Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
PO. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online Edition:
www. dailyemerald .com
Monday, March 4,2002
Editor in Chief:
Jessica Blanchard
Managing Editor:
Jeremy Lang
Editorial Editor:
Julie Lauderbaugh
Assistant Editorial Editor:
Jacquelyn Lewis
Editorial
ASUO should
grant access
to vote count
The ASUO Elections Board made a major
philosophical error when it barred reporters
from witnessing the Feb. 22 primary election
vote count. But the ASUO Constitution Court
made an equal blunder when it refused to clarify the
incident after a grievance was filed.
Oregon Commentator publisher Bret Jacobson filed
the grievance after the primary election, arguing that
the elections board is a public board and the counting
would constitute an executive session, for which one
representative from each medium is allowed under
Oregon law. ASUO rules state that student govern
ment must follow applicable state laws, but Jacobson
failed to cite this rule in his grievance, and the court
dismissed the issue on this technicality.
After the vote-counting fiasco in Florida during the
2000 presidential election, the elections board should
be trying even harder to ensure free and fair elections.
The easiest way to do that is to involve reporters — by
nature, the watchdogs of government.
The elections board denied media access to campus
representatives reportedly because of personal prob
lems against specific Commentator staffers.
The elections board first granted an Emerald pho
tographer access before the tally began, but when he
arrived at the ASUO office, he was turned away with
the excuse that there was someone representing the
Commentator that the elections board didn’t want
present, citing that person’s “rude” demeanor.
Furthermore, the Emerald and the Commentator
were told by representatives of the elections board that
media members would only be admitted for the tallying
if they could provide applicable state laws or ASUO
rules that granted the media access to vote tallies.
The elections board has no business denying media
access to the tally because of a personality clash or
otherwise, and it should be the responsibility of the
elections board to know the laws that pertain to the
ASUO elections process. The excuse given is flimsy at
best and obstructs the common duty of all media
members at these events.
But the court did not clarify if media members are
allowed to be present during vote counting. By throw
ing out the grievance, the court simply complicated
matters further and let the questions go unanswered.
Despite the need for clarification from the court,
we maintain that media members have a responsi
bility to students to be a watchdog for ASUO pro
ceedings. No one should have been denied access
during the tally, and it is especially unfair to deny
everyone access — when they might normally wel
come it — because the elections board dislikes rep
resentatives from the Commentator.
By circumventing procedure in favor of peace of
mind, the ASUO elections board has compromised its
integrity in the minds of voters, and the court in turn
needs to clarify its position on the issue.
Editorial Policy
editorial board. Responses can be sent to
ietters@dailyemerald.com. Letters to tire editor and guest
commentaries are encouraged. Letters are limited
to 250 words and guest commentaries to 550 words.
Please include contact information. Trie Emerald
reserves the right to edit for space, grammar and style.
Editorial Board Members
Jessica Blanchard
editor in chief
Jacquelyn Lewis
assistant editorial editor
managing editor
Julie lauderbaugh
editorial editor
Jerenr
lor
Golda Portillo
community representative
Leon Tovey
newsroom representative
Better than a public school
ith an $8 million budget
cut looming over the Uni
versity, our leaders are
frantically scrambling to
find solutions. An increased enroll
ment figured to be pushing 20,000
means the University will be forced to
do more with less. Generic ideas like
cutting programs, putting a freeze on
new hires and increasing tuition have
all been put on the table, but even with
these ideas, the
University is in a
dubious position of
always receiving
the short end of the
stick. The solution
is for the Universi
ty to go private.
There is no ques
tion that this school
is the beacon of the
Oregon University
System, but it is at a
crossroad. This
campus continuous
Columnist ly operates with a
balanced budget,
has found alternative funding sources to
expand facilities and recently completed
the most successful fund-raising drive in
state history. All this is done while other
OUS schools keep finding their way into
trouble. So while state dollars could be
flowing to the University to make it one
of the premier schools on the West Coast,
this money is going to make other OUS
schools nothing more than average.
Over in La Grande, anybody can at
tend the glorified community college
know as Eastern Oregon University for
the same in-state rate. During the budg
et cuts of the 1980s, there was talk of
closing Western Oregon Uni
versity in Monmouth and us
ing the facilities as a correc
tional institution. Yet for
some reason these schools
and others continue to waste
resources that could be best
used elsewhere in the Oregon
University System, like here.
