Oregon Commentator/Kiefer VerSteegh

This image was taken from one of the outer walls of Bean West, near the Hamilton complex. Apparently somebody thought that the dorms (or the university) was much like that of a repressive regime. Does that mean that Dick Lariviere is comparable to Stalin? According to the meaningful social commentary spray-painted on a college dormitory in Oregon, yes. Yes he is.

No word yet on finding the perpetrators. Must solve other spray paint-related crimes first.

Today we were forwarded an e-mail correspondence between Phylicia Haggerty, a University of Oregon student, and ASUO Senator Tyler Griffin. I warn you, its contents are disturbing, for it shows the true nature of the misguidance many students have about the Pacifica Forum situation. I have my own opinions about the contents of this e-mail, but I dare not write them here, lest I take away from the incredibly intelligent, well-spoken and well-informed e-mail response Sen. Griffin replied to Haggerty with.

I hope Griffin doesn’t mind that I’ve posted this here, but I believe that such attacks on the members of the ASUO, who have been a highly deliberative body on the subject to this point, should not be subject to such ignorant attacks from members of our student body. I hope students can better inform themselves by better understanding the depth and consideration all members of the ASUO have taken on this point. All I can say is that I openly applaud Griffin for his expressed opinions within his reply. Good for you, Tyler.

From Phylicia Haggerty to Sen. Tyler Griffin:

To The Members of Our Student Senate,

I am a senior at the University of Oregon and I am very concerned for my safety. I am not understanding why the Pacifica Forum situation has not been resolved. I am getting ready to graduate in June with two degrees from this institution, which up until a week ago I was very proud to be a duck.

I have written a letter to Student affairs along with the president of this institution because I feel as though you all are clearly not responsible to make the right decision. I wish you could all sit back and take this situation personally, but you cant because your not the one being hated against. I know what you all look like and as far as I am concerned I believe there is only one person who looks like they would be hated against by this forum so I would not expect you to take this personally. I have already called the Oregonian and if you do not think this news will get out of the University of Oregon spot light you have another thing coming. If this hate group were a bunch of students of color you would have resolved this already.

Freedom of speech? Really is that all you can back your decision on. I bet that students will use their freedom of speech to take this higher than all of you. The first amendment is only applicable when it does no harm to others. Trust me, I have studied plenty of Supreme Court cases. I am very saddened that this has happened and nothing has been done about it. Being a person of color on this campus is already difficult and then to have a hate group promoting students to hate us is even worse. I hope this e-mail finds you well, but I am very frustrated and hurt that I do not feel safe to walk to class, and the fact that nothing has been done about it is beyond unbelievable. If you do not think that the diversity on this campus will decrease due to this decision you need to think again.

That is of course you probably have no concern to keep this “diverse” campus “diverse”. I urge you to sleep on your decision and attempt to take it personally before next weeks meeting. Thank you for your time.

Now, from Griffin back to Haggerty:

Phylicia,

I am sorry you feel hurt, and unsafe, and think that we are morally bankrupt people for not voting for this resolution, but..

You make me feel unsafe. And, yes at this time, because of this email you sent, I feel ashamed to be a duck. Knowing that my peers at this university are so ignorant and naïve to make such accusations of our ASUO Senators, elected by student body.

And, how dare you say we on the body have not been discriminated against! You should truly be ashamed for saying this. You trivialize the nature hate, as you are using the same rhetoric that you wish to silence.

I would encourage you to think, in more depth, what are the possible implications of your extremely false accusations.

Feel free to contact me at any point.

Senator Tyler Griffin (seat six)
EMU Board
Rules Committee Chair.

The first winter term edition of the Daily Emerald came out today, inexplicably without any editorial or opinion column whatsoever (where’s my D’Andrea retrospective on the last decade?) What the paper chose to run on its opinion page was instead an enlarged section of its “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” blurbs.

Now if you’re not familiar with the section, they are essentially uncredited (read: without a byline, standing as the general editorial stance of the newspaper) paragraph blurbs about news stories the Emerald approves or disapproves of. My favorite of today? This one:

“Thumbs Up for No Smoking – North Carolina, the nation’s top tobacco-producing state, went smoke-free inside bars and restaurants Jan. 1. If it can happen there, it’s hard to imagine why smoking would be allowed anywhere else. Say, on campus, for instance.”

Glad to see the Emerald still has the wonderful editorial slant that disallows private business owners to make decisions for themselves. And if they had it their way, students as well.

It’s good to be back.

[UPDATE] The second edition of the Emerald came out today, and despite their 5-person paid opinion staff, the entire opinion page had borrowed columns from Portland State’s The Vanguard. I wonder if the Vanguard staff collected a stipend for that?

