Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 17, 1990)
Page 4 THE CLACKAMAS PRINT From thé Editor... ASG assumes students will understand Issues concerning game room I’m concerned about the voice of the students on this campus. The decision was made to move the Rec reation Center without any student input, and now that it has been approved, students feel that it is too late to do anything. Part of my concern is about who is representing us as a body of students. In a memo dated August 27,1990 from Tony Franklin, Associated Student Government (ASG) President and Debbie Bakker, Director of Stu dent Activities it reads, “The students understand the overcrowding issue in the Community Center Building and are willing to cooperate with the move of the Rec reation Center.” This memo was sent to the Acting Assistant Dean of Student Services Lee Fawcett, initia tor of the propoals to move the game room. I would like to hear from all the students that knew about the proposal to move the Recreation Center on or before August 27,1990.1 was on campus this summer and I never heard about the proposal. I even saw Tony every once in a while around campus and he never asked me how I felt about the move. I would venture to say that the members of ASG, of which there were five working over the summer, were the students who understood the overcrowding issue. I will even go so far as to say that of course they under stand, their offices are also in the Community Center and God forbid anyone should suggest moving their offices out to Trailer A. When the student government, namely the Presi dent, is making such generalizations about how we stu dents feel when we’re on summer vacation I think we should question that. We elected him President, now we need to let him know how we feel about the issues that affect us. When I interviewed the ASG officers at thebegin ning of the ter m, Franklin said he got involved in student government because there was “too much apathy” here among the students. I question the amount of apathy there is among the students. How can students be apa thetic when they don’t even know what’s going on? Students - don’t keep your views to yourself. It is important that we let ASG and the Administration know exactly how we feel about the decisions they make that affect us. I think it was wrong of ASG to assume that the students “understand the overcrowding issue” when no one even knew about it. I also think that it is wrong for students to sit by passively while decisions that affect themare being made and not make any effort to finding out about them before it is final. We have a responsibil ity to be educated about the issues that affect us. Angela Wilson Jim Spickelmier Jennifer Soper Aaron Brown Lane Scheideman Ron Jagodnlk, Jr. Gregg Mayes Carie Gardener Heather Lee Himes Brenda Hodgen Heidi Hoffman Frank Jordan Nolan Kidwell Jennifer Lessard Richard Marx Jane Wilcox Editor-In-Chief: News Editor: Feature Editor: Sports Editor: Photo Editor: Rhapsody Editor: Business Manager: Staff Writers: Photographers: Kyle Moe Darby Pereira David VanKeuren Eric Sanders Production Staff: X, Ad Salesman: Darkroom Tech: Advisor: Scott Johnson Anthony Porter Jillian Porter Tricia Shcneider Dan Champie Debbie Felix Linda Vogt The Clackamas Print aims to be a fair and impartial newspaper covering thé college community. Opinions expressed In The Clackamas Print do not necessarily reflect those of the college ad ministration, faculty or Advertisers. The Clackamas Print reserves the right to edit letters for content, grammer and to reduce the length of letters without changing the meaning intended by the writer. Unsigned letters will not be printed. The author's name will not be printed if he so requests, but the orginal letter must be signed. Clackamas Community College, 19600 S. Molalla Avenue, Oregon City, Oregon 97045. Trailer B. Telephone: 657-6958, ext 309 (office), 578 (production) and 577 (advertising). OPINION October 17,1990 Knock, Knock.. . anybody home? potential loss to game room profits which translates into funds for student clubs and activities, so obviously money is not a problem for students. Since the game room will not be totally shut down, this arrangement is financially sound for ASG. The facility will continue to function on campus pro viding a suitable social atmosphere for students to relax. Of course, this new location is so far away from the center of life on campus that the word “social” is inappropriate. This imprôvement to our campus aesthetics, the game room move, creates a doomed social activity which will eventually fade into the dark back corner where shelveable students continue with their “undesirable” activities, af fecting no one, not even themselves. Eventually, the game room will not exist because the students’ lack of interest will not warrant further investments (subsidies) from the college administration (or rather, from which ever ac count the costs will come). The whole aesthetic problem will be solved in one subtle move. This sounds extreme. Yes, it is. How far from the near future is it? Close! All depends on how the game room does in the next year. For those people interested, a suggestion also raised by the administration is to move the smoking area under a make-shift tarp pulled between Trailer A and B after the game room has moved. This is not fact; it is a rumor. However, think about the importance of the students here. Where are the rights of the students in this? What we have on this campus is a prime example of big business in action. What we must do as students is weigh the social value of decisions made by the administration to the monetary value. The ethical questions must be asked. After the questions are answered, we as students must go- The elimination of smoke inside campus buildings stand up for our decisions, however painful that stance may become. supposedly will have the same effect At least, we as students can voice how we feel about Unfortunately, as in most big business ventures, the individual student must pay, and not necessarily in mone the dominance of big business. We might find that we agree with the administration. We must have a voice. tary sums. If not, we may find business as