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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1998)
NEWSROOM (541)346-5511 E-MAIL ode@oregpn. uoregor/jdu ADDRESS: Oregpn Daily Emerald P.OBOX3159 Eugene, Oregon 97403 ON-LINE EDITION: www.uoregon edu/~ode Thumbs r\ TOLLHOUSE ATMS: Santa Clara (Calif.) County now offers a kiosk to crime suspects so they can post small bail amounts on their credit cards. The machines may help reduce jail overcrowding, but they don't take American Express. TO CRANKY PO LICE: A16 year-old was charged with pointing a toy gun at a Bend police officer. The ar resting officer was responding to a call about a car full of armed teens. When the police are in hot pursuit, pulling outatoy gun isn't going to be the wisest prank. ,-—~ - , TO BRAZILIAN VOTERS: Despite govern ment efforts be fore the election, some poor citi zens in Brazil vot ed for political candidates who could do them fi nancial favors. Shoes and refrig erators were pop ular items, but cement and plas tic surgery also won voters’sup port TO BIG MAC ADDICTS: A group designed to find out what Oregonians want from health care released a report suggesting that citizens who smoke, drink al cohol—and reg ularly eat at fast food restaurants —should pay more for heaith care. So much for “your way, right away.” ©regotiSKCmeralb EDITOR IN CHIEF Ryan Frank EDITORIAL EDITORS Jonas Allen, Kameron Cole Educate, don’t baby-sit, University students t'MLT y 11 1 8 Letters to the Editor X Notifying parents of alcohol and drug use invades students' privacy and limits their freedom This country has its share of people who invade others’ privacy: peep ing toms, eavesdroppers, mail thieves and — the U.S. Congress? The House and Senate recently ap proved an amendment allowing universi ties to notify the parents of students under 21 if their child violates alcohol or drug policies. The only thing missing is Presi dent Clinton’s signature, which is expected to come soon. This amendment, while a noble attempt to watch out for students, ignores why they are in school in the first place. Most univer sities are not boarding schools. Parents generally don’t “ship” their kids away and visit on the weekends to check up on them. Instead, universities provide students with the chance to make their own deci sions and grow up independent of the rules back home. This arrangement works just as well for universities; they are here to teach students, not baby-sit them. But baby-sitting students is exactly what the amendment proposes. The sponsors of this legislation mean well. Last year, five deaths on Virginia campuses were attributed to alcohol; this is an attempt to stop students’ irresponsible drinking behavior. Yet one amendment can’t accomplish that. College is a time for students to branch out; many would ar gue that it is a time tor students to rebel. One of the motiva tions behind the amendment is for students to know that their “rebel lious” weekend activities may be discov ered by parents. Legislators believe that the threat of parents finding out about stu dents’ behavior will curb the number of al cohol-related injuries. Current federal law prohibits universi ties from releasing the records of students over the age of 18. Once students have reached that age, it is not a university’s le gal responsibility to “report” home to par ents. By allowing records to be released un til students are 21, this amendment would violate the privacy of adults who just hap pen to still be in school. Even if it is passed, this amendment would be only selectively effective. Uni versities could report documented alcohol and drug policy violations, but for the most part, those violations would come from the residence halls, where resident assistants can “supervise” students. Once students get to bigger parties, where larger amounts of alcohol and drugs are consumed, “baby-sitting” those stu dents is limited, at best, and people are left to watch out for themselves. Because offi cials only respond to the most out-of-hand parties, a majority of the violations would go unreported — meaning the university and parents would receive just the “high lights” of student habits. No one will be helped by this amend ment. Parents will only be informed when their children are caught at the loudest par ty. University officials will have to take the time to call parents more often than they al ready do. Students will be left with their privacy invaded, their feelings hurt be cause they can’t be trusted and the belief that they will never be free from the watch ful eyes of their parents. And no one appreciates a peeping tom. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon .uoregon.edu. Discriminating tastes? I have been following the UO reli gious discrimination issue since it be gan early this summer, and I would like to point out a few insights I’ve had. In the article the Emerald ran on page 10 the other day (ODE, 9/30), in paragraph eight Computing Center Director Joanne Hugi said that the CC has no formal guidelines on which newsgroups they carry. In paragraph 13, she is quoted as saying these groups were removed because they “no longer fit the newsgroup manage ment standards.” These two state ments are incompatible. Hugi said that Joe St Sauver was implementing a new system to man age the newsfeed. St Sauver has giv en so many different stories that I don’t know what to think. This is a continuation of the eva sive tactics CC officials Hugi and St Sauver have been using throughout the debate on this issue. They’ve been, in my opinion, consistently rude and unprofessional, either stonewalling or employing technical doubletalk and circular self-referen tial logic in a crude attempt to mysti fy students and concerned citizens from all over the country into believ ing that there is no discrimination oc curring here. When cornered, St Sauver has been known to insult one’s knowledge of computer sys tems or change the topic entirely. Hugi refused to answer any of the e mail I and many others sent her, and actually hung up the telephone on UO graduate student Dave Faux. I have a sheaf of correspondence from St Sauver on my hard drive. As I look through it, I note the reasons St Sauver has given for this action. Among them, in order, technical dif ficulty, poor spelling, unfavorable hi erarchical designation, bandwidth, duplicate topic, unconventional tax onomy, lack of programmatic re quirement and now, “newsgroup management standards.” While none of these reasons makes any sense whatsoever on its own, they are con siderably more nonsensical taken as they came in, one at a time. In the end, it must be noted that the missing groups are: alt.pagan, alt.satanism, and the alt.magick hierarchy. A fairly narrow set of topics. If you have a non-UO newsfeed, (not Eugene FreeNet: they get their news from the UO), check to see if they carry the groups in dispute. In almost every case, they do. If they do not, perform the following experi ment: e-mail your news administra tion. Request any of the groups. They will add it. No questions asked. Cody Yarbrough Newsgroup questions I have been following this case of blatant religious discrimination for several months now. There are a few items that your article (ODE, 9/30) did not cover which I would like to bring to the attention of your readers: 1. St Sauver removed 33,000 of the 35,000 newsgroups a couple of weeks ago and returned 32,000 newsgroups the next day. He made sure to return the 50-some Christian newsgroups and other religious newsgroups but still did not return the pagan groups in question. He said this was at the request of the Office of Affirmative Action (OAA). The OAA said they re quested nothing of the kind. 2. St Sauver recently added anoth er 224 newsgroups, including tamu.religion.Christian, which an nounces Christian events for Texas A&M University. None of the 224 was the pagan newsgroups in ques tion. 3. The Computing Center compiled an investigative report on the two of ficial complainants (Kerry Delf and Craig Hunt) in this case. This report gave information about complaints about Delf and Hunt resulting from a flame war in 1996. They were exon erated of the accusations that same year. While the Computing Center also submitted the exonerating evi dence, this was clearly an attempt at character assassination. They have also suggested that any outside testi mony is inadmissible if the person is not an official complainant. Of course, this is not true — the OAA has confirmed its falsity. 4. Delf and Hunt requested that, since their main argument for not re activating the pagan newsgroups is that there is reasonable access to them through other means, they re move all religious newsgroups from the main UO news server, at least un til the case is decided. They refused to grant this request for equal access and gave no reason. 1 believe that St Sauver has left the University open to possible litigation that could potentially cost the Uni versity many tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, which might bet ter be spent improving the academic curriculum. Were I a student or a member of the faculty of your August institution of higher learning, I would most certainly be circulating a peti tion for St Sauver’s immediate dis missal. Alobar Greywalker Pagan clergyman Correction In the Oct. 6 story “UO student faces incumbent Susan Castillo in candi dates’ forum” and the Oct 7 story “Student runs in state senate race,” Castillo should have been called a for mer KVAL-TV reporter. The Emerald regrets the error.