Sometimes, living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to forget just how loathsome and malignant hipsters are. They are, after all, nearly as ubiquitous as such similarly squishy and useless northwest fixtures as “fog” and “moss” [Fog is not squishy. -ed], not to mention their close namesakes, hippies. We observe with embarrassed disgust these irritating, unimaginative raiders-of-long-dead-pop-culture pedaling around town on their fixed-gear bicycles, frequently sporting absurd facial hair and 1980’s garb — though neon-colored early-1990’s clothing has in recent years begun to creep into “fashion”.

But lest we forget how miserable and, ultimately, brainless and malevolent hipsterism is, one need only take a glance at the sorts of antics International Hipsterdom routinely engages in, specifically the marketing of designer jeans produced in such transgressive, counter-culture places like North Korea. According to the Swedish hipster at the center of all of this:

The idea for the project was born out of curiosity for North Korea, which has grown increasingly isolated in recent years under Western criticism of its human rights record and nuclear ambitions. “The reason we did this was to come closer to a country that was very difficult to get into contact with.” [emphasis added... also, die a painful death of syphilis, or something, you putrid sore]

Frankly, I agree. Damn the West for “isolating” North Korea by “criticizing” its human rights record. I guess when you’ve had the collapse of Enron happen on your soil, you’ve got no place pointing fingers at all those gulags. After all, it isn’t as if North Korea hasn’t walled itself off from the rest of the world since the 1950’s. Then again, no one ever accused hipsters of having any sense of history — unless you’re talking about what sorts of clothes were trendy from about 1978 until sometime in the 1990’s, that is.

Thankfully, it seems like non-hipster factions in Swedish society have come to their senses, refusing to allow shelf-space to so-called “NOKO” branded designer clothes (if you didn’t hate hipsters before, just take a look at the wastes of sperm pictured in the BBC report). At least one of the founders of “NOKO Jeans” admits that North Korea “sometimes treats its citizens terribly.” Huh. You don’t say. Well, it’s a good thing, then, that a gaggle of well-intentioned young lads decided to give it the good old college try and did what they could to fix the situation by… err… peddling North Korean-made clothing at exorbitant prices in Swedish luxury boutiques (the jeans were reputedly slated to be sold for $215). I’m sure that they really would’ve made a difference if the forces of international capital hadn’t forced their wares off the shelves.

The game’s just so loaded, you know?

At any rate, the next time you see some hipster galavanting around campus, cocksure in his faux-Mercury mustache or her unconvincing “nerd-girl” attire, just remember to ask that person if they’d buy the latest, hippest “NOKO” jeans if given the chance. At the very least, it’ll make them feel uncomfortable, defensive, and most importantly, unfashionable. What’s certain is that the those of us who don’t necessarily mind being used as marionettes by the forces of international capital need to take every advantage over this vile sub-species that we can afford, even if it means making them feel that they’re not decked out in the most transgressive and “avant” of duds.

Because that’s the real crime.

Well, “health care reform” is on its way to the Senate floor. When it passes (not if, but when), it will amount to little more than billions of dollars worth of wasted money and one big “WIN” check-mark in Team Blue’s column… and make no mistake, this isn’t about the so-called “right” to health care, looking out for the disadvantaged, making things more “affordable*”, or any of the other noble rhetoric people are deploying — it’s about politicians being able to point to some astoundingly expensive piece of legislation and being able to say, “LOOK!!! WE DID SOMETHING!!” Period. Full stop. Democrats get to crow about their “big win” for the common man and Republicans get to strut around and talk about all that “fiscal responsibility” they forgot about between 2000 and 2008.

(more…)

The Ol’ Dirty is reporting that OSPIRG has finally been kicked out of the space in the EMU that they’ve been using since being sent packing last year. Not only that, but ASUO Executive Emma Kallaway pointed out that OSPIRG shouldn’t have been there in the first place, since they haven’t been a student group in years:

The Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group was dealt another blow Tuesday when the EMU Board of Directors delivered notice that OSPIRG’s file cabinets have to be cleared from its spot in the east side of the EMU, its professional staff can no longer use incidental fee-funded resources and a recognized student group would soon move in to share quarters with the Survival Center and the Student Insurgent.

The explanation provided was that OSPIRG is no longer a recognized student group and therefore cannot occupy space in the EMU. The inconsistency, as ASUO President Emma Kallaway noted, is that OSPIRG has not been a student group for years. Until July, the ASUO had a contract for membership in the statewide organization. No one ever bothered to mention contracted services should not have been allowed space in the EMU.

