You know, if there’s one group in football that doesn’t get as much press as it deserves, it’s the offensive line. Well, the Duck’s offensive line is looking to put a little glamor back in the position. They just put out a calendar full of humorous, surreal beefcake shots of themselves. All the proceeds will go towards the National Childhood Obesity Foundation (natch). If you’re wondering how surreal, well …

I’d make a lot of snarky comments, but Everyday Should Be Saturday is already on top of things. Thanks to OC Alum Ian Spencer for bringing this to our attention.

This is the lede of the ODE’s front-page story on Ben Linder, a university student who was killed by contras while working in Nicaragua (emphasis mine):

Inspired by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a socialist political party that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and helped some of the nation’s poorest people, Ben Linder of Portland moved to Nicaragua after graduating from the University of Washington in 1983.

That’s odd, considering what the Library of Congress Country Study on Nicaragua has to say (once again, emphasis mine):

In its eleven years in power, the Sandinista government never overcame most of the economic inequalities that it inherited from the Somoza era. Years of war, policy missteps, natural disasters, and the effects of the United States trade embargo all hindered economic development. The early economic gains of the Sandinistas were wiped out by seven years of sometimes precipitous economic decline, and in 1990, by most standards, Nicaragua and most Nicaraguans were considerably poorer than they were in the 1970s.

The ‘Ol Dirty’s front page today has a big spread on all the Earth Day events on campus. Below the fold, however, is a nice little story headlined “Researchers link biofuels to food price increase.” From the opening paragraphs of the article:

A sign outside of the SeQuential Biofuels retail fueling station in south Eugene reads “fight global warming.” But recent studies and media reports have increasingly questioned biofuel’s side in that and another life-and-death planet-scale fight.

As food riots erupt across the globe, researchers and analysts have been scrambling to explain why food prices have exploded in recent months, and the crosshairs are increasingly focused on corn-based ethanol biofuels.

The article goes on to mention the increasing criticism of biofuel production coming from sources such as The Economist (subscription wall), The New York Times and Science. Reason has been all over the subject as well. With all this scrutiny, you would think the government would be less eager to push through new biofuel subsidies and laws. Well …

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As I previously wrote, President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter where he addressed, as he called it, the “gutter bigotry” of the Pacifica Forum. Here’s the full text pertaining to the PF:

In moving forward, there will always be a diversity of opinion about our approaches to equity by constituencies both on and off our campus. Our efforts benefit from continued open and honest engagement in these differing perspectives. Yet, even as we talk about our different perspectives, we must remain committed to advancing these efforts.

Even as we make notable progress, there have been challenges to the inclusiveness of the community we attempt to create here. Just last term, a student writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald was the subject of a viciously personal anti-Semitic posting for expressing her journalistic views on American foreign policy. In another incident, a group meeting on campus, in an unabashedly racist manner, mocked efforts by others to honor contributions by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And, finally, larger issues of First Amendment freedom of expression were raised once again by the Pacifica Forum, an outside group that holds its meetings from time to time on campus, and which hosted as a speaker the person who targeted the Emerald writer.

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President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter denouncing the Pacifica Forum for its sometimes “unabashedly racist” content. The letter came at the urging of the community board of Oregon Hillel, a Jewish student group on campus; they were prompted to action by a disturbing, anti-semitic screed written by PF regular Valdas Anelauskas attacking ODE columnist Deborah Bloom.

While Frohnmayer spent plenty of time denouncing the forum, he was careful not to call for their outright banishment from campus. From the Register-Guard article:

Frohnmayer said in his letter that groups such as the Pacifica Forum may use UO facilities but do not speak for the university. The appearance of any speaker on campus does not imply the UO’s “endorsement, support, or even its moral indifference to the content of a message,” he wrote.

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Editor-in-Chief of the Oregon Daily Emerald Laura Powers is filing a grievance against Con Court for their recent ruling declaring that ASUO candidates can’t advertise with campus media. Powers is appealing the ruling on grounds of factual accuracy, since she can’t argue the Court’s actual reasoning. Powers, along with us, believes the ruling is complete bullshit:

“We’re not a university facility, we don’t reject ads based on politics and everybody has equal access,” Powers said. “Bitch, please!”

Con Court’s ruling seems to imply (although they won’t come out and say it) that since some people [read: Rock the Yellow] couldn’t afford advertisements it wasn’t equal access. I agree with Powers. Bitch, please!

P.S. How great is it that a grievance is being filed against Con Court to be decided by Con Court?

1. People dressed in garbage.

I saw the garbage monsters walking down 13th today, beatboxing and telling people to recycle.

