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Commentary
Editor in Chief:
Michael J. Kleckner
Managing Editor
Jessica Richelderfer
Editorial Editor
Pat Payne
Wednesday, March 5,2003
Letters to the editor
Upcoming election should prompt
student involvement
There are a number of issues and concerns that af
fect students on and off campus. These issues are felt
widely and deeply and can be shaped and cast in
many different lights. Perhaps you are of a mindset
that there is relatively little that can be done about the
problems we face on campus, but perhaps the right
people haven’t yet had the opportunity to advocate for
such priorities. Maybe you can be the change.
Elections for positions within the ASUO Execu
tive, Student Senate and a variety of other commit
tees are rapidly approaching. Your involvement in
these areas will not only dramatically affect your
personal and professional growth, but will also pro
vide the stage upon which you can play out the ac
tion that you want to take to create a better commu
nity and university for students.
Additionally, there is an opportunity for you to in
volve yourself in a particular area of interest by pe
titioning your fellow students and placing measures
and/or constitutional changes on the ballot. I urge
you to consider seriously the changes that you want
to see, or the positions that you want to take on the
things that matter most to you and your fellow stu
dents. Step up to the plate and disown the belief
that college students are apathetic. You are the only
one who can be held responsible for action that you
don’t take. Application materials are available in the
ASUO office, EMU Suite 4.
Rachel Pilliod
ASUO president
Treasonous administration wages
hypocritical imperial war
Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien spoke vol
umes when he asked, “If you start changing regimes,
where do you stop? Who is next? Give me the list.”
According to the Sept. 2000 (pre-election) Project
for the New American Century defense strategy blue
print — whose authors are now top administration of
ficials — that list is long and includes China. Regime
change in Iraq was a first step, and here we are.
Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov complains
that America’s demand for regime change implies “a
step aimed at democratic transformations in the
Arab world.” Now consider defense policy adviser
Richard Perle’s recent “Meet the Press” comment: “I
don’t see what would be wrong with surrounding Is
rael with democracies; indeed, if the whole world
were democratic, we’d live in a much safer interna
tional security system because democracies do not
wage aggressive wars.”
Yet here we are, waging an aggressive war.
This isn’t just about oil. What most Americans
don’t seem to grasp is that America is changing fun
damentally, becoming an empire bullying the world.
Wasn’t this the kind of arrogance that caused Sept.
11,2001?
As far as the administration’s response to Sept. 11,
2001, goes, the word “reckless” comes to mind. As
far as their vision for America, the word “treason
ous” fits. Culturally and environmentally, their poli
cies invite disaster, whether by nature or acts of re
venge and despair from the oppressed.
A government that seeks to spread democracy by
force, and against the will of its people, doesn’t know
the meaning of the word.
Brian Bogart
first-year graduate student
peace studies
Letters to the editor
and guest
commentaries policy
Letters to the editor and guest
commentaries are encouraged.
Letters are limited to 250 words
and guest commentaries to 550 words.
Authors are limited to one submission
per calendar month. Submission must
include phone number
and address for verification.
The Emerald reserves the right
to edit for space, grammar and style.
0 9 9 9 9 9 9. * 9 9 9 V » . » • - - * * *
UO conveys wrong message with Woods
Guest commentary
As former felon Rodney
Woods stands poised to accept
a University football scholar
ship, it’s important that the
family and friends of Christo
pher O’Leary, the 18-year-old
who died after a beating in
which Woods and two friends
were initially implicated, un
derstand that not all Oregon
football fans feel good about the
program’s participation in this
young man’s attempt to absolve
himself of moral and legal re
sponsibility for events that took
place May 19, 2000.
Woods pleaded no contest to
felony assault for chasing down
and beating a man who ques
tioned why two of Woods’ foot
ball teammates were punching
and kicking O’Leary, who had
¥ r •
gone to the party to pick up his
girlfriend for a date and was still
in the front yard when the beat
ing took place.
Some witnesses said Woods
did not participate in O’Leary’s
beating only because others
were holding him back. Woods
and his family, who are facing a
wrongful death lawsuit filed by
O’Leary’s parents, maintain he
never touched the boy and
played no role in his death.
