Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 27, 2005)
Gregg LaVoie prepares to represent Oregon at the NCAA Championships I 5A Oregon Daily Emerald An independent newspaper www. daily emerald, com Since 1900 | Volume 106, Issue 165 | Friday, May 27, 2005 Sunriver punishment incomplete Though ASUO members have logged more than 100 service hours, a retreat"do's and don't video" they agreed to create is not yet finished BY PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTER Student government leaders have complet ed more than 100 community service hours as part of a punishment for some leaders’ drink ing alcohol and smoking marijuana on an Oct. 8-10 finance retreat to Sunriver. But a re treat “do’s and don’t video” that participants agreed to create remains unfinished. Retreat participants have logged “upwards of 150-200 hours” of service at campus, city and state service projects, former ASUO Stu dent Senate President James George said. Yet George said he didn’t know the status of the video and other retreat guideline material. Senator Jack Crocifisso, who worked on the video, said that it isn’t finished and that he doesn’t know when it will be completed. He said the project suffered setbacks when mem bers of the Senate were removed by the ASUO Constitution Court. The self-imposed punishment the group formulated mandated that participants con duct at least 100 hours of community service. Student Judicial Affairs Coordinator Chris Loschiavo, who approved the punishments, said participants must provide evidence of the completed punishments by the end of the month. ASUO officials initially proposed an earlier timetable for completing parts of the punish ment. But Loschiavo said while the dates might have been goals, the ultimate deadline was the end of spring term. Participants also agreed to hold extra office hours, but Loschiavo on Wednesday said those hours were designed to contribute to the 100-hour goal. Retreat participants formulated the punish ment for themselves after taking group re sponsibility for retreat attendees who smoked and drank on the trip. Participants refused to disclose names of violators or how many of the 39 students who went on the retreat com mitted violations. Although the participants initially pledged to pay back the roughly $3,200 used to fund the trip, that plan was later scrapped because of of ficials’ concerns that it would be unfeasible to raise the money and that paying back the funds would send a message that the retreat wasn’t successful. George said he hasn’t received records of service by ASUO members from the recent campus-wide University Day service project. But he said existing records show that partici pants worked for organizations such as FOOD for Lane County, the United Way of America and the Outdoor Program. “I think everything has been pretty much wrapped up,” George said. George said he remains a proponent of re treats, although he said that Sunriver is an ex pensive destination and that expenditure lim its may need to be set for future years. He said off-campus locations, if controlled, are impor tant because they prevent attendees from be ing distracted by campus life. He also defended the October retreat, saying actions by individual participants, “ although poor,” didn’t affect the benefits of the retreat. “I think the main thing people need to real ize is that the retreat was a success,” he said. “This is something people should learn from and benefit from in the future. ” parkerhowell@dailyememld.com Kate Horton | Photographer Toby Hill-Meyer read an excerpt from her thesis and an essay she wrote that was recently published in a book titled “Getting Bi” on Tuesday night in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Alliance office. INDEFINABLE University graduate Toby Hill-Meyer explained the language barriers behind gender identity and the term "bisexual" BY MATT Cl LABAN DAILY EMERALD FREELANCE REPORTER For the reading she was about to give, Toby Hill-Meyer wore a red halter top with lipstick to match, black Levi’s 501s and black leather work boots. Her hair was tied back in two long ponytails. Though dressed effeminately, Hill-Meyer could just as easily have worn the black leather biker garb from a number of pictures she passed around during the reading Tliesday night. The two outfits match the fluidity of Hill-Meyer’s bisex uality. “I have butch days, and I have fem days,” she said. “I have different feelings on different days, and 1 feel free to fulfill them.” A recent graduate and former Programs Finance Committee senator, Hill-Meyer read works drawn from her thesis-zine, “A New Language of Gender and Desire,” as well as an essay recently published in the HILL-MEYER, page 4A Debaters argue military-funded research BY EVA SYLWESTER NEWS REPORTER With 10 percent of University re search funding currently coming from the U.S. Department of De fense, four members of the Universi ty Debate Team debated whether the University should accept mili tary funds for research at a public forum Wednesday