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EDITOR IN CHIEF
Sarah Kickler
EDITORIAL EDITOR
Mike Schmierbach
NIGHT EDITOR
Nicole Krueger
The years have put
the youthful desire to
‘de-school' with a book
and a beer in perspective
spent most of my senior year
as an undergraduate at some
comer spot in the library, stu
-JL. dent union or against a log on
the beach, in late spring, reading
Thomas Wolfe. I was not taking a
literature class on Wolfe or South
ern writers, but I was very tired of
everything about school after 16
unrelenting years of it.
I yearned to spring from what
seemed to me to be the holding
tank of America’s middle class
plus youth. I wanted to move and
breathe in the real world, to be an
equal with it. I had ripened all I
could in the schooling environ
and the time had come to “de
school” myself and the rest of so
ciety, which I sensed would be a
lifetime task.
After classes, my friends and I
would go to bars that were indif
ferent to our IDs. Languishing in
that particular kind of rigor mor
tis due to the insularity and ho
mogeneity of life at a small, pri
vate university under flat gray
Northwest skies in a city on the F
list, I would leave our table after
throwing down a few beers and
move to a stool at the bar, situat
ing myself for conversations with
people who’d had experience
with life, at least the kind I hadn’t
and maybe wouldn’t.
One hairy, beet-faced regular
read me his only poem on the
back of a dirty pink invoice from
“Larry’s and Gary’s Automotive”
that he delicately pulled from his
billfold whenever he saw me.
Each of his readings revealed a
new profundity about love and
loneliness with each pitcher of
Miller drained. It was easy, then,
to blame life for having failed him
and to commiserate by sharing
smokes and brew. Once I invited
some of the “folks” back to school
and gave them a tour of my pro
gressive sorority. They had never
had a reason to be on campus.
Hannah
Dillon
tourists asked
me what hap
pened when
“the sisters” got
into fights with
one another. It
doesn’t happen,
I said, but if it
did, we’d re
solve it by talk
mg it out. iNO,
she said. I mean fighting, like
with fists and feet?
I turned most of my back on my
required studies the deeper I got
into Wolfe and the closer gradua
tion got. 1 could no longer force a
devotion to the social sciences
and urban education. I was one of
a very small group of students
who were majors of a radical new
program on campus. We consid
ered ourselves the avant garde of
cultural and educational change.
“Cultural pluralism” was our ban
ner. Systems analysis and man
agement for institutional and so
cietal transformation was our
objective, gestalt the process.
We were cautioned by our pro
fessors that the concept of cultur
al pluralism alone would take
about 20 years to work its way
into the consciousness and ver
nacular of the mainstream. We
couldn’t wait that long and be
lieved, despite evidence other
wise, that the majority of Ameri
cans would be receptive to our
unraveling of the myth of the
“melting pot” perpetrated by the
powers that were and still are. Af
ter all, we were a society whose
cultural pluralism had always
been, had resisted the forces of
white-washing and needed to be
respected, nurtured, promulgated
and rejoiced in by all. We felt
commissioned to make that hap
pen and confident it would.
But then there was Wolfe’s
opus “Of Time and the River” and
his protagonist Eugene Gant’s
splendent soul, his restless wan
derings and insatiable hunger for
life. His poetic sensibilities were
honed in the sore of youth’s soli
tary receptivity to life that is both
intoxicatingly lovely and exquis
itely cruel.
Eugene was trying to make
sense of it all while trying to free
himself from his compulsion to
and repulsion by his idiosyncrat
ic family in the Carolinas. I was
Gant and had to find out more
about the man who had exuber
antly authored me. I read every
biography on Wolfe, which lead
to biographies on Maxwell
Perkins, his saintly editor at
Scribners.
Wolfe would stand and scrawl
in pencil on mounds of paper on
the top of his refrigerator, some
times all night. Perkins would
come to his office in the morning
and there were Wolfe’s worn box
es wound with rubber bands con
taining his mad night’s work. I
was Thomas Wolfe. And so I was
too busy and preoccupied to tend
to the last of my formal studies.
The textbooks for my classes nev
er engaged that deep-down place
that sought corners to read in un
til my eyes ached, dinner was
missed and my heart raw from
resonation.