Along with OSPIRG’s illegal occupation of the EMU, it seems they’ve been using other University resources such as phone lines and computers that they had no particular right to. That, of course, hasn’t stopped them from being a bunch of ingrates:

The EMU Board says OSPIRG staffers cannot use the phones paid for by the incidental fee. OSPIRG students say they use cell phones because the land line was cut in July. The board says OSPIRG can’t use the computer provided in its former office space; OSPIRG Chair Charles Denson said it was slow anyway.

Sorry the misappropriated computer in question wasn’t up to your standards, Chuck.

Via Reason, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a great article about one of the Commentator’s favorite topics — intellectual diversity on campus. It starts by discussing the (somewhat eyebrow-raising) opening of a “Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements” at Berkeley, and eventually moves into a broader discussion of the intellectual monoculture that’s evolved on college campuses over the last forty years:

Though we are no longer in the politically correct sauna of the 1980s and 1990s, and experiences vary from college to college, the picture [David Horowitz] paints of the faculty and curriculum in American universities remains embarrassingly accurate, and it is foolish to deny what we all see before us.

Over the past decade, our universities have made serious efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity on the campus (economic diversity worries them less, for some reason). Well-paid deans work exclusively on the problem. But universities show not the slightest interest in intellectual diversity among faculty members. That wouldn’t matter if teachers could be counted on to introduce students to their adversaries’ books and views, but we know how rarely that happens.

[...]

Lyons was an American historian who wrote about the 60s and made no secret of his liberal politics or his loathing of Reagan and post-Reagan conservatism. But he was also disturbed by how few colleges offer courses on conservatism, treating it as a “pathology” rather than a serious political tradition…

The author, Mark Lilla, offers some anecdotal evidence of what happens when students are allowed the opportunity to take courses in conservative thought that are taught actively and honestly:

Lyons’s class was split almost evenly between liberal and conservative students, who had no trouble arguing with each other. They seemed to understand what thin-skinned professors wish to forget: that intellectual engagement is not for crybabies. The students had loud debates over Reagan’s legacy, Bush’s foreign policy, religious freedom, abortion, even the “war on Christmas”—and nobody broke into tears or ran to the dean to complain. And the more the students argued, the more they came to respect one another. According to Lyons, students learned that that conservative guy was no longer just the predictable gun nut or religious fanatic. And the conservative students learned that they had to make real arguments, not rely on clichés and sound bites recycled from Fox News. [emphasis added]

[...]

We should be grateful for his modest book, which has lessons for everyone. It reminds liberal academics of just how narrow-minded and conservative (in the nonpolitical sense) they are in their hiring and teaching, and how much they have to learn if they want to understand the political world we live in.

There are lessons for conservatives, too. Anti-intellectualism has always dogged conservative tradition (you betcha!), and figures like David Horowitz, who stoke the hysteria, only contribute to the dumbing down. Hopped up on Fox News, too many young conservatives have become ignorant of the conservative intellectual tradition and incapable of engaging civilly with their adversaries. [emphasis added]

Or maybe it’s just more convenient for some to promulgate the “racist, gun-toting, religious nut” stereotype and continue to churn out the thoughtless, pliable Nate Gulley’s and Diego Hernandez’s of the world.

Vincent linked to this piece of drivel over at the Eugene Weekly blog, titled “One Big Way to Honor Ted Kennedy,” in his post below, but in case you were too lazy to click on it:

Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:

There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.

While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.

…

The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…

Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.

(more…)

It’s been forty years. No one cares. The world does not — and never did — revolve around you. So please scurry off and die already, and take your self-serving myth-making right along with you.

Thanks,

Everyone else.

Well, tonight saw President Obama’s “health care forum”. The ABC network has come under a great deal of criticism for its perceived kowtowing to the Obama Administration and refusing to sell ad time to the dissenting Republicans (can you imagine the outrage had the players instead been Fox News and President Bush, circa 2004?). The Republicans are calling the whole thing an “infomercial“. Media Matters is calling Fox News a bunch of hyporites (I guess whether “turnabout is fair play” or “he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” is a more appropriate slogan for the left’s sudden enthusiasm for uncomfortably close ties between the government and the media depends on which side of the aisle one hails from…). Meanwhile, reports indicate that ABC employees donated to the Obama campaign by a factor of roughly 80:1 ($124,421 to Obama, $1,550 to McCain) and Michelle Malkin is howling about “astroturfing“. Other statistics (“damned lies…” and all that…) indicate that 89% of Americans are more or less satisfied with their health care, raising the question of why exactly it’s so urgent to push through health care reform right now — as others have mentioned, maybe fixing Medicare first would provide an encouraging example of Obama’s brilliant ideas on health care — or is Walter Reed a harbinger of state-run health care (actually Walter Reed is state-run health care…)?

