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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 31, 2001)
Wednesday 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 EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL j. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com Apoor excuse for pettiness A small furor is brewing on campus over ab solutely nothing. Here’s the quick rundown: The College Republicans and Justice For All, the student group op posed to abortion rights that brought the Genocide Awareness Project to the University last year, are planning a fundraiser for Womenspace, a local domestic vi olence clinic. The College Repub licans asked the College Democ rats and Students For Choice, a student group working for abor tion rights, to cross ideological lines and join the effort. The two groups have said they will not help. In short, this is nonsense. Of course the College Democrats and Students For Choice should help raise money to combat domestic violence and offer support to women who have been abused. Jed McGuire of the College De mocrats suggested Monday (“Groups conflict over fundrais er,” ODE, Jan. 29) that the Repub licans were trying to force the De mocrats into participating in order to make them look bad. “I’m a lit tle confused as to what [their] mo tives are,” McGuire said. If the College Republicans’ mo tives are shaky, then why not par ticipate, help out a very worthy cause and give the Republi cans no ammunition? It would be petty of the Repub licans to use the Democrats’ non-participation as partisan baiting, as they have said the fundraiser isn’t about poli tics. It would be even more petty of the Democrats to re fuse simply because of poli tics. All of this hubbub is silly and seems like a media stunt. Maybe that’s a good thing, be cause it will make members of student groups aware of the fundraiser. The College Re publicans have said they will contact every student group and ask them to participate. Why doesn’t every group, in cluding the College Democ rats and Students For Choice, join in the effort and elimi nate the “controversy” entire ly? Imagine the goodwill if every student group made at least one phone call on behalf of abused women. Womenspace has said that it hasn’t been contacted about the fundraiser and that it has to decide whether to accept donations. Mar go Schaefer, community outreach director for Womenspace, said Monday that there is a limit to how far across ideological boundaries T the organization can stretch. It would be terribly petty of the group not to accept donations so licited by hard-working students simply because of those students’ personal beliefs or politics. Do mestic violence victims need sup port, and Womenspace wouldn’t be endorsing Justice For All’s op position to abortion rights by ac cepting the group’s help. We urge everyone involved to get their wits about them and stop this immature behavior. We strongly encourage every group on campus to make a few phone calls and help raise money for Women space. Finally, we hope that no one 1 Giovanni Salimena Emerald has to read about this issue again, except to find out how much money was raised for a worthy cause. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu Virginia schools can't pledge their way to patriotism Do you remember reciting the “Pledge of Alle giance” in school? Some students might have done this, and others may not have. The practice has fallen out of favor in the last 20 years. Many people who did recite the pledge remember doing so fondly. Others of us remember it as drudgery, an other piece of boredom in the school day. Students in Virginia may soon get to experience the pledge for themselves. On Friday, Jan. 26, the Virginia State Senate moved closer to requiring the pledge to be recited every day in every school in the state. Ordinarily, the Emerald edi torial board wouldn’t speak out about a local issue across the coun try, but the forcing of this ritual seems like an interesting educa tional question. What leads the Virginia Senate to think that making children en gage in mindless recitals will in crease their patriotism? That goal would be better accomplished with some actual curriculum; many students today had very lit tle real civics education in grade school. This case is interesting because the cause is being promoted specif ically to nurture patriotism. The pledge’s main supporter, State Sen. Warren E. Barry, an ex-Marine, was quoted in the Washington Post on Tuesday discussing Virginia’s stu dents. “What I’d really like to do is have them all go to Marine Corps boot camp for 10 weeks,” he said. Wait one minute. Won’t manda tory rituals make the patriotism hollow? Actually, that was exactly the finding of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943, when it decided that no American could be forced to recite the pledge or to stand dur ing the ritual. Patriotism is truly Letters to the editor New name won’t bring change I want to express my appreciation for the excel lent and comprehensive article published in your paper concerning the protest on Jan. 17 urging the closure of the Army School of the Americas (SOA). On that day, there were protests in 35 cities on three continents. Countries included Germany, Austria, Canada, Honduras and Chile, as well as many ac tions in the United States. We were protesting the reopening of the SOA under a new name, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Numerous human rights groups, including Unit ed Nations truth commissions, Amnesty Interna tional and Americas Watch, have documented the involvement and leadership of SOA graduates in atrocities, from the assassination of Archbishop Romero, six Jesuit priests and four Catholic reli gious in El Salvador in the 1980s, to the current re lationship between the military, including SOA graduates, and paramilitary atrocities in Colombia. SOA troops have used their skills against their own people. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disap peared,” massacred and forced into refuge. Yet the Army School of the Americas has never admitted to its legacy of torture and oppression nor taken re sponsibility for the actions of its notorious gradu ates. Will there be dramatic changes with this new name? The late Sen. Paul Coverdell, an SOA sup porter, said that the changes would be “cosmetic.” Rep. Maxine Waters said, “Cold War, Drug War, whatever they call it, it is still a war against the poor.” Peg Morton Eugene served, the court found, when it is genuine and voluntary. And a gen uine love of country was certainly the intent behind the Pledge of Al legiance. For the unfamiliar, here’s a short history lesson. The pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bel lamy, a Baptist minister and a Christian Socialist. Bellamy was chairman of a committee organiz ing American schools’ celebration of the 400th anniversary of Colum bus Day, and he proposed flying the American flag over every school and teaching civics and pa triotism to every student. The original pledge read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liber ty and justice for all.” Dr. John W. Baer, an author and historian, writes that Bellamy’s purpose was to celebrate our freedom, guaran teed to us by our country. Bellamy himself explained the idea in his notes from 1892, as quoted by Dr. Baer: “The true reason for alle giance to the Flag is the ‘republic for which it stands.’” Note that the author of the pledge did not say the reason for pledging allegiance is because a teacher requires it. The pledge was amended in 1924 to change "my Flag” to “the Flag of the United States of America,” and in 1954 to add “under God.” Bellamy protest ed the first change, and Dr. Baer writes that Bellamy’s granddaugh ter said he would have resented the second change. The Virginia Senate’s bill allows students with a religious or philo sophical objection to forgo saying the pledge. That reduces the sting of the religious language. And as long as students are allowed to sit out if they object, we don’t have a huge problem with requiring the pledge. It just seems like another government mandate on schools that has nothing to do with actual learning. Virginia currently re quires a moment of silence every school morning, and the state is working on a bill requiring the motto, “In God We Trust,” to be posted prominently in every school. On the flip side, the state only requires one year of civics classes during the entirety of a child’s 12 years of schooling. Requiring the Pledge of Alle giance every day accomplishes nothing. Teaching children the sentiment behind the pledge and the operation of our country to en sure freedom would do a lot more to inspire patriotism and duty to one’s country. Perhaps Virginia and every other state should work to require civics education instead of empty rhetoric. This.editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu.
