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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 1999)
Editor in chief: Laura Cadiz Editorial Editors: Bret Jacobson, Laura Lucas Newsroom: (541)346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O.Box3159,Eugene,OR 97403 E-mail: ■ ode@oregon. uoregon.edu On-line edition: www.dailyemerald.com In its quest to quickly fill the new vice president for student affairs position, the University neglected to look outside the limits Students received a brand new friend recently, though not many of them really liked the package she came in. Anne Leavitt took hold of the position of associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, but the process for locating candidates didn't contain as much breadth as it should have. In yet another offshoot of the John son Hall sit-in last year in response to a racist comment made in a Universi ty class, students who searched for any and every avenue of broadcast ing their mandate of tolerance in creased their demands for the posi tion of vice president for student affairs. So the University listened and ac tually took the demands seriously, to an extent. The position was indeed created by the University and subse quently filled by the very talented and qualified Leavitt. However, de spite a very acceptable result, the search was much too narrow as it ne glected to look nationwide for candi dates who may have offered more di verse experience bases in favor of a campus only search. It was a search for diversity that was one of the main reasons for pro ponents who wished the position filled, so while a campus selection may create an easier transition for the administration, it fails to offer the benefits sought by student groups. One of the University’s explana tions for opting for an in-house search, aside from a well-placed faith in the abilities of candidates from campus, was that someone from the school would best understand the unique culture of the environment. While this sounds reasonable on the surface, this statement seems more about ease than meeting the spirit of diversity, one of the main concerns of the position. The University has completely missed the mark by implicitly sug gesting that a person entering from a different scholastic culture would be less able to fulfill the position. The truth seems quite contrary, in fact. If the working theory on campus is that differing points of view can come together to make a stronger weave of community, then a nation wide search would provide the most diverse group of possibilities, leaving the most likely reason for a campus only search seems to be lethargy. It would take much longer and involve much more effort to sift through a multitude of bright hopefuls, but that’s the baggage that comes with seeking different perspectives to en rich one’s community. Time should not have been the foremost concern when finding a stu dent advocate position that has re mained a void for years. The extra concern and effort that would’ve been put to a larger effort would have reassured students that every rock had been overturned for a position so important to the student body, even in the case that Leavitt still was hired. As it stands now, there is a qualified person in a job, but stu dents will always wonder what a harder examination might have brought if only a bit more labor had been used.There is no doubt that Leavitt’s master’s degree in educa tion policy and management and University experience in administra tion and student affairs make her an excellent choice, but there should have been at least some effort to ex amine other options for the job. While the end result may very well have been a conclusion that Leavitt would best understand the environ ment, the limited search goes against the University mantra of diversity as a necessity and instead sold the process short in the apparent desire for expediency. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald edi torial board. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu. Thumbs To a lot greener Grass Guneter Grass won the Nobel Litera ture Prize, and its $1 million accom paniment, for his work in the Danzig Trilogy about the rise, fall and after math of Nazism in Germany. To political double talk Democratic presi dential hopefuls Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sena tor Bill Bradley have started debat ing policy and vi sion for the future. The substance fi nally begins to re place the listening tour-style of prima ry politics. To nuclear mis takes Japanese uranium processing plant workers set off an uncontrolled atom ic reaction after putting too much of the radioactive substance into a bucketlike contain er, creating Japan’s worst ever nuclear accident Thursday. To $125 million in metric waste NASA lost its Mars Climate Orbiter Thursday because there wasafailure to convert English measurements to metric units when programming the probe.
