Editor in chief: Laura Cadiz
Editorial Editors: Bret Jacobson, Laura Lucas
Newsroom: (541)346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
Thursday
April 27,2000
Volume 101, Issue 140
Effierald
Bryan Dixon Emerald
r
Those of you set to leave
these hallowed halls and
emerge into the world of
employment, student loan
payments and adulthood face a
particular dilemma. An opportuni
ty, really. You’ll either set out on
the path of amassing a lifestyle or
living a rewarding life. The choice
is yours. But I thought I’d give you
a little information that might
prove helpful.
We live in a culture that increas
ingly prizes lifestyle at the expense
of having a life, resulting in 70
hour workweeks, growing wealth
concentration in the hands of the
rich and surges in addiction, social
isolation and depression. The top 1
percent of U.S. households owns
39 percent of the nation’s mar
ketable wealth, according to Eco
nomic Policy Institute figures, up
from 22 percent in the late 1970s.
But what a glorious lifestyle so
many Americans have cobbled to
gether. The need for a second
home has evolved into the necessi
ty of third homes, and $2,000
courtside seats are de riguer in Los
Angeles and New York. The peo
ple we tend to put on pedestals are
the Bill Gateses and Phil Knights of
the world, who write $20 million
checks like we write $10 checks to
the corner market. They’ve earned
their money and have the right to
spend it as they wish — just like
you and I do. I am not advocating
communism or railing against the
capitalist system. The results are
already in on that count.
When you leave the cozy con
fines of campus life you’ll be bom
barded with messages pushing
lifestyle over quality of life. Those
free T-shirts you received for filling
out credit card applications will
morph into even greater induce
ments to sign on the dotted line.
Companies will line up to sell you
things you don’t want and extend
you credit you
1’t really need.
You need more of this
to be cool, trendy and hip,
they say with their glitzy mar
keting campaigns. Job-wise, you’ll
have a choice to do what you really
want to do or perhaps settle for
something lesser that might pro
vide the job security and
benefits parents often
crave for their kids.
Lifestyle is sold to us
through advertising and
peer behavior. It’s “keep
ing up with the Joneses,”
being who others want
you to be instead of be
ing who you are. It em
phasizes how it looks,
not how it feels. It’s
about accumulating and
stockpiling things, rather
than sharing and living
simply. It’s about what I
have, what I own, not
who I am. It values out
side appearances more than inter
nal qualities: integrity, serenity and
character, to name a few.
Life to me is the excitement of
living it, not being ruled by the fear
of losing what you have. It’s
deeply, internally satisfying,
whereas lifestyle is a bit like eating
cotton candy — it never fills you
up and leaves you hungry for
more. Life is authentic and natural,
not refined, packaged and glossy
on the outside. It’s having your pri
orities in line, not putting the cart
before the horse. Lire is
an inside job rather than
about outside appear
ances. It has a spiritual
as well as a material
component.
It’s great to have nice
clothes, to drive a car
that works and to be able
to do the things you
I- want. My thoughts are
not fueled by some Puri
tan streak but rather by
the desire to be a voice
that many of you won’t
~ hear, a cry in the bliz
zard of lifestyle-first
messages you’ve been
hearing since you first turned on
the TV or picked up a magazine.
Financial security is a welcome
thing, and a reachable goal, espe
cially for the college-educated. Life
Whit
Sheppard
and Lifestyle are not mutually ex
clusive concepts. They can co-ex
ist quite peaceably.
The pursuit of lifestyle at the ex
pense of a satisfying life is short
sighted and ultimately unfulfilling.
We have a lot to learn from other
cultures that value family time and
mentoring their young far better
than we do in our headlong dash
for cash. “It takes a village to raise a
child” has become “It takes 500
channels to raise a child.” The re
sults are plain to see.
I’m proposing that you rethink
contemporary ideas of what “suc
cess” means. Emerson’s notion of
success: “... To laugh often and
love much... to know even one life
has breathed easier because you
have lived...” is not as hopelessly
outdated as it may seem. Besides,
have you ever heard someone say,
“Hey pal, get a lifestyle”?
Good luck out there, you’ll need
it. Buyer beware.
Whit Sheppard is a columnist for the Ore
gon Daily Emerald. His views do not nec
essarily represent those of the Emerald.
He can be reached via e-mail at
whitneys@darkwing.uoregon.edu.
Letters to the editor
To each his own
I sincerely hope University
President Dave Frohnmayer
sticks to his guns. Brown is no
longer the only university in the
country to make a moral choice
and stick to it regardless of the fi
nancial cost of those decisions.
The Worker Rights Consortium
may not be an industrial watch
dog, but I ask’you: Is the industry
in question likely to promote an
organization which may pull sur
prise visits? Perhaps the WRC
should have industry representa
tives on its board so that fairness
to the companies involved may
be assured. However, such ad
vance notification that an inspec
tion is coming allows such com
panies to clean up their act before
the inspection occurs, and then
go back to business as usual when
the inspection is done.
Nike CEO Phil Knight’s deoi- *
sion to pull his own personal con
tributions to the University is his
right, and I applaud him for fol
lowing his feelings. I hope he
does not expect the University to
cave in and turn its back on what
may well become an industrial
watchdog group. That (group)
may find issues that need to be re
solved by individual companies
for the health and welfare of their
employees. I hope the Nike com
pany does in fact work hard to
promote and resolve these issues.
The University’s athletic de
partments are sure to miss the
support received in the past from
Nike and from Knight, but that
does not mean our athletes cannot
overcome these issues.
Good luck folks, and congratu
lations to Frohnmayer. I only
hope I can do so well.
Cheryl Fitzgerald
FAA, fibers undergraduate
No more handouts
Kudos to University President
Dave Frohnmayer for respecting
student wishes and not bowing
down to corporate demands! Af
ter all, why should Nike CEO Phil
Knight be consulted before the
University president honors a stu
dent vote? Where was he during
election time to express his
views? Shame on the students
who voted to join the Worker
Rights Consortium and then de
nounced their positions once
cash was waived beneath their
> . Tum.to'Letters, page3A V