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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 14, 1999)
Friday. Vla\ I t. IW) TT Weather forecast Today Saturday Showers Showers, sun High 58, Low 41 High 62, Low 41 ‘The Phantom Menace’ A review of the Star Wars’ prequel, plus a look at the pop culture phenomenon/SECTION B An independent newspaper Volume 100, Issue 153 University of Oregon www.dailyemerald.com University Day Amanda Cowan/Emerald Junior Katy Ho is one of dozens of students who gave their time to beautify the campus during University Day activities on Thursday. . Author bell hooks challenges power structure 7 he feminist and antiracism activist says universities promote the domination of whites By David Ryan Oregon Daily Emerald More than 520 students crammed into the EMU Ballroom Thursday night to hear bell hooks, black feminist author and pro fessor, rally for diversity in higher educa tion. bell hooks, who does not capitalize her name to draw attention away from herself as an author to the content of her writings, pressed students to support diversity and engage the “white supremacist capitalist pa triarchy.” hooks is the author of “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” and is a pro fessor of English at the City College of New York. Students were so tightly packed into the EMU Ballroom that some lined the walls and some sat outside watching the speech on a television monitor. “Your presence is in and of itself a warm embrace,” hooks said of the audience. hooks described the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” in a story about a group of white liberal arts students she talked to in Kentucky who she said had “a distorted education that starts with Colum bus and moves on to Shakespeare and moves on to all those other things,” includ ed in traditional American education. hooks’ speech opened the Education 2000 Conference, a three-day conference on multiculturalism in education. An alliance Turn to HOOKS, Page 5A Nick Mediey/Ememid Students overflowed the EMU Ballroom last night to hear bell hooks speak on diver sity of viewpoints in academia and the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Why Eugene lacks a city housing code The City Council formed a code committee in 1996, but could not afford its plan By David Ryan Oregon Daily Emerald Once upon a time, in a wet, green city called Eugene, a diverse group of lawyers, activists and business people came together to fill a hole in the rule of law. They were the Department Advisory Committee for the Housing Code Project, a nine-person group charged with the task of reconstructing city housing standards that had been lost in budget cuts during the early 1980s. The group tried to establish what is standard in most American cities — a hous ing code. Eugene didn’t have a housing code then. And it still doesn’t. The story of the housing code committee sheds light on the question of why, as Eu gene enters a new millennium, the city lacks housing guarantees most American cities have had for decades. On the committee were members like Cheila Ramirez, a caseworker with a His panic political group. She advocated for the rights of renters. There were members like Sara Fraiser, a real estate appraiser acting as an advocate for landlords. Unique in the group was Pat Gergen, a simple homeowner with civic in terests. John Vanlandingham, an attorney with Lane County Law and Advocacy, said there was pressure to create a housing code be cause of media attention drawn to a dwelling in the Glenwood neighborhood. The house was run-down, had sewage prob lems and a heavy infestation of rodents. Local television cameras and newspaper articles showed pictures of the mentally dis abled inhabitants and the landlord that was taking advantage of them. The City Council felt something should be done. From June 1996 to September 1997, the advisory committee discussed the essential requirements for one of the most basic needs of human beings — a place to live. They considered the costs involved, the responsibilities of landlords and tenants, the benefits of good heating and the con quests of mold. In October 1997, Marshall Kandell, chair man of the advisory committee, wrote of the committee’s obstacles in a memorandum to the City Council. He said the committee met opposition from landlords and property managers fear ful of the kinds of duties the committee might assign to them. Then there were homeless advocates who feared standards would increase the cost of housing and force poor residents to live on the streets. The decisions they were asked to make were intimidating. “The challenge in doing so is to come up with a code which identifies and punishes the few bad apples without unduly punish ing the great majority of decent landlords and property managers,” Kandell said. Turn to HOUSING, Page5A