Natalie Jeremijenko will hold a lecture tomorrow, April 17, at 7 p.m. in 177 Lawrence Hall. Jeremijenko is a conceptual artist with a background in, among other things physics, neuroscience, biochemistry and precision engineering. Her most well known work, done with the Bureau of Inverse Technology, was the Suicide Box, a motion-activated camera that documented suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge. The BIT later took the data on suicide trends and indexed it against the Dow Jones Industrial Average to create the Despondency Index. Probably the most interesting of her projects, though, has been One Trees.

Lately, Jeremijenko has been working on placing buoys in the Hudson River that light up when fish swim through them. This should be an interesting lecture to say the least. For further reading, Salon has a big ‘ol feature on Jeremijenko.

A guest commentator in the Daily Emerald today added to the drumbeat of demands for the departmentalization of Ethnic Studies. Amidst all the usual complaints about how the University of Oregon is failing in its stated goal to be “more diverse,” Kit Myers, a graduate student in Ethnic Studies at U.C. San Diego, spelled out what a departmentalized Ethnic Studies might mean for this campus:

Departmentalization for ethnic studies will address many of the six major goals of the diversity plan. It means building a critical mass of faculty of color on campus; it means fostering a culturally responsive community; it means developing and reinforcing diversity infrastructures; it means more dialogue and critical engagement with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class, which improves campus climate; it means knowledge and growth; and for many students, staff, and faculty of color on campus, it means retention.

Such a formulation seems vague, to say the least. While increasing the number of minority faculty on campus is a laudable goal, Myers seems to be unintentionally implying that a departmentalized Ethnic Studies will adopt hiring practices that favor some candidates at the expense of other candidates who do not pass the skin color test. If this is the case, it is nakedly discriminatory and for this university or any other to purposely adopt a policy that is specifically formulated to exclude a large percentage of the population is unethical at the least, if not flagrantly illegal.

As for the assertion about Ethnic Studies “furthering the discussion of race” on this campus… well, I’ve just gotta call bull on that one. As certain members of our own student government amply prove on a seemingly weekly basis, the “discussion” of race on campus often amounts to little more than accusations of racism hurled around in nearly every imaginable circumstance, and is often used as a bludgeon to curtail free speech, stifle criticism, and shut down debate. How any of this “improves campus climate,” I do not know. I also do not know why “issues of gender and sexuality” are assumed to fall under the rubric of an Ethnic Studies department, but Myers seems to take it as a given.

Of course, my worries about departmentalizing Ethnic Studies may be entirely misplaced. Indeed, I hope they are since the Department of Ethnic Studies seems to be a question of “when” rather than “if” at this point. In fact, I am not necessarily hostile to departmentalization as such but as I’ve written elsewhere, there is precedent for such programs to become highly politicized and exclusive. To date, not a single proponent of departmentalization has to my knowledge bothered to address such criticisms and we’re treated instead to the usual blandishments about diversity.

Instead of moralizing to the student body about how necessary Ethnic Studies is, how about putting together an example of what a typical course of study in that department might look like? What about enumerating where exactly the gaps are in currently available courses and how Ethnic Studies might fill those gaps? How about actually answering some of the worries about exclusion and politicization in an honest and forthright way instead of characterizing critics as racists with no legitimate concerns?

Of course, such conciliatory gestures are probably unnecessary since, as I mentioned, departmentalization is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point. Despite their loud commitment to “dialogue” and “discussion,” it’s clear that proponents don’t feel the need to spend their time convincing the portion of the student body that still holds reservations that a Department of Ethnic Studies is truly a boon to the University of Oregon.

Thus, we’re left wondering exactly what a departmentalized Ethnic Studies brings new to the table. So far, all we’ve been offered by the likes of Kit Myers is an empty plate and the promise that there’s all sorts of good stuff in the kitchen, if only we’d shut up and let them feed us.

I was just reading the Emerald’s story about the Oregon Action Team’s victory, and I noticed this interesting little tidbit:

 ”It’s easy to buy an election,” Sen. Nate Gulley, a Rock the Yellow supporter said after hearing the results.

The Commentator wonders if Senator Gulley can provide any evidence whatsoever to back up his statement, or whether he’s just speaking from personal experience.

For his part, Diego Hernandez was quoted as saying that he hadn’t “even processed it yet,” which probably stems from the fact that he’s spent a significant portion of his processing power lately fulminating against white people in the comments section of the Daily Emerald, producing such gleaming pearls as:

Diversity, in the mind of the average white, heteronormative male is obviously or should be non-European…White people suddenly want to be included in the term diversity. This is why Affirmative Action is becoming weaker and scholarships that are meant for people of color are going to white people because diverse means something different.

and leading off with:

Wake is an idiot, he needs to wake up and stop being a racist, uneducated baboso. 

