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Oregon daily
emerald
Monday, October 1, 1984
Eugene, Oregon
Volume 86. Number 22
Politics, magic linked
by art of deception?
By Paul Ertelt
Of the Emerald
Psychology Prof. Ray Hyman held a
copy of Sunday’s Register-Guard and
tore it in half, demonstrating the “flimsy
physical basis of our information
resources.”
Hyman continued his destruction un
til the newspaper was a handful of
fragments, then restored it to its original
form with a quick flip of the wrist. More
than just a clever magic trick, Hyman
said his demonstration was analogous to
the human mind and the way it pro
cesses information.
Hyman discussed the “Psychology of
Deception” as part of a political sym
posium held in the Eugene Community
Conference Center Sunday. He punc
tuated his talk with other acts of illusion,
using cards, rope and a small
chalkboard.
“Ever since the beginning of the
human race, there have been people who
have specialized in deceiving their
fellow human beings.” Hyman said.
“Some have known it as magic, others as
politics.”
The human mind receives information
in fragments, much like the torn
newspaper. From those fragments, the
mind constructs complete concepts,
making assumptions to fill in the gaps,
Hyman said.
The mind's assumptions about infor
mation are usually correct, but this same
ability makes people susceptible to
deception. In fact, people who are more
intelligent and imaginative are more
vulnerable to deception, Hyman said.
“What makes us open to deception,
also makes us good problem solvers and
good processors of information,” he
said.
Deception also requires the coopera
tion of the person deceived in what
Hyman called a symbiotic relationship
with the deceiver.
“Deception is never a one-way street,”
he said. “The victim has to cooperate;
the deceiver can only arrange
circumstances.”
Hyman’s examples of otherwise in
telligent people who allowed themselves
to be deceived ranged from his father,
who never listened to his assertion that
“professional” wrestling was anything
but authentic, to the scientists fooled by
psychic charlatans.
In politics, image makers give us
fragments about candidates, hoping that
we will fill in the gaps with the desired
assumptions, Hyman said.
Although he said it happens “on both
sides,” Hyman used Pres. Ronald
Reagan’s so called Teflon presidency to
illustrate how assumptions affect a
politician’s image. (The term Teflon has
been used to refer to Reagan’s apparent
ability to maintain a strong image and
deflect public criticism.)
“We are part of the conspiracy, mak
ing (politicians) better than they are
because we want them to be better than
they are,” he said.
Hyman began performing magic,
which he calls “pure chicanery,” as a
child. He worked his way through col
lege by reading palms.
Hyman became increasingly convinc
ed of his ability to tell people’s fortunes,
but a friend challenged him to try an ex
periment. When Hyman told people the
opposite of what he saw in their palms,
his subjects continued to agree that his
readings accurately reflected their
characters.
Because of his knowledge of
psychology and magic, Hyman has often
been called on to investigate psychic
phenomena. Though he said he keeps an
open mind, Hyman is skeptical and has
yet to witness a demonstration of
psychic ability.
“Everytime I got near them, their
power evaporated. They said it was my
negative vibes or something.”
Hyman’s talk was part of a series of
talks on current politics given by Univer
sity faculty as part of the Eugene
Celebration.
Joan Acker, director of the Center for
the Study of Women in Society, jour
nalism Prof. Roy Paul Nelson, and
political science Prof. Jerry Medler also
spoke.
OSPIRG wants CUB in Oregon
Photo by Bill Harpole
Saturday’s football crowd at Autzen stadium was treated to a sunny after
noon and the Ducks’ win over the University of the Pacific Tigers, 30-14.
See related story Page 11.
By Scott McFetridge
Of the Emerald
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader
visited the Universtiy in 1971 and decid
ed the student climate was right for
founding the first of his long-desired
“student action armies.”
It’s not an army anymore, but 13 years
later the Oregon Student Public Interest
and Research Group is still working to
get students involved in the world
around them, says Louis Tippens,
OSPIRG project coordinator.
While OSPIRG members say they
usually work on a variety of projects,
their principal cause this year has been
getting Ballot Measure 3, the Citizen’s
Utility Board, on the state ballot and
subsequently getting the measure
passed.
Oregon is the only state in the country
with a sole public utility commissioner
who is completely responsible for deci
sions concerning requests for rate hikes.
As a result of this, Donna Lawrence,
local OSPIRG chair, claims that public
utilities have been the top profit-makers
in the state for the last three years, and
are making unfair profits at the expense
of the ratepayers.
The public utilities have a large and
professional entourage of lawyers, ac
countants and energy experts represent
ing them at rate request hearings
Lawrence says. The average ratepayer
on the other hand, doesn’t have such
professional representation at the hear
ings, and as a consequence, rate in
creases are almost always granted, she
says.
However, if CUB is passed by Oregon
voters this November, consumers would
gain this informed voice at the hearings,
Lawrence says.
As proposed, CUB would consist of a
15-member board, with three members
elected from each congressional district,
Lawrence says. These boardmembers
would in turn select a staff of experts to
represent utility customers, she says.
“We will hire the same people as the
utilities except at a public-interest
wage,” Tippens says.
Tippens cites the performance of CUB
in Wisconsin as proof that a citizens
utility board will work. CUB began there
four years ago and now has approximate
ly 90,000 members. It is estimated that
CUB has saved Wisconsin ratepayers
$285 million, Tippens says.
Continued on Page 10
Woman Vietnam veteran helps others deal with war
By Diana Elliott
CM the Emerald
It’s no secret that when “our
boys” returned home from Viet
nam more than a decade ago
they were greeted with animosi
ty. But they weren’t the only
ones who got brickbats instead
of bouquets from the millions of
Americans who opposed the
war, Rose Sandecki, team
leader of the Concord, Calif. Vet
Center said.
Sandecki is one of at least
7,500 women who she says are
“the forgotten veterans” of the
Vietnam War. With four years of
active duty in the Army Nurse
Corps in Vietnam more than ten
years behind her, Sandecki now
devotes her time to lecturing on
issues that relate to women
Vietnam veterans.
By traveling around the coun
try and discussing her wartime
memories, Sandecki encourages
women veterans to do the same,
she says, in order to release
some of the bottled-up anxieties
left over from the war.
Last week Sandecki came to
the Eugene Vet Center and gave
two workshops dealing with
post-traumatic stress syndrome,
a psychological ailment that
haunts many veterans with hor
rifying flashbacks of the war.
One workshop was exclusively
for women Vietnam veterans,
and the other for counselors and
community organizers who
work with these women.
Sandecki described her ex
perience, which began in 1968.
She was watching the war on
her living room television one
night, and feeling the idealism
of the era.
“It was the ‘ask not what your
country can do for you’
ideology that got me going. I
just wanted to help the wound
ed GIs I saw on TV,” she said.
So Sandecki joined the Army
Nurse Corps in May 1968 and
by October was stationed in Cu
Chi, Vietnam, as head nurse of
the Intensive Care Unit at the
12th Evacuation Hospital.
Shortly after she arrived her
patriotic fervor dwindled.
*‘I wasn’t prepared
psychologically,” Sandecki
recalled. ‘‘As soon as I stepped
off the plane in Cu Chi I realized
what I was getting into was not
what I had expected.
‘‘I remember the scene. The
stench was horrible, a mixture
of airplane fuel and burning
waste from the latrines. God,
there’s nothing like the smell of
burning shit.
“The smell, the heat and peo
ple walking around, carrying
heavy machine guns, really
woke me up to reality,”
Sandecki said.
“But the real terror was yet to
come. We were shelled all the
time. The government said we
were safe, but the evac hospital
was located right next to where
the ammo was stored, so we
were constantly being shelled,”
Sandecki said.
“We weren’t safe,” she add
ed. “That’s what people don’t
understand. 1 saw combat just
like the guys.”
And just like the men in the
army, Sandecki and the other
nurses spent 12 months
witnessing the war from center
stage. But the nurses couldn’t
carry weapons. They were sup
posed to depend on male doc
tors for protection.
Sandecki said women in Viet
nam confronted their own battle
line — discrimination.
“We were expected to attend
social functions. If you didn’t
show up at the officer’s club
there would be rumors that
something was wrong with you.
You were either gay or shacking
up with one of the doctors.
They couldn’t understand that
we were exhausted from work
ing 12 hours a day,” she said.
Many American women serv
ed time in Vietnam, though not
all were nurses. Teaching, com
munications and Red Cross
work were some of the other
fields with women workers.
‘‘No one knows how many
women were in Vietnam,”
Sandecki said. ‘‘Estimates
range from 7,500 to 55,500.”
Through Sandecki’s national
circuit for women Vietnam
veterans, she has tried to locate
these women so they can meet
and work through some of their
frustrations; however, the task
of finding and helping them has
Continued on Page 8