Inside:
•USSA symposium, Page 4
•'Joblink' online, Page 7
•Civil War revenge, Page 10
Oregon Daily- _
Emerald
Monday, March 7, 1988
Eugene, Oregon
Volume 89, Number 115
Law conference hosts environmental advocate
By Mike Drummond
Emerald Associate Editor
David Brower, one of the nation's
premier proponents of environmental
protection, fittingly closed the curtain
on the nation’s largest environmental
law conference held at the University’s
law school this weekend.
Brower and other prominent en
vironmentalists conducted workshops
and seminars at the sixth annual Western
Public Interest Law Conference, which
drew student participants from as far
away as Georgia.
Brower, 75, has a resume as long as a
runway. He began fighting for en
vironmental protection in 1939, and his
credits include serving as executive
director for the Sierra Club for 17 years
and founder and head of Friends of the
Earth. For the past five years, he has
directed the Earth Island Institute, an
organization that pushes for global
restoration of the environment.
In his closing address to a crowd of
200, Brower charmed and delighted the
audience with witty phrases and per
sonal anecdotes.
Brower’s message, however, was
Criticism targets 'irresponsible' practices
serious — survival of the planet. He
criticized strip mining and clear-cutting
practices, calling them irresponsible,
and urged the crowd of mostly law
students to continue fighting for preser
vation and restoration of the
environment.
"We are stealing, we are mining, we
are taking away the future and the en
vironmental capital. It feels good at the
time, but the question is: What happens
after that? It is the world's young that
have the most to lose," Brower said.
He called for a change “in the way we
think." and pointed an accusing finger
at the nation's institutions of higher
education for not taking a more ag
gressive role in battling pollution of the
planet.
"There is no university in the country
that's challenging this, [and] we are still
in the Dark Ages in understanding the
limitations of the earth," Brower said.
He reiterated his plea for this genera
tion to outline a global agenda that
would address problems of toxic waste,
deforestation and water and air
pollution.
Stressing the need for more people to
get involved with cleaning the Earth's
ecosystems, Brower said it was up to to
day's newly graduated law students to
continue legal action in pursuing solu
tions to the world's environmental ills.
Brower noted that environmental
organizations are standing on better
financial footing than they were in the
1970s, and said he would like to see
them use more of their assets to combat
environmental problems.
"The Sierra Club is worth about $4
billion, and I'd like to see it use {this
money) more. Other environmental
organizations have similar assets in their
members, and you must never
underestimate what could be done with
that.” Brower said.
Three other environmental advocates,
Peter Coppelman, Rick Sutherland and
Raid Benfield, joined Brower on the
closing address panel. Coppelman is
vice president and former senior counsel
for The Wilderness Society, and has lob
bied Congress for passage of numerous
wilderness bills.
Sutherland is executive director of the
David Brower
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, a San
Francisco-based organization.
Benfield is an attorney with the Na
tional Resources Defense Council, based
in Washington, D.C. He currently is
working on administrative appeals of
forest plans in Virginia and Colorado.
m
Photo by Philip Thome
Physical plant employee ferry Doming uses a high-pressure water hose to remove paint
from the windows of the University Inn dining hall. Rain kept the paint wet. making Dom
ing ’s job easier.
Paint bomb hits University Inn
By Sue Bright
Emerald Contributor
University Inn employees
discovered green and yellow
paint on the windows of the
dining hall Sunday morning.
"They did us a favor by us
ing water-base latex paint.”
said Bob Rookard, a Universi
ty physical plant employee.
Several empty cans floating in
the Millrace confirmed that
the paint was water-base
latex.
There was some suggestion
that the incident was the
result of Civil War weekend
hostilities. Gigi Wuisman,
University Inn food service
worker, said she believes the
Turn to Bomb, Page 6
Candidates get SPA thumbs-up
By Cami Swanson
Emerald Reporter
Students for a Progressive
Agenda endorsed the Karen
Gaffney/Steve Hoyt presidential
ticket on Friday after some
debate within the endorsement
committee.
‘‘We feel that they will ad
vance the philosophical and
political aims of SPA,'' SPA
spokesman Steve Nelson said.
Those aims include ‘‘student
empowerment,” or encourag
ing students to take an active
part in University government
by giving input to the
legislature, Nelson said.
However, the endorsement
was not reached easily by all the
members of the endorsement
committee.
In the process of endorsing a
candidate, the seven-member
SPA endorsement committee
interviewed the applicants and,
after two deadlocked meetings,
reached a consensus on who
would receive the endorsement.
“This nomination is the most
unique we’ve had,” said SPA
endorsement committee
Turn to SPA, Page 6
uix supports uorary work
in pre-election statements
By Bryan Houston
Emerald Reporter
Democratic State Rep. David
Dix announced Friday his plans
for re-election and said he
would put foremost improving
the University library and freez
ing property taxes for low
income senior citizens if re
elected.
Dix serves District 41. which
includes precincts surrounding
the University, the Ferry Street
bridge area, part of the
Whiteaker neighborhood, the
city of Coburg and the Gateway
area of Springfield.
Dix, :t(), is co-owner of a
Eugene public relations firm.
Republican Jack Roberts will
challenge Dix in the May 17
election.
The freshman legislator said
that his first priority will be to
push for funding in the State
Legislature for the University's
main library to become a
research facility.
Dix said that the $24 million
cost of the expansion would in
clude $9-$10 million in private
funds, and that the remaining
$14-$15 million could come
from the state, although he did
not specify the exact form of
funding.
The second priority, Dix said,
is a property tax freeze for
senior citizens with low
incomes.
The plan states that for those
who retire at age 62 or 65 with
an annual income of $22,500 or
less, the amount they were pay
ing in property taxes at the time
they retired will not rise. The
state will pick up the 6 percent
annual increase.
Dix said this will be a $7
million to $8 million dollar
program.
Dix's third priority is
developing proposals to fight
crime in the state of Oregon, he
said. His plan is to start with
troubled juveniles, counseling
those who have been abused
and making sure they graduate
from high school. “McLaren
isn’t the answer," he said.
Dix also said that he supports
Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's pro
posals announced last Thursday
to spend $11.1) million on addi
tional prison beds and other ex
periments, but he called the
proposals just a "short-term
solution" to the problem.
"This is a nightmare that's
been ignored for eight years
before Noil Goldschmidt ever
took office,” Mix said.
Dix’s fourth priority will bo to
address the state's mental
health problem, he said. This
would be a $15 million pro
gram, financed at the state
level, to increase bed space at
the state's mental institutions
for patients who are involun
tarily committed.
It would also allow patients to
remain at mental institutions so
they will not be forced to live on
the streets. "It’s not fair to make
someone sleep out in the rain,"
he said.
As his fifth priority. Dix an
nounced that he would like to
try to make Eugene into a
"capital for amateur athletics.''
This would include trying to get
funding for a dome over Autzen
Stadium for attracting the
World Track and Field Meet
and possibly ice skating, basket
ball and conventions, "not just
a cover for five football games a
Turn to Dix, Page 3