Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
PO. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
Online Edition:
www. dailyemerald. com
Editor in Chief:
Andrew Adams
Associate Editors:
Peter Hockaday
Jeremy Lang
Tuesday, August 14,2001
Editorial
UO shouldn ’t let
athletics success
harm its humility
It was a bad idea to begin
with, and fortunately Ath
letic Director Bill Moos
and other top administra
tors realized their proposed
changes to the University’s
broadcast policy would do
more harm than good.
At a time when our Duck
athletes, and even their
Beaver counterparts, are strut
ting proudly in the national
spotlight, it’s understandable
that the University’s top ad
ministrators are feeling a little
proud. But for those who fly
too high, there’s always a
chance of getting burned, and
this University was soundly
burned by national journal
ism groups and even the
ACLU for proposing to limit
the media to only 20 seconds
of footage and 20 seconds of
interviews for two days after
any Duck game.
To be fair, the Athletic De
partment was attempting only
to deal with one news show,
local broadcaster KVAL’s “In
side the PAC,” that it and its
contractee ESPN believed was
an infringement on the exclu
sive broadcast rights of the ca
ble sports-news channel. But
its heavy-handed approach
was met with the ire of the
journalism community and the
criticism of almost every mem
ber of the media in the state.
Journalists and anyone inter
ested in the Ducks had a legiti
mate reason to be critical of the
policy. Not only did it raise
concerns that the University
was ignoring constitutional
rights, but it also opened the
University to speculation that
it was setting a policy to pro
tect lucrative contract deals.
So while it may make sense
that the University is taking a
more active and vigorous
stance on protecting and man
aging its image because of the
national prominence it has
achieved through athletics,
our administration and Ath
letic Department must re
member that that same recog
nition is a double-edged
sword. Finally near the top in
the world of intercollegiate
athletics, our University lead
ers need to realize they must
hold themselves and this in
stitution to a higher standard
as well, or they will face again
the firestorm of national and
local criticism their misguid
ed media policy received.
That proposal made the
University look foolish, and
there is a risk the other instru
ments of the University’s
hype machine may have the
same result. Right now, mo
torists in the California Bay
Area and Los Angeles are be
ing treated to billboards tout
ing the athletic prowess of
Ducks Rashad Bauman and
Maurice Morris. These follow
an imposing billboard of Joey
“Heisman” Harrington in New
York City. One wonders why
generous donors would spend
thousands of dollars to erect
the billboards in places where
folks likely cannot even pro
nounce “Oregon” or
“Willamette” correctly. Is it an
attempt to intimidate other
athletes of the Pac-10 in their
home cities or to drum up a
wider fan base for Oregon
football outside the state? Ei
ther reason is rather doubtful,
and so it likely is an attempt
to create a football legacy on
one record season, a bowl
game victory and pure hype.
Legacies aren’t bought —
they are earned. The Universi
ty should keep in mind that
this campaign will look arro
gant and foolish if this upcom
ing football season falls flat.
Competition good
for campus media
It is good to hear that the
Oregon Voice magazine will be
resurrected. While the publica
tion’s new backers admit they
won’t have a new issue out for
quite some time, they appear
dedicated to giving new life to
the troubled magazine.
Any community benefits by
vibrant and vocal news out
lets, and while in recent
memory the Voice never real
ly has been a heavy hitter in
campus news and politics, it
is encouraging to hear that
some students think they can
turn the now-defunct paper
into a quality product. For a
school with supposedly one
of the best journalism pro
grams on the West Coast, it
was somewhat perplexing to
see the Oregon Voice steadily
decline in quality to the point
of irrelevance and become the
butt of constant jokes by the
other campus magazine, the
Oregon Commentator.
These jokes most likely will
not end, as most on the staff of
the new Voice are former Com
mentator staffers, but one can
hope that will mean the jokes
won’t be one-sided.
The new editors of the maga
zine say the Voice will be a mix
of left-leaning news features
and entertainment stories. And
while this is definitely not a
new formula for the Eugene
community, at least one more
news outlet on campus will,
ideally, improve the quality of
all campus publications.
This editorial represents the views of the
Emerald’s editor in chief and does not
necessarily represent the views of the
Oregon Daily Emerald.
Stem-cell decision serves everyone
Guest Commentary
Pat
Payne
It took President Bush half a
year, but we finally have a de
cision. Last Thursday, he fi
nally made the toughest
choice so far in his young presi
dency: the government funding of
research on embryonic stem cells.
No matter what side you’re on in
this debate, the decision is the
best you are going to get.
In a speech from his Crawford,
Texas, ranch, Bush announced
that federal funds would be used
to support research for stem-cell
lines that have already been cre
ated, but that there would be no
funding for any new extraction
of embryonic stem cells. These
are cells that come from blasto
cysts, the dividing of the union
of sperm and egg that becomes
an embryo and eventually a hu
man. These cells also regenerate
indefinitely, making them as
close to immortal as anything
gets in this world. These cells
also have not yet specialized
themselves into specific duties
in the body, and so can “morph”
into any cell in the human body.