But never mind all that. The masthead says “a conservative journal of opinion” and, since we’re not getting any of that sweet, sweet, free stimulus money (and since we find the idea of the government bailing out newspapers utterly repugnant– sorry journalism majors), I thought I’d call attention to Cato’s crucial coverage of what’s poised to be a total health-care debacle — one of positively federal proportions. In any case, you can find an informative live-blogged response to the President’s err…  “highly adversarial” appearance on ABC here.

And in case you don’t give two squirts of piss about the de facto socialization of health care in this country, I invite you to instead discuss this article, which seeks to establish whether or not the “FreeCreditReport.com band” is “legit” or not. But I’ll never respect you again.

Rather than trying to append this to the smoking, charred remains of the last post that dealt with intellectual diversity, I thought I’d give this piece from Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy its own space.

Much has been made in the comments section of this blog about what the problem actually looks like and what can be done about it, and I think that Anderson does a reasonably good job of crystallizing a few of the major concerns regarding the lack of intellectual diversity in the academy.

He makes clear the results of a lack of intellectual diversity in the academy, and it’s not just that students run the risk of ending up in a classroom with biased instructors. Rather, courses that approach subject matter from a conservative or libertarian perspective simply are not taught. This is due in large part to the fact that many existing faculty are either uninterested or unable to teach such courses, with the outcome that classes in conservative political thought or historical interpretation, etc. have more or less disappeared from curricula. For support he cites Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, who writes:

To be sure, a political science department may feature a course on American political thought that includes a few papers from “The Federalist” and some chapters from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”

But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism’s relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom.

[...]

While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.

Berkowitz argues that, far from actively seeking “conservative” scholars during faculty searches, departments should instead look for professors who, regardless of their political background, would be able to convincingly teach a courses about conservative interpretations of history, ideas, politics, etc. to complement the stable of scholars in virtually every humanities or social science department who are fluent in leftish ideas.

This approach would likely have the effect of attracting a more “diverse” group of applicants and nullifies the basis of the argument that only “liberal people apply to liberal schools” (or the even more absurd notion that conservatives are simply too thick to be academics) while at the same time avoiding any sort of political “litmus test” during the hiring process.

While approvingly quoting Berkowitz’s admonition against “affirmative action for conservatives,” Anderson also notes the stultifying results of the left-liberal coccoon in academia:

… within an academic institution, I find myself treated as “conservative” – either to recoil from in faint horror, with a certain advice to students, well, if you take him, you have to know what you’re getting, or with a certain faint institutional pride that we’re broad-minded enough to have someone like him, which is to say, there is nothing an academic institution cannot praise itself for if it tries hard enough. I’ve had conversations – earnest, well-intentioned – that amounted to saying, “We’re so glad you’re our token conservative.”

If a quality education that exposes students to a wide variety of ideas and perspectives is indeed the mission of this institution (and sometimes one wonders…), then it simply isn’t enough to retort “well, go take an economics class” whenever someone complains that conservative ideas are given short shrift in the academy. Students actually need to be able to expose themselves to a truly diverse set of ideas that are taught by people who’re interested in and qualified to teach them, regardless of their political background (I mean, can you imagine what a class at the UO campus on the ideas of Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley might look like?).

As it stands, students are often presented with the illusion of choice and given the option of taking courses in any number of subjects, a large number of which approach the course material, whatever it may be, with much the same theoretical framework.

That’s not diversity, and telling conservative academics to get out of town and move to Texas doesn’t change that.

Journalism grad student Dan Lawton has a new post over at his blog with responses to his recent ODE opinion piece on the lack of ideological diversity on campus. The  responses are all very predictable (“There are no Republican professors because you have to be smart to be a professor. Hurr hurr hurr!”). But then you get to the comment from UO journalism teacher Dan Morrison, who is on the record as saying (emphasis added):

You may be very upset that the University of Oregon, which, I may point out, is funded by people who live in a liberal state, and therefore, no surprise, tends to be liberal, attracts professor applying for a job who tend to be liberal. But as a student you have a choice. You do not have to come here. You most certainly can choose to spend your money to go to school in Alabama, or Texas, or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Louisiana or South Carolina.  And if you like conservatism, you can certainly attend the University of Texas, and you can walk past the statue of Jefferson Davis every day on your way to class.

