Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
OUR VIEW
You can’t fix stupid,
but you can take
away its matches
The Columbia Gorge is aflame,
through the Gorge for the next decade
should be a reminder each and every
and the smoke from Eagle Creek
time we pass: Don’t use fireworks
has mixed its way (along with
smoke from other regional fires) into in Oregon’s forests. Bad things will
happen. You may be held criminally
Eastern Oregon.
Although the view is hazy and the and financially responsible.
air quality abysmal,
We must make
its quite clear that
it perfectly clear to
A simple
the massive blaze
those who have long
was started with
lived in and loved
reminder:
Don’t
fireworks illegally
this state, and those
use fireworks in who are new arrivals,
set on the Mt. Hood
National Forest.
it is never OK
Oregon’s forests. that
According to
to use fireworks on
witnesses, a group
public land. Parents
of teenagers casually tossed smoke
must instill that in their children.
bombs and fireworks into the steep
Lighting fireworks in Oregon forests
valley beneath beautiful Punch Bowl must be culturally verboten — it
Falls. A surprise to no one with
cannot be something that crosses
a brain, the dry September brush
the mind of even the most rebellious
caught fire. That fire soon got bigger, teenager. We have too much at stake,
and by the time of this writing had
spend too much money, time and
grown to more than 10,000 acres.
energy trying to keep Oregon as
Thousands of people have evacuated, beautiful and environmentally pure as
many homes are in danger, and
possible to have it all go up in smoke
so are historic buildings like the
by one careless hand.
Oregon could consider banning
Multnomah Falls Lodge. That’s not
to mention the environmental damage fireworks. Sale, possession and use. If
an outright ban is a bridge too far, then
in a place like Eagle Creek, which
perhaps consider hiking taxes high
is a haven for salmon and steelhead
enough that we can continue hiking in
and other wildlife. Oh, and there is
a green Oregon. Shouldn’t fireworks be
the recreational damage done to one
taxed immensely to pay for the cost of
of the most beautiful and most-used
fighting the fires that result from them?
hikes in the Gorge.
We’re as red-blooded, Fourth of
Damage, damage, and more
July-firework loving Americans as
damage.
you’ll find from sea to shining sea.
Even though most of our readers
But if you love this country, and you
are well aware, this is a critical time
love this state, wouldn’t you show it
to remind Oregonians of the dangers
by not setting it on fire?
of fireworks. And a drive or hike
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher
Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
YOUR VIEWS
‘Stars and bars’ a bad fit
for Round-Up merchants
When I was little I studied the Civil
War outside of school. I learned in the
books that I read that the Civil War was
fought over slavery and the United States
won.
The southern armies almost always
flew the battle flag or “stars and bars”
because the official flag of the South was
too easy to mistake for the American flag.
It’s an enemy flag.
Round-Up isn’t about the Civil War.
The hubbub about flag vendors on Main
Street isn’t about free speech, this is
about time and place. Confederate flags
don’t fit Round-Up.
Liberty Flags & Gifts told me last year
that they have flags from many enemies
of the United States and not just the
Confederate flags. Round-Up definitely
is not about treason. Go get your $6,000
somewhere else.
If you’re for the Confederacy or the
stars and bars or whatever, that’s fine with
me. I just think you’re stupid.
James Tibbets
Pendleton
Confederate flag is not
racist, should be welcome
In response to the Main Street
Cowboys not allowing the flag vendor to
be on Main this year, here is what I have
to say.
First of all, the flag is not the
“Confederate Flag.” It is the “Battle Flag
of Northern Virginia.” The stars are laid
out in the pattern of an X, and the blue
bands are put on the 13 stars to show that
the southern states no longer wanted to
be a part of the union with the northern
states. In simpler terms, the message of
flag’s design is simply this: cross us out
of your Union.
The southern states withdrew from the
union in a movement called “secession,”
which led to the Civil War. That is the
only message this flag is sending.
If this flag actually represented
slavery, hatred, white supremacy or
something worse — as so many biased
and uneducated people so foolishly
believe — then its design would reflect
that by incorporating images of those
whom it stood against, and there would
be a big X on their images. But that is not
what is on this flag. And that is not the
message this flag sends.
This flag is not racist. Never has been.
Never will be. All that people need to
have to be able to see and understand this
truth is a basic knowledge of history and
an ounce of common sense.
We need all the vendors and all
diversities of the vendors to keep this
town alive. We cannot start acting
like other states. This hate has to stop
somewhere. I refuse to let this town end
up like Charlottesville, or the many others
desecrating monuments. We will not run
over people, we will not tear down our
statues, will not tear down our heritage.
We are famous for Round-Up. This
could tarnish us, first the flag, then
what — our statues? Then what? We look
no better than any other state and then no
one wants to come to Round-Up or to our
town for fear of being harmed or run out
of town due to race, creed or color. That’s
not what this country is about. We are all
equal.
Donald Edwin Lien Jr.
Pendleton
OTHER VIEWS
The real campus scourge
cross the country, college
curated selves,” as UCLA psychologist
freshmen are settling into their
Elizabeth Gong-Guy called them,
new lives and grappling with
“amplify the fact that you’re sitting in
something that doesn’t compete with
your residence hall alone.”
protests and political correctness for
Gong-Guy runs her university’s
the media’s attention, something that
Campus and Student Resilience
no one prepared them for, something
program, which helps students with
that has nothing to do with being
emotional struggles and exemplifies
“snowflakes” and everything to do with
many schools’ intensifying efforts
Frank
being human.
to address loneliness, among other
Bruni
They’re lonely.
mental health issues.
