Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012, September 30, 1998, Page 10, Image 10

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Students allege discrimination
By TriciaSchwennesen
Oregon Daily Emerald
Two students filed a grievance
against the University Computing
Center and its assistant director
Joe St Sauver, alleging religious
discrimination.
Psychology major Kerry Delf
and anthropology major Craig
Hunt filed their complaint in late
August with the Office of Affirma
tive Action after the alt.paganism,
alt.satanism and the entire
alt.magick hierarchy newsgroups
were arbitrarily removed from
Usenet, the University server.
Newsgroups are on-line address
es where people can post messages
and exchange information.
"If we had all the religious
newsgroups or none of the reli
gious newsgroups, then this
wouldn’t be an issue,” Delf said.
"This is a state institution, and this
is illegal, unacceptable, and this is
unconstitutional. ”
Ken Lehrman, Office of Affirma
tive Action director, said that the
grievance is still under investiga
tion and that a report will be made
to the Affirmative Action Admin
istrative Council
with a recom
mendation of
how to remedy
the situation.
John Moseley,
provost and vice
president for aca
demic affairs, in
consultation with
University Presi
dent Dave Frohn
mayer, will de
cide within the
next 30 days
whether Delf and
Hunt were sub
ject to religious
discrimination.
"No decision
has been made
regarding the al
legations of reli
gious discrimi
nation,”
Lehrman said.
><
j The
vve are investigating in a thor
ough and complete manner.”
The University provides access
to more than 35,000 newsgroups,
but there are no formal guidelines
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about which newsgroups are
available, Computing Center di
rector Joanne Hugi said.
On any given day an unknown
number of other religious news
groups are available to anyone with
access to the University server.
“Formal guidelines probably
wouldn’t meet the needs of the
University because technology is
changing so quickly,” Hugi said.
Newsgroups are added and
deleted on a daily basis. The Uni
versity network would operate
more slowly if more newsgroups
were made accessible, Hugi said.
Hugi said the complaints of reli
gious discrimination and academ
ic censorship are not justified be
cause those same newsgroups can
be accessed through other servers
made available on the University
homepage.
“I’m not going to pull a Clinton
and say that it depends on how
you define censorship, but obvi
ously we can’t carry everything,
and we don’t carry things that are
against regulations or are illegal,”
Hugi said. “These groups were not
eliminated because of content.
They no longer fit the newsgroup
management standards.”
Delf, Hunt and Faux agree the
newsgroups could be easily ac
cessed through another server
such as Dejanews or Eugene Free
Net, but the quality of the access
would be inferior to the access
provided by Usenet.
Hugi said St Sauver made the
decision to remove the three
newsgroups and other news
groups related to hobby topics like
cars because he was implement
ing a new system to organize and
manage the news available
through the University server.
St Sauver did not return phone
calls, but Hugi said she stands by
his decision.
The University server is recog
nized as being one of the top 100
newsfeeds, according to a month
ly review called Freenix 1000.
“The Computing Center has re
moved newsgroups that contain
content pertinent to the UO cur
riculum,” said David Faux, folk
lore graduate student. “People
aren’t clamoring about news
groups that were never there.
We’re clamoring about news
groups that were there, that were
active newsgroups."
In a message posted to the
uo.org.asuo newsgroup, Faux said
the newsgroups that were removed
were actively used for research pur
poses by students studying folklore,
religion and even sociology.
In that same message, Faux
wrote, “By refusing to entertain any
notions foreign to their own whims,
the Computing Center is saying that
their own arbitrary decisions super
sede the needs, interests and acade
mic concerns of the student body. ”