night. Concerned Faculty for Peace and Justice members Frank Stahl and Jette Foss organized the event. In debate competition format, the debaters — Jason Lear, Laurel Moeslein, Jennifer McBride and Adam Lorts — were given a side to argue 15 minutes prior to the start of speeches. Lear and Moeslein were assigned to argue in favor of the statement, “This House believes that the University of Oregon should not do research funded by the U.S. Military,” while McBride and Lorts were assigned to argue against it. Lear and Moeslein said that by participating in military research, the University philosophically supports war. In addition, the mili tary’s goals are to kill people and de stroy things, and surveys always show that University students are opposed to war by a large margin. “The military isn’t here for the benevolence of the students,” Moeslein said. “They’re here to use us.” The team arguing against the statement brought up the follow ing ideas: Withdrawing University support will not stop the war; mili tary research has contributed to in novations such as the Internet and treatments for diseases such as breast cancer and osteoporosis; and military research can jump start the local economy by provid ing patents, which lead to start-up companies and jobs. “Any research helps all science,” Lorts said. University Debate Team coach Aaron Donaldson said the opinions discussed in the debate do not nec essarily represent those of the indi vidual debaters. Iauren Wimer | Senior photographer Jason Lear, a member of the University Debate Team, argues against military research on campus Wednesday night. Lear, a junior English and politi cal science major, said after the de bate that debaters try to minimize their personal opinions to explore topics more fully. “We can do both sides just as well,” he said. “This is the first topic this year that actually affects students at the U of O,” Lear said, adding that, while researching the topic prior to the debate, he found that students MILITARY, page 3A Professor submersed in volcano exploration Craig Young and his team found unexpected new wildlife while delving into the Samoan chain BY EVA SYLWESTER NEWS REPORTER A University biology professor is part of a trailblazing mission to investigate a new underwater volcano growing in the Samoan chain. Traveling last month in a 7-foot-wide titani um bubble called a submersible, Oregon Insti tute of Marine Biology Director Craig Young said he saw unexpected varieties of wildlife that will be the subject of future research. “Nobody’s ever taken a submersible to Samoa before,” Young said. “It’s exploration, just like Lewis and Clark.” Hubert Staudigel, a geologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the Universi ty of California, San Diego, and Stan Hart, a geochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, had been studying the Vailulu’u volcano to monitor the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates. Deposits of magma known as “hot spots” exist below these plates that make up the earth’s surface, and they form volcanoes when they push up ward. As the tectonic plates naturally shift, the portion of the plate that is on top of the hot spot changes, creating a new volcano. Staudigel compared this to shifting the posi tion of a table underneath a leaky roof. “The most recent drop points to where the dripping is,” Staudigel said. In the Samoan chain, the most recent drop is Nafanua, growing up inside the summit crater of Vailulu’u at an unusually fast rate. “This cone has grown hundreds of meters high just within the last two years,” Young said. “It will eventually become one of the is lands that people could live on.” Staudigel said this volcano is currently at a critical juncture because, as underwa ter volcanoes approach the surface of the water, eruptions become more likely; in a process similar to the rush of bubbles when a soda can is opened, the gas within the magma is finally free to expand and ex plode. Another byproduct of this juncture is that iron and carbon in the magma meet with oxygen in the water, and the energy released in this oxidization process con tributes to the growth of bacteria, which in turn become food for other organisms. “We saw much potential in looking at the biology of the system,” Staudigel said, explaining why he recruited Young to join the project. As their submersible descended into the mouth of the volcano, Young and his cohorts were greeted with a slithering surprise. “(The submersible) immediately became surrounded by all these eels coming out of the cracks and crevices,” Young said. Young said the usual assortment of animal life in such an area includes invertebrates such as clams and mussels, but all his team found were eels and microbials. “This is a totally different animal assembly than has been seen in a hot water system be fore,” Young said. It is currently unknown why the volcano at tracts such an unusual crowd. “Until we can catch one (of the eels), we won’t even know what it is,” Young said. VOLCANO, page 3A
