Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Suite 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online: www.dailyemerald.com
— Oregon Daily Emerald
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Jan Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Travis Willse
Friday, March 12,2004
Focus must
shift toward
academics,
not athletics
College sport is at a turn in the road, a junction that either
could make it an acceptable part of the campus or push it further
along the road to self-destruction. Because it has become an un
wieldy big business, it faces an important choice:
Follow the current trend at the University of Oregon, where
multiple millions are spent on varsity athletics in a system where
educational programs go hungry. Or move away from out-of
balance spending by following the revolutionary action of Van
derbilt University, where the office of athletics administration
has been dosed.
There's another option. It has its roots, ironically — maybe un
derstandably — also at the University of Oregon. Here in 2002, a
new idea was pushed by the Faculty Senate President James Earl
and some of his colleagues. Borrow
er** n gs -jR- ing from the global nuclear competi
KL. 1 tion, they feel the campus arms race
COMMENTARY threatens "mutually assured destruc
- tion" of college football and basket
ball. Within months, other Pac-10
universities passed similar faculty resolutions. The concept
moved eastward, where early backing came from schools in the
Big Ten Conference
My correspondence with the Vanderbilt chancellor helps me
better understand Vand/s experiment — an attempt to defuse
the time bomb of that excessive spending.
Vanderbilt offers no magic potion, just a simple mixture of vi
sion and courage offered by Chancellor Gordon Gee to cleanse
big time sports of their terminal illness. His decision to disband
the traditional department of athletics for varsity sports caught
the college world by surprise. Shock is a better word at many
schools where athletic programs soar out of control while aca
demia, to which they belong, finds itself increasingly in serious fi
nancial trouble.
The game on the field has not gotten beyond Vanderbilt. It
stays competitive against richer programs of state institutions.
Staying close off the field is something else. It comes at the em
barrassing cost of expensive promotions and excessive spending
on facilities and coaches. The exploding payscale for football
head coaches finds many earning more than the university pres
idents to whom they report.
Oregon signaled it was in the football arms race when it paid a
quarter million dollars for a billboard in downtown New York to
promote star quarterback Joey Harrington. Soon after came the ad
dition of 12,000 seats to Autzen Stadium at a cost of $90 million.
Long-established football factories today know Oregon is
making a serious move to join them on the field and in the cash
box Eyebrows went up with word of the Ducks' new $3.2 mil
lion football locker room.
Oregon's step up into the stratosphere of sports spending
seemed assured when its plans were announced for the most ex
pensive basketball facility in the nation. But when cost for re
placement of McArthur Court jumped to $ 190 million, the proj
ect was put on hold.
The Register-Guard Sports Editor Ron Bellamy noted the
$ 130 million pledged by donors for the new gym, lamenting the
change would result in "a loss for the credibility" of the Oregon
Turn to ACADEMICS, page 3
Eric Layton Illustrator
Dealing with death
Please forgive the poor timing — writing
about death is hardly an apt way to dose
the first week of the year that feels like
spring. But death, and what it means to
people, has been on my mind lately. You
see, my Aunt Inga passed away in February.
I'd only met her maybe a half-dozen times,
but I still felt a tug of sadness when my
brother told me. I'd never dealt with the
death of a family member or friend as an
adult, and I realized I didn't know how to
respond to the situation. Sadness? Sure, but
sadness is hardly a complete emotional re
sponse to such a complicated situation.
But I'm not alone in my uncertainty:
America has forgotten how to deal with
death. We watch the news and hear about
dead celebrities, deaths at war and even
genocide, and we digest it all like any other
news item, queued between moot presi
dential primary results and the basketball
scores, unsure just what to make of it.
Though we're uncomfortable with sex—
after all, a single exposed nipple spun the
mass media into a frenzy and the Federal
Communications Commission into a se
quence of paternalistic threats of unduly
harsh punishment aimed at discouraging
indecency — we're perfunctorily, even
bizarrely, comfortable with death.
Moral conservatives and anti-corporate
leftists would likely form an odd alliance
on this point, arguing that images of
death presented in the media trivialize
human life either as less than spiritual or
commodified. And there's probably
some truth to that: Though elementary
school-age children see few, if any, sexu
al acts on television, by the end of ele
mentary school they'll watch some 8,000
Travis Willse
RivaiSess wit
murders on the small screen, according to
research cited by the University of Michi
gan Health System. Whether sex and vio
lence on television instigate sex and vio
lence in real life is debatable; however, it's
not such a leap to assume that television
significantly influences how we perceive
our culture.
While media influence seems to be a
likely factor in America's thanatological
ambivalence, it certainly can't fully account
for the individual's, or even the culture's,
awkwardness with the subject.
Regardless, for all this ambiguity, Ameri
ca recognizes the dead as something sa
cred, even in the realm of the secular. As
construction crews geared up to bore the
MAX light rail tunnel under Sylvan in the
1990s, the easiest route cut through part of
the Finley-Sunset Hills Mortuary. Despite
protesters' complaints, officials decided to
lay track along the embattled path, and 14
buried bodies were relocated.
Last Saturday, police arrested Henry
Reid, director of the UCLA Willed Body
Program, on allegations of "illegal activi
ties involving the commercialization of
human remains" — a sort of modern
grave-robbing.
We recognize that these situations run
deeper than transportation planning and
allegations of selling property that one
doesn't own.
Whether changing views of and reac
tions to death constitute a moral failure
probably depends on your point of view.
But, how we relate to death necessarily in
tertwines with how we relate to life. And if
consideration of the former helps illumi
nate the latter, a little introspection on mat
ters mortal could do us all some good.
Contact the editorial editor
at traviswillse@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.
Flyer7s attack shifts focus from important issues
First off, we would like to say that we are sure
that tire Emerald was just as disappointed as us to
leam that your distribution was used to spread
around the flyer which made allegations against
March 9) and are confident that your newspaper
staff knew as little about this as we did. That said,
let us turn to the incident itself:
We are taking it very seriously. Until the afore
mentioned flyer was released, the incident had no
Sigma Nu on Monday,
March 8. We appreci
("Fliers distributed ir
responsibly," ODE,
ties to our fraternity: The incident did not take
place on our property, it did not occur at a
function that we in anyway sponsored and the
alleged perpetrator was not associated with our
house. Although a group of members, myself
included, were in attendance at the event in
question, we attended it as outsiders. I became
personally involved in the incident when a
close friend of mine alerted me to the situation,
whereupon I and a fellow member (Tim For
den) assisted the victim to the hospital. Again,
Tim and I did not act as representatives of Sig
ma Nu, but rather only in accordance with our
own moral codes.
The unfortunate truth of this situation is
that the flyer released takes the form of an at
tack which in turn provokes our fraternity
into a defensive mode. The important issues,
which involve the safety and well-being of the
young woman, the punishment (if necessary)
of the alleged perpetrator and the materializa
tion of the actual facts, are at risk of being ig
nored. In spite of the urge to focus on defend
ing ourselves from an attack, we will continue
instead to do the best we can to assist in the
investigation — not as good members, but as
good people. Members that were present at
the site of the crime will come forward and
file reports of what they have seen and we
urge the other witnesses present to follow that
example. Above all, we hope that the young
woman involved can find the courage to do
the right thing.
As for the specifics of the crime, we feel it in
appropriate to describe in this forum what we
believe happened that evening, both out of
courtesy to the young woman and with respect
to the rights of the accused. What our member
ship witnessed will be reported in full to Stu
dent Life, where it can be used for its correct
purposes: serving justice and ensuring the safe
ty of students at the University of Oregon.
Andy Newsom, an undeclared sophomore,
is the president of Sigma Nu.