Oregon daily
emerald
MOONIES_6
WATT A DAY7
TAXING NIGHT8
MARATHONS 12
Tuesday, October 4, 1983
Eugene, Oregon
Volume 85, Number 22
College gets
$300,000 gift
for humanities
By Doug Nash
Of the Emerald
Amherst President-elect Peter Pouncey's
convocation cries lor stronger interest in
the humanities were answered by Universi
ty Pres. Paul Olum Monday, when he
revealed a $300,000 grant from the National
Endowment lor Humanities.
Calling it "one of the largest and best
grants in the country,” Olum said the
money would be used in a three-year pro
ject to improve the teaching of the
humanities.
The new grant will allow University facul
ty to teach numerous introductory courses
tor classes of 25 students. By contrast, the
average lower-division history course has
125 students, Olum said. The new, smaller
classes will benefit about 10 percent of the
undergraduates.
In addition, the University hopes to
establish a Center for the Humanities,
which Olum said would increase the
University's chances for attracting visiting
faculty and receiving additional grants. The
proposal for such a center will be taken to
the State Board of Higher Education's
November meeting, he added.
Humanities include studies in literature,
rhetoric, history, philosophy, religion and
the arts.
The effects of the new grant will be im
mediate, said English Prof. Donald Taylor,
who will be the center's director. Sixteen
experimental sections of introductory
humanities courses will be offered during
winter and spring terms, he said. Four
upper-division courses will be added to the
program in the next two years, he said.
During the second and third years, the
University will invite major humanist
scholars to campus to lead faculty seminars,
give public lectures and teach upper
division and graduate-level courses, Taylor
said.
"The programs are not radically in
novative in method, topics or approaches,
Taylor said. "Our goal is that the faculty
community and the students become in
volved together in those arts of interpreta
tion which the humanities share."
Continued on Page 5
Davis, Atiyeh,
students fete
'higher ed week'
By Frank Shaw
Of the Emerald
SALEM — In a mostly symbolic
display of support for higher educa
tion, Gov. Vic Atiyeh and Chancellor
of Higher Education Bud Davis sign
ed a proclamation recognizing the
contributions of all Oregon institu
tions of higher learning on Monday.
The ceremony was held in conjunc
tion with Higher Education Week,
which began Sunday and runs
through the week to Saturday.
Before signing the proclamation,
Atiyeh said that although higher
education has seen some hard times
in the last few years, he "admires the
way (higher ed has) held on," and is
pleased with the chancellor's
performance.
"Education has been battling for
funds," Atiyeh said. "It's not been
easy."
Davis thanked the governor and
the Legislature for their support of
Continued on Page 3
Photo by Dave Kao
The University's second annual Convocation drew hundreds of students and professors to the Memorial Quadrangle Mon
day on an unusually sunny afternoon to hear Columbia scholar Peter Pouncey.
inhumane' tech threatens humanity
By Melissa Martin
Of (he Emerald
More than 500 students, faculty and com
munity members gathered Monday after
noon under blue skies and shade trees in
front of the library to hear a Columbia Col
lege professor defend moral values against
the inhuman side of technological
progress.
Peter Pouncey wove historical quotes
from many disciplines with recent nuclear
issues to plead for humanities.
Pouncey, dressed in a purple academic
robe, spoke after a procession by 100 facul
ty in colorful regalia and 10 student flag
bearers.
The University Brass Choir provided the
music.
The two-year-old Convocation soon may
become tradition, said Robert Berdahl, arts
and sciences college dean, who spoke,
along with University Pres. Paul Olum, for
the Platform Party.
"I hope today remains a vivid memory —
at least as vivid as Mac Court registration,"
Berdahl said.
Speaking with a slight British accent,
Pouncey said the humanities are becoming
“poor, down-at-heel chamber musicians
left in the wings, sounding the slightly
scratchy grace-notes to the main business
of lire."
While Pouncey spoke, the University's
recently acquired historical flag waved in
the breeze on the platform.
