Oregon Daily Emerald
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
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gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald
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■ In my opinion
Do-it-yourself Thanksgiving
It’s Thanksgiving! This has always
been my favorite holiday. I love the
cooking and eating and nondenomi
national status. I love feeling grate
ful. I love spending the day with my
family, whomever it may happen to
be that year.
My freshman year, all the stragglers
from Wilcox Hall in Bean East piled
into a couple cars for a very Springfield
Thanksgiving. I had a group of friends
who lived off Fifth Street and Harlow
Road. By the time the feast came
around there were about 20 random
people, including the five guys and one
girl who lived in the house, someone’s
mom, the out-of-staters from the
dorms and all our visitors, plus this
one guy I’m not sure anybody knew.
We ate at the table and at the counter
and on the floor. We had stuffing and
mashed potatoes, but we also had
Miller High Life, which the vegetarians
politely sipped. After dinner a few of
us gathered around the python’s cage
to feed him a Thanksgiving rat.
Our hosts were all originally from
Oakridge, and the guests were from all
over the place. For many of us, it was
our first Thanksgiving away from our
families. I’m sure many of the Emer
ald’s readers are going through the
same first this year. So all you out-of
staters, as you jealously watch the mass
exodus of students driving just a few
hours home this weekend, remember
that Thanksgiving is what you make it.
Make it a good one.
One year we had an all-girls Thanks
giving where we watched “Sex and the
City” and drank cosmos while every
thing cooked. We also made phallic
symbols out of the rolls and tri
umphantly screamed when we used
our own strength and ingenuity to re
move the gizzards from a turkey that
refused to defrost. We broke all the
Thanksgiving rules. We made fried
ARMY FETH
RHETORIC CHECK
zucchini and ate it before dinner. When
the turkey came out of the oven we
picked at it until it was ugly, because
there was no one to swat our little
hands with a spatula. We didn’t even
make dessert because Rasool from
Duck n’ Go had given us an enormous
plate of baklava and the biggest pump
kin pie I’d ever seen. I think he was
proud of us for making the whole meal
by ourselves.
If you have your own kitchen, by all
means, try to cook for Thanksgiving. In
vite some other people you know can’t
go home and do whatever you want. If
you don’t want to cook a whole turkey,
don’t. Get a chicken or a turkey breast
and roast the heck out of it. Or hey, call
it a current events holiday, skip the
poultry all together and congratulate
yourself on avoiding the avian flu. Don’t
be scared by the tradition and expecta
tions of the meal. Make what ever foods
you are thankful for.
If you are going to a friend’s house, re
member you are there to represent your
own family, so bring something to the
table, literally. Maybe it’s your Aunt's fa
mous perogies, or maybe your family
eats Tofurky. Figure out how to make it
and introduce a new group of people to
the joys of your own weird traditions.
After all, you’ll be enduring theirs.
If you’ve got nowhere to go, fear not.
You can always go to the bar. Max’s is
having a potluck dinner. If that’s not
your style, the Friendly Street Church
Fellowship Hall is having a free meal at
noon for “all with no place to go for the
holiday.” See if you can make a dish, or
help out at a retirement home dinner.
You can also volunteer at a homeless
shelter and help people who don’t have
as much to be thankful for.
The bottom line is this: Thanksgiv
ing is the best holiday. It’s all about
gluttony and love and sharing. Be
thankful for whatever you have, and
express it in your own way. But do try
to spend the day with someone else.
Everyone is compatible on Thanksgiv
ing. Now might be the best time to get
any bad karma out of your system;
afterwards, you can take a nap.
The possibilities for a Thanksgiv
ing away from home are endless. I
imagine a group of guys somewhere
trying to shoot a frozen turkey
through a basketball hoop. I see peo
ple playing video games while their
Stouffers dinner bakes away. I bet
there is someone out there who
watches the Food Network all day,
then gives up and takes the gang to
Marie Callenders. Some type-A
would-be chef is neurotically check
ing the poultry thermometer ^very
five minutes. I’d love to sit in on a
vegan Thanksgiving some year. '
I will never forget my first Thanks
giving away from home. It was the
epitome of this very American holi
day. There was a whole bunch of us
with totally different lives, but we all
had one thing in common: We rec
ognized the need for a gathering. I
hope my friends from Springfield,
wherever they are now, don’t forget
to feed the snake and realize how
thankful I still am for the year they
fed me.
Happy Thanksgiving, University
of Oregon.
afeth@ daily emerald, com
■ Guest commentary
Coleman not referring to racism
in letter critiquing fan behavior
As the co-director of the Black Stu
dent Union, I am writing in response to
the commentary by Beth Overgard
(“Professor should keep attacks free of
unjustified claims of racism,” ODE
Nov. 15) to point out a flagrant misrep
resentation of Dr. Edwin L. Coleman’s
letter (“Out-of-control football fan
behavior is intolerable,” ODE Nov. 9).