As it currently stands, stem-cell
research has resulted in approxi
mately 60 “lines,” or self-repli
cating colonies of these cells.
Supporters of research look to
possible miracle cures for every
thing from spinal injuries to
Alzheimer’s disease. The main
problem, and hence the moral
question, is that these blasto
cysts are made up entirely of
stem cells, and so are destroyed
as the cells are extracted. Also,
because these are the progenitors
of humans, there are those who
would say that to harvest stem
cells is little better than murder.
It was in a way a watershed de
cision: Bush took a consummate
ly political decision and kept
politics out of it. His decision
was at once pragmatic and emo
tional. Everyone comes away
with something, apparently, but
nobody gets their way complete
ly. In my mind, a decision that
neither side is completely happy
with is most likely the best. Still,
he now has to walk this tightrope
for the rest of his administration,
and it could still come to backfire
on him come election time
should either the anti-abortion or
pro-choice lobby come to see this
stance as a compromise it’s not
willing to accept.
Furthermore, this decision
does leave some big loopholes
open. First, Bush barely side
stepped the religion versus sci
ence argument that turned stem
cells into a surrogate battlefield
for the pro-choice/anti-abortion
war by acknowledging where the
stem-cell lines came from, but
realizing that the genie is out of
the bottle. His announcement
will not sit well with anti-abor
tion advocates who see Bush as
condoning the destruction of em
bryos for scientific ends. Also,
Bush did not prohibit research
using new extraction: He merely
barred federal money from being
spent on it. By not allowing fed
eral funding, or conversely call
ing for a ban on new extractions
outright, Bush puts a chilling
question to scientists. We have
seen, with the decoding of the
human genome, that genetics are
a good business if their promises
hold out. The problem is that
many of these firms place profit
before scientific openness. My
concern is that, simply put,
many of these groups would
probably put their research un
der a veil of industrial secrecy to
protect their “intellectual prop
erty.” This in and of itself is not
problematic, as companies often
have proprietary knowledge that
they want to keep under wraps.
Yet scientific knowledge should
be out in the public to be
checked by scientific peers who
can duplicate the experiments or
otherwise make sure that what
happened actually happened.
There may still be a way for
Bush to fund expanded stem-cell
research and (miracle of mira
cles) keep both the anti-abortion
and research communities hap
py. If research now ongoing in
Los Angeles and Massachusetts
pans out, scientists may actually
be able to create blastocysts with
out conception, which is where
theologians believe life begins.
No conception equals perhaps no
moral headaches for Bush and
the religious right.
But still, Bush took a large step
toward saving many lives with his
decision. Let’s hope that someday
it will pay off with the cures the
medicos promise.
Pat Payne will be a columnist for the Oregon
Daily Emerald in the fall.
Letters to the editor
Marijuana is nothing to fear
The editorial "Glamorization of
marijuana poses risks for society"
(ODE Aug. 7) expressed fear that
increased acceptance of marijuana
in Canada would lead to its ac
ceptance here.
This is nothing to fear. Despite
the worries expressed in your ar
ticle, marijuana is, according to
DEA Administrative Law Judge
Francis Young, "one of the safest
therapeutically active substances
known to man."
In the editorial, the author points
out that most of the millions of
people who use marijuana lead
successful lives. This being the
case, what possible justification do
we have to put people in jail for us
ing an herb which, in 5,000 years
of recorded use, has never killed
even one of its users?
Kevin M. Hebert
Chicopee, Mass.
Drug policy reform needed
The Aug. 7 editorial is correct
in that glamorizing marijuana use
is ill-advised. That being said, it's
not the relative harmlessness of
marijuana that necessitates a re
thinking of America's punitive ap
proach to drugs, but rather the
dangers posed by the drug war it
self. Tough drug laws give rise to
a lucrative black market in illegal
drugs, effectively subsidizing or
ganized crime. The crime, corrup
tion and overdose deaths attrib
uted to drugs are all direct results
of drug prohibition. With alcohol
prohibition repealed, liquor pro
ducers no longer gun each other
down in drive-by shootings, nor
do consumers go blind drinking
unregulated bathtub gin.
There are cost-effective alterna
tives. In Europe, the Netherlands
has successfully reduced overall
drug use by replacing marijuana
prohibition with regulation. Dutch
rates of drug use are significantly
lower than U.S. rates in every cate
gory. Here in the United States, ille
gal marijuana provides the black
market contacts that introduce
users to drugs like heroin. This
"gateway" is the direct result of a
flawed policy.
Given that marijuana is arguably
safer than legal alcohol, it makes no
sense to waste tax dollars on failed
policies that finance organized
crime and facilitate the use of hard
drugs. Drug policy reform may
send the wrong message to chil
dren, but I like to think the children
themselves are more important
than the message. Opportunistic
"tough on drugs" politicians would
no doubt disagree.
Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.
program officer
The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation