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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 1999)
Perspectives It’s election day, so this will be short, sweet and to the point. Vote yes for OSPIRG. Here’s why you should vote yes: OSPIRGgets things done. For example: Tuition is rising (it’s up 90 percent since 1990). OSPIRG worked to defend $30 bil lion in financial aid, we de fended the student-interest loan exemption and in creased the maximum Pell Grant allocation by $300. Now students can graduate from school without de claring bankruptcy. Our waterways are be coming toxic sewerways (2.5 million pounds of tox ic chemicals were dumped in the Willamette in 1996 alone). OSPIRG defended Eugene’s right to know about the toxic chemicals that are going into our wa ter and helped Gov. Kitzhaber make the right to know about pesticide use one of the biggest envi ronmental issues in the < state. Air quality is dropping, asthma rates are skyrocket ing. OSPIRG pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to enact tough new clean-air standards. Banks just keep getting bigger. The bigger the bank, the more outrageous the bank fees. OSPIRG re search, led by Consumer Advocate John Valley, helped save us all money by finding the best banks. Why should students be working statewide to save Oregon from toxic chemi cal overload and to fight for better student financial aid? Because we can. Students have the op portunity to find the prob lems and make the solu tions. We have the time, we have the structure and we have the power. To not work on these issues in the Commentary Merriah IM1H most serious way we can would be to tie our own hands behind our back. Here’s how I see it: With so many problems out there, a few people (like 17,000 University stu dents) can be a strong voice by contributing a couple of dollars each term to hire professional staff to go straight to the problem and tackle it head on. When pollution washes up on Oregon beaches and ruins our rivers, we have the ad vocates to stand up for bet ter pesticide protections and a system to hold in dustry accountable for the cleanup. Without statewide staff reaching the four comers of the state, we would end up cleaning up their mess with our taxes alone. A long list of student groups that work to make a difference have endorsed: Movimento Estudiantil Chicano De Aztlan (MEChA), the Black Stu dent Union (BSU), Les bian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance (LGBTA), Graduate Teach ing Fellows Federation (GTFF), the Women’s Cen ter, the International Stu dent Association (ISA), Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (SETA) and the Survival Center. And to tell you the truth, if they were on the ballot we would endorse them, too. Here’s the thing: The more issues that students work on and the more vic tories we have the better this state gets. A small group of people on campus (and some powerful special interests off campus) that just don’t like students working on saving the environment and student aid have tried to feed this campus a line. They’ll say anything. You’ve heard it all by now. We’ve done our best to rise to the challenge and provide you with the infor mation you need. We have budgets and financial breakdowns that say the same things that we’ve al ways said. We hire staff to work for students and get things done. Ralph Nader was on campus Tuesday for Earth week, and by the way he talks we have a lot to do. He put everything in per spective. When a laborer wakes up to work 12 hours in the field, they are forced to think only about how they are going to make enough money to survive. They want something more but they lack oppor tunity. If there’s one thing we’ve got it’s opportunity. Stu dents work hard too, but Ralph said we have a dif ferent challenge and I think he’s right. If we don’t stand up and fight for jus tice, cleaner air, accessible colleges and universities, who will? Think of how many people wish they could be in our shoes. We have to take advantage and raise a stink. You pay $2.88 each term and you get a shot at clean er water, cleaner air, more student aid. Now that’s a bargain. Vote yes for OSPIRG. Merriah Fairchild is OS PIRG’s state board chair woman. Responses may be sent via e-mail to mfair@ gladstone. uoregon.edu. Without funding, OSPERG has been more visi ble this year than in any of my four as a University student. That should say something about their “need” for $128,000 — funding that would make them the third highest funded student organiza tion, behind only student government itself and the Emerald. When students get to gether to raise awareness and effect change on cam pus, they need little or no money. And this is shown by the fact that many of OSPIRG’s most popular activities, namely stream walks and canned-food drives, cost little to orga nize. So, logically, most of OSPIRG’s “projected” budget will not fund those types of things. Nearly 80 percent will leave the UO campus and pay the salaries of profes sional lobbyists to influ ence local, state, and fed eral policies. That’s taken from their own projections. Eighty percent, baby. The rest pays bureaucratic and ad ministrative expenses. Student incidental fees should not fund partisan political causes, they should certainly not pay lobbyists’ salaries and, as much as possible, our stu dent fees should stay on campus. OSPIRG violates all three points. This is why students should again deny funding it in today’s election. Although you may agree with some of OSPIRG’s politics, you are probably opposed to their funding on principle. Why? Imagine the formation of a student gum-rights group at the University, Commentary Jonatfum one that would bring speakers to campus, spon sor some gun-safety semi nars and a few intern ships. But 80 percent of their $128,000 budget would fund the salaries of National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbyists to do pro gun research while they weren’t lobbying. Meanwhile, campus gun-control advocates are forced to pay the fee, re gardless of their beliefs. If you are opposed to this in principle, you op pose OSPIRG’s funding because they do the exact same thing—albeit for a cause more palatable to college students than guns. Left, Right, conserv ative, liberal: It is wrong to fund political causes with student fees. Some one with a minority opin ion always gets the short end of the stick. OSPIRG tries to skirt this issue by calling them selves “nonpartisan.” Yeah. OSPIRG is about as nonpartisan as a neutered dog is. Well, you get the point. Politics means taking sides. OSPIRG can’t have it both ways. Gun-rights advocates believe they’re working in the “public in terest,” too. OSPIRG is partisan indeed, and that means that students who disagree with their goals are forced to fund a politi cal cause antithetical to their own. So what about The Commentator and the Sur vival Center? Don’t they take sides? The Commentator and Survival Center do not hire lobbyists to promote their politics in govern ment. This is a vital differ ence. Promoting and bringing awareness to a viewpoint on campus is entirely different than lob bying for a cause in Wash ington, D.C. OSPIRG is zealous about regaining its fund ing, not because of the stu dent and campus aspects of their program, (which students here showed would be accomplished anyway) but because they’re a political lobby ing machine that wants a $128,000 truckload of our cash. Proving my point? Ex pect to see a lot of unfa miliar faces here on elec tion day. Those are the state OSPIRG employees taking sick leave to make sure their cash cow gets funding this time around. Do you really think Ralph Nader would travel thousands of miles to pro mote a simple campus group before election day? Really. It’s about money, politics and little else. Last year, students test ed the waters to see what cutting OSPIRG’s gargan tuan budget would do. This year, students showed they could bring awareness to OSPIRG’s is sues without all of that money. We’ve been doing fine without funding OSPIRG for a year. Let’s make a tra dition out of it by voting no on OSPIRG today and Thursday. Jonathan Collegio is major ing in political science and economics. Responses may be sent via e-mail to ameri caQgladstone. uoregon. edu. Vote for human rights, vote for the Gardenburger boycott NORPAC is the largest growers’ co operative west of the Mississippi with a distribution network that reaches Japan and earns annual sales of $300 million. Farmworkers make their earnings through piece rates. Their wages are based on the number of pounds, sacks or buckets of crops they pick in a day. Sound reasonable? We must understand that 1. piece rates fall well below subsistence levels, 2. farm workers work with substances that destroy life and 3. farmworkers are excluded from employee rights guaranteed under the Na tional Labor Relations Act of 1934. Farmworkers who pick strawberries have been paid at a rate between 12 and 15 cents per pound for the last 15 years while the relative supermarket price of strawber ries has gone up exponentially during the same period . Farmworkers are the largest workforce in the United States who work, live and get sprayed with substances intended to kill life. Pesticides, herbicides and fungi cides have been shown to cause cancer, tu mors, death and physical deformities in newborns. Annually there are 300,000 re lated pesticide injuries to farmworkers. The NLRA guarantees employee collec tive bargaining rights, the rights to paid breaks and a safe work environment, among other things. Farmworkers are completely excluded from these provisions and growers don’t see a need to provide them. Child labor is allowed in the agricultural industry. Gardenburger plays a very important role in the boycott of NORPAC Food Inc., and its product line, Flav-R-Pac, by contin uing to have its products sold through the distributions network of NORPAC Food Sales. In essence, Gardenburger is break ing the boycott of NORPAC Food Sales. This relationship is why Gardenbuiger’s earning in sales are increasing. This is why Gardenburger refuses to honor the request of farmworkers to support the NORPAC boycott called by PCUN. We ask that you support the boycott campaign to discontinue the purchasing of Gardenburger and NORPAC products on this campus. You can do so by choosing the alternative patty in the dining halls, telling friends and family to stop purchas ing Gardenburger and NORPAC products and urging the University administration to select alternatives. Farmworkers voted in the fields to im prove their situation. The explanation of the consumer and market demands given by the University administration and housing administration allegedly provides the justification for Gardenburger and NORPAC products’ presence on this cam pus. What it actually does, contrary to what we may think, is make a political state ment in support of this market relation ship. What about the students on this cam pus whose parents and families are currently working in the fields? The leadership of the University is forc ing these students to take part in their own families’ exploitation. This is not some thing the University wants you to hear. Children of farmworkers are trying to be a model to their parents by obtaining an education. How does one feel safe and welcome when the University is partaking in their own exploitation? When the University decided to join the movement to boycott South African in vestments because of apartheid’s oppres sive and exploitative nature on black South Africans, it was the ethical thing to do. Why should support for farmworkers be any different? Oppression and exploita tion similar to South Africa is occurring in the fields of the Willamette Valley. Should we not uphold democracy for farmworkers who experienced it and are asking us to do the same? Is it democratic when year after year racist policy is creat ed and implemented that pits us as U.S. citizens against farmworkers over issues of wage, working conditions, police brutality and housing? Democracy apparently is not allowing us to have a place at the table. This commentary was submitted by the Com mittee to Boycott Gardenburger and Flav-R Pac.
