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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2001)
Seeking ‘Snood Anonymous’ The lastest computer game phenomenon has left many Snood-addicted. Page 7 Bruisin’ Beavers A ‘frustrated’ Ken Simonton helped Oregon State win its second game. Page 9 luesday, October 16, ZOO 1 Since 1 900 University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon Volume 103,Issue 36 State office investigates complaints about Qwest ■Consumers say Qwest phone company charged them for services not requested By Beata Mostafavi Oregon Daily Emerald John Meyer thought setting up his phone at the beginning of the year would be a simple process. After calling Qwest Communications In ternational, the senior expected to get a roughly $20 phone bill for the basic service —which was all he asked for. But about a month later, his bill came to more than $30, which included an extra fee for a custom choice package that had “caller ID,” “last-call direct,” “30-num ber speed dialing” and other features. “I told (the sales representative) that all I wanted was a regular phone line,” Mey er said. “Why would students want all those features and something so expen sive? It’s not like I’m running a stock bro kerage. I don’t even have a caller ID box. ” Several students have experienced problems similar to Meyer’s. A few say they have been billed for services they did not request and some say they have had trouble with Qwest’s customer service. Difficulties with canceling and installing services have ranked high on the list of student complaints. In the last year, many of the same complaints about the phone company have been reported to the Oregon Pub lic Utility Commission, PUC Spokesman Bob Valdez said. One of the biggest issues, Valdez said, is that it appears Qwest sales representa tives do not tell customers that a basic Turn to Qwest, page 8. Happy 125th Revering the ‘Grand Old Lady ’ ■ Deady Hall, the University s first building on campus, now provides a home for the department of mathematics By Eric Martin Oregon Daily Emerald Veins of black ivy shroud the walls of Deady Hall, but the University’s first structure and “grand old lady” is no worse for wear. Archi tects said the building would stand for 1,000 years — barring earth quakes — when the University and Deady Hall opened its doors on Oct. 16,1876. Today is the Univer sity’s birthday, and 125 years later, the architects’ prediction is stand ing the test of time. Inside Deady Hall, professors are ushering students into an un derstanding of mathematics, just as professors be fore them have done for more than a century. “It’s got a long history,” visiting math instructor Fred Hervert said from his office on Deady’s fourth floor. “I could be sitting right where someone sat one hundred odd years ago.” If that someone was female, you can bet her ankles weren’t show ing. Women were required to use Deady’s east stairwell because ad ministrators were concerned too much ankle flesh would attract the wrong kind of attention. Just to be sure, men scaled the stairwell on the building’s opposite end. Turn to Deady Hall, page 6 University of Oregon 125th ANNIVERSARY Part of a historical series Nike releases first report of corporate responsibility ■ Nike’s first corporate report reveals challenges and successes for the multinational corporation By John Liebhardt Oregon Daily Emerald Joining a growing list of multination al corporations, Nike released its first corporate responsibility report, which details the company’s efforts at devel oping environmental sustainability and global labor compliance. Although the report cited gains in corporate environmental policy and la bor practices at Nike’s more than 700 contracted factories, the company said it has a lot of work to do. “In this report, Nike for the first time has assembled a comprehensive public review of our corporate responsibility practices,” Nike chairman and CEO Phil Knight said in a statement that ac companied the report. “You will see a few accomplishments and more than a few challenges.” The Beaverton-based company, which has a contract to provide li censed apparel for the University, has been accused of pushing profits over corporate responsibility. “Nike seems to be a decade behind,” Law Professor Ibrahim Gassama said, pointing out that companies like Reebok were involved with human rights issues more than a decade ago. “Nike is distinguished by its recalci trant behavior and its own self, by not being responsible.” Turn to Nike, page 8 Jon House Emerald Since Deady Hall opened in 1876, it has been placed on the National Registry of Historic Places and designated as a historic landmark. Nike's Corporate Responsibility Report The report addressed how the Beaverton-based shoe and sports apparel company handles many areas of social responsibility in its offices and more than 700 contracted factories—employing over 500,000 workers. Here are some excerpts: Monitoring: “Effective and comprehensive monitoring requires certain specific skill sets revolving around four areas of compliance: Health and safety, pay and benefits, terms of work and management worker relations. We believe it requires a neutral bias toward both management and worker. Monitoring is not advocacy. How well do we do monitoring? Not well enough. As this report goes to press we are in the final stages of a review of the whole system, triggered by a series of factory and worker issues that suggested our current system was not performing at an adequate level.” Child Labor: Calling their age standards “the highest in the world,” Nike says that in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia, “those standards are next to impossible to verify” because birth records do not exist or can be easily forged. Nike has set its age-limit standard at 16. “We put teeth behind the policy with oversight and follow-up. A Nike contractor found employing any worker under our age standards must a) remove the child from the workplace, b) continue to pay that child worker’s basic weeklv wage, c) place that worker in an accredited local school and pa^es to keep them there, and d) agree to rehire that worker when reaching the Nike minimum age. Factories that refuse to follow these steps will lose our business.” Potential suspects detained at airport ■Travel agents heed FBI warnings to be on their “highest alert” and help authorities detain suspects By Lenny Savino Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON (KRT) - Two Mid dle Eastern men who paid cash for one way airline tickets from New York to Amsterdam and apparently gave false phone numbers to a New York City travel agency were being questioned Monday by the FBI, the agency said. The men bought tickets for Friday night’s Delta Air Lines Flight 80, scheduled to leave John F. Kennedy International Airport at 8:15 p.m. They were detained before boarding the flight, which was canceled. The FBI would not identify them, or two other Middle Eastern men who went to the same travel agency later the same day and tried to buy one way tickets for the same flight. They walked out of the office after the travel agent became suspicious and started to make a phone call, law enforce ment officials said. “The investigation is ongoing,” said an FBI spokesman who asked not to be named. At the very least, investiga tors were pleased that travel agents are looking for suspicious customers and notifying the FBI when they find them, the spokesman said. The two men, who are still in cus tody, could face immigration viola tions, the FBI said. In other developments Monday, U.S. authorities said they believe four overseas bombing plots have been thwarted since the World Trade Cen ter and Pentagon attacks. U.S. officials identified the targets of the four plots as the U.S. Embassy in Paris, an American building in Turkey, U.S. Embassy buildings in Yemen and a NATO building in Brussels. The plots against the U.S. Embassy in Paris and NATO headquarters in Brus sels have been widely reported. Police across Europe have made numerous ar rests in that case, including two men identified as potential suicide bombers. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, police in Brussels took four men into custody in connection with a plot to drive a truck bomb into NATO headquarters. Information on the Turkey and Yemen plots was less specific. Over the last month, 225 people overseas have been arrested for terrorist-related activ ities in about 40 countries, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft. On Monday, Ashcroft met with Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s interior min ister. Spanish police and the FBI have been investigating suspected hi Turn to Investigation, page 8
