Emerald offers
career guide for
University students
page 1B
Tough times for
English graduates,
Philosophy graduates?
page 11B
The future
appears bullish
to economic analysts
page 8B
Oregon daily - .
emerald
Friday, May 13, 1983
Eugene, Oregon
Volume 84, Number 153
Hult Center budget blues plague council
By Melissa Martin
Of ttw Emerald
A bright orange sign in the city coun
cil chambers read “For sale: Hult
Center.. .will rename to suit this
time.. .cash only,” while a Hult Center
proponent told more than 125 people
Thursday that ticket sales brought $6
million into the community since the
September opening.
The Eugene Budget Committee
listened to audience feedback for two
hours at a public hearing for the
preliminary budget recommendations.
The Hult Center, one of the several
issues discussed in the meeting, will
lose $61,300 from its marketing and
advertising budget if the council votes
to approve the budget committee’s
recommendation this month.
“A reduction in the marketing
budget will have an impact on income
figures,” said Gary Williams, chairman
of finance for the Committee of the
Performing Arts.
The Center has added $1 million to
the Eugene-area economy, Williams
pointed out under the glare of televi
sion lights set up in front of the room.
"This snow job has laid down a layer
of snow so deep you need a plow to get
in,” Tom Heusel of Citizens for Open
Government contradicted, the group
that opposed the Hult Center name
change.
The “incredible Hult hoax,” Heusel
said, gave a tax break to the Eugene
Performing Arts Commission and
financial donors.
“This isn’t the first time the public is
bailing out the city,” Heusel said.
The Hult Center’s recommended cut
is part of the budget committee’s revi
sion of a proposal by Micheal Gleason,
city manager.
In other action, representatives of
the Eugene Commission for Human
Rights asked budget committee
members to “have compassion” on the
program and not reduce the paid staff
of two to the recommended one.
“I hope this is not an indirect way to
phase out the Human Rights Commis
sion," said resident Keli Osborn.
“I’m making a plea that you not
balance the budget on the backs of the
people,” added a commission
volunteer.
"The managerial magical wand
won’t solve the problem this time,"
Ann Bunnenberg said of the recom
mended cuts to the Human Rights pro
gram, which deals with affirmative ac
tion for the aging, disabled, minorities,
women and youth.
The committee also added $277,000
back into the budget for city swimming
pools.
Colun Gray, seated in the wheelchair, made a brief plea to the Eugene budget
committee not to cut the city’s Human Rights program.
1
Hi mom, hi dad..
Parents of University students can attend classes,
an open house and various campus activities during
Parents’ Weekend today and Saturday.
“The events will help parents become acquainted
with the campus and with their son’s or daughter’s
perspective on campus life," says Gary Peiss, a com
puter science iunior and chairer of the planning com
mittee for Parents' Weekend.
Activities begin today with parents invited to at
tend classes. Other events include:
The annual Canoe Fete, a floating parade on the
Millrace. The fete begins at 5:30 p.m. across Franklin
Boulevard from campus.
Saturday's events include five University faculty
lectures on topics ranging from the quality of education
to economic recovery.
The activities conclude with a Starlight Big Band
Dance in the EMU Dad’s Room at 9 p.m.
Lecturer outs bite on students
By Sean Meyers
Of ffw Eimrild
It was a subject, the lecturer would have
freely admitted, that he could really sink his
teeth into.
The occasion was a campus presentation
Thursday by Jan Perkowski, the chairman of
the Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures at the University of Virginia. The
topic, of course, was vampires.
Most of the three score in attendance were
clearly serious students of East European
culture. The motives of others, like the man in
the Transylvanian cloak and the woman with
the florescent hair, were suspect.
“The question I am most frequently asked
is are there really vampires?’ ” said Perkowski,
editor of Vampires of the Slavs. “In fact, there
are, and I know because I met one.”
With that opening salvo, Perkowski was
guaranteed a captive audience.
As it turned out, Perkowski almost didn’t
meet his first vampire. He was just finishing up
some research on a isolated Slavic society liv
ing in Canada.
“There was this one last farmhouse left,
way off in the distance,” said Perkowski. “I
wanted to be thorough.”
He struck up a conversation with a woman
in her native Slavic tongue, noticing that all of
her front teeth were missing, except the
"canines."
"I figured, you know, they just couldn't af
ford dental work," said Perkowski. But his men
tal processes “raced at computer speed” when
the subject turned to vampirism.
“I said ‘what is a vampire?’ ” Perkowski
remembers. "She said, ’I am.’ ”
Further probing revealed that certain
Slavic cultures determine vampirism upon the
birth of a child. If the caul, the membrane en
compassing the fetus, covers the head at birth
the child is a vampire. But the parents can pre
vent that fate by saving the caul, drying it out,
burning it and having the child ingest it when
it’s 12-years-old.
“If I had to do that, I’d mix it up in some
brownies or something," Perkowski noted.
He also met an elderly woman that claimed
her daughter was bitten by a vampire on the
arm, not the neck.
But the Western stereotype of the blood
sucking, Dracula-vintage vampire is not
historically correct, said Perkowski.
That myth springs from the "vampire
epidemic” that swept the Balkan Peninsula a
few centuries ago. In reality, many people were
suffering from diarrhea or a similar disorder
that caused a sharp decrease in bodily fluids.
This left them weak, gaunt and pale, which the
community attributed to vampires, who they
believed were were sapping the “life-blood”
from people.
Western researchers liberally translated
this to mean that the vampires were literally
sucking blood from their victims.
In fact, the Slavic or “folklorist” vampire,
not to be confused with the literary, psychic or
psychotic vampire, feeds by sucking his or her
own breasts or by climbing up a church steeple
and ringing the bell. The first one to hear the
bell dies. No fuss, no muss.
And don’t expect a clove of garlic to fend
off a determined vampire. Some of them like
the taste, suggests Perkowski.
"One of my students said ’hell, if you had
to drink blood all the time you’d spice it up,
too.*"