Comment
In a sea of people, they find
Extended, elaborate freshmen
themselves adrift. The technology that
orientation schedules are another
keeps them connected to parents and high
intended prophylactic against loneliness,
school friends only reminds them of their
which is a common reason for dropping out.
physical separation from just about everyone
And as Lawrence Biemiller recently noted
they know best. That estrangement can be
in an article in The Chronicle of Higher
a gateway to binge drinking and other self-
Education, there’s even a push to place and
destructive behavior. And it’s as likely to derail design freshmen dormitories so that solitary
their ambitions as almost anything else.
time is minimized and interaction maximized.
Brett Epstein felt it. “I spent my first night
Three new residence halls at Goucher
in the dorm and it hit me like a pile of bricks:
College, one of which opened last fall and
It’s just me here,” Epstein, a 21-year-old senior two of which are nearing completion, typify
at the College of Charleston, told me about his
this trend. Goucher’s president, José Antonio
start there three years ago. “I was completely
Bowen, said that the center-of-hall situation of
freaked out.”
bathrooms, the glass walls
Clara Nguyen felt it, too.
of laundry rooms and even
“It’s a lot more difficult to
the speed of the wireless
make friends than people
connection in common
make it out to be,” Nguyen,
areas — much faster than in
a 19-year-old sophomore at
the rooms — are deliberate
UCLA, told me about her
pushbacks against forces
experience last year. “I didn’t
that can isolate students.
know how to be someone
“Students are arriving
new while at the same time
on college campuses with
being who I always was.”
all of their high school
The problem sounds so
friends on their phones,”
ordinary, so obvious: People
Bowen told me, referring
in an unfamiliar location
to the technological quirks
confront dislocation. On their
of today. They too easily
own two legs for the first
substitute virtual interactions
time, they’re wobbly. Who
for physical ones,
would expect otherwise?
withdrawing from their
Well, most of them did,
immediate circumstances
because college isn’t sold to teenagers as just
and winding up lonely as a result.
any place or passage. It’s a gaudily painted
That’s why the solution isn’t hourly
promise. The time of their lives! The disparity
messages from concerned moms and dads,
between myth and reality stuns many of them,
whose stubborn attentiveness, no matter
and various facets of youth today — from
how well meant, can leave their children
social media to a secondary-school narrative
psychologically frail. Mental health experts
that frames admission to college as the end of
and college administrators recommend a more
all worry — worsen the impact.
thoughtful organization of campus life and
Harry Rockland-Miller, who just retired
more candid conversations about the tricky
as director for the Center for Counseling
transition to college.
and Psychological Health at the University
Nguyen, the UCLA sophomore, said that in
of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me the
her Vietnamese-American family in Southern
emblematic story of a freshman he treated:
California, all the talk was of doing well
“He was 18. He came to school and was
enough in high school to get to college and
invited to a party his first weekend, and he
not about the challenges college itself might
didn’t know anybody. So he started to drink.
present. Epstein, the College of Charleston
He drank way too much and ended up lying
senior, said that his popularity in high school
on a bench in his residential hall, feeling very
in the suburbs of New York City perhaps
sick. Nobody stopped and said, ‘How are you
distracted him from any awareness that “I
doing? Are you OK?’ And he felt so isolated.
was going 700 miles away and being dropped
When he came in to speak with me the next
in a place of 10,000 people and wasn’t
day, the thing that struck him — what he
going to know anybody.” What followed, he
said — was, ‘There I was, alone, with all these
added, was “a long battle with anxiety and
people around.’”
depression.”
Alone, with all these people around. In
One of the narrators of Tom Perrotta’s
a survey of nearly 28,000 students on 51
superb new novel, “Mrs. Fletcher,” is a former
campuses by the American College Health
high school lacrosse star who arrives on
Association last year, more than 60 percent said campus “after all the endless buildup” and
that they had “felt very lonely” in the previous
develops a “queasy feeling” that his world has
12 months. Nearly 30 percent said that they had become at once more populous and a whole
felt that way in the previous two weeks.
lot colder. “There I was, people-watching and
Victor Schwartz, medical director of the
eating my omelet,” he says of one morning in
Jed Foundation, which is one of the nation’s
the dining hall, “and the next thing I knew my
leading advocacy groups for the mental
throat swelled up. And then my eyes started to
health of teenagers and young adults, said that water.”
those findings were consistent with his own
We urge new college students not to party
observation of college students today. “While too hard. We warn them of weight gain (“the
they expected that academics and finances
freshman 15”). We also need to tell them
would be sources of stress,” he told me,
that what’s often behind all that drinking and
“many students were lonely and thought this
eating isn’t celebration but sadness, which is
was sort of unique to them, because no one
normal, survivable and shared by many of the
talked about it.”
people around them, no matter how sunny
Their peers in fact do something that mine
their faces or their Facebook posts.
couldn’t back in the 1980s, when I attended
■
college: use Facebook and Instagram to
Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for
perform pantomimes of uninterrupted fun and The New York Times since 2011, joined the
unalloyed fabulousness. And these “highly
newspaper in 1995.
A
College
freshmen are
settling into their
new lives and
grappling with
something that
no one prepared
them for:
they’re lonely
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and
products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number.
The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
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