonstrators seemed to
favor the latter, chanting
"What do we want — ROTC off
campus.”
Student Jim Middaugh, who
helped coordinate the
demonstration, said pro
testers want to force the facul
ty assembly to address the
motion directly, instead of kill
ing it by a parliamentary tactic.
ROTC has a place on cam
pus, “but it needs to conform
with regulations,” Middaugh
said.
Andrew Harvey, another stu
dent protesl ,-r, said students
demonstrated “to start draw
ing people's attention to the
(ROTC) issue and to
demonstrate physically that
there are pcop'a who are upset
at the decision.”
Harvey said he wants the
faculty to discuss the motion
Photo by Bob Baker
More than 100 stude its call for ROTC compliance with University anti-discrimination regulations.
again. “I don’t care what pro
cess they use,” he said. "I
want to see justice done.”
Provost Richard Hill, con
tacted after the protest, said
he "had no way of estimating
what the impact (of the
demonstration) will be” on the
ROTC issue.
Protester Tom Dierken said
the assembly’s decision isn’t
representative of the entire
University.
“I can’t imagine all the pro
fessors feei (ike that,” he said.
Dierken said student support
for the rally was “inspiring.”
He said it’s not just one
special interest group fighting
to resolve the moral issue in
volved in the ROTC controver
sy. “Everyone can relate to it,”
Dierken said.
Public Saftey officials
watched the demonstration
from inside Johnson Hall.
"All we want to see is
peaceful demonstrations,”
said Oakley Glenn, public
safety director.
ASUO president-elect Mary
Hotchkiss attended the pro
test “to let students know the
student body government is
supportive of student ac
tions.” Although the
demonstration was no! an
ASUO-sponsored event,
Hotchkiss said she sides with
the student protesters.
Contacted on duty at Ft.
Lewis, Wash., Lt. Col. Steven
Wolfgram said the demonstra
tion would not change his
actions.
‘‘I just plan on continuing
doing what I’ve been doing,”
Wolfgram said.
Demos’ tax plan balances Oregon budget
SALEM (AP) — Democrats in the Oregon House
pushed through a budget-balancing tax package
Wednesday that could cost Oregonians close to $400
million in added taxes over the next two years.
Approval of the four bills, which now go to the
Senate, came despite protests of Republicans who
said the increases will stifle economic recovery.
In another tax-related development Wednesday,
the House Revenue Committee refused to kill a sales
tax measure being touted as a property tax relief
plan.
The measures passed Wednesday would extend
for two more years several so-called "temporary” tax
increases passed in 1981 and 1982 to head off budget
deficits.
Opponents of the measures said the Legislature
is breaking a promise not to extend what were in
tended to be one-time taxes to get the state through
a budget crunch.
The bills would:
• Continue an 8 percent income tax surcharge.
The bill, HB 2201, passed 35-24.
• Extend a 10-cent a pack cigarette tax increase.
That measure, HB 2191, passed 37-22.
• Keep state and federal depreciation tax deduc
tions separate, preventing corporations from using
the more generous federal tax breaks in figuring
state taxes. The bill, HB 2197, passed 35-24.
• Delay another two years a law that would
automatically adjust the $1,000 personal income tax
exemption to account for inflation. This provision is
included in the income tax bill.
The fourth bill is a technical measure dealing
with collecting the cigarette tax, which totals 19
cents a pack. The package would raise an estimated
$388 million to help balance a 1983-85 general fund
budget of about $3 billion.
The measures appear to have general support in
the Senate, where Democrats have a lopsided 21-9
majority.
The House votes were mainly along party lines,
with Democrats picking up support from only two
Republicans on most of the bills. GOP Reps. Mary
Burrows of Eugene and Tony Van Vliet of Corvallis
voted for all the measures.
“We’ll be much better off not to tax business to
death,” said Rep. George Trahern, R-Grants Pass,
who claimed the tax package will discourage badly
needed industrial growth.
But Democratic Rep. Tom Throop of Bend,
chairer of the revenue committee, said the state
hasn’t yet climbed out of the recession and it can’t
afford to pass along tax breaks such as the federal
depreciation allowances.
Throop also said the tax package raises far less
than the tax boosts urged by Gov. Vic Atiyeh, who
submitted a proposed budget that would require
about $550 million in tax increases.
Rep. Vera Katz, D-Portland, who heads the
House half of the budget-writing Joint Ways and
Means Committee, said state agency budgets have
been reduced by 13 percent over the past four years.
Further cuts would require carving into “base
budgets that are lower than in 1979,” she said.
House GOP Leader Larry Campbell of Eugene
said most Republicans weren’t ready to vote on tax
measures until the lawmakers act on a proposed con
stitutional amendment to limit growth in state and
local government spending.
He said nearly half the state budget goes to
local governments to help offset property taxes that
continue to rise because of inadequate steps to
check spending that is “out of control."
Earlier in the day, Rep. Wally Priestley, D
Portland, one of the Legislature’s most vocal op
ponents of the sales tax, proposed that the Revenue
Committee table the sales tax. That effectively would
have killed the issue, since only rarely is a tabled bill
resurrected.
Priestley, who’s a member of the panel, said
despite weeks of hearings and behind-the-scenes ef
forts by some special interests to stir up support for
a sales tax, no significant support for a sales tax has
emerged.
“We’ve spent so much time on the question and
it must come to an end," he said. “We have no ma
jority that supports the sales tax. All of this time is
being wasted.”
But the committee voted 8-1 to reject Priestley’s
motion with several committee members saying
although no agreement has been reached on a sales
tax, it's too early to bring the issue to a vote.
The revenue panel is considering several sales
tax proposals, most of which would levy a 4-percent
sales tax with the proceeds to be used to provide pro
perty tax relief.