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Commentary Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday March 31, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR IARED PABEN AY1SMA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH HALINGIT AMANDA BOLSINGER ADAM CHERRY EMILY SMITH EVA SYLWESTER SHELDON TRAVER NEWS REPORTERS CIAYTON IONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYjCM nyburg PULSE EDITOR AMY IJCHTY SENIOR PULSE REPORTER IOSHUA LINTEREUR PULSE REPORTER CAT BALDWIN PULSE CARTOONIST A1LEE SLATER COMMENTARY EDITOR GABE BRADLEY ANNEMAR1E KNEPPER CHUCK SLOTHOWER JENNIFER MCBRIDE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR LAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER ERIK BISHOFF KATE HORTON PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURTWANGI.ER GRAPHIC ARTIST DUSTIN REESE SENIOR DESIGNER ELLIOTT ASBURY WENPY KIEFFF.R AMANDA LEE IONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY IEANNIE EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKF1ELD PAULTHOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS GREG BILSIAND AMBER L1NDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR WEBMASTER (541)346-5511 JUDY R1EDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER LAUNADEGIUSTI RECEPTIONIST JERF-D NAGEL PATRICK SCHMERBER HOLLY STEIN PETER STEPHENS JANA SWANSON ROB WEGNER CAROLYN ZIMMERMAN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CALISCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE IIIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE KELLEE KAUFTHEIL MIA LEIDELMEYER SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES CLASSIFIED (541) 3464343 rei NASH AN AM AN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KORALYNN BASHAM ANDO KAIY GAGNON KERI SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541)346-4381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT SABRINA GOWETTE JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday through Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Dally Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is pnvate property. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. ■ In my opinion Where everybody knows your name “Thank you, Mrs. (pause) Kekeke.. .KEPner, is it?” This type of thing may have hap pened to you too. In line at the grocery store, purchases made, you are handed your receipt. The clerk makes a “friendly” attempt to refer to you by name. “No, it’s Nepper,” I reply, “like KNife.” “Oh, sorry Mrs. Knee-per.” I shrug. This is not worth a 20 minute conversation. On to the video store. “See ya back here Wednesday, AnneMarie!” I turn around. Funny, I didn’t recog nize the girl when I was checking out. Did I go to high school with her? No way, she looks far too young. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this person in my life. But, apparently, we are on a first-name basis. And I won’t be seeing this stranger on Wednesday; I’m far too cheap for that. I’ll be back tomorrow for my dollar credit. I first noticed this phenomenon three years ago. After ringing up my groceries at a local chain supermarket, the clerk asked me if I had a Club Card. I did indeed, and began to rattle off my phone number. The clerk interrupted me before I could finish, with a terse, “No, no, no, we don’t do that anymore. We have to scan the card. ” _^. ANNEMARIE KNEPPER WORKS ON PAPER When pressed for details as to why, the clerk explained that the new com pany policy is to thank every customer by last name. Having a customer’s phone number spoken aloud followed by their last name was a privacy and safety risk. Makes sense. Except that the entire issue would be null if it weren’t for the policy of addressing customers by name. 1 understand that these service workers are just trying to do their jobs. It would be vain and silly to believe that our 30 second exchange moved them to want to be my best friend. I’m sure management made the name us age decision. It’s possible the workers feel equally uncomfortable with the sit uation. So why are so many service providers jumping on the “proper name” bandwagon? It seems to this customer that they are trying to create a false sense of fa miliarity, a “homey-ness,” in a cold warehouse-like setting. An instant bond between two strangers that, they hope, will result in repeat business with the customer. Well I just can’t buy that. Here’s why: Giant chain stores are finally waking up to the fact that people crave intimacy. I believe people actu ally do want to feel at home in their neighborhood grocery store. They want a friendly environment in which they can shop. Bully for that. But the sad reality is that the “neighborhood corner grocery store” doesn’t exist anymore in most cities. Tiying to cre ate that feel by pretending that the store clerks actually know each indi vidual customer is an exercise in fu tility, not to mention somewhat de meaning to the customer’s actual value as a human who deserves to be known. Instead of creating a genuine sense of community and friendliness by taking an interest in the customers’ more complicated needs, the service providers are taking the easy route, jumping past the whole paying atten tion thing and just reading the cus tomer’s name off a computer. The re sult is far from the intention. The customer does not become a friend, or even a store patron. The customer becomes nothing more than a Club Card number. annemarieknepper@dailyemerald.com ■ Guest commentary Professor John Baldwin leaves lasting impression on University When I arrived at the University campus in the fall of 1990 to do gradu ate work in the Environmental Studies Program, it was immediately evident that Professor John Baldwin was the environmental “big man” on campus. That was the year he founded the Insti tute for a Sustainable Environment and began serving as its director. He had just stepped down as head of the Envi - ronmental Studies Program, a program he was instrumental in establishing. The next year, he became president of the North American Association for Environmental Education and went to Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (still one of the great landmark envi ronmental events). His Introduction to Environmental Studies class was popular among stu dents seeking enlightenment on the state of our natural world. Most stu dents got much more than they bar gained for. John’s lectures were often stunning, jaw-dropping and eye-pop ping, as young minds began to grasp the scope and magnitude of our global environmental crisis. John was an extraordinary speaker who could bring together vast amounts