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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 12, 2005)
Commentary Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday, May 12, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR JARED PABEN AYISHA YAUYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH RALINGIT ADAM CHERRY BRITTNI McCLENAHAN EMILY SMITH EVA SYLWESTER SHELDON TRAVER NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR JON ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURC, PULSE EDITOR AMY LICHTY SENIOR PULSE REPORTER JOSHUA UNTEREUR PULSE REPORTER CAT BALDWIN JOHN PALMER PULSE CARTOONISTS AIIX.E SLATER COMMENTARY EDITOR GABE BRADIXY ANNEMARIE KNEPPER CHUCK SLOTHOWER JENNIFER MCBRIDE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR IAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHERS KATE HORTON ZANE RTIT PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURTWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST DUSTIN REESE SENIOR DESIGNER EUJOTT ASBURY WENDY K1EFFER AMANDA LEE IONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY IEANNIE EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKFIELD JOSH NORRIS SPORTS COPY EDITORS GREG BILSLAND AMBER LINDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS JENNY GERW1CK PULSE COPY EDITOR ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR WEBMASTER (541) 346-5511 JUDY RIEDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER LAUNA DE GIUSTI RECEPTIONIST JERED NAGEL PATRICK SCHMERBER HOIXY STEIN JANA SWANSON ROB WEGNER CAROLYN ZIMMERMAN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CAL1SCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE KELLEE KAUFTHEIL MIA LEIDELMEYER SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES CLASSIFIED (541)346-4343 TR1NA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KORALYNN BASHAM ANDO KAIY GAGNON KER1 SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541)3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT SABRINA GOWETTE JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pu6 lished daily Monday through Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Daily 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 / despite \ The value of DDS \ J5L / The Assault Prevention Shuttle has had a long, contentious relationship with Designated Driver Shuttle. I cannot and am not speaking for APS, DDS or the University. I can I only speak for myself and my experiences. During my work as an APS volun teer, I’ve heard a constant stream of complaints against DDS. People con nected to APS have raised concerns regarding the poor DDS work ethic (allegedly choosing to play video games instead of answering phone calls), forgetting to return keys to the office or van and subsequently not working, generally poor organization including having no spare keys avail able and not notifying APS when they are locked out and/or will not be working that night. While volunteering once or twice a week in the APS office, I did not wit ness any of those events first hand and only heard of them after the fact. However, the following did occur a few months ago when I was there. At APS, we received more calls than usu al. Many calls were confused, inebriat ed people trying to contact DDS. When asked why they didn’t simply press the correct extension, the callers respond ed that they had tried repeatedly and no one at DDS answered. There were workers in the DDS office, so one of our staff members walked there and asked what was going on. DDS em ployees said they had forgotten to turn the phones back on after turning them off for some reason. Accidents happen, but when your job is to answer phones at a popular shuttle service, one would think it strange that no one was calling. It’s that kind of inattention to detail that APSers find so irritating. Similar phone incidents occurred so frequently that APS began a log of when the DDS phone was not on dur ing their scheduled work hours. That said... Does DDS save more lives than APS? Yes. Does DDS provide a more valuable service to University students? It ANNEMARIE KNEPPER WORKS ON PAPER depends on the student. APS provides service to, on average, 70 people per night. APS runs every night of the week, from 7 p.m. to mid night on weeknights and until 2 a.m. on weekends. If keys are forgotten, workers can call someone to let them in immediately so APS can continue running as usual. APS has 12 paid staff members and more than 80 volunteers. DDS runs from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. every day.. The DDS Web site, not up dated since the 2001-02 school year, does not say how many people it serves each night. Its employees are paid and it does not rely on volunteers. Now, it must be mentioned that not all DDS workers are irresponsible. In fact, many are dedicated, polite and good at their jobs. Nevertheless, an or ganization, like a team, is only as good as its weakest member. And the weak est members of DDS did something in credibly out of line — something so far from okay that it is reprehensible (“Designated drivers caught drinking,” ODE May 3). It seems that DDS suffers from fail ure to communicate. Evidently, it was n’t communicated that drinking on the job is totally unacceptable and could result in immediate dismissal and dis ciplinary action by the University. The University employee policy regarding drugs and alcohol is very clear: “The illegal use, possession, or dis tribution of drugs and alcohol on in stitutionally owned or controlled property or as part of any University activity is proscribed conduct.” (See Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 580-22-045(8).) “The University may impose disciplinary sanctions against any student or employee found to have vi olated this rule ... not limited to, sus pension without pay, and termination of employment.” The DDS employee drinking inci dent was probably an isolated one. Yet by not running at its scheduled time and not answering phone calls, which DDS admits has happened sev eral times, DDS has been irresponsible in its position as a student-funded serv ice. It's unfortunate a DDS employee did something as egregious as drink ing on the job before the organization got a slap on the hand. In an online post in response to the Emerald’s article on DDS, one shuttle employee says “I believe that the ben efit provided on the many nights we are running at full strength vastly out weighs the burden put on APS the few