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LET TERS ADDRESSING RAPE Your “The Freshman Survival Guide” (Oct. 12) states: “The first half of your first term of college is known as the ‘Red Zone,’ the period of time a young woman is most vulnerable to rape … so go with friends you trust and look out for each oth- er, and keep an eye on your drink.” Why are you giving advice only to women when addressing rape? How about talking frankly with men, the gender that creates and perpetuates the prob- lem? What if instead you had published: “Male sexual assaulters are more likely to prey on freshman women, so if you ob- serve a man play up to a freshman or any other woman, stick around and intervene when necessary. If you know of a man who puts drugs into women’s drinks, report him to authorities. And do not in any way con- done, encourage, enable, participate in or make jokes about such behavior in men.” Harriet Behm Eugene UNFORTUNATE JUXTAPOSITION I wanted to check in with you all to say that I absolutely love your work, and I’ve been able to use a great deal of your work in my classroom to talk about very impor- tant social justice related issues as well as important community organizations and goings-on, for which I’m very grateful. VIEWPOINT I also wanted to check in with you about your recent issue, “Back to Campus” (Oct. 12). I noted that the “Freshman Sur- vival Guide” is placed opposite an ad for a lawyer who seems to represent students and other folks who are accused of sexual assault. I’m not familiar with the details of how y’all sell advertising and why certain ads are placed on certain pages or paired with certain articles, but as a consumer of Eu- gene Weekly I’m concerned that the pairing of this article with this ad is promoting or at the very least condoning sexual assault. I realize this is a leap, but I’ve shared the ad and the pairing of the two with a va- riety of folks and we each agreed that there was a message being shared, and it is one of linking freshman survival with the pro- tection of those accused of sexual assault. I understand the Weekly has already been distributed, but I wanted to share this concern as a community member, an edu- cator, a woman and a UO student. Relée Davis English language development teacher Eugene Editor’s note: The placement was unintentional and unfor- tunate. We apologize. KENNEDY IS WRONG Will Kennedy’s “Raffi for grownups” (Oct. 12) spoke more to his anger issues than to give information about Jimmy Buf- fer. I’m not a Parrot head my music taste runs a gambet from clasical to funk & hip hop. But I do have a lot of great 80’s young adult music memories with Buffet. I get his point about the me Gen, but many of these big bucks people are philanthropists. Jimmy Buffer funds environmental & humanitarian disaster relief volunteer ac- tion through FAUACA in the Carribian. He also gives grants to youth in Detroit & for vegi gardens in harlem. Do your home- work Mr Kennedy. Carol West Eugene Editor’s note: We felt that this letter made its point without our editing it for typos. LEVIN IS WRONG On the whole, I appreciate Rick Levin’s florid stylings, even if he does tend toward an oxymoronic holier-than-thou nihilism. That said, his recent review of Jekyll & Hyde at Cottage Theatre (Oct. 12) gets some important background wrong. First, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche are not all products of “the late 19th century.” Marx published Das Kapital in 1867, after 20 years of previous published work. He died in 1883. By contrast, the vast majority of Freud’s work was published during the first three decades of the 20th century. More important, Levin's gloss on Rob- ert Louis Stevenson’s original, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, provides a nice example of how people confuse what they think they know for what they know in fact. Contrary to Levin’s assertion, this story is not a familiar one — much less “the way it speaks to the duality of human nature, good and evil and all that.” It is the titular characters that are familiar, not the story, or its vision of good and evil. I’d guess these are virtually unknown. I’d be curious to hear how Stevenson “intuits the catastrophes of the coming century.” It seems to me that Levin has simply read his own obsessions into the space where familiarity with the actual work would go. I regard this as a shame, as beyond the apparent spectacle of the current musi- cal lies a profound original of lasting rel- evance. Timothy Shaw Eugene PARROTHEAD REVOLT First James Taylor, and now Jimmy Buffett. Next, Will Kennedy will be chas- tising John Denver because “Rocky Moun- tain High” wasn’t about smoking pot. Michael Billings Eugene LETTERS POLICY: We welcome letters on all topics and will print as many as space allows, with priority given to timely local issues. Please limit length to 200 words and include your address and phone number for our files. Email to letters@eugeneweekly.com, fax to 484-4044 or mail to 1251 Lincoln, Eugene 97401. BY AMY ADAMS Let’s shine some light on Bach TRANSPARENCY IS NEEDED ON THE OREGON BACH FESTIVAL B erwick Hall, the new home of the Oregon Bach Festival, is an el- egant building — small, modern, light-filled, with a performance hall that can seat up to 140, perfect for small-ensemble perfor- mances such as were given at the public reception on Oct. 8 cele- brating the building’s opening. Windows abound — from virtually every desk in the office, light floods the space. That, sadly, is the only transparent thing about the festival these days. The few scraps of information given to the public lead to more confusion than clarity: The festival renews artistic director Matthew Halls’ contract through 2020 and then abruptly fires him, issues an unconvincing press release and then claims that the relationship has “drawn to a close.” Both the university and Halls agree to not “disparage” the other party. Yet in that silence, both parties are dis- credited as the public struggles to guess at what has been concealed. That is how silence works — people fill it with whatever comes to mind. The festival website has all but ground to a halt, its vibrant banner photo replaced by an appropriately black rectangle, like a censored phrase. Halls’ pres- ence has been virtually erased from the site — photos featuring him are gone. News releases about him are gone. A video of Halls extolling the beauty of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 is inexplicably disabled. One can almost hear crickets chirping in the website’s silence, a sharp contrast to years past when autumn would be spent gloating over the summer’s successes, promoting the Chamber Music at Beall concert series, highlighting any cheerful festival news and enticing patrons with hints of future performances. Confidentiality is not a virtue, it’s just a tool that ensures information stays with authorized people. And it can, like any tool, be misused. Because of con- fidentiality, the festival’s stakeholders are prevented from knowing if there was wrongdoing or ineptness or both. They are unable to prevent whatever happened 4 October 19, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com from happening again, because they don’t have any relevant information. All that’s known is that the University of Oregon, in clinging to its self-imposed secrecy, may well be protecting someone’s interests, perhaps even its own. And it is doing so at the expense of the Oregon Bach Festival. Running a performing arts organization is a challenge even during the best of times, but look now at the new hurdles faced by the festival: How do you repair the eroded confidence of donors? How do you convince volunteers to stay, when the organization they love does not tell the truth? How do you cultivate enthusiasm to a shocked and dismayed community of patrons? How do you fix a damaged brand? How do you run a conducting master class...after firing the master teacher? How do you replace the relationship built between conductor and festival musicians? How do you forge connections between community and festival in an atmo- sphere of mistrust? How do you engage world-class artists after firing the world-class artistic director? How do you sell tickets … when no one even buys your press releases? I have a long history with the festival. I sang in the chorus for 20 years. Helmuth Rilling is one of my greatest influences and a master teacher I’m proud to have made music with. I was on the OBF board of directors as a musician representative and served on the search committee that hired Matthew Halls as Rilling’s successor. His joy, his relish and skill in music making are profound and infectious. And he was ours. Amy Adams is a singer who lives in Springfield.
