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.