Tuesday
Editor in chief: Jack Clifford
Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
September26,2000 VOLUME 102, ISSUE 20
EDITORIAL EDITOR: opededitor@journalist.com, Michael Kleckner .
Athletics makes a bold play to keep the ball rolling
/
LONE VOICE
m THE WOODS
BRET JACOBSEN
It was third and long for our
beloved Ducks last week,
and that was before the
UCLA Bruins even arrived
in town. And in the end, it was
not a Hail Mary bomb that
marked the week for the athlet
ic program, but rather a few
smaller plays that are impor
fant for the long term.
The University’s athletic pro
gram has always had the cards
stacked against it. This is partly
due to the school’s national
anonymity and historically
meager budget, while more
recently its growth
prospects were abruptly
\ stunted when Phil Knight
\ pulled a $30 million
pledge after the Uni
versity joined the
" Worker Rights Con
sortium.
The first problem for the athletic
program is that Eugene is a small
school on the West Coast that re
ceives more rain than Noah had to
fight through on his wooden
dinghy. It’s hard to attract the top na
tional talent necessary for a nation
ally competitive program when
Duck teams receive inappropriately
little media attention, and there are
larger schools with more tropical
conditions.
But if the inclimate nature and
isolated geography of the school
weren’t enough, the eruption over
worker rights and the role of the
University in ensuring its licensed
products are made responsibly put a
dent in plans to expand Autzen Sta
dium. Such an expansion would
have improved funding for the ath
letic program and reduced its finan
cial needs from the University’s
budget.
Those historical and political
conditions, in a nutshell, caused the
Ducks to fall behind and are why the
beloved mallards needed a bold
play.
And until last week, it looked as
though the decision to join the WRC
would be a costly fumble that would
cripple the athletic program and
turn the tide of national ascent.
But within one week, two seem
ingly unrelated events worked in
concert to regain the momentum to
improve.
First, ESPN’s College GameDay
television crew descended on Eu
gene to cover the Ducks and Bruins
match. Granted, they wouldn’t be
here if the opponent weren’t the
Bruins. But the crew’s arrival
marked the first time the pre-emi
nent national sports network has
hosted a show from the Northwest.
It is critical to any program striv
ing for national acceptance to re
ceive as much media attention as
possible. Since polls still count for
just about everything in college, and
most reporters and coaches in
volved in the polling process usual
ly don’t have the time or inclination
to watch every game — especially
West Coast games starting late —
name recognition is immeasurably
important.
That coup for national attention
was followed by a hotly debated is
sue more closely related to the Uni
versity’s body politic. School Presi
dent Dave Frohnmayer made the
decision to join the Fair Labor Asso
ciation, the first step to mending the
important relationship with Knight.
Some may argue that a school
shouldn’t be so dependent on indi
vidual private donors, but the harsh
truth is that for the athletic program
to be a perennial contender for the
Pacific-10 title, or possibly even
loftier goals, there must be substan
tial investments in facilities. While
it is the contention of some that
such funds should come from the
state and the notion of others that
athletics ought not receive so much
attention as it is, the reality is that
the money isn’t coming from the
state and that it seems prominent
athletic programs at least build the
brand recognition of a school.
In the end, the appearance of
ESPN will make a small contribu
tion to the tough job of capturing na
tional recognition and the FLA deci
sion will in some small way begin to
mend the tattered relationship with
the University’s most generous
alumnus.
It wasn't a Hail Mary week for the
athletic program. It was just enough
to get the first down and keep the
drive alive.
1 hts year, we ll convince ourselves politics is fun
MICHAEL J. KLECKNER
OK, studious types. Time to get
back to work. Or play, or whatev
er it is you do to pass the time
during classes.
I pass the time thinking about our world,
and wondering. Politically, socially, cultur
ally — add whatever other social science
word you like. My world revolves around
human interaction and questioning the wav
we form the misshapen weirdness we call
reality.
I’m Mike Kleckner, the Perspectives edi
tor this year, and this page of the Emerald is
going to take you on a trip into the whacked
out world of politics and society. We will all
come back intact — probably — but if we do
our job right, everyone will sustain some
singed hair and maybe a few scars. It’s part
of life, y’all.
Here’s the brief bio sketch. You get no
elaboration.- but -read- my columns and you’ll,
get context. I’m 28. a Taoist, an anarchist,
i m queer, a pacmst, a vegetarian and a mal
content who grew up in a Volkswagen van
as a moderately conservative, hard-left liber
al. Go figure.
So, my pitch is for politics. This page will
cover as much of campus life as we can
manage to get pissed off about. But my
shtick is the sometimes cesspool of corrup
tion we call the modern-day political sys
tem.
Politics is fun! Sure, it’s a game, and the
rich tend to dominate, but it isn’t boring or a
waste of time. Politics is about people decid
ing how to get along. The formal version of
which we call society, but those rules are re
ally practiced much more informally be
tween people.
On a personal basis, we decide what’s
right and what's wrong. Don’t try this at
home, but say we yell at some jerk in a car
who doesn’t know how to drive. That’s a po
litical decision. In such an outburst, we’ve
determined how much distress we have to
take and how close that driver was to inter
fering with someone else's direct experi
ence. That’s politics. The suits in Washing
ton just codify their outbursts in law.
When we all interact in the codifying-law
type stuff, we have a say in society. We get to
decide what's equitable and how to go about
-providing that equity to the masses. We get
to decide how much is acceptable to take
from another person (or how much is re
quired for free expression), what sort of
rights exist and the basis for deciding and
enforcing those rights. Thinking about those
basic ideas of how people should live to
gether is a lot of fun. No, really.
OK, maybe I overstate my case. Maybe
some people don’t think that sort of intellec
tual endeavor is fun. Maybe it’s just people
like me, who end up with jobs like this.
But this whole process is freedom, y’all.
It’s what we’re all so stinkin’ proud about in
this country. We have the power, the right
and the duty to examine society’s structure
and to decide ways to change it and make it
more like the picture of utopia we hold in
our head when we bitch about how crappy
this world is.
Perhaps the Emerald’s opinion page won’t
turn you all into political junkies. However,
we — the editorial board and columnists —
will try to explain the theories on society
that underlie all the current political non
sense to which we’re subjected. We.wiil try
to make sense of the spin and the propagan
da (we’ll try — we're not geniuses here).
And we’ll try to cut through the slime in an
entertaining way, so that maybe together we
can talk about what kind of world it is we *
want.
■ Because thaf’s-what politics in America
does. It decides how we live.
So read Perspectives. And join the con
versation. We will try not to preach at you
from our lofty tower of righteousness, the
way many newspapers do, telling you the
“right answers to the world’s most pressing
problems” (even though we do peer down at
campus life from some lofty offices in the
EMU).
We’ll have opinions, sure. Bet on it. But if
we can explain to you the process of acquir
ing that opinion, then you can share your
opinion and we can build our world togeth
er.
Make sure to tell us where the writers or
the paper has gone wrong and why. Use e
mail or post a message on the Emerald’s Web
site after you’re done reading. Call me at the
•office. Write a letter to the editor. Talk to me
about a guest column. And be assured, I will
respond.
'There are other treats in store. You’ll get to
know about them soon enough.
Make sure you read, think and interact.
It’s the only wav our world will work.
We need you. We need all of us, together.
Because soon we, the college student popu
lation, will be in power, and we better get
ready.
1 he Perspectives page will try to help us
all along-the path. And veah,-I-know it’s pol- -
itics, but it will be fun. I promise.