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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1999)
DO YOUR PART. Recycle this PAPER STUDENT TRAVEL London.$633 Paris.$726 Madrid.$953 Brussels.$989 Frankfurt.$726 All fares are round-trip.Tax not included. Some restrictions apply. (800) 777-0112 STA TRAVEL WE’VE BEEN THERE. BOOK YOUR TICKETS ON-LINE www.statravel.com foryOli C\i (A* {/aivzr$ily of Ortyoh (kt*j> ikktii ' r . | . M’c« ptopU. ACvatt. > • Travel Hf CIEE: Council on International Educational Exchange university or Uregon In the EMU Building Eugene 877 1/2 East 13in Street Eugene (541)344-2263 r Eugene's V Best Futons ROCK SOFT FUTON Eugene's Best Futons 1231 Alder St. • 686-5069 M-S 11-6 Sun. 12-5 <7DL CLA66f ILP5... rcA.jr campus marketplace. National News Freshmen are more conservative By Kalpana Srinivasan The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Aside from the predictable bags of unwashed clothes and as yet-to-be-read books, this year’s college fresh men may have also brought home some surprises for spring break: conservative views on casual sex, abortion and other issues. A comprehensive survey of this year’s college freshmen finds a host of areas where young adults are taking decidedly different turns on issues than previous gen erations of students. From the lowest support ever for casual sex and keeping abortion legal, to questions of law and order and even uieir goals in me, tne ditter ences are sometimes wide. “We have members who are more conservative than their par ents,” says Chris Gillott, chairman of Pennsylvania State Universi ty’s Young Americans for Free dom. Gillott says some of his peers go home and “come out of the con servative closet” to their families, igniting heated discussions on topics from Social Security to af firmative action. Young adults are looking for a return to religious or more tradi tional moral values after the lega cy left by the baby boomers, he says. A few examples: —Only 40 percent of freshmen agree that it’s OK for two people who like each other to have sex, even if they have only known each other a short while. That’s down from 42 percent in 1997, and an all-time high of 52 percent in 1987, according to the study by the Higher Education Research In stitute at the University of Califor nia, Los Angeles. —In 1970, 56 percent of the freshmen surveyed showed strong opposition to capital pun ishment. By 1998, less than a quarter of them believed the death penalty should be abolished. Sev enty-three percent of freshmen said there is too much concern for criminals — an almost 50 percent increase since the early 1970s when only about half of those sur veyed felt that way. —Only half of this year’s fresh men backed efforts to keep abor tion legal — a record low figure after six years on the decline. Sup port for laws protecting abortion peaked in 1990 at 65 percent. “We have pro-choice students on our campus who still say they would never have an abortion,” says Ryan Gruber, a senior at the University of Wisconsin, Madi son, who used to head the school’s college Republicans. “Even if they don’t want to push their message on others, there is less tolerance on a personal lev el.” Wendy Shalit, a 23-year-old au thor who lashes out against ran dom college hookups and sexual encounters in a new book, says it’s no surprise young adults are turning away from the values of the generations that preceded them. “Their parents are the ones who sort of believed in this libera tion through promiscuity and ex perience,” said Shalit, whose book, “A Return to Modesty: Dis covering the Lost Virtue,” came out in January. But some kids to day are “embracing the codes of conduct that their own parents re jected.” Shalit pointed to the rise in ballroom dancing as one sign of how young adults are looking for new ways to relate to each other. Even views on the grand scheme of things can shift consid erably in a few generations. Near ly three-quarters of the Class of 2002 consider being well-off fi nancially among their highest ob jectives. Their parents had different goals when they were freshmen: In the late 1960s, more than 80 percent wanted to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life.” Today, only 40 percent of incom ing college students find that ob jective compelling. A record low 26 percent of freshmen believe that “keeping up to date with political affairs” is a very important or essential life goal. In 1966, interest in politics was at its height, with a record 58 percent of freshmen considering important in their lives. But some say these results don’t necessanly signify apathy among today’s students. Instead, ac tivism and civic-mindedness may turn up in different forms, like volunteering and community ser vice. “These activities are political in the sense that they are trying to