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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 29, 1998)
CONTACTING US I—i NEWSROOM: (541)346-5511 E-MAIL: ode@oregon. uoregon.edu ADDRESS: Oregon Daily Emerald P.0. BOX 3159 Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: www.uoregon.edu/~ode Perspectives EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Holly Sanders Senseless squabbling won’t save schools A GOP proposal for tax-free savings accounts provides campaign rhetoric but no solution Have you every willingly engaged in a discussion with someone who you and your friends secretly despise? Stop hedging and just admit that you have and that you know ex actly why you did it. One of the great traditions of human interaction is the superfluous conversation. Even if you don’t use that particular termi nology, you know what I mean. They’re those con versations that you enter into only be cause you know you’ll be able to build a much better conversation around them later. No where is su perfluous conversa OPINION Kameron Cole iiuu inuie uuujipiuuuusiy pracucea than in American electoral politics. As a case in point, witness the cur rent congressional flap about educa tion. Last Thursday, the Senate passed a Republican-backed bill that would allow the establishment of special ac counts for education. The interest on these accounts would be tax free and the money could be applied to pri vate-school tuition. President Clin ton, whose own set of education pro posals was rejected during the same session, has vowed to veto the bill. It would be easy to lump this de bate in with the rest of the verbal noise that spews forth from the floor of Congress, but unlike the majority of political squabbles the govern ment engages in, this one is actually about an important issue. In fact, education is arguably the most important issue facing Ameri cans today. Yet there has been a con sistent pattern of failure on the part of the government to address the problems facing education in any way that comes close to being ra tional or effective. The schools that are worst off in terms of resources tend to serve the people who are worst off in terms of resources. Yet the backers of this bill would have us believe that it’s feasi ble for these people to find $2,000 a year to pay for private schools. This begs the obvious question: If families whose children are languishing in substandard, often dangerous schools could afford to set aside such a sum, wouldn’t their children al ready be in private schools? The ob vious answer: Yes. Indeed, the fami lies who would reap the most benefit if this bill were actually enacted would be the ones who already have children enrolled in private schools. That having been said, let’s get to the real issue. Congress’ plan is most notable for its complete and utter failure to apply the most elementary principles of logic. And the Republi cans themselves are fully aware of this. You can tell they are aware by looking at some of the embarrassing ly thin arguments that have been used to support their proposal. These include the assertion that schools are subject to market forces; therefore, the bill would force public schools to improve by introducing the element of competition. Yes, the Republicans know that their attempt to privatize education is terminally flawed, and they know that it’s fated for a quick presidential veto. Moreover, they know that it wouldn’t work anyway. And you know what else? They don’t care. They don’t care because this whole debate has been an exercise in super fluous conversation — a way to give them something to talk about when election season rolls around. To be fair, it should be noted that Democrats have engaged in their fair share of bombast as well. Even as re cent studies point to an increase in the number of American schools that are literally falling down around students and teachers, A1 Gore is vowing to wire them all to the Internet. Fixing education is going to be hard. It’s going to take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. And it needs to start now. If America waits until the elections have been decided and the volume of political posturing has died down to consider our options, there won’t be any left. Katneron Cole is a columnist for the Emerald. Her work appears on alter nate Wednesdays. Her views do not necessarily represent those of the news paper. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Control spending If successful, the McCartan cam paign for ASUO Executive would have set a benchmark for-.future hopefuls as to how much money should be spent in pursuit of a de sired outcome. There is some irony in the observation that the campaign that promised so many changes on campus is resorting to the standard tactic that exists in politics today — he who spends the most money wins. In defense of McCartan, I think she was a worthy candidate and had plenty of excellent references. Her grades and accomplishments can speak for themselves, and being a part of all those committees presum ably means that she cares about what happens on campus. However, I see no defense for the manner in which the McCartan campaign was run. Those involved obviously know how people function and felt that by spending money on two $500 full-page Emerald advertise ments plus five dozen T-shirts and a handful of other creative items, their shot at winning the election would greatly increase. While some of the campaign methods were inventive and amusing, the level the promo tion obtained was stupefying. In my opinion, calling a private residence to request a vote is unacceptable. Currently there is no limit on the amount of money a student can spend on his or her campaign. Per haps this is because the McCartan campaign was the first one to chal lenge the ethical limits of the influ ence of money on the elections. As a result, I see two paths that the stu dents here can take. The first is to ig nore what happened this year and allow future classes to use this elec tion as a reference for what must be done in order to win. The other is to place a limit on the amount of mon ey that can be spent during a cam paign in order to preserve any of the integrity found in student govern ment — integrity that appears to be lost in state and federal politics. RyanTroseth Economics Unethical funding Both your columnists Jeff Shaw and Hannah Dillon reliably raise crucial issues and make the intelli gent reader stop and think. They are fine journalists and their columns alone make the ODE worth reading. Shaw’s latest piece. “Dealing with the Defense Department,” (ODE, April 22) was a call to the two-edged sword of contemplation and action if ever there was one. Shaw shared some very troubling quotations of justification: “The reason I have no problem taking military money is because they let me do the science,” says Matt Ginsberg, founder of the Computational Intelligence Re search Lab. For a moment I thought I was reading Dr. Josef Mengele ex plaining why he was happy to do Herr Hitler’s research. Oh, some will say, that was a different time and place. Yet if you stand in the shoes of Iraqi children or balance on the crutches of the countless land-mine casualties around the world — all courtesy of U.S. military-funded “science” — you’ll get a pretty good idea of what it may have been like to be taking a ride in the Nazi cattle cars. But why stop with Pentagon mon ey? By Ginsberg’s amoral logic, if the Unabomber could have kicked in enough money, campus labs would have helped him design more effi cient “devices.” Hold on, this ques tion was answered for us by David Etherington, CIRL director. “The federal government is far more able to provide research funding than, say, Federal Express would be.” Well, it may look like easy money, but guess whose money it is? The feds being so willing to throw our hard-earned tax dollars at scientists without ethics or principles some how does not make it easier for me to accept. How about the rest of you, University community? Vip Short Eugene Democracy wins In 1971, OSPIRG was created to challenge the status quo. Since then, unfortunately, they have become the status quo through monopolistic politics to the tune of $147,000. Therefore, I would like to congratu late my fellow University students for courageously accepting the chal lenge set forth by the Honesty Cam paign, for taking control of our inci dental burden and voting no on OSPIRG. Democracy is victorious to day. Will Arnold Residence Hall Association ASPAC Representative CORRECTION In the story "OPS officer files discrimina tion suit” (ODE, April 28), it should have read the investi gator “inter viewed 16 indi viduals and received exten sive written in formation from one former em ployee of OPS” and found that Williams was not promoted due to his per formance. In ad dition, the speaker in the pull quote on Page 1 should have been iden tified as James Williams. The Emerald regrets the er rors.
