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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 7, 1999)
Monday, June " 1999 ( Weather forecast Today Tuesday Mostly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy High 6l, Low 45 High64,Low45 OSPIRG ruling expected The Constitution Court may rule today on the grievancesfiled in this year’s general elections/? AGE 16 Changing the rules Wrestling coaches call the changes to ways college wrestlers can lose weight positive and neccessary/ PAGE 17 An independent newspaper Volume 100, Issue 168 University of Oregon www.dailyemerald.com Respected professor leaves UO African-American historian Quintard Taylor's departure leaves the University reeling By Ryan Frank Oregon Daily Emerald Quintard Taylor throws his head back, looks toward the ceiling and lets out a deep, chest-shaking chuckle. It’s his nervous He’s unsure if he wants to open his child hood memories for a virtual stranger. But he does. _ Since joining the University m 1990, Tay lor has reached success like few others be fore him. In a history department where the study of the western United States is the pri ority, Taylor, 50, is the nation’s leading his torian of African-Americans in the West. His success has now led to his leaving tor j Minority faculty M More coverage of the faculty of color who will be retiring from the University PAGE 15 uit; uinvtu&iiy ui Washington at the end of the month. Growing up in rural west Ten nessee, Taylor picked and chopped cotton on the farm his father managed at a time when “African American history was made every day.” “We lived behind the veil of segregation,” Taylor says. “There were some folks who had made peace with that. We actually wanted to compete to see if we could com pete with the best and brightest.” Competing meant gaining an education. “We wanted to see how far our education would takes us beyond the segregated world of Brownsville,” Taylor says. By his early teens, Taylor’s relatives were active in the Civil Rights movement in Hay wood County, and he wanted to join Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washing ton in August 1963. “You’re too young,” his mother told him. He wasn’t deterred. The challenges to the racial and social norms in the South pushed Taylor toward learning how the country reached that point and where it was headed. He studied history in high school and had the opportunity to integrate an all-white high school when he was 16. Why waste time, he thought. Transferring would mean an extra year in high school. Instead, he graduated and moved to North Carolina to attend St. Augustine’s College. From St. Augustine’s, Taylor took the ad vice of a recruiter from the University of Minnesota and moved to Minneapolis, where he succeed largely because of a tight knit group of African-American students. After earning his master’s degree in 1971, Taylor was convinced he wanted to teach. After teaching stints at Washington State University and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and earning his doctorate at the University of Minnesota in between, Taylor chose to follow the leads of W. Sherman Savage and Kenneth W. Porter, two founders of African American history in the West at the Univer sity of Oregon. Turn to TAYLOR, Page 16 ,* tit M At Oregon and across the country, men s basketball programs are losing players at an alarming By Tim Pyle Oregon Daily Emerald No program is immune to the epidemic plaguing Division I-A men’s basket ball this off-season. Not Duke. Not Kentucky. Not Arizona. And not Oregon. From coast to coast and conference to conference, the transfer bug has affected almost every team. In fact, 76 players have left their teams in search of another this off-season, ac cording to ESPN.com’s most recent trans fer listings. At this University alone, four players left in about three months this spring, boosting the total to seven in head coach Ernie Kent’s two seasons. In February, Mike McShane departed, citing playing time and a personal con flict with Kent. Eight days later, Donte Quinine followed, saying he no longer had the desire to play for Oregon. After meeting with Kent, Yasir Rose mond announced in late April he would not return for his senior season. In early May, a week after undergoing surgery on his right ankle, Skouson Harker decided to transfer to ensure playing time in his senior season. Although the reasons for transferring vary nationwide, coaches are alarmed at the implosion. “It seems to be growing, and you don’t ever want to lose a player out of your pro gram, both emotionally and physically,” Washington head coach Bob Bender said. “There’s definitely more movement than ever before.” And many coaches believe the trend will not subside any time soon. “You find the same thing being said by all the coaches,” Kent said. “That it is in credible where this is all headed.” The numbers show that college basket ball is becoming more of an individual af fair, as even key contributors for winning Turn to TRANSFER, Page 11
