Commentary
Oregon Daily Emerald
Monday, September 26, 2005
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GOING TO BI; A
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STUMS
Aaron DuChateau | Illustrator
■ In my opinion
Dealing with disaster
Hurricane Katrina has come and
gone, taking with her more than 1,000
lives. Rita is well on her way out, with
only one reported death directly relat
ed to hurricane damage. I think we’ve
all learned something — preventative
measures are key.
President Bush certainly believes in
preventative measures. He went out of
his way to ignore concrete evidence
and predict that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction. Bush even went to
war to prevent an Iraqi weapon of
mass destruction from hitting the Unit
ed States. So maybe it would be more
accurate to say that Bush pre-empted
his post-9/11 fall in political capital by
blaming terrorism on Iraq and attack
ing the country at will.
The Bush administration was all for
a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, but
not one person took such a strike in
evacuating the city of New Orleans.
Yes, money is always an issue. The
subtext to the money is that no one in
the Bush administration can even lis
ten when environmental scientists say
global warming could be one reason
for a recent upsurge in dangerous
storms. If the government has the
power to allocate the billions of dollars
it takes to deal with Katrina, they sure
ly have the power to use scientific in
formation as well as foresight and re
duce greenhouse gases with the help
of cleaner-burning fuel sources.
Speaking of preventative measures
that can still save future disaster vic
tims, it would do Bush well to remem
ber that a reported 37 million Ameri
cans live in poverty. Aside from using
phrases saturated in political correct
ness, Bush is doing very little to solve
the problem of poverty. Bush claims
that he can see the poverty/racism fac
tors that resulted in Hurricane Katri
na’s destruction, but policy decisions
show only that there is a “great city”
needing to be rebuilt.
Phrases drenched in political accu
racy are of no help to the poor. New
buildings do nothing to heal the
AILEE SLATER
FURTHER FROM PERFECTION
poverty that led to so many citizens
unable to escape their Great City as it
flooded out from under them. With
out a car to travel across freeways,
without a television to even realize
that there was a problem, New Or
leans’ poorest had little choice but to
perish where they stood.
Pouring money into new Gulf Coast
development (potentially more than
$200 billion) can’t save the poor from
another hurricane; only government
acknowledgment that the poor are im
portant and necessary to our society
can prevent another instance of un
necessary death.
The Bush administration showed its
disregard for the poor long before Kat
rina hit, with a national policy of fewer
welfare programs and more tax cuts. If
Bush wants to repair hurricane dam
age and the damage done to his own
image, he ought to use future policy
decisions to prove he cares. Bush must
show that in the wake of thousands of
Katrina casualties and less than 100
Rita deaths, his administration has
learned its lesson. No more ignoring
the poor and disadvantaged until they
are already dead and plastered across
a television screen.
So where’s the funding and policy
to at least attempt a solution to
poverty?
A rebuilt city will likewise do little
to end racism. Racism is an issue that
Bush has admitted was related to the
level of destruction in New Orleans. It
seems that Bush is perfectly happy to
oppose racism during his speeches,
saying that America must “rise above
the legacy of inequality,” but he is
somewhat less likely to look at race
when crafting his administration’s
policy values.
Bush agrees that there is a link be
tween race and poverty, yet he ignored
the racism/poverty cycle in his stand
against affirmative action. And then,
here comes Hurricane Katrina, a skep
tical nation and Bush’s lowest ap
proval ratings ever. Now, Bush has no
choice but to admit, in his own words,
that the United States is home to a
“history of discrimination, which cut
off generations from the opportunity
of America.”
It’s not good that our president
only acknowledges racism when his
administration is accused of being
racist. If Bush truly understood the
connection between a history of dis
crimination and the loss of opportu
nity that still exists to this day, affir
mative action wouldn't even be a
question. In the United States, the
only sure way to repair poverty lies
in access to higher education.
The Bush stance is clear: If no one is
giving him criticism, the issue may as
well not exist. Racism is pushed under
the rug until a hurricane upends New
Orleans. We know that sexism isn’t dis
cussed in the context of rape and abor
tion; sexism is a non-issue until child
prostitution rings are discovered. Bush
doesn’t acknowledge homophobia
when vying to make gay marriage ille
gal; homophobia is ignored until the
national news reports that another
young gay person has been killed by
harassers. When does it end?
It ends as soon as our lawmakers
get off their politically correct high
horses and actually use their federal
dollars and political power to do
something about it. Even $200 billion
can’t buy a fair fight against a hurri
cane. Dealing with the human ele
ment involved in exacerbating disas
ters is surely the most efficient and
important route to healing.
aileeslater@dailyemerald.com
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■ Editorial
Stereotyping
students is
disservice to
community
On Saturday, The Register-Guard published
a news article explaining why the Eugene
Police Department will resume its “Party Pa
trol,” concentrating EPD energy on University
neighborhoods where potentially unruly
parties may occur.
Reporter Rebecca Nolan applauds EPD’s ef
forts, offering a few tongue-in-cheek insults
directed toward the University population:
“(‘Party Patrol’ is) much reviled by youngsters
who believe that hosting a kegger in a
cramped rental apartment is a right protected
by the U.S. Constitution.”
The truth is, as long as everyone crammed
into that apartment is older than 21, the right to
have a party in a private residence is protected
by the Constitution. Underage drinking is un
derstandably a problem that must be dealt
with, but not everyone comes to college han
kering to get drunk and “start burning furniture
in the street,” as is indicated in Nolan’s article.
More police watching over the West Universi
ty Neighborhood may have helped prevent ri
ots in recent years, but stereotyping all Universi
ty students because of rioting more than two
years ago only enforces the mentality that stu
dents are a nuisance to the Eugene communi
ty, no matter our current actions. Nolan’s article
insults college students, not even mentioning
the economic and cultural benefits that a Uni
versity population brings to Eugene.
Eugene belongs to each of its residents
equally; we must all live in this city together.
Nolan’s “us and them” stereotypes will only
encourage more anger and frustration from
everyone. In the future, all Eugene media
should encourage the value of mutual respect
by using facts rather than stereotypes when
reporting on University news.
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