Whoa, whoa, hold on. Full stop. Really? I don’t know where Morrison gets off, but the last time I checked, being conservative does not mean one is some sort of neo-Confederate. In fact, that’s a fairly disgusting and disingenuous statement to make. Way to really raise the level of discourse there, tiger. Of course, maybe Morrison has just been yukking it up with his UO colleagues so long that he doesn’t realize everyone’s not an effete, latte-sipping pinko. (Do you see how that works?)

Second, perhaps some of us can’t afford out-of-state tuition. Perhaps some of us simply want a decent education at the state’s supposed “flagship university.” And as a “flagship university” or a “hot brand” or whatever the UO’s touting itself as these days, maybe we’re upset because we’re paying to sit in class and listen to pious, liberal professors tell us how evil cars/Bush/guns are instead of trying to provide us with an actual education.

P.S. I forgot to mention: Lawton challenged Morrison to an open debate of the subject, which Morrison declined.

In the latest issue of the Student Insurgent (at least I think it’s the latest… aside from a calendar advertising events in May at the “Eugene Free School”, I can’t find a date anywhere on this thing), noted advocates for fiscal responsibility, Joey Beats and Cimmeron Gillespie fire a devastating broadside against the Student Rec Center, admonishing the Rec Center for its profligate ways.

We couldn’t agree more! In fact, former OC Editor-in-Chief Ted Niedermeyer scooped the Insurgent on this story about two years ago (story begins on page 20). Still, it’s nice to see the Insurgent kids finally take notice of the massive misallocation of student dollars at the University of Oregon:

This problem of funding as [sic] been a constant issues [sic] for the Rec. Center, as they have gone before student government asking for more money, year after year and received in full, [sic] their requested funding… Such waste is intolerable given the national financial state and our own Fat-Katz administration’s promises of ‘fiscal responsibility’.

No doubt it’s only a matter of time before these newly minted fiscal conservatives at the Insurgent join the Oregon Commentator in demanding higher standards of accountability and less wasteful spending of student money across the board in the ASUO.

Will they reverse their support of that notorious money sink known as OSPIRG? Hope springs eternal.

Then again, one of their letters to the editor in the latest issue describes how the Insurgent gang gave some random anarchist a ride to the Bay Area in a “state-owned” van and proceeded to go “to the co-ops in Berkeley for a naked, neon good time,” so I’m not getting my hopes up.

One can only wonder if that trip was paid for by student money and, if it was, how the Insurgent staff squares that with their sudden commitment to prudent fiscal management.

[EDIT]

The next column in the Insurgent, attributed to “Greenwash Guerillas”, lambasts the U of O for it’s attempts at “greenwashing” through the use of carbon offsets. It begins with the paragraph:

Carbon offsets follow the same logic as indulgences did for the Catholic Church centuries ago. Offsetting argues that if you do something “bad” you can mitigate that by paying someone to do something “good” in your name.

Did we buy up the Insurgent with some of that blog contest money and someone just forgot to tell me, or something?

Well, campus today is all aflutter for the impending “march on Johnson Hall“. In what seems to be a deliberate attempt to rekindle past glories, the “Step Up, Oregon!” faction is going to demand that Oregon distance itself from a clothing manufacturer accused of employing sweatshop labor, breaking the law, and generally being very, very bad.

Even the ASUO is trying to get in on the action.

I want to avoid weighing in on whether Russell is an evil company or not; They may very well be, and I’m in no position to say they aren’t.

The problem I have with virtually every argument that I’ve seen advocating breaking with Russell (apparently in violation of OUS rules) is that they do little more than repeat Workers Rights Consortium talking points without even a hint of skepticism.

We’re told that closing down a factory “…prompted Worker Rights Consortium investigations, which found that the decision to close the factory was at least partly because of [unionization attempts], constituting a violation of Honduran labor laws.”

That’s all very well and good, but did anyone honestly expect them to come to any other conclusion? The WRC has painted a proverbial target on Russell’s back, and I think everyone would be absolutely shocked if they didn’t reach the exact conclusion that they did, in fact, reach.

To put it another way, I find the WRC’s “findings” about as convincing as a report reading something along the lines of “an investigation by the Democratic National Committee found that George W. Bush was a bad President” or “investigations by the Communist Party of the USA found that capitalism is bad”. Those statements may or may not be true, but, like anything coming from the WRC, they’re not exactly unbiased.

As part of their college education, students are expected to show at least a modicum of skill in critical thinking.

It would be nice if those skills could be put to use questioning the veracity of claims of corporate wrongdoing made by an organization whose express purpose is to accuse corporations of wrongdoing.

I’m not necessarily disputing the claims that Russell may in fact be a rotten company. I’d just like to see people be a bit more careful about repeating what amounts to little more than propaganda.

Then again, hope springs eternal.