It is clear that Dr. Coleman was not
insinuating that the African-American
Huskies’ drum major was booed
because he was black; instead,
Coleman was communicating that he
was proud of him, as a fellow African
American, for taking such a high pro
file position and persevering through
the boos. It is clear that Dr. Coleman
was establishing a personal connec
tion with the young man, which
caused him to share his humiliation.
He was NOT making claims of racism.
The purpose of his letter was to ex
press his shock that the University
crowd booed the band’s performance
in what was supposed to be a
non-competitive atmosphere.
Does racism exist on campus? Yes.
Does it prevail during the athletic
events? Yes. (I have personally heard
racially derogatory comments made
toward opposing team members and
officials.) Is racism what Dr. Coleman
was referring to? No.
Felecia Wheatfall
Black Student Union Co-director
INBOX
Walking to work last week, 1 passed
the long line of drowsy students
waiting to buy football tickets. Curious,
I asked the guy in position 900 or so
how long he had been there. Since 4
a.m. was the answer. Oddly enough, I
had been up since 4 a.m. also, but due
to a restless infant, not to a policy
concocted by adults.
I’m as big a sports fan as the next
guy or gal, but there seems to be a di
rect clash between sports and studies
when students are forced to miss a
night’s sleep and probably a good
chunk of their Monday classes just to
support the Ducks.
Can’t the University, in all it’s
wisdom, come up with a better solution,
such as a weekly ticket lottery? Any
computer-science undergrad could write
the code for such a system, even one
that weights individual odds to make it
more likely for past losers to win later.
Back when I was a student here, we
went to Mac Court to stand in long
lines to register for classes and short
lines to buy football tickets. Computers
have automated the former process,
and could easily handle the latter. Since
the rest of us can buy tickets online
(and judging by the recent Xbox
episode), the athletic department is
surely hip to the hi-tech scene.
Granted, the current system rewards
the die-hard fans (with good camping
gear) for their perseverance, as maybe
it should be in the jock world. But
honestly, should a few thousand stu
dents be missing or sleeping through
half of their Monday classes when fair
and more humane solutions exist?
Given that students pay for tickets
through activity fees, distributing them
in this manner is akin to assembling
your employees on pay day, tossing
their wages on the floor, and having
them scuffle over the coins.
Show some respect for those who
bring you the Autzen effect.
Keith Downing
Eugene
■ Editorial
A tribute to
Ted Koppel's
tenacity on
'Nightline'
Tuesday night marked the end of an era in
broadcast journalism.
After a quarter-century at the helm of
ABC’s “Nightline” program, Ted Koppel
resigned gracefully from his post.
As print journalists, we usually find very little
that is encouraging about television reporters,
and all too often we can easily dismiss them as
flimsy, ill-informed and egotistical. Koppel
stands out from this gross generalization
because he broke all these stereotypes.
His show, which usually explored just a
single topic in the course of a program, was
among the most thought-provoking news
programs on television.
Over the years, Koppel was one of the
few television journalists willing to take
himself out of the spotlight and battle an
unconvincing interviewee for the truth.
During the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, America watched as Kop
pel calmly hammered then-FEMA Director
Michael Brown when he said the organization
was just uncovering facts that journalists had
been reporting for days.
Koppel was unflinching in his line
of questioning.
“Don’t you guys watch television; don’t
you listen to the radio? Our reporters have
been reporting about it for more than just
today,” he said.
On his last “Nightline” program, Koppel did
not choose to do a soft-focus, clip-show retro
spective, as many of his peers have done. In
stead he focused on revisiting one of the most
popular stories he told on the program: The last
year in the life of a man with a terminal illness.
Sadly, this brand of broadcast journalism is a
dying practice in an era when cable news an
chors speculate first and ask questions later, or
as Koppel put it, “being first with the obvious.”
As if to add insult to injury, ABC has picked
some of the worst possible television person
alities to replace Koppel. His successors in
clude Martin Bashir, famous for his ridiculous
exposes on Michael Jackson, Cynthia McFad
den, who earned her stripes plugging away at
the tabloid show “Primetime,” and Terry
Moran, a non-offensive weekend news
anchor. These three new co-anchors represent
everything that Koppel was not.
It cannot be said that “Nightline” was a
perfect journalistic endeavor, nor that Koppel
was without flaws. But in a career that
spanned four decades, he did many things
right. We are sad to see him go.
CORRECTION
Because of a reporter's error in Tuesday's ‘‘Committee
to review professor's case," the Emerald reported that
University law professor Merle Weiner was sued after
referring to a domestic violence court case in her arti
cle "Strengthening Article 20.” Weiner was not actually
sued, but was threatened with a lawsuit. The threat
was settled out of court.
Because of an editor’s error, the headline should have
specified that the University Senate’s new committee
will not specifically review Weiner’s case but will use the
case as a basis to discuss the issue of whether the Uni
versity should provide legal protection when professors
are sued while they are employees of the University.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Parker Howell
Editor in Chief
Steven Neuman
Online Editor
Shadra Beesley
Managing Editor
Ailee Slater
Commentary Editor