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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 1994)
EDITORIAL School board says no where will they go Eugene has a reputation in Oregon as being a friendly city. The Eugene School Board and citizens living around Civic Stadium have put that reputation in dan ger. Wednesday night the board voted five to one to accept the recommendation of Eugene .School Superintendent Margaret Nichols not to allow a homeless camp to be established at the bus bam near Civic Stadium. Nichols and neighbors cited the safety of students attending South Eugene High School as a major reason for the denial. One neighbor was quoted in Thursday's edition of The Register-Guard as saying that though she didn't want to "criminalize the homoless”there was no disputing "the use of alcohol and drugs is very well doc umented among the homeless." These residents have seen a few too many episodes of Cops. Drug use among high school student is very well documented, apparently these residents are under the Impression that without the car camp near the high school none of the students will use drugs. Wrong. There are probably u goon num ber of student there who have already tried drugs, and their experiments hap pened even though there was no homeless < ir camp near their school. Much of the testimony at Wednesday night's meet ing c ame from people who were at one time homeless or are currently homeless. The school board said no. I don*t personally see any reason to go back to them/ Rtchard Greene. member ot Shelter Work Group A former resident of the Centennial car camp was quoted in The Register-Guard as saying, "what I needed was a place I knew my wife and children would be safe while 1 looked for work/' A place where his wife and children would be safe, not a place where he could spend the day doped up on hero in. So where do the homeless go from here? At a news conference on Thursday Shelter Work Group announced plans to propose a winter car camp near Centennial Boulevard for the third year. The group also planned to examine using Armitage State Park as possible car camp site, and said it would keep looking at the bus barn us a possible site after it is vacated. Richard Greene, member of Shelter Work Group did not sound optimistic about the last option, “The school board said no. I don’t personally see any reason to go back to them." Where have compassion and empathy gone? The decision by the school board is just the latest exam ple of how extremely selfish people can be. This decision is just like people who advocate more and longer prison sentences but don't want prisons built near their homes, or people who claim that they are sympathetic to drug addicts but don’t favor residential treatment centers in their neighborhoods. There is a time to say not in my back yard: When a nuclear power plant wants to set up shop in you back yard it would be more than wise to say no because it has been proved that living next to a nuclear reactor pow er plant can cause harm to people, animals, and vegeta tion. But where you are saying no to ideas that could potentially benefit families and children or people who have been down on their luck because it may devalue your house or make you neighborhood look undesirable or because you fear something that has not been proved, that’s called paranoia. I ha Oragon daily Emarald » pubkyhad 3a*y Monday through Enday dunng lha tchooi yaar and Tuaaday and Thuraday during in# aummar by in# Oragon Daily Emarald f'utoaahmg Co Inc . al lha Unryara*y a) Oragon. Eugana. 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I HtUt THl Si&HJ ”'to stnAiws'itwr OPINION Everyone’s a lawyer, that’s okay I was breast fed by lustioe, and watnnd on the Uw I com*' from <i family of lawyers My mom is a lawyer. Mv pop is a lawyer They met on opposite sides of a divorce case, with my mom representing the woman, and my pop representing her estranged husband Mom won the case Pop won a new law partner and a girlfriend In a case of what fan only be I ailed poet ic justice, I think it's rather fitting that they are now in the process of a divorce. My sister is a lawyer. So is her husband They attended law school together and did really cute stuff like helped each oth er study for the fair exam Now my brother is vi< arlously getting into the act. and has announi «d his engagement to a wonderful woman. Her occupa tion? You guessed it So how have I been affected by this overabundance of esquires? For one thing, I can impress my friends by telling them some of their rights (You know, the stuff that police and landlords neglect to inform you of ) I also have a strong sense of what's fair and what’s not. When 1 was a wee four-year-old, my parents sent me to my room and told me to stay then*. Alter about thnte minutes, I flung the door open, thrust my hands onto my hips and told them 1 knew my rights. Attorneys are a strange breed. They don't like being called "sharks," or "ambulance chasers." Try it and watch them gel mad. They are also quite defensive if you say that their profession takes advantage of people (kind of like journalists!) Mom and pop used to work together in the same law office. I guess you could call it a "mom and pop" operation. Working there made for some interesting times. Especially when my mothers rich divorce clients would turn up their snobby noses at my pop's destitute criminal clients. Yep, mom helped break up marriages anil pop helpixi soften the jail sentences of crooks As i ^ LiaSauiccia you can probably tail, none of this has made me the least bit cynic til Working tit their office niHili* me realize just how tit the merry of lawyers people are It's as if mother Justice made up her own little language just so her lit tle cuddly counselors could always keep busy translating it for everyone else. One of the hardest things I hail to deal with as h child was that my pop's clients were sometimes child molesters, murderers and rapists (and even an occasional flasher) One morning I woke up to see him on the front page of the newspaper next to his child molester client. “Why do you have to defend these people?” I said in tears, l'hat’s when he taught me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. If you are in law school, you will probably learn it too. although it's so tmsit I suspect that it's the easiest to forget. "Lia." he said, "everybody accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. And every one. even the guilty ones, have the right to legal counsel.” When he put it that way, I could see that I had no busiturns assuming somebody is guilty without a fair trial. And in my everyday life, 1 guess it has influ enced me not to judge people before hearing their stury In jour nalism, that can make the differ ence between a catty, misin formed article and a realistic, compassionate one. I loved to watch Pop spellbind a courtroom and make the uptight prosecutor look dumb. Having a divorce lawyer for a mother can fa; a kick in the pants as well. I don't know many oth er people who joke about hand ing out their business cards at weddings The most important thing she taught me was that women could do anything. The second most important thing was that women who Is'lieve they can !>e anything (such as an attorney) get hassled a lot She told me stories about coming home from law school and bursting in tears as soon as she got in the door because she didn't want all the men and the one other woman in her class to see her cry. She cried because in those days, there weren't any sex ual harassment laws and her pro fessors thought nothing of asking her opinion about whether women who got raped deserved it or not. Yet if I wore to pick one skill, just one, that is the singlumost advantage to being raised by lawyers it is this; Arguing skills 1 don't always use them, espe cially if the argument is one not worth fighting But if I’m in the mood, or if I'm provoked, and ESPECIALLY if I'm talking to some jerk who thinks they are smarter than the whole rest of the world, and ESPECIALLY if thiil jerk is WRONG, then watch out I'll put them on the stand, make them squirm, and relish in it. So if I think I am such hot legal stuff, then why don't I go to law school, you may ask. The answer is this: I don't think I'm hot stuff. Like most other lawyers (and journalists), I just pretend. A career in the law just isn't for me Although I believe in justice and fairness, I couldn’t handle watching people being thwart ed from true Justice because of an ill-working justice system 1 couldn't handle the disappoint ments of losing someone’s case, of not doing enough to help someone. Besides, if I worked for the Law, l couldn’t break it as often. Lia Suk iccia is a community reporter for the Emerald.