I am guessing your not educated about “race,” especially because Wake’s comment is obviously ignorant and racist, and because you used the term “Hispanic.” I don’t get my definitions from the encyclopedia, especially socially related terms. Race and Racism is so complex that you can major on it and get a Doctorate from the topic. Suddenly, I have to stay silent when I speak about race, because if I talk about it then it might loose it’s meaning.  [emphasis added]

After someone in the comments section (whom Hernandez claimed was “Sean Jin himself or someone associated with him or the neoliberal, neoconservative, ignorant Oregon Commentator” [Gosh, it’s so nice that you’re always thinking of us!!]) pointed out that his sentiments were coming dangerously close to breaching the University’s definition of “discriminatory harassment,” Hernandez suddenly made an about-face, claiming:

But anyway if you read what Wake said, it is obviously not racist, but I thought I should just do it to see what kind of dialogue would come of it. Very interesting stuff…   [emphasis added]

Between churning out such confused vitriol and denouncing Sean Jin’s “hate speech” about the Multicultural Center, it’s no wonder that Mr. Hernandez has been suffering a dearth of CPU power needed for processing the Oregon Action Team’s victory, leaving it to Nate Gulley to instead insinuate election fraud and further drag what remains of the ASUO’s reputation through the mud.

Congrats to the Oregon Action Team for shaking these tossers up a bit.

The Smoke Free Campus Task Force (don’t laugh, it’s paid for) has set up a survey to gauge student, staff and faculty thoughts on making campus smoke-free. From the survey:

The Smoke Free Campus Task Force has been appointed to assess the pros and cons of establishing the University of Oregon as a smoke free campus. To assist in this effort, the task force is asking all faculty, staff, and students to complete a short survey to give feedback about the current campus smoking policy and whether the UO should become a smoke free campus. Establishing campus as smoke free would prohibit smoking anywhere on campus, including all buildings and all campus grounds and properties.

I would advise all freedom-loving students, staff and faculty to fill out the survey … as many times as possible. Also, check out the OC’s response to these efforts from fall term.

As promised, the Pacifica Forum revisited the topic of Martin Luther King, Jr. yesterday, the anniversary of his assassination. However, unlike last time, when a PF speaker called King a “moral leper and communist dupe“, this week’s lecture focused on the “right-wing, corporate, militarist conspiracy that targeted King in 1968 and that still controls our country and its policies with its propaganda today.”

Longtime Pacifica Forum member George Beres claimed that King’s assassination, as well as the Kennedy’s, were orchestrated by a powerful “shadow government.” Not only that, but he claimed the populace at large has been brainwashed by said shadow government’s subtle and insidious propaganda (perpetuated by a complicit mass media, of course). You should probably pop a couple of Valium before you (more…)

The Oklahoma Senate decided yesterday to shelve a bill that would have allowed concealed carry of firearms on college campuses to military veterans and those with firearms training. The bill, introduced by Republican Jason Murphey, faced strong opposition from students, faculty and administration on Oklahoma campuses, who said that it would have decreased safety rather than improved it. From the AP article:

University of Oklahoma President David Boren had argued the bill would hurt recruitment of students and faculty. It also would pose a dilemma for police trying to determine whether a person wielding a weapon was a “deranged gunman or someone who thinks he is doing good vigilante work.

I’m not an expert on police tactics, but why wouldn’t it be the same way that they determine real threats in any other situation? Thousands of law-abiding people carry concealed weapons outside of college campuses, yet the news pages aren’t splashed with stories of police accidentally gunning them down.

But I don’t imagine this would be a problem anyways, since the police habitually show up after campus shootings, just in time to clean up the bodies.

For more on the issue, check out Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. Also related are these stories about a Medford teacher who sued the school district for her right to carry. She lost but has since filed an appeal.

Over Spring Break, Sudsy was observed trouncing around the University of California, Berkeley campus.

Amongst other things, physics students in a particular lecture hall at UC Berkeley will begin their classes Monday morning with a welcoming message:

Happy Spring Term, everyone!

On Tuesday, April 1 at noon, supporters of the soon-to-be closed Holy Cow Cafe will hold a sit-in and costume contest in the EMU food court to protest the EMU’s decision not to renew the restaurant’s lease.

According to the poster for the event, everyone should participate because “taking political action is fun and rewarding. Don’t knock it ’till you try it. And, lastly, because this is a fight we can win!”

The poster also included a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. about the effectiveness of sit-ins and non-violent protest. However, the reason the sit-ins of the civil rights movement were effective was because a) the protesters weren’t supposed to be sitting there, b) their presence incited violence against them and c) this attracted media attention, gaining sympathy for their cause. None of these qualities will be met at Tuesday’s sit-in. Last time I checked, the food court was made for sitting in, and no one is likely to get violent unless the protesters block access to Panda Express. (Some people feel very strongly about orange chicken).

And a costume contest? Seriously, this is how you plan on sticking it to the man?