Last year, the OUS set a
goal of creating a top-25 engi
neering program at Oregon State
University, a school that has managed to
go $19 million in the red. When a col
lege can’t responsibly spend the money
it already has, it doesn’t make sense to
give it more when the money could be
better spent at another institution.
Just ask Mike Eyster, who, as the Uni
versity’s housing director, pays $1.3 mil
lion per year toward a statewide debt
pool. University Housing racked up
only 17 percent of the pool but pays off
36 percent of it. The difference helped
schools like Oregon State University
build a new residence hall but prevents
the University from doing the same.
As a private school, tuition would in
crease quite drastically, because it is a
simple economic fact that a better prod
uct costs more — and a better product is
what the University should be striving
for. Creating endowments could offset
some tuition costs, and the
University
has already
proven that it can raise money by itself.
Increased tuition also means that enroll
ment would drop off because some stu
dents wouldn’t be able to attend the new
and improved University of Oregon, but
this is fine. As the cost of tuition goes up,
so should admission standards.
The top universities in the nation are
those that have students whose primary
purpose is more than just receiving a
piece of paper with their name on it at
the end. These are also the schools with
well-paid professors, modem facilities
and hundreds of millions of dollars in
research grants. In U.S. News and World
Report’s most recent rankings of national
doctoral universities, two-thirds of the
nation’s top 50 schools are private.
It is time we make the switch and
join them.
E-mail columnist Jeff Oliver
at jeffoliver@dailyemerald.com.
Poll Results:
Every week, the Emerald prints the results of
our online poll and the poll question for ne<t
week. The poll can be accessed from the main
cage of our Web site, www dailyemeraid.com.
We encourage you to send us feedback about |
the poll questions and results.
last week's pall question:
What is your favontevtce?
Results: 112total votes
■ Drinking — 20.5 percent, or 23 votes
■ Online porn — 28.6 percent, or 32 votes
*?■
■ Caffeine—19.6 percent or 22 votes
■ Don’t know — 1.8 percent, or 2 votes
•Don’t care—6.3 percent, or 7 votes
This week's pell question:
Who or what is this week’s talk of the town?
The choices:
■ Men’s basketball Pacific-10 championship
■Alcohol sales on Sundays
■ David Horowitz's anti-reparations speech
■ Ralph Nader’s environmental law keynote
speech
■ Don’t care
■Don't know
Letters to the editor
No gun is a ‘toy’
The recent incident involving a stu
dent in possession of a handgun (al
beit “only a BB gun”) did not leave
me unsettled as much as it convinced
me of the serious need for weapon ed
ucation for the young people in our
society (“BB gun may trigger judicial
hearing,” ODE, 02/28).
What did disturb me was Sung-Min
Kim’s reference to the BB gun as a toy.
No gun, regardless of whether it is
made of plastic, wood or metal
should ever be considered a “toy,” if
it is capable of firing a projectile. No
matter how small that projectile is,
the threat of damage to its intended
target still exists.
Kim readily admits his mistake,
and I don’t believe he should suffer
extreme disciplinary action as a re
sult of his poor judgment. It is obvi
ous that he has an interest in
firearms. College is not the place to
pursue this interest, but as a gun en
thusiast I would like to suggest that
a class in handgun safety would be
an appropriate way for Kim to pur
sue this interest and most impor
tantly, learn about safety measures
and the huge responsibility that
each person who handles weapons
must accept.
Carolyn Baker
junior
anthropology
Elections disrespect nature
Our University has become a
desert. Storms have knocked down a
number of trees; we cut and remove
their trunks. We cut more trees in or
der to protect University Street (or to
benefit the season’s growth). No re
spect is given to the nature found
about our campus.
Our University is finding itself in a
barren desert and the elections reflect
it. We lack desire for abundance of na
ture and replace it with non-satisfac
tory exercises of “democratic” tech
nology. But it is not! This is a cry that
replacing nature with technology is
not a move in the direction we need.
Recall the election! DuckWeb and the
system are faulty! Place the power in
the people.
Chuck Holding
senior
political science