I haven’t been able to read
Wolfe since, but it was because of
his fictional Eugene Gant that I
applied to graduate school at the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill where he had attend
ed. After my degree, I would
teach literature, I thought. It
would be the means through
which I would give air to voices
outside the canon that had not
been heard. Why had I discovered
the African Writers Series while
in Africa? Where had it been?
Where had I been? How was it
that we had never met until after
my schooling? How many others
hadn’t we had the opportunity to
meet? There was so much to recti
fy
Years later I sit in Knight Li
brary and listen to the Universi
ty’s own poet read from his new
book “set in a Deep South river
port.” The sounds of his craft and
their richly textured evocations
touch that deep-down place
which has now aged, smells of
cedar and camphor, and has be
come quietly receptive to and re
ligiously respectful of exceptional
writing. Robert Hill Long’s “The
Effigies” is exceptionally fine,
compelling me, once again, to
seek a comfortable comer.
But no longer do I need to be
the writer or protagonist. No
longer do I actively seek experi
ences. They arrive in plenitude of
their own accord. No longer do I
believe that I can help to make the
world a more just and compas
sionate place within a decade by
my righteous will and dedicated
toil in nonprofit organizations.
And no longer do 1 desire to flee
from academia by indulging my
rebellion and stomping assertion
in seedy taverns among broken
lives or in lyrical volumes tran
scending curricula. “A stone, a
leaf, a door.” Oh, (happily) lost
youth and its savory-sweet effi
gies!
Hannah Dillon is a columnistfor
the Emerald. Her ivork appears on
alternate Fridays. Her views do not
necessarily represent those of the
newspaper.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!
OSPIRG is vital
The Oregon Student Public Interest Research
Group is one of the most vital programs that we
have on campus. OSPIRG is the most democra
tic, student-oriented and effective organization
that the Oregon student movement has seen.
Every other year, OSPIRG goes to the ballot to
have students approve their funding allocation
from our student fees. Instead of having the
ASUO president or Student Senate put them
on the ballot as most groups do, they gather
thousands of signatures to be put on the ballot.
This year they gathered over 3,500 signatures.
At the same time, there is no other organiza
tion in this state that has worked harder to pro
tect students’ rights to control student fees. The
anti-student rights movement that wants to see
OSPIRG removed is the same anti-student
rights movement that believes that students
should not have control over student fees. We
have it good here in Oregon; the ability to con
trol our student fees sets us apart from the rest
of the nation. OSPIRG has been instrumental in
protecting that student control.
Join me in sending a clear message to the
anti-student rights movement on this campus
that we want student control of student fees.
Vote yes on the OSPIRG ballot measure.
Bill Miner
ASUO President
One candidate cares
It is unfortunately seldom in people’s lives
that they encounter a person who consistently
acts out of nothing more than caring. A person
who, with no side agenda, will help others for
the sake of being helpful and not for their own
personal gain.
When one recognizes this in such a person,
I feel that it is important to give them the atten
tion they deserve and learn from their good
will. If we all spent more time studying such
people, I believe that this giving perception
could improve our lives and those around us.
I write this letter because I recognize that one
of the candidates for ASUO president is such a
person. I am excited to see this type of person
have the opportunity to help an entire univer
sity population. She is truly the most caring
person I have ever met, and I hope to see her in
the position to help as many people as possi
ble.
Max LeeKwai
Business/Japanese
Restore credit unions
On Thursday, March 26, the House Banking
Committee passed HR 1151. It now goes to the
full U.S. House of Representatives for a vote.
Consumers need HR 1151 to preserve their
right to choose a credit union. Since 1982, cred
it unions have been allowed by regulators to
add groups of people who were not in the origi
nal membership group. These groups include
many businesses too small to start their own
credit union or could not provide the services
demanded by consumers today. As of March
1996, there were 888,000 Oregonians working
for firms of fewer than 500 employees. The
Supreme Court took away the credit-union op
tion for these Oregonians. HR 1151 will restore
the right for 888,000 Oregon consumers to
again choose a credit union for financial ser
vices. Take the time to make a difference. Write
your representative and senators today. Urge
passage of HR 1151 to preserve the right to
choose; 888,000 Oregonians will thank you.
Gordon P. Hoerauf
President/CEO
U-Lane-0 Credit Union