nights we can't run the vans.” To this I must ask, the benefit to whom? The intoxicated riders? Or the person who chose not to drink but would like a ride because he or she does not feel safe walking alone at night? The latter is our customer, who couldn’t get through to APS because drunk customers were flooding the phone lines when they couldn’t contact a DDS representative. APS and DDS are both funded in part by student fees. When APS re sources go to serving DDS patrons, it is not only unfair to APS staff and riders, but the student body as a whole. It is impossible to know how many assaults, rapes, and acts of violence APS services have prevented. It is also impossible to know how many drunk driving incidents DDS has pre vented. Both services are valid and important to the University. Neither one is more essential than the other, and both organizations need to be working at “full strength” every night to ensure the safety of University stu dents who have come to depend on these services. annemarieknepper@dailyemercdd. com ■ Guest commentary Ze/hir pronouns represent future in spite of linguistic conservatism A great controversy has emerged recently in campus publications over the use of the gender neutral pronoun set ze/hir. This has manifested main ly in the Emerald’s obstinate refusal to use ze/hir and the Oregon Com mentator’s outright hostility toward any sort of variance from a strict ide ology of gender binaries. While the Emerald has merely provided a plethora of examples of dreadful journalistic style, the Commentator has — inadvertently, I’m sure — demonstrated that ze/hir is a perfectly usable form. For those who are not familiar with ze/hir, it is used rather than she/her or he/him/his for some people who identify outside of a man/woman di chotomy. Like he and she, ze has sev eral forms that are not particularly easy for the average person to classify grammatically (he, she, ze; his, her, hir; him, her, hir; his, hers, hirs; himself, herself, hirself), but anyone who can use she and he is capable of integrating ze. Listening to individu als who respect self-identification and pronoun preference makes this quite clear, as they form sentences like “ze knows that’s hir job,” “that book is hirs,” and so on. There is a pattern that is consistent and easy to produce. A description of only the speech pat tern of respectful individuals could be perceived as unbalanced; nevertheless, the school administration has shown an obvious inability to deal with gender identity based harassment, which is ex plicitly forbidden in the University’s nondiscrimination policy. Fights about pronouns are nothing new. Most, if not all, English speakers use “they” as a third person singular gender neutral pronoun, even though grammarians attempting to reinforce class hierarchies through language have tried for hundreds of years to convince us that this is impossible. Lord Brougham's Act, passed in 1850, limited the use of “he or she,” and instead in cluded all people under the masculine pronoun. None of this really matters in terms of the structure of the language, though. The reality of what forms peo ple actually produce determines lan guage. Ze/hir is clearly possible for Eng lish speakers to use, and is luckily becoming more and more widespread in many communities. Pirn Kelly is a senior linguistics major OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to toe editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should be sent to letters@dailyemerald.com or submitted at the Oregon 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 reserves toe nght to edit for space, gammar and style. Guest submissions are published at the discretion of the Emerald. ■ Editorial Marijuana poses lesser threat than violent theft It’s no secret that Oregon has a bit of a funding problem. Public programs involv ing education, insurance and so on are los ing steam as lawmakers in Salem and vot ers around the state continually show an extreme dislike for taxes. The most recent example of these harms was reported Wednesday, by the Register-Guard. According to the Register Guard, Lane County district attorneys will not prosecute more than 100 nonvio lent misdemeanors such as car break-ins and credit card fraud. Instead, public lawyers will focus on crimes such as do mestic violence, high scale robberies and drug dealing. Unfortunately, this is just another exam ple of how the U.S. government’s drug war forces individual communities to ignore crimes that should take higher legal priori ties. Instead of makine sure nponlp who break into cars are taken off the street and punished, prosecutors will use state funds to make sure the local stoner isn’t assist ing his neighbors in eating lots of food and forgetting stuff. Not that drug dealing is a small matter. Some substances, such as PCP, pose seri ous danger to both drug users and inno cent bystanders. Anyone who sells drugs that directly threaten society deserves to be prosecuted at the most severe level possible. The sale of some drugs, however, should simply be a lower priority to the government than breaking into someone’s car. The federal government recognizes marijuana as more dangerous than cocaine, which is legal for some medical use, while marijuana is a Schedule I drug and represents one of America’s worst out dated policies. Marijuana is a surprisingly mild drug. It is usually not chemically altered, it is much less addictive than most drugs, and it has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Also debatable is the govern ment’s need to regulate its citizens’ sub stance use in the first place. Of course, when money runs low, the need to make marijuana a primary public concern at the expense of prosecuting people who use stolen credit cards is to tally irrational. As far as violent tenden cies go, one should assume that a crimi nal who breaks into or uses another’s personal property is certainly more dan gerous than someone who sells a drug that the majority of the population has admitted trying. The real shame is that Oregon must make choices regarding which criminals deserve to be reprimanded for their ac tions. Until Oregon lawmakers can figure out how to appease voters and fund pub lic services, Salem should seriously eval uate its standards of community safety. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Editor in Chief Ailee Slater Commentary Editor Steven R. Neuman Managing Editor Shadra Beesley Copy Chief Adrienne Nelson Online Editor
