CONTACTING US NEWSROOM: AODRESS. (541)346-5511 Oregon Daily Emerald E-MAIL P.O.BOX 3159 ode@oregon. uoregon.edu Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: www uoregon.edu/~ode Perspectives EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Sarah Kickler The twelve days of finals AN EMERALD EDITORIAL As we head into finals, our stress level is reaching critical mass. Therefore, we present the 12 days of finals— 12 things we would like to receive for Finals Week Illustrations by: CHRIS HUTCHINSON 7 • The Rolling Stones at Autzen: After watching two Rose Garden shows sell out in mere minutes, we cannot help but wonder if the football team could have foregone that one day of practice to grant us a shot at seeing “the world’s greatest rock and roll band.” Then again, that lost day might have kept the team from fulfilling its muscular destiny in Las Vegas. -• PARKING FOR 217685 IMore comfortable • classroom chairs: Most of the time, the rigid seats in many of the University’s lecture halls and class rooms simply keep us from napping. Dur ing Finals Week, however, they leave us badly in need of physical therapy after con torting ourselves to the chairs’ complex forms to write out essays and fill in bubble sheets. 2. A truly dead week: Any Dead Week that requires attending class and writing papers isn’t a dead week at all. We need what other schools have: a period of time to read and study, free of classroom pressures. 3 • A library that’s open 24 hours: Maybe this is too much to ask during the whole year, but at least during finals it seems unreasonable for students to have to seek out coffee shops and dorm lounges to study in. Sometimes we need the smell of books to inspire us in our studies. fr • More food choices: The EMU has the Skylight Cafd and the residence halls have their cafeterias, but the fact is there aren’t many places to look for food on campus and those places just don’t offer that much variety. Good curry would be a good start. 5. Sleep: What more need we say? Sleep depriva tion is the college student’s favorite hallu cinatory experience, but during Finals Week those bags under the eyes can make it hard to read our exams. 6. A longer winter break: Some of us nave been going since last winter break, having endured summer term. Frankly, three weeks isn’t going to cut it; we have family to visit, friends to hang out with and sleep to catch up on. 8 • Warm classrooms: For some reason, perhaps a horrible ge netic experiment, many people seem to think that 40 degrees is an appropriate tem perature for classrooms. They turn the heat off and leave the windows wide open. To compensate, we bundle ourselves in sweaters and scarves, only to stumble upon the one classroom where the heat has been cranked up to 90 degrees. 0 • Snow: Sure, it might make getting to class take a little longer, but somehow we miss the white stuff. Maybe it’s global warming, maybe it’s El Nino, maybe it’s just Eugene’s climate, but a fluffy blanket of white has been noticeably absent from campus for a while now. i Unreserved parking spots: b tired of looking for parking on 10. We’re tired of looking Tor parking on campus and finding the athletic depart ment has claimed every spot near the EMU the day before a basketball game. The park ing shortage is bad enough without pander ing to athletics personnel at the cost of oth er events and students. 11 • Health: Whoever suggested viruses are the sim plest life form was clearly wrong. We can cruise through a term without suffering for our physical sins, only to fall victim to the worst cold of our lives on that weekend we desperately need to catch up on our read ing and prepare for our exam. Obviously, these viruses are plotting against us. One more week without the sniffles. That’s all we ask. 12 • A plane ticket out of town: Eugene is a lovely town, don’t get us wrong. But right now, if we have to endure one more rain drop, pass by one more hip pie or witness one more tear gassing, we’re going to start a riot ourselves. What we most need during Finals Week is for finals to be over. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Ineffective journalism In order for journalism to be an effective tool, one must first make an attempt to get the facts before displaying them to the public. Ed itorial editor Mike Schmierbach proved himself to be unable to use journalism effectively as he shows his ignorance of the issue he is addressing in his column on the McCaughey septuplets. In his column, Schmierbach stated that all of the babies were in critical condition. If he had been taking note of the true story, he would have known that in fact, only one of the babies (the last one) had ever been in critical condition and that was only for a few hours. They were placed in serious condition because of their premature birth, not because there were so many of them. Another chord was struck when Schmierbach took to dictat ing that the McCaugheys were "foolish” by not choosing to se lectively abort, for various rea sons. Sure, the McCaugheys may not have been completely pre pared for seven newborn babies when they began with the fertility treatments, but there are certain factors that help to indicate the probability of multiple births in women using the treatment. These indicators were not present in this case. Thus, they took the risk and ended up with seven and they chose to keep those seven. This leads into my next point. What does it matter whether a family had seven children one by one or all at once? It could be ar gued that in fact the foolish ones were the ones who had them in dividually and ended up on wel fare because they had the choice to stop at any point. When the choice came up for the McCaugh eys, it became a choice of person al morals rather than just stop re producing. Another point that needs to be addressed is the issue of “adding to overpopulation.” First, the ma jor problem with overpopulation is population density. You aren’t going to convince a million New Yorkers, living where it is over crowded, to pack up and move to Nebraska, where it is wide open. So New York will remain dense ly populated and Nebraska less so. Have you ever been to Iowa? I don’t think seven new children will be a real problem. Finally, one of the reasons that the McCaugheys did in fact re ceive so much media attention is for the simple fact that they did n t seek it beforehand. They man aged, amazingly, to keep this knowledge of their risky pregnan cy hushed and out of the media’s prying hands. When did you learn that this birth was going to take place? Not only was this a medical breakthrough, but almost a media one as well. Chalk one up for privacy of the people. Your cachet of misinformation amazes me. The best columnists are the ones who are informed of their topics before the begin to pass on their opinions of the issue. Ignorance by itself is not a good thing but when added with the ar rogance that Schmierbach por trayed it is downright abhorrent. I agree that something needs to be done about families on welfare. I agree that attention should be given to the issue of overpopula tion. I agree that more research and attention should be given to fertili ty treatments, as well. But, Schmierbach, your good in tentions have been overshadowed by your ignorance. The media is a circus that you chose to be a part of, now don’t going playing with the untamed lions. Jenel J. Stelton-Holtmeier Journalism