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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
don't plan to prosecute. At Texas Tech, meanwhile, David Murrah. director of the South west collection, stands staunch ly behind his museum piece: "NASA’s claims that the rock doesn’t exist suit us just fine,” he says. "If they want to come put the university in jail, that’s fine, too!” Beyond Divestment The divestment move ment is far from over, even though Congress recent ly overrode President Reagan's veto of economic sanctions against the Pretoria govern ment. Hundreds of students across the country turned out for the Oct. 10 and 11 National Protest Days, but now that 116 schools have divested about $3.8 billion worth of stock in American companies with op erations in South Africa, the question remains: What next? To figure that out, Middlebury College in Vermont recently hosted a national collegiate symposium on South Africa, which was broadcast live over American Public Radio and to radio listeners in Australia. r or iwo nours, siuuenis from schools that ranged from the University of Alas ka, Fairbanks, to Florida International phoned in ques tions for the five panelists, who disagreed sharply over what role students can still play in ending apartheid. For their part, some student ques tioners seemed to feel they could be most effective by con tinuing to make the divest ment debate a national issue. What college students need to do now is start d isprovi ng the argument of those opposed to sanctions [who say] that black South Africans would be hurt the most," said Jabuiani Xhlapo, a Middlebury sopho more from Soweto. "Ifyou have a ladder and you pull it out. who is going to be hurt more, the ones on the bottom or the ones on the top?” - akt mm Humoring tho stutfonts: Radio s riotous Dick Orkin Laugh Lessons From a Pro Faculty and administra tors at Franklin and Mar shall College decided they had a problem: the school’s earnest, largely pre professional students seemed to be in danger of losing their senses of humor. Rampant ca reerism had induced laugh at rophy, an unseemly state for a school named, in part, for the witty Benjamin Franklin F&M alumnus Dick Orkin, the funnyman whose classical ly resonant voice is one of the best known in radio advertis ing, volunteered to come to the rescue as the school's first "humorist in residence.” The school arranged a four-day whirlwind return to the 199 year-old campus, nestled in Pennsylvania’s pastoral Amish country. The campus radio station stoked the audi ence for weeks beforehand by playing installments of "Chickenman," Orkin’s hi larious radio serial from the '60s. and its hallmark cry, "He’s Everywhere! He’s Everywhere!” filled the air waves. Orkin shared secrets of humorous writing with Eng lish students, talked the ad game with business classes and spoke in auditoriums and one on one, "wandering about, sprinkling levity all around the campus.” While keeping the stu dents in stitches, Orkin pushed a serious message: that "it’s OK to give yourself per mission to laugh," and that a sense of humor, essential for coping with life, can help you succeed. "It's going to change the way I look at classes," says senior Josh Levine. The most impassioned views came from panel mem ber Malcolm Fraser, former prime minister of Australia Ever since he returned from a mediation mission to South Af rica earlier this year as part of the Commonwealth Emi nent Persons Group. Fruser has insisted that nothing short of "much toucher, immediate sanctions" imposed by the United States in concert with other major Western govern ments will be effective Pre dicting that civil war "could be months away." Fraser urged students on: "Badger all your senators and besiege the White House." In This Tank, Talk Is Chirp Arthur Myrberg can drive a tank of bicolor damselfish crazy—and not by tapping on the glass, ei ther Myrberg, professor of marine biology at the Universi ty of Miami's Rosentiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, has unlocked specific meanings of damselfish "lan guage"—grunts, growls and chirps He even makes many of the fishy sounds himself Most of his subjects' conver sation has to do with sex Alow chirp says there’s a male around ready to mate; tone in dicates whether the chirper is large or small To female dam selfish, that matters; big fish can better protect theeggsafter laying. Other noises stake out watery turf and coax a depart ing object of desire to return. Besides having developed one of the world's great party tricks, Myrberg sees many practical applications for his discovery, including directing fish away from polluted areas, controlling spawning and in creasing harvests But he denies being an aquatic Dr Dolittle: "I have just learned the signals. The animals do not talk back to me." lU.l srKATK>N MV MAHl WWKNTIIAI