of information to make a compelling and dynamic performance. He was al ways accessible and available to meet with students and often followed his students’ progress after graduation, helping them in any way he could. Thankfully, the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group recognized him with an award for excellence in teaching in 1991. He studied zoology and wildlife ecology, and as part of his doctoral work he helped to run a reserve for sandhill cranes. One day a station wag on came down the dirt road toward the visitors’ center driven by a man with his two kids. The man rolled down his window and asked John what the pur pose of this reserve was. John ex plained the mission to protect the cranes’ dwindling marsh and wetland habitat. The man asked, “Well what are these cranes good for anyway?” John gave a lengthy explanation about the magnificent sandhill cranes, their limited habitat, their long migrations, the vulnerability of their species and so forth. The man was still perplexed. “But are they good to eat?” he finally asked. John leaned over to him and said, “Are your children good to eat?” He was a big-picture thinker. No field of study was outside his reach, be it science, philosophy, business or poli tics. He knew the past and the present and used them to shape the future. He never got lost in the details, but never lost sight of them either. John keynot ed many international environmental conferences around the world and ac cepted virtually every invitation to speak on environmental topics. John wrote the best early book on environmental planning in 1984, “En vironmental Planning and Manage ment,” and co-authored “Corporate Environmental Policy and Government Regulation” in 1994. As an associate professor in Planning, Public Policy and Management, he taught courses on environmental planning and impact analysis, world energy policy and plan ning, sustainable development, and Oregon’s land use program. He served twice as PPPM department chair. John’s outspoken intellectual hon esty was one of the qualities I appreci ated most. Environmental figureheads often get caught up in a “feel-good” version of environmentalism. This ver sion is intended to appeal to a wide au dience by telling people what they want to hear: We can solve the world’s environmental problems if we simply switch to recycled stationery or drive smaller cars. But this is fundamentally misleading. At best, these strategies will gain us a few moments to actually address the real problems. As long as human population and consumption keeps expanding, we will continue to push other species off the planet until our ecological support system is com pletely overwhelmed. John made it clear that the time for action is now. “Look at your hand!” he would im plore of his students. “Your hand is made from dirt. Your body is just a step or two on the food chain from the soil we walk on. You’re a product of the earth.” John was more the pragmatic realist than the sentimentalist or ro mantic, so I don’t think he was preoc cupied with matters of his own death. “Dust to dust” and cycles-of-life were more his philosophy. John shocked us all by passing away March 7 of an undiagnosed illness. John made a real difference in this world and will always be an inspiration to those who knew him. We will dearly miss his clear voice, brilliant mind and hearty laugh. Eben Fodor lives in Eugene ■ Editorial Weapons proliferation reveals Bush hypocrisy Hypocrisy and the U.S. government are terms which certainly go hand in hand, but this one really takes the cake. An ongoing federal investigation has dis covered Pakistan may have illegally pur chased U.S. nuclear technology through an Islamabad businessman said to have ties to Islamic militants. According to the Los An geles Times, “U.S. law prohibits the sale of equipment that can be used in nuclear weapons programs to Pakistan and some other countries as part of the effort to curb nuclear proliferation.” Now get this. During the federal investi gation into Pakistani weapons technology on one side of the White House, the Bush administration was busy with its own task — promising Pakistan the sale of F-16 fight er jets from the U.S. as a reward for Pak istan’s cooperation in the War on Terror. Pakistan requested the technology to build up the country’s defenses; however, Pak istani Information Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed has firmly articulated that the sale of the jets is not dependent on a reduction in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. And that’s not all. According to the Asso ciated Press, “Mindful of the fragile balance of power in South Asia, the administration also gave a green light to India for its own purchase of sophisticated weapons.” Well, just as long as it’s fair. Both amusing and disturbing here is this fact; Federal money is funding an investiga tion into Pakistan’s purchase of nuclear technology in an effort to crack down on nuclear programs, but investigators could easily walk down the hall into the Oval Of fice, slap someone, and achieve the same ef fect. The Bush administration is effectively speaking out against an arms race while sneaking up and injecting both competitors with a hearty dose of steroids. The message is that nuclear technology is acceptable, as long as it is in the interest of the United States. Technology purchased from militant groups deserves an in-depth investigation, but technology from the Unit ed States is a bountiful reward, an agent of balance. Our government must recognize that nu clear weapons are not a bargaining chip. Luckily, Congress still needs to sign off on the export of this technology before either country can receive the F-16s. Congress must make a decisive stand against this inane decision and affirm that the power to wipe out entire nations, not to mention the planet, belongs in the hands of no one. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Steven R. Neuman Editor in Chief Managing Editor Ailee Slater Commentary Editor Shadra Beesley Copy Chief Adrienne Nelson Online Editor OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should be sent to letters@dailyernerald.com or submitted at the Ore gon Daily Emerald office, EMU Suite 300. Electronic submissions are preferred. Letters are limited to 250 words, and guest commentaries to 550 words. Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month. Submissions should include phone number and address for verification. The Emerald re serves the right to edit for space, grammar and style. Guest submis sions are published at the discretion of the Emerald.
