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Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Jared Paben
Managing Editor:
Travis Willse
EDITORIAL
Campus projects
should preserve
aesthetic legacy
Even in times of continual monetary leanness, the Universi
ty continues to develop and reinvest to meet the needs of a
changing (and slowly growing) student body, and to improve
the campus's aesthetics.
Consider the following (not exhaustive) summary of cam
pus improvement projects:
• Hayward Plaza. In a July 1 meeting, the Campus Plan
ning Committee approved a proposal for a new entrance at
East 15th Avenue and Agate Street to the University's famed
track and field venue. The design includes landscaping, brick
work and a columned entrance, and a showcase for the Uni
versity's athletic achievements.
• Heart of Campus. The busiest intersection on campus —
University Street and East 13th Avenue — is seeing a face-lift
this summer, including a new, student-designed kiosk. Once
home to a one-way thoroughfare, the street will no longer be
open to motor vehicles during the day hours.
• Living Learning Center. Workers recently tore down the
tennis courts between the Walton and Earl complexes on East
15th Avenue to make way for the Living Learning Center, the
first new on-campus residence hall in decades, which is set to
integrate living space with classrooms and instructors' offices.
The University deserves kudos for strategically timing the
Heart of Campus' construction. Like last year's "pedestrian
refuge," doing major construction on a heavily trafficked
area in the summer inconveniences the smallest number of
people. But not all of the University's construction projects
will be so ergonomically benign.
The University campus has about 3,300 parking spaces, leav
ing driving commuters with fewer than one space for every six
students and staff members (a low ratio compared to other cam
puses). In all this construction, the University should ensure
that staff and students have access to this precious resource.
At the same time, while the University is poised in many
ways to vault into the future, it should in considering all these
campus improvements remember the importance of the cam
pus's aesthetic legacy. For example: The neoclassical stylings
of the new Hayward Plaza are pleasing to the eye, but do they
mesh with the University's look?
Whatever the project, the Emerald Editorial Board wholly
supports the above and other campus improvements in spirit,
given that the University takes into consideration both the
needs of the present and the legacy of the past.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Jared Paben Travis Willse
Editor in Chief Managing Editor
Erik R. Bishoff
Online & Photo Editor
ONLINE POLL
THIS WEEK’S POLL RESULTS
Do you support the GTF walkout on
Wednesday? (32 votes)
1. Yes - We have a responsibility
to support our students and staff
- 56 percent
2. No - I’m paying for my classes
to be on campus - 25 percent
3. No - It is unfairly inconveniencing
students -13 percent
4. Yes - It's a great excuse to skip
class - 6 percent
NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION
What role should presidential and vice
presidential spouses play?
Visit www.dailyemerald .com to vote.
• They’re there to decorate the
White and Blair houses for the
holidays
• They should make or influence
policy
• They should support their
spouses' politics
• They're not elected, but they
should act as goodwill emissaries
Aaron Sullivan Illustrator
Drug of choice
Working in a small-town newsroom, I
heard a lot of stories about it:
A man masturbates in the doorway of a
hotel in Curtin for hours until police are
called out. When the two officers arrive,
the man shoots one with a high-powered
rifle, penetrating the officer's bullet-proof
vest and killing him.
A man steals nachos from a corner mar
ket in Cottage Grove and when police offi
cers arrive at his home he attacks them
without provocation. They hit him with a
baton and spray him with pepper spray. A
police dog battles him but he still nearly
kills the officers with his bare hands.
A man races on Interstate 5 from the
Sutherlin area to Cottage Grove, where his
transmission finally explodes because he
had been unknowingly flooring it in sec
ond gear for the 40-mile trip.
Meet methamphetamine, and the bro
ken, violent, paranoid people who used it.
A man enters 7-Eleven and buys Cheetos,
Mountain Dew and a huge danish. He then
goes home with his friends, where he
munches his snacks and plays video games
or watches infomercials until he falls asleep.
