Need a place to sit or sleep? Help yourself!
By Scott McFetridge
Of the Emerald
Do you find yourself looking
around a bare room? Maybe a
table from mom and a poster
that you bought in eighth grade
are all you see. Does your voice
echo inside empty walls when
you talk on your telephone?
Buying new furniture to outfit
your home can indeed be ex
pensive, but don’t give up
hope; there are options.
A drive around the area on
most Saturdays will reveal that
“Eugene is the garage sale
capital of the world,” says Carl
Falsgraf, a University graduate
student.
Falsgraf moved into a vacant
house in Eugene from Japan this
fall. He says he found a cabinet,
clothes, kitchen utensils and
chairs at garage sales. His best
buy, however, was a $25
Panasonic stereo.
“You can find anything in a
garage sale,” Falsgraf says.
“And it’s a lot nicer than Fred
Meyer. You get to talk to peo
ple,” he says.
But Falsgraf has a backup ap
proach to furnishing his home
when garage sale merchandise
doesn’t appeal to him.
“I built a lot of my own fur
niture,” he says. “It’s actually
very easy in Eugene to make
your own furniture because of
the cheap lumber.”
Torkjell Djupedal, a graduate
student from Norway, also
found that building his own fur
niture could save money. He
says he bought table legs at a
yard sale for $2 and then made
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the rest of the table himself.
And for $5 he purchased a rock
ing chair that needed only
minor repairs to the seat, he
says.
Some people, however, don’t
have the time to shop at garage
sales or the skill to craft their
own furniture, and for them
outfitting a house may mean
paying the price for new fur
niture or being happy with what
they can get.
“My house came with an ugly
couch, an ugly chair and a
dresser that works,” University
senior Kelly Hunt says.
Although she isn’t especially
happy with the decor of her
house. Hunt says that for the
moment she and her roommate
will make do.
Lisa Gates, a resident of the
famed Animal House, also is
settling for less than the best.
She bought a dresser, a bed and
wall hangings from home for
her room, but for the rest of her
living quarters she had to adjust
to the furniture that was already
there.
“The furniture looked like it
might have been left over from
the movie (Animal House),”
Gates says.
Meanwhile, Stephen
Chrisman, a third-year architec
ture student, moved into an
empty, seven-room house last
year. With no money and no
ambition to buy furniture, he
and his roommates did the best
with what little they had, he
says.
“We all had stuff for our
bedrooms, but the rest of the
house was pretty bare,”
Chrisman says. "One of the
guys brought a kitchen table
from home, but all we had for
the living room was lawn
chairs. It wasn’t that comfor
table, but it worked."
Some people are lucky
enough to find furnished apart
ments, but some household
necessities still are required,
says Mark Bernheimer, a junior
studying telecommunications.
Bernheimer says he bought a
couple of plates, a napkin
holder and a shower curtain
with a matching checkered
towel for his apartment. "The
formica-topped table came with
the place,” he says.
However, some furnishings
(>raphi«. by Rob Kraft
— regardless of price — are ir
resistible, says sophomore Jill
Keith, who found a chair she
liked at Import Plaza in
Portland.
"It’s just like when you see a
shirt and buy it,” Keith says. "I
saw a chair and bought it."
Gift rekindles humanities study
By Michael Doke
Of the Emerald
Humanities — defined by a
University official as the study
of human action — is making a
comeback at the University,
thanks to a three-year, $300,000
grant from the National Endow
ment for the Humanities.
And Humanities Center direc
tor Don Taylor says humanities
enters into every subject, in
eluding science and
philosophy.
“Humanities study anything
human beings do,” Taylor says.
“While science studies subjects
and laws, the humanities study
human action in particular,
such as the rise of science.
“The Humanities Center tries
to make available for all
students what the Honors Col
lege offers only a select group,”
he says.
The center is offering seven
courses this term, costing an
average of $3,750 each, Taylor
says. Almost 175 students have
enrolled, and the average class
size is 25 students. The center
offered 13 courses last year, the
first year of the N.E.H. grant.
Faculty members in political
science, English, German,
music and history departments
will offer seven classes during
the winter term.
Between 80 and 90 percent of
the work jn a humanities course
is discussion and analysis,
Taylor says. Students have to
work harder in the class and
take an active role in the educa
tion process, he says.
The class size and
humanities’ goals mean fewer
objective tests, more writing by
the student, more class discus
sion and closer faculty scrutiny
of written and oral work, .he
says. Students have more
responsibilty to learn in a
humanities course compared to
the larger lecture class, he says.
‘‘There’s very little of the
professor-up-here, student
down-there feeling in the
humanities class.” says history
Prof. Ray Birn, who team
teaches a humanities rare-books
course with rare-books librarian
Martin Antonetti.
‘‘Everybody participates with
each other because students
make the atmosphere conducive
for this.”
"We’re conducting a course
of a high scholarly level,” An
tonetti says. “The humanities
emphasis of education con
fronts the total person. It seeks
to change the person on many
levels — socially, intellectually,
psychologically and spiritual
ly,” he says.
Bim adds that in the rare
books course “not only are we
studying books, we’re studying
a lot about people: who wrote
the book, who made it and who
sold it. It’s the humanistic ap
proach. The grant encouraged
us to develop the course. It gave
us the inspiration,” he says.
Emmeli Adler, a humanities
senior enrolled in the rare
books course, says “There is a
much closer contact with pro-'
fessors. He’s making his point
right there in front of you.
“There’s the opportunity to
take more advantage of their ex
pertise — an opportunity lost in
huge lecture classes,” Adler
says.
Studying the humanities and
having a broad education is the
only way to get the entire ex
perience out of college, she
says.
“What else is there? That's
what education is.” she says.
“What is it you come to college
for? Job.training seems to be the '
case more and more, but you
come to get an education.”
Teaching the humanities is at
least as expensive as teaching in
science and professional pro
grams. Taylor says. For every
dollar available for humanities
research from public and
private sources, about $100 is
available to the sciences and
social sciences, he says.
“You can’t put a dollar value
on the humanities like the •
sciences or computer sciences.”
Taylor says. “But what would
society be like without a
humanistic understanding?
Citing an example. Taylor
says the scientist, as a profes
sional, is not expected to think
about the consequence of his ac
tion. As with Los Alamos and
the Manhattan Project, the
scientists’ goal was to develop
the atomic bomb. The conse
quence of this was not
discovered until the explosions
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Scholars of the humanities try
to understand and discover
what men and women have
dono, Taylor says. They raise
the understanding and value of
such actions by adding the com
ponent of interpretation and
analysis to help form opinions
for the individual, he says.
“Education may be profes
sionally oriented, but
humanities generally are the
core of the University,” Taylor
says.“No one here wants to see
the University become an in
stitution of technology.
The N.E.H. grant expires in
September 1986, Taylor says.
But he says he hopes the pro
gram will be successful enough
by then to be maintained.