usual. Nothing for us. Fortunately, ASG is being subsidized $5,000 for the Wake up! Knock, Knock, Knock! Wake up! Are we all still asleep in our summer euphoric dream? Our rights as students on this campus are quickly receding out of our reach. Can we stand by and let the administra tion walk into our lives and disrupt our peace of mind? As in all big business, the administration has sold out our rights as individual students to assemble at our leisure, for potential profits. Yes, the game room is still a hot issue. Why shouldn’t it be? With reminders of last year’s issue, the indoor smok ing controversy, still gracing our campus in their splinter ing splendor, the administration has again forced through renovations to the campus way of life without student ' approval. Last year as this year, all decisions about the issues in question were worked out during the summer months when the campus daily traffic of students is nil. Of course, the students had representation during the whole process. That technicality was covered, but as in most decisions made that affect the campus, the urgency to come to an agreement was emphasized by the administra tion. How can any elected official on or off campus make a decision without an opinion from the people that it will affect? That question can be easily answered. Money! The financial sense of closing down the game room appeals to the administration. With the game room removed from the center of attention, more desirable students and more community organizations will use the facilities we have on campus. Eventually, this process will bring a profit to the college, and probably more money than ASG can make providing the game room. Business will boom, as theories Greed, ignorance threaten to engulf us- Yet we are capable of change... I awoke one morning and discovered that I am a the presence of strong evidence that the forests are the crank. Not only that, but I am the worst sort of crank; an planet’s strongest defense against global warming ant environmental crank (my father would be horrified). I the greenhouse effect. This litany of destruction could go on indefinitely, have no feelings of guilt or shame on the matter, quite the contrary, I revel in my aberration. I think we all have a but why bother? Anyone with an above room little “crank” in us these days and maybe even have a need temperature IQ knows what a mess we’re all in. What can to vent this crankiness in a constructive manner but lack any one of us really do about it after all? To start off with, a suitable method. Allow me to introduce you to the En we can all make use of our power to influence our elected vironmentalist’s Grimoire. During the next few months I officials (don’t laugh) and vote our conscience. We all can individually make a difference. Yount will be offering up essays designed to enlighten, occasion ally, and enrage the crank within you more often than not. students can help to shape the future. That’s not rhetoric It is the intent of these forthcoming articles to motivate All facets of our education can lend strength to the you into thwarting the greed and ignorance of those who growing resistance to the illogic of waste and poison would rape and despoil our planet producing industrial practices. Environmental To that end I submit the Grimoire”s Although accounting is not generally regarded as an environmentally Grimoire first recipe... sensitive career, a CPA is capable of by helping by caring enough to Ever since the publication of recommend - when the opportunity Randall Hodgins Gerald Barney’s “Global 2000” report, comes - that Corporation A and Mr. X the nation and most of the world have U been attempting to make some (painfully slow) progress choose, as their tax reducing charity, an entity that works toward cleaning the poisons and infuse out of our soil, to improve the global condition. Older people with children can, at least, rear their water, and air. It’s a monumental job that dwarfs the children to reverence the earth we share in common and resources of any one individual - or so it seems. There are thousands of inactive and abandoned teach them how to take care of it. If our children are hazardous waste dumps in the U.S. and thousands more raised to perceive and reject the hypocracy of current still active - along with deep well inj ection sites. Nearly all technological mores, then the battle will have been of these either threaten to leak or actually are seeping engaged in ernest. If they grow up to become a people their wastes into drinking water supplies. In our own that are compelled to turn away from materialistic ideals community groundwaters have been poisoned; the city of in favor of a deeper sense of social-ethical-ecological Gladstone currently buys its water from another source stewardship, then the battle is won. In the past fifty years we, as an organism, have because of the wastes seeping into its groundwater supplies. Chemicals are being introduced into the developed our ability to influence our surrounds to a environment without any knowledge of the effects that destructive potency. The worst damage has been done in they may have on it. Monies dedicated to clean up the last twenty years. The Aged, therefore, are the most 'inactive waste sites are being spent largely on planning important group of all. They are the only people who can and litigation instead of reparations. The Mississippi give living testimony to how little time it has taken to delta is eroding at a rate of more than 62 mi^/yr and is bring this planet to the brink of desolation. The truth is that the only way to make a change for accelerating the destruction of one our largest wetlands. Despite the fact that wetlands are a rapidly disappearing the better is to begin by making a change in the way that resource, canal dredging continues along the delta. The you perceive yourself. We are all responsible. We arc Brazilian rainforests are being harvested not for the land also all capable of making a significant contribution to or for lumber, but to be rendered into charcoal for use as solving our problems - as individuals that care and are a cheap industrial fuel. This deforestation continues in willing to fight within our means.
