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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 1993)
EDITORIAL Supercollider tunnel has been sealed up The estimated $5.5 billion project that has turned into an $8 billion. 54 mile tunnel is dead. The supercollider project that has been in the works since 1983 was voted out by Congress. For many they say. it is a sad day in sci ence. Republican Jake Pickle, D-Texas. said,"The people who killed the collider are worse than the people who killed Santa Claus." Sania Claus seems to have been missing his rounds for quite some time now. Actually, there has never really boon a Santa Claus, as far as politics is concerned. Hope fully, that won’t come as a shock to Pickle. There is no super collider either. Pick le. equating the death of the project with the death of Santa Claus, should pro vide a little insight to the significance of the project, that was to far surpass its original cost. Its estimated completion date of 1999 is as far off as the project itself. The 54 mile tunnel was to be used to study the origin of matter. The 54-mile tunnel was to be used to study the origin of matter. This would be accomplished by forcing pro ton beams to collide in the tunnel. Projects like those are of the upmost interest and importance in the science community, but an estimated one billion dollars will be spent on the shut down. This billion dollars will enable the project to slay intact for possible future use, when Santa Claus is of significance important in the manage ment of this country. This is moro than Congress merely flexing its political muscles. It is a great use of political power to scrap a project that should have been scrapped many years ago. The origin of matter seems of little importance at the pre sent or even the future when compared to the trillion dollar debt that the US has acquired. Cuts have to be made, and finally, it seems a clean cut was made. If deficit reduction is going to happen, then continuing to deduct from projects like the supercollider is a wise choice. Science is a long term investment. Fortunately it is not long enough to see the light at the end of this 54 mile tunnel. This recent decision will probably make the future dismissal of funds to science related projects somewhat more difficult. The supercollider will no doubt be used as an example of the management of science-related money. Maybe that will be in the benefit of everyone, and future projects will be required to be scrupulously researched prior to the disposal of funds, at least to the point of seeing a trace of light at the end of the tunnel before digging at the beginning. Science is an endless quest of money reauests to fund longterm projects to answer, in this case, the unanswer able. Science does hold many of the necessary keys to tho future. If the supercollider project would have beon one of these keys, then the funding would have remained. Oregon Doily Emerald PO DO* j»v. f uC.l M om The Oegon OaHy F m*r*kj m pubfeshed darty Monday through F riday during the *choo< year and Tuesday and Thursday dur>ng the lumimt by the Or agon Oa»*y Emerald Publishing Co . Inc . at me Urwversrty of Oregon, Eugene. Oregon The fcmeratof operates independently of me University with offices af Smte 300 of me Ert) Memorial Un*on and «s a member of me Associated Press The fmeraW <s private properly The unlawful removal or use o* papers <s prosecutable by 'aw Editor-In-Chief; Jake Berg Managing Editor Editorial Editor Graphic • Editor Fraalanca Editor Caftey And&ffoo l)«v*d lhotn Jetl Pasiay Jefi Winter* Sport* Editor Editorial Editor Photo Editor Supptamant* Editor Slovo Mims Joff Pckhttfdl Anthony Ftynoy K»Fy Sol o Night Editor Dave Charbonneau Associate Editors: Scot Clemen*. Sfudenf 6overnment/Acf'v'f<*s. Rebecca Marntt. Community. R ves Janssen. Hyh+f £\Acaf«on Apynrnijtfrafon News Staff l.eah Bower Dave Charbonneau. Meg Dedoipb Amy Davenport. Ma a F.eWs Mart»n Ftsber Swab Henderson. A/A MesseWaht, Edward K»opfen*te«n. Ytn Lang leong. Tr«it| Noei. Eivsabeih Reenstjema. l»a Saioccia. Scot* Simonson, Stephanie Sisson. Sosanne Steffens, Jui«e Swenten. Mc*e*e Thompeon-Agmar, Kev»n Tripp. Amy Van Tuyt, Darnel West Oenerai Manager: Judy Rwdi Advertising Director: M*ir* Water Production NUoager M£n«*e mom Advertising: Frehm* Ben Lyndtey Bernstein, Sub*r Outla. N»coM» Me'/mof*. i^esa Isabelle. J&rnmy Mason. Mchaei M.i*n©. Van V O'Bryan II. Rachael TfuM. Ketsey Wake*. ArtgMO Classified: Becky M*wchani, U»vvr Vclcv Me a. S*m T/e Tec* Distribution ^Bandon Anderson. John Long. Graham Sampson Business: Kathy Carbone. Supermo* Judy Connery Production Dee MeCobb Products Coortfnetor Shown* Abe-*; Greg Desmond. Ta,a GfluiRney Bad Jons Jennifer Roland. Natt TKmgvg<i, Clayton Vt*» Newsroom Bu»iness Office 346-5511 346-551? Display Adverting Classified Adverting 346-3712 346-4343 C-^rg, j <£>mi rwf*4*u>«f~i « & I >v% rst* ' • 0^ ✓ >♦»' w I- \><'c •&}f ¥ OPINION Seats sold; students left in cold Scot Clemens 1 don‘I like football. Not that I'm one of thorn nam by pambys who deplore the vio lence and seemingly incompre hensible pointlessness of the game. It just never caught my fancy. Yet 1 realize that I stand in the minority, and therefore don't mind the fact that I pay for other people's football games through my student fees. For those who don't know (or never bothered to think about it), the ASUO — via the IFC — pays the athletic department about a million bucks a year so that students (an get into athletic events free, or nearly free. This system hos worked for many years Indeed, it worked well until about two weeks ago. The I)ui:ks ware to play USC that weekend. Yet, Coach Brooks had some other things on his mind. According to the min utes of the October 4. athletic department meeting, "There was a discussion about selling section five as reserved seating for the USC game if student tick et sales do not improve." Ah, section five. This is the section nestled up in the South west comer of Autzen Stadium. (It’s a lovely view of. . ., well, the corner of the football field. And some football players, when ever they happen to be in view. In sports parlance, these seats suck.) It is also the station the ASUO — again, via the IFC — tried to give back to the Ath letic Department last year. However, the Athlete Depart ment didn't want them back (<.,in you blame them?). Accord ing to associate athletic director Sandy Walton there wero two reasons they didn't want the seats back. First, they felt that students would lose out if they sold the seats back. Once you sell a section back to the depart ment they don't often give them back evidently. (Thank God we have the athletic department to stop the IFC from making dumb decisions! If it weren't for the department the IFC would have been a mess for the last few years.) Second, the athletic depart ment is not dumb, they know they can't sell these tickets to anyone but the most desperate football fans. So a deal was struck and the students had section five to themselves, almost. Why almost? Because according to the con tract the department can sell tickets in the student section if students don't pick up their tick ets by the Thursday l>efore game day. In the past this meant that general admission seats were sold in the student section. But on the fateful day of October 7. Brooks decided to sell them reserve. Once this decision was made, the entire section became reserved and the prices for all the seats went up to $19. When game day finally arrived, a large group of students waited to purchase tickets (granted the smart ones bought theirs before Thursday and were already sitting down). That day. over a hundred students were turned away (The ASUO esti mates it was between 300-400, the department says 100-200). The estimates notwithstanding. SON reserve tickets were sold in section five, leaving over four hundred seats unoccupied. (Yes. you number-crunchers, there was room enough for all.) U<t's do a little math: nineteen dollars, times 50H seats, equals $9,662, Two dollars (the price of student admission), times 200 (a good average), equals $400. Fif teen dollars (general admission price), times 5UH, equals $7620. It seems it is much more lucrative to turn the section into reserve than to leave it general admission. So what did we learn? The athletic department would rather sell few seats to fetch a higher price regardless of the spirit of the agreement with the student body. We also learned the department doesn't mind selling the students seats, then kicking them out. then re selling the seats for a higher price. ^ Now — I want to make this perfectly clear — the athletic department did not violate the contract. It is allowed to sell those tickets as reserve. The problem is that it did not warn students, nor was it done in a spirit that many people appre ciated. According to ASUO President Eric Bowen, he called the department when he got word of the plan the week before the gume. He then called to confirm them and was told that section five would not be sold as reserve. Yet. on Thursday the department phoned him saying that, sure enough, the plans were back on. Bowen, not a hot head. was miffed. Brooks did apologize for send ing the students away and said it would never happen again. He also stated that he was respond ing to a funding problem. Cod knows the department has bills to pay. but perhaps in the future they will see to it that students don't lose out on a deal they should be able to count on. Bowen, however, would be well advised to look over the contract when it is up for renew al and recommend that the IFC get rid of the loophole and any other clause that may be mis used. Perhaps the ASUO can even unload section five. Scot Clemens is an associate editor for- the Emerald.