Meet marijuana, and the giggly, hungry,
video-game playing people who use it.
My point here is not that pot is a com
pletely harmless drug — it does impair the
user and have some negative physical affects
— but rather that in terms of posing a threat
to society, there's clearly a difference between
meth and pot. Meth is more dangerous and
destructive to addicts and society at large
than pot is. So, it would make sense that
pursuing pot users with more vigor than
meth addicts would be absolutely ludicrous.
But sadly, that's exactly what our out-of
touch federal government seems to be do
ing: pouring money and resources into an
endless battle on pot use.
According to a press release from the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, "The
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Cam
paign, a comprehensive federal effort to
provide drug prevention messages to
America's children, was reworked in 2002
to produce harder-hitting ads that have
focused on the harms of marijuana."
JARED PABEN
HELP WANTED
Consider this a wake-up call to our out
of-touch politicians in Washington, D.C.,
who are busy pursuing local pipe shops
and doctors who prescribe marijuana.
Wake up and realize we have a new enemy
to fight— one that already has a head start
wreaking havoc in our society— and
investing anything less than our full efforts
in battling this foe is unacceptable.
Here is some ground-level intelligence
on this enemy, which, according to the
U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, has already become one of the
most prevalent illicit drugs in the world:
Meth makes people dangerous.
"Chronic abuse can lead to psychotic
behavior, characterized by intense para
noia, visual and auditory hallucinations,
and out-of-control rages that can be cou
pled with extremely violent behavior," ac
cording to a NIDA fact sheet.
Meth addicts steal. According to an Aug.
2 column in The Oregonian, a meth addict
robbed at least 30 different places along
southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland
in the past year.
That same addict stole appliances,
including washers and dryers from up to
100 vacant Portland homes.
Meth addicts are also self-destructive. The
drug itself— which can be made with hy
drochloric acid, and lithium from batteries
or lye — can increase body temperatures to
as high as 104 degrees. It can leave a user
awake and without an appetite for days on
end, if an overdose doesn't cause a heart at
tack or stroke first. Hallucinations may cause
the user to perceive bugs crawling under his
or her skin; he or she tears his skin apart with
knives or fingernails trying to get at them.
Meth destroys families. Almost two
years ago I interviewed a 17-year-old boy
who told me his mom and dad were
meth addicts who spent every cent of the
family's money on the drug. When he
was 10 years old and his grandmother
died, his mom spent all of the inheri
tance money on the drug.
Another teen told me he came back
from a trip when he was 12 or 13 years
old, only to find his meth-addicted father
at home, 6'1", 92 pounds and bald.
"Dad just shaved his head; he was try
ing to run from the cops," he said. "He
looked like he just came out of a concen
tration camp"
In May 2002, a Cottage Grove woman
came home and found her 18-year-old
daughter hanging from a rod in the closet
with a belt around her neck. Her daughter
had been a meth addict, and had hung
herself because of her sorrow at getting in
volved with meth. She left behind a four
year-old daughter and two sisters.
Meth also costs a lot for the rest of society.
Meth labs, which are often set up in residen
tial rental units, cost thousands of dollars to
clean up, which lowers property values.
Moreover, the dangerous chemicals from a
former lab can also cause unsuspecting resi
dents to fall ill. According to a column in
the Aug. 2 column in The Oregonian, the
federal government estimates "one in sue
meth labs explodes or catches on fire."
I had a police officer once tell me that
his department could go out and bust a
meth lab any time it wants, but there sim
ply wasn't enough money to fund it. In
stead of busting meth makers, he said de
partments frequently go after marijuana
dealers, because they usually have more
money, yielding bigger crops of forfeitures
for the department.
Now, here's a thought for you Washing
ton lawmakers: Instead of dropping mil
lions of dollars on commercials depicting
pot smokers as dangerous criminals, you
could actually fund local police depart
ments so we can go after the real criminals.
editor @ daily emerald, com
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