change the system we have,” says Kendra Fox-Davis, a 1998 UCLA college graduate who now is vice president of the U.S. Student As sociation in Washington. She added that while students today may not be as likely to demonstrate or march in protest like their parents, young adults are active on a host of issues from de creasing tuition to raising attention to sweatshop labor conditions. The 1998 freshmen norms are based on the responses of 275,811 students at 469 of the nation’s two- and four-year colleges and universities. Colleges were cho sen to represent a cross-section of the student population nation wide. UCLA’s research institute has conducted the survey annually since 1966. Expanded hate crime laws proposed By Sandra Sobieraj The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Hoping to ride the momentum of headlines from Kosovo, Laramie and Jasper, President Clinton asked Congress on Tuesday to extend federal hate crime laws to include offenses based on sexual orientation, gen der or disability. The United States, Clinton said, is as vulnerable as Kosovo — “old, even primitive hatreds,” Clinton said. “It’s very humbling. We should remember that each of us almost wakes up every day with the scales of light and darkness in our own hearts, and we’ve got to keep them in proper balance. And we have to be, in the United States, absolutely resolute about this.” The president also ordered the Education Department to begin collecting data on hate crimes on college campuses. “We have sig nificant problems there and we need to shine a light on that,” he said without elaborating. An MTV: Music Television sur vey released Tuesday found that 91 percent of 12 to 24-year-olds describe hate crimes as a “very se rious” or “somewhat serious” na tional problem. Nearly two in 10 young people said they know a victim of a gender-based hate crime. Overall, more than 8,000 hate crime incidents were reported in the United States in 1997. For 1998, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported a 108-percent increase in gay bashing violence that left victims hospitalized. Assaults and at tempted assaults with firearms against gays and lesbians rose 71 percent, the report found. “We’re talking about whether people have a right, if they show up and work hard and obey the law and are good citizens, to pur sue their lives in dignity free of fear, without fear of being abused,” Clinton said. Current hate crimes laws bans only race-, ethnicity- and religion based crimes. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999, which Clinton endorsed, would add three protected categories — sexu al orientation, gender and disabili ty — and make the prosecution of hate crimes easier by deleting the stipulation that the victim is tar geted for engaging in certain feder ally protected activities, such as serving on a jury, voting or attend ing public school. More than 40 states have hate crimes laws but only 21 cover sex ual orientation, 22 cover gender and 21 cover disability. Clinton endorsed a partnership among AT&T, Court TV, Cable in the Classroom, the National Mid dle Schools Association and the Anti-Defamation League working with the Justice and Education de partments to develop middle school curricula to combat intoler ance. Robert H. Knight of the Wash ington-based Family Research Council denounced it all as a “ho mosexual agenda.” “We cannot allow the law to designate less protection for some people than others,” said Knight. He called the middle-school pro gram an attempt at “re-educating America’s children away from tra ditional morality under the guise of’tolerance.’” Clinton’s effort to revive the leg islation, which went nowhere in the House and Senate last year, comes on the heels of several high profile cases: —Matthew Shepard, a gay col lege student pistol-whipped and strung up to die on a prairie fence in Laramie, Wyoming. —James Byrd Jr., the black man killed as he was dragged by a chain behind the pickup truck of white supremacists. —Billy Jack Gaither, a gay tex tile worker in Alabama beaten to death then burned atop a pile of tires. Such headlines improve the leg islation’s chances in Congress, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said. “Unfortunately when you have incidents like we’ve had in our country over the last year, it sometimes tends to gal vanize public interest and support for something like this.” The Rt. Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, suffragan bishop of Wash ington who participated in the White House announcement, said Shepard’s “crucifixion in the Wyoming winter” made the legis lation’s necessity “horrifying clear.” “While we watch what is un folding in Kosovo with ever in creasing horror, we must not let those distant hate crimes distract us from the hate crimes here on our own soil,” Dixon said.