I know from unfortunate
first-hand experience following
a high school graduation party
that there are people who will
stand by and watch or even
cheer as someone is being
kicked in the head — and then
there are the rest of us.
By his own plea-bargain ad
mission, Rodney Woods didn’t
just fail to protect O’Leary
from being savagely beaten to
death, and he didn’t just stand
idly by as it happened; he
chased and beat the kid who
dared to speak out against his
friends’ deadly acts.
It’s also clear that every time
Woods denies involvement in
O’Leary’s beating — which he
must do for legal and public re
lations reasons — he causes
deep pain to the victim’s family.
That’s the last thing Rodney
Woods would want to do if he
sincerely felt remorse for his
role in the O’Leary family’s life
time of pain.
But if he wants to take the
next step in his football career,
that’s what he has to do. A Cali
fornia judge’s decision last week
to reduce his felony to a misde
meanor opened the door.
Woods’ mother told the
court this is her son’s only
chance to get a college educa
tion. Given the availability of
assistance and the experience
of people without means who
have found a way to pay for
higher education, that state
ment lacks merit.
Make no mistake, Rodney
Woods will be in Eugene —
with what would have been
two years left on his original
felony probation agreement —
to live his dream of playing
big-time football.
And when you boil down all
the justifications, arguments,
emotion and fact-spinning,
there is one nugget on which
we can be certain: A criminal
received special treatment and
attention because he is also a
talented athlete.
That’s the wrong message for
a university to send.
Pat Malach lives in Hillsboro.
voice concerns on U.b. weapons burning
Guest commentary
Oregon is home to enough chemical
weaponry to annihilate the entire population
of the United States. The Umatilla chemical
weapons depot in Northeastern Oregon is
home to 12 percent of the nation’s chemical
weapons stockpile, which includes nerve
agents VX and GB (sarin gas) and the blister
agent HD (mustard gas).
An international treaty signed in 1982
requires us to drastically reduce our chem
ical weapons capabilities by 2004. In order
to comply with this treaty, the U.S. military
has built several incinerators around the
country to destroy stockpiled chemical
agents. However, while the destruction of
these chemical weapons will greatly im
prove the safety and security of people in
America and around the world, the practice
of incineration has lethal potential.
Test bums at Umatilla have shown un
promising results, to say the least. Small
test bums were stopped when harmful
amounts of lead, chromium, nickel, anti
mony and arsenic were being released into
the atmosphere. Incinerators have already
begun operations in Utah and the Marshall
Islands and both have shown results simi
lar to the tests performed at Umatilla. Gary
Harris, a former chief permit coordinator at
the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facili
ty, just outside of Salt Lake City, stated that
test bum reports were falsified in order to
conceal findings that many munitions
could not be burned safely. Harris reported
human health and environmental concerns
to the U.S. Army and was directed not to
report the findings to the state of Utah un
der the threat of losing his job, according to
statements he made at the National Press
Club on Jan. 11, 2000.
When these incinerators are not func
tioning “properly,” the situation looks even
worse. Both the Marshall Islands and
Tooele incinerators have experienced nu
merous operation accidents including fires,
explosions, massive spillage of chemical
agents and the release of nerve agents into
the atmosphere and facility corridors fre
quented by workers.
Already, the military has wasted $1.2
billion building the hazardous Umatilla
incinerator. While simply allowing these
weapons to sit and corrode is clearly not
a good idea, cheaper and much safer
means of disposal do exist such as water
neutralization/hydrolysis. A hydrolysis fa
cility could be constructed at half the cost
of a chemical incinerator. One has al
ready been built at the Aberdeen Proving
Ground in Maryland, just outside of
Washington, D.G. Operations at Aberdeen
have been running safely and effectively.
So now that the Bush administration
has scared us all witless over weapons of
mass destruction, why has this threat not
been dealt with within our own borders?
Have recent events blinded us to the irre
sponsibility of our own military? If burn
ing chemical weapons does not sound like
a good idea, I ask you to please express
your concerns to the Department of Envi
ronmental Quality.
David Kurushima is a freshman in humanities.