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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 1995)
VIEWPOINTS EDITORIALS, OPINIONS, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Most world leaders need better safety nets ■ OUR OPINION: Protect ' of high-level officials is vital to global and national security Americans wore rer »?nlly horrified when a 25-yoar-old Jewish law student was able to walk up and fin* point blank .it Israeli Prime Minis ter Yitzak Kabul as the leader was having a peace rally in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Nov.<! Many Americans remem ber where they were and what they were doing when John Hinckley jr. nearly suc ceeded in taking Ronald Reagan's life as the former president was leaving a Washington. DC., hotel in the early '80s. Incredibly, news footage from that assassination attempt actual ly shows Hinckley's arm and hand coming up with the pistol and firing the shots Almost two gene! ,i! jails have gone by since John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in his personal limousine as the presidential motorcade made its way through down town Dallas. Texas Again, thousands of Amerii an citi zens remember exactly where they were, what time of day it was. and what they were doing as the president died on that fateful day. Perhaps one reason why so many Americans still remember the way Kennedy died, the way Reagan nearly died, and the way Rabin lost his life, is that we don't exper t world leaders to fall victim to the same random violence that takes the lives of so many "regular" human beings every day. We just don't think our leaders are as vulnerable as other people. Americans am used to being the global loaders in high-tech areas such as space travel and "spying an the had guys." We have power ful satellites and an entire army of intelligence o|w*rn tives whose fob is to waU h out for America’s national security. The United States also has the CIA and FBI to help protect our leaders Most of us know just enough alxnit presidential sec urity to be mystified and baffled by it We might not know exactly how the presi dent and other important officials are protected, but we believe the protec lion proc i‘ss is carefully detailed and invariably carried out by highly trained professionals. Someone walk up and •'boo! President t lintou Not in America. Actually, it is possible in America. Earlier this year a man wearing a trench coal walked up to the iron fence sur rounding the White House, whipped out a machine gun. and started peppering the* presidential grounds with gunfire Before that incident, a man crashed his airplane into the White House lawn in a scenario that could have come right out of a Tom Clancy novel. Just when wo think our leaders and off it ials are safe, someone figures out some bizarre way to slip through the net of protection. When there is no net, as was the tragic case in Yitzak Rabin's assassination, we are shocked The movie In the Lino of tiro featured Clint Eastwood as a veteran bodyguard who was willing to "take a bul let" for the president. 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Nctvontbot 17, 1996 SUDDCNtY, I ONWRSTAND Tut APPEAL Of ASSAULT WEAPONS 7i Women’s studies: closed for discussion Several years ago, an article in ixinunen ion magazine argued that today's univer sity was not a fomm for ojwn debate, but rat! i ; ii s, -titiitiDi: that dee aids ,uiv mil t i I Il>\\ s Chi' author wrote "jModem MliTi inodermn s! partisans have lit Ho sympathy either with open discourse or with analytic pro i odurvs that fail to guarantetf desired conclusions " no, mere is no secret society of tenured, totalitarian teachers waiting to indoctrinate young minds And yet, fur all of the courses at the University that attempt to promote freedom of expression and respect for opposing views, there are # few sad dening exceptions Nomi Pearce's Women’s Studies 101 class should be put at the top of this list All of her students give Pearce high marks for her exposition on issues, such as the societal devaluation of women. However, when the topic of abortion comes up, many women believe that Pearce shifts from instructor to advocate These women fee! that Pearce has ignored classroom pluralism in her mistaken assumption that the terms "feminism" and "pro-choice" are synonymous The result has been the marginalization of all students who do not adhere to Pearce's simplis tic classroom position on abortion. These people range in beliefs from pro-choice to pro-life, including one student who has had an abortion. Their objections stem from a slide show pre sentation given by All Women's Health Services several weeks ago. In attempting to achieve its goal of "demystify ing women's bodies," the presentation instructs its viewers on giving cervical self-exams, illus trates menstruation and discusses the wide range of pubic hair patterns. One frame promises to provide a "new view of the clitoris." and then shows a woman masturbating to the [mint of ch loral erection. No. these weren't the objectionable pieces However, once the topic of abortion was addressed, the presentation was no longer con cerned with "demystifying women's bodies." Instead, it insulted women's minds. After watching the presentation, one would think abortion is the easiest operation known to woman. The narrator refers to abortion as a "come-and go procedure." The viewer is told that most abor tions take only three to five minutes and that All Women's Health Services knows the "truth" almut abortion. All Women's Health Services and Pearce s ver sion of this abortion “truth" is illuminated by one of the presentation's last slides. A thin, beautiful woman is seen smiling with clean, white teeth. With every blond hair in place, the Barbie Doll waves to the camera as she exits the abortion clinic. The viewer is told that this woman has had an abortion just moments before. I his is the only picture of any post-abort ion woman. This propagandists caricature is as inisrepre senlative as it is destructive. No person, pro-choir e or pro-life, claims that abortion is an enjoyable experience. The depic tion of the abortion procedure as being equiva lent to a three-to-five-minute dental cleaning simply does not reflect the reality of struggle that '<) many women endure betore and after the pro cedure, Pearce betrays Iter students in attempting to sell them a smiling Barbie that demeans women in the most insidious of ways. In addition to only inviting the abortion clinic for this presentation, Pearce has assigned several pro-choice readings in class, one of which argues that abortion is equivalent to any other form of birth control. Meanwhile, there nave been no pro-life readings, and Pearce has rejected the request of one student to invite a mainstream rignt-to-life group to offer an alternative perspec tive. During our interview, Pearce said, "I don't think a balance is what I was looking for." It is this form of pedagogy that subverts the entire education process Certainly every class will lie structuriKl around a professor's ideology. But there must always lx> a genuine attempt on the part of the instructor to provide a range of perspectives in class Stating one’s opinion and then providing bal ancing ideologies is one thing; silencing all views that differ from the instructor’s, while con ducting a pro-choice rally in class is quite anoth er. The danger in Pearce's advocacy is manifest in the silence it creates The notion that abortion is a "come-and-go procedure" was heard. The voic es of women who require many hours of post abortion counseling were silenced. Barbie was heard. Complexity was silenced. All Women's Health Services was heard. Fem inists for Life was silenced. It's ironic that the women's studies depart ment has worked so hard to create this silence, when soldiers for the women's movement have fought so many years to give women a voice. The instructors for next term's 101 classes are Lisa Albrich, Lisa Bornstein, Sheila Page Edwards and, of course. Nomi Pearce. If you are considering taking the course, cell these women and ask them if they plan to invite All Women's Health Services Ask them if other perspectives will lie invited, studied and respected. Remind them that marginalizing students for the indoctrination of their agendas is destructive Remind them that smiling. Abortion Barbie Dolls insult and demean women just as much as their Mattel counterparts. Remind them that propaganda never empow ers. Keith Cunningham, a senior majoring in English, is o columnist for the Emerald.
