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Editor in Chief:
Jessica Blanchard
Managing Editor:
Michael J. Kleckner
Editorial Editor:
Julie Lauderbaugh
Assistant Editorial Editor:
Jacquelyn Lewis
Editorial
Don’t publicize
HIV test results
The Oregon Health Division is doing a dis
service to the community by requiring
health care providers to report names of
all people who test positive for HIV, the
virus that can lead to AIDS. The state should drop
this requirement and allow complete anonymity.
As of Oct. 1, the Oregon Department of Human
Services began its new reporting system, which
keeps the names of patients in a database until
their case report has been completed. DHS will
then assign a unique identification number to each
case, which begs the question: Why not simply use
a number in the first place? The threat of possibly
being identified when testing for HIV and AIDS
may deter people who fear they have the virus
from being tested.
The University Health Center is also required to
submit names of those who test positive, and the fear
factor of being revealed as having HIV or AIDS, espe
cially on such a small campus, is detrimental to the
success of student health care.
Unfortunately, there is still a stigma attached to
having HIV or AIDS, and that makes it insensitive of
the Oregon Health Division to require identification.
Although the reasoning behind the new policy is to
provide state health officials with more accurate
numbers, the bottom line is that officials can just as
easily track patients anonymously.
Editorial Policy
These editorials represent the opinion of the Emerald
editorial board. Responses can be sent to
letters@dailyemerald.com. Letters to the editor and guest
commentaries are encouraged. Letters are limited to 250
words and guest commentaries to 550 words. Please
include contact information. The Emerald reserves the right
to edit for space, grammar and style.
Poll Results:
Every week, the Emerald prints the results of our online poll and
the poll question for next week. The poll can be accessed from the
main page of our Web site, www.dailyemerald.com. We encourage
you to send us feedback about the poll questions and results.
Last week’s poll question: What are your plans for Halloween?
Results: 62 total votes
Trick-or-treat—5 votes, or 8.1 percent
Study—6 votes, or 9.7 percent
Drink—29 votes, or 46.8 percent
Participate in Pulse costume contest—4 votes, or 6.5 percent
Play with Ouija board—0 votes, or 0 percent
Go to a party—11 votes, or 17.7 percent
Don’t know—7 votes, or 11.3 percent
It appears as though drinking is the option of choice this Halloween
among online voters. And unfortunately for Parker Brothers, it
looks as though voters have outgrown the novelty of Ouija boards.
This week’s poll question: How are you changing your holiday
travel plans because of terrorism?
The choices:
Taking the train
Staying home
Hitchhiking
Renting a car
Taking the bus
Keeping plans the same
Don’t know/Haven't thought about it
Awakening America
The human race is not necessarily
a violent species, as a whole. It is
our relatively peaceful nature
that makes society possible.
However, we do have a violent potential
that emerges from time to time. Even sen
sible people can become feverishly ag
gressive when discussing the urgent need
to end aggression. It is this ability to pro
duce violent anger that has enabled us to
progress and survive. But uninhibited, it
has also caused
much suffering and
— death.
The question
L then becomes,
F when is violence
i justified? Some
may say that vio
lence is never justi
fied, but there is a
g| problem with that
attitude, because
we are not a passive
Debenham species. And if
progress. It is because each individual
strives to exceed that so much advance
ment has occurred. It is because people
stand up for what they value that values
are instilled.
We might ask ourselves whether the
terrorist attacks were justified. In the
eyes of many Americans, they certainly
weren’t. But what about in the eyes of
the terrorists? Bush thinks he has a
clear idea of who is good and who is
evil, and he declares this openly in his
speeches. But evil is not so clearly de
fined. What is evil, and where does it
come from? Who creates it, and why? I
believe the human race is inherently ag
gressive, but assuredly not evil. Per
haps it is ti me we looked closer at this
term so easily prescribed.
Certainly these violent attacks were
cruel and devastating. But would we
have listened to a peaceful approach?
And will we listen now? Extreme vio
lence does have a cause, a foundation,
and we need to question what it is and
how we can change it. Killing the terror
ists will not stop them, because we are
Columnist
everyone were al
ways submissive,
there would be no
not getting to the root of the problem.
We often think of the United States
as wealthy, great and free. We say that
the rest of the world hates us because
we stand for these things. But is it re
ally so black and white? Perhaps we
need to consider how our country
could have invited these attacks. It is
time to give up some of our national
ego. America may be great and
wealthy, but our wealth has made us
self-absorbed isolationists.
The problem is, you aren’t going to
wake a bear out of hibernation by slip
ping a note next to its snoring head, ask
ing to talk things over, especially when
the bear’s den is soft and comfortable
and protected. Maybe we, the American
society, are that bear — thirsty for oil,
hungry for power and craving the ex
pansion of our commercial regime. In
Peter Utsey Emerald
deed, we have been so captivated by
our own satisfying dreams that it took
crashing airplanes to wake us up.
But instead of coming out with a rever
berating roar and a thrash of our yellow
teeth, we should question the reason
we’ve been awakened. We can’t eat every
thing we see without thinking, or we’re
bound to get ourselves poisoned. The
United States has already eaten too many
bad berries and rotten fish. Is it not natural
that we should have a stomachache?
The world in which we reside is not a
passive one, and unfortunately some
times it takes violence to create change.
Now that we’re awake, we should take
the time to learn why.
Tara Debenham is a columnist for the
Oregon Daily Emerald. Her views do not
necessarily reflect those of the Emerald. She can
be reached at taradebenham@dailyemerald.com.
Letters to the editor
Fossilized dung
is better than fresh
It's common sense that:
The University supporting a service
that refuses to hire people because of
gender is a violation of the University’s
own non-discrimination policies.
Losing three to six residential blocks
or losing the downtown hospital site to a
Coburg/Crescent site is preferable to los
ing the hospital altogether.
A traffic-filled downtown mall is prefer
able to an abandoned pedestrian one.
When you make downtown a historic
district, you drive new businesses away
and eventually kill downtown by limit
ing its development. Look at Albany,
Corvallis, Lebanon, etc.
A student-funded organization that
doesn't undergo an annual budget ap
proval process is wide open to charges
of fraud and abuse, regardless of
whetherthere’s impropriety or not.
Any California team that’s having a good
season will be ranked higher than any Ore
gon team, even though we're better.
The odds of you catching Anthrax are
infinitesimally low.
Not all war is bad. Without the Amer
ican Revolution, there would be no
America (as we know it), no Bill of
Rights, no Constitution, no freedom any
where — the American Revolution
helped to inspire the European and
Latin American ones.
Dissent and disagreement aren’t dis
loyalty.
Not all partisanship is bad. Without
dissent, disagreement and discussion,
we’d all be boring carbon copies.
Not all partisanship is good, either.
Without compromise, we'd never get
anything done.
Even a coprolitic daily newspaper
like the Emerald, which has all of the
vigor and enthusiasm of a lobotomized
sloth, is better than a fecal publication
like the Commentator.
Derek Ian Jones
sophomore
undeclared
Smoking marijuana
should be your choice
I am 45 years old and capable to make
my own choices on how to raise my own
family. The interpretation of what mari
juana does and how it does it doesn’t
even configure in my life (“There’s no
hope with dope," ODE, 10/15). I’m
aware marijuana affects different people
in different ways, but the issue here is
still choice.
Human nature is always looking for
escape — whether its coffee, tobacco,
alcohol, food, money, sex, whatever.
With the shape the nation’s in, it might
help everyone to sit back and burn one
just to think about what happened and
how we’re going to deal with it.
I hate the thought of having to kill an
other human being, whether in war or
peace, and not having a choice on how to
deal with it myself. Marijuana is a minute
issue. I have children and am dealing with
issues of drugs, alcohol, violence, war and
now terrorism. I have to teach them how
to make their own choices on all of these
subjects, and all I have to do it with is
sheer determination, help from God, a
strong (weakening) back and good friends
and family.
Marijuana has strengthened my life
in all of these areas. But now I’ve had to
give up pot because of drug testing in
the workplace. I've had the same job
for 20 years. Pot has never interfered
with anything until this testing start
ed. I thought the Fourth Amendment
meant what it said. Apparently I was
wrong.
Dale Covington
Cross Plains, Tenn.