Drawing a parallel between history
lessons and the nuclear age, the Amherst
College president-elect said the push for
progress and new jobs sacrificed human
values.
"Technological progress was achieved by
concentrating on the job in hand, at the ex
pense of considerations of human values."
Despite regrets by the people,
technological change took place and the
agency of the change was "somehow out of
their hands," Pouncey said.
"It takes single-minded attention on the
data to produce progress as a by-product."
Pouncey, who was born in China and
educated in England, used the example of
war casualties and their futile repetition
throughout history.
He referred to the Los Alamos trade-off.
The scientists focused on the data and
forgot to ask whether the job ought to be
done until it was finally completed.
"The scientist is never exempt from hav
ing a moral, humane sense," Pouncey told
his attentive audience.
When science and progress took the
spotlight, humanities dealt with its inferiori
ty complex by toughening up the discipline
with positivism and Marxism, according to
Pouncey.
Pushing for hard facts, technological
singlemindedness has been devastating
moral philosophy, he said.
"It is not in doubt that technically, we can
destroy ourselves and our world."
He compared the possibility of a nuclear
explosion that would end life with the "Big
Bang" explosion that theoretically began it.
But the nuclear war threat is not the only
anxiety society faces today, according to
Pouncey.
Raising children in a shifting society is
also a predominate worry.
"Too many parents — and loving parents
at that — look on their children with great
trepidation, as incredibly delicate human
time-bombs waiting to explode on them, in
any one of a series of great crises, beginn
ing with finicky eating in infancy. ..
"What a life! Cold war within the family,
and cold war between the nations.”
But Pouncey stressed pessimism is not
the answer.
"We now know that the promised land is
further away than was thought, and will
take very careful navigation to reach."
Seminars follow-up theme
The University's second annual Convoca
tion attracted hundreds of students — ex
cused from Monday afternoon classes — to
both local and visiting professors' seminars
that spanned many topics, from the
elderly's political clout to America's fragile
wilderness.
POLITICAL CLOUT
People who believe all the myths about
aging — that senility hits at age 65 — tend to
become that way in reality, said )eane
Bader, director of the gerontology program.
“It is a self-fulfilling prophecy," she said.
Bader spoke at a seminar on “the Politics
of Aging" as part of the Convocation.
Aging is an important political issue, not
only because all people will eventually
become old, but because of the amount of
money the government spends on old peo
ple, she said. By the end of 1983, 27 percent
of the federal budget — $211 billion — will
have been spent on elderly people.
"The politics of aging commands atten
tion because of the price tag," Bader said.
"Politicians assume older people have a
potential or real political clout," Bader says.
Older people do vote, but they do not vote
as a bloc on very many political issues, ex
cept for their tendency to vote against local
tax levies.
"Young people are less tolerant of being
willing to give their money for programs for
older people," said Ross Anthony, an
economics professor who also spoke at the
seminar. "Unless something is done, we'll
see a real battle."
Changes in the system need to be made,
according to Anthony, so there will be
enough money to go around.
For example, during a routine operation,
something went wrong and the person end
ed up “brain dead." Medical technology
kept this person alive for six months at the
cost of over $1 million.
Do people have the right to die? he asks.
"I think they do. There are other things
we could spend that money on."
If our past ethical standards are not com
prehensive enough to deal with the pro
blem, then we need to develop new stan
dards, he says.
WOMEN'S ROLE
Advances in technology could affect
working women in any number of ways,
but unless people are careful, warned Joan
Acker, director of the new Center for the
Study of Women in Society, the impact will
be a change for the worse.
Technological change will either create
more skilled, higher paying jobs for
women, or will initiate a trend back to tradi
tional roles, agreed Acker and two of her
colleagues, Steven Deutsch and Donald
Van Houten, both sociolgy professors.
"I think negative scenarios are more pro
bable," Acker said. The negative scenarios
would eventually lead to a "decline in sex
equality," she added.
The seminar, one of 13 during Mon
day’s University Convocation, focused on
the "Implications for Working Women of
the New Technology."
But working women are not just the
Continued on page 5