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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 1999)
New Continued from Pagel ulty offices, visiting chairs and legal research and writing instructors oc cupy the majority of the third floor, from which spectacular views of the surrounding campus can be en joyed. With building-wide technology aided teaching equipment and cut ting-edge networking capabilities, the law center is entering the 21st centuiy well prepared for success. Law students must come pre pared, too, as each is required to have his or her own laptop com puter for attendance at the school. Every classroom is equipped with individual outlets for the personal computers, which encourages stu dents to remain connected to ad vancements in the technology at hand and with each other. An- on-site server facilitates the streamlining of on-line syllabi and student-body listserves so that an “e-mail community,” as Strickland refers to it, can be created as well. “The technology is another component in keeping us all con nected,”he said. And the reason, no doubt, that a national legal-instruction organi zation recently bestowed the title, “Most wired law school in Ameri ca,” on the school at its annual conference. Additionally, Strickland said “be cause all required classes will be conducted here, and because law students will spend so much time in the building, I think the center func tions as a real self-contained unit.” Yet as interconnected as it is, the law center is equally open to use by the greater community as well, with local legal firms em ploying the schools’ resources and various alumni events scheduled throughout the year. “We are hopeful that people in the Eugene community at large will be involved in the building and participate in community-fo cused events held here,” he said. “It’s a great place to work in,” he continued. “But more than any thing, we feel it’s an environment in which one can learn. Each classroom in the spacious new law school is equipped with individual outlets for laptop computers. Catharine Kendall/Emerald Japanese youth do it all at rock festival, then pick it all up By Michael Zielenziger College Press Exchange The head-bangers surged. The crowd pulsed, then inoshed fever ishly while the rap/heavy metal band Rage Against the Machine climaxed an aggressive set with an angry, rebellious chorus: “Don’t do what they told you! Don’t do what they told you!” Then the house lights came up, and 25,000 Japanese kids silently picked up their trash, gathered up their plastic tarps and picnic cool ers and meekly retreated, leaving behind a tidy, pastoral hillside. Just one week after the Wood stock music festival in Rome, N.Y., ended in a chaotic blur of ar son fires, vandalism and accusa tions of rape, some of the same rock groups trekked across the Pa - cific for the three-day Fuji Rock Festival held at this remote ski area about 250 miles north of Tokyo. More than 50 bands played, mostly British and American and many of them angry. But in a na tion where order, group harmony, cleanliness and courtesy are deeply ingrained disciplines, the bands provoked a different reac tion from 65,000 or so who at tended. And the contrasts be tween the wild Western music and the Japanese emphasis on communal responsibility were everywhere in evidence. A single ticket to this festival cost nearly $150 per day, but not a single person could be found trying to sneak into the festival or pass off counterfeit tickets. And while hundreds of colossal security guards with combat boots and camouflage pants were im ported from nearby U.S. military bases to keep order, they rarely had to raise a hand to keep the thousands in line. Instead, they gently caught the few dozen “body surfers” who tried to launch them selves toward the stage during some performances, gingerly toss ing the surfers onto old leather up holstered wrestling mats. “The level of violence is just so different,” said Tak Misawa, a Japanese music writer and pro moter who had just returned from the Woodstock ‘99 festival and wore the T-shirt to prove it. “The Japanese love to copy American things so we try moshing and body surfing but we really aren’t so aggressive,” he said. “We try to do America-style things, but we do it maybe only 80 percent of the way.” As Japan gropes it way out of a long-term economic funk and feels itself losing its direction, many older Japanese fervently in sist that Japan’s young generation, which grew up affluent, has be come a race apart from its parents and will somehow loose a cre ative spirit that will rescue the country from seeming inexorable decline. But interviews with dozens of young Japanese festivalgoers found little appetite for rebellion and almost no desire to stake out an individual path. “We don’t think the current system is very stable,” said 21 year-old Ryuta Harada, who looked much like an American college student with his dread locks, goatee, and Thrasher T shirt. “We don’t really think the lifetime employment system,” that has come to symbolize Japan’s economic miracle, “will be around much longer ... So people like me know we should do what we want to. “Certainly I would like to keep my freedom for as long as I can,” Harada continued, “but that would be a freedom to think for myself... and I haven’t really de termined my own ideas. “We have a little bit of resis tance,” he said, finally, “but as we get older it sort of peters out.” Woodstock-style rock festivals are uncommon here. The first Fuji Rock Festival ended in disaster three summers ago when a ty phoon roared through the site during a concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, almost destroying the stage. Promoter Masahiro Hidaka was determined to try again, even im porting a stage from Australia big enough to accommodate the giant lighting displays and television monitors used for outdoor festival extravaganza. “Japanese kids don’t really have much experience with rock festivals, but I want to expose them to good alternative music,” Hidaka said. He was particularly excited about being able to con vince Phish, a popular band that has inherited some of the fan loy alty once reserved for the Grateful Dead, to make its first Japanese concert performance at this year’s festival. We don't condone throwing rocks... 007015 ... but if one were so inclined you could hit us from the new Law School. Yep, we’re just a stone’s throw away. 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