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