Yesterday’s ODE commentary from Bradley, wherein he takes the ROTC protest to task, here.

Okay, but I think he may have missed some points.

1) It is abundantly apparent that the protestors wished to be arrested for the purpose of airing their views in a newspaper headline, which they accomplished at slight taxpayer expense but without inflicting violence on themselves or others.

2) Being university types, the protestors situated their event on campus grounds, quite possibly because a) this increases the likelihood that the Emerald will cover the story thoroughly, and/or b) it’s more of a central location to the parties concerned than the Federal Building downtown.

3) There aren’t that many places on campus where the presence of fifty people would be seen as anything out of the ordinary, let alone a matter of trespassing. Sure, they could have clogged up Johnson Hall– but, really, that’s been done.

4) By the logic of Bradley’s commentary, if the protest had been staged at Johnson Hall, it would be anti-administration; and if it had been staged at the Federal Building, it would have been anti-federalism. There isn’t any claim made in the article that the writer knows the disposition of the protestors– it’s entirely within reason, and statistically probable, that some of those in attendance have loved ones in the service. This opens up the question of what is meant by the term “anti-military”: does it refer to a hatred of those in uniform, to the opinion that there are some problems more amenably solved than through the imperilment of those same servicemembers, to some other notion within a wide range of possible perspectives, or to all of the above? We can safely assume that, whatever it means, no one who has loved ones in the military is opposed to the welfare of those loved ones or those loved ones’ comrades in arms.

5) It’s easy enough for some to recall the civil rights movement as a historical event fixed neatly within the same decade that gave us the walk on the moon, and to think of it as a decisive moment later universally understood as the triumph of absolute right over absolute wrong. A closer look informs us that a lot of people disagreed at the time– whether the movement should be happening at all, whether those behind it had laudible goals, whether those goals were acheivable, how exactly to pursue them– and there are still any number of people disagreeing over the peripherals of that debate. I’ve had occasion to speak with people– living, breathing Americans in the twenty-first century at points north and south in our far-flung Republic– who feel quite strongly that the position of absolute right did not win out. By that I mean that there are people who perceive the civil rights movement to have hardly begun to occur, as well as people who perceive that it has but who are not at all happy about it. Just a heads-up to anyone reading who thinks that all the matters of right and wrong have been ironed out for us by previous generations.

6) There are people who think that this war is a good one, and they make a number of arguments to support their position. Among them, some define the terms of the argument in terms of right and wrong– the victory of freedom over terror, etc. Then there are people who think this war is a bad one, and conversely they make a number of arguments too. Not surprisingly, many of these arguments are also grounded in absolute notions of right and wrong– the reprehesibility of government officials who make misleading claims that eventuate in the exacerbated misery of a nation on the other side of the world where we need to be making friends among potential enemies instead of the opposite, playing fast and loose with the integrity of our military and the lives of our soldiers and in the process rendering our nation ever more vulnerable to new threats. All these people are Americans. None of them are joking.

Via Althouse, some hauntingly familiar echoes in Wisconsin. “Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow” just received under 1% of their requested budget.

Now, while I’d like to shout Southworth at the top of my lungs, there’s too little detail to go on at the moment, although there are some tantalizing hints: “the decorum in the room was appalling”, etc. Also, CFACT were requesting nearly four hundred thousand dollars - three times the budget of those scrounging pinkos at WISPIRG. This is a hell of a lot of money, and I have no clue what they could conceivably need it all for. (Yes, they have 50+ interns. So what? Suck it up, interns.) While the decision doesn’t appear to be predicated on any mealy-mouthed nonsense about “cultural well-being” of students, the “insufficient itemization” charge is one we’ve dealt with ourselves - last year, the final, pitiful attempt by Eden Cortez to dismiss our budget was on the grounds that we had a general “office supplies” line item instead of separate sections for pens, pencils, envelopes, etc. So, this might be one to keep an eye on.

Bryan brought this to my attention: Which one of these girls do you think this guy is trying to sleep with?

Also, it’s obvious that the girl in the hat miscalculated the amount of space it would take to properly convey all of her salient points. It’s like reading a goddamn eye chart.

*Picture via Kate Horton and the ODE (by “via” I mean I didn’t ask permission to use it)

[Timothy Adds: ODE story here.]
[Ian Adds: Photo hotlinked to and embeded from ODE server.]

For anyone who is interested, I will take part in the horrendously titled “Free Speech vs. Hate Speech” panel tonight at 7:30 in the McAlister Lounge.

The panel will be moderated by Interim Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez. Other panelists include Chicora Martin of the LGBTQA, David Fidanque of the ACLU and Margie Paris of the Law School. Yes, it will be a blast.

I guess I’ll be situated on the pro-hate speech side, considering how the organizers turn these things into strict dichotomies. Still, if anyone is interested you should come and check it out.

This is a bit of a late notice, but if it isn’t into your head yet that our meetings are always at 7:00pm on Wednesdays then here’s your notification. This week we’ll as usual be in one of the Century Rooms near the EMU Skylight.

Update on the dorm-harassment story here. New wrinkle in the lede: swastikas are apparently being drawn in residence halls by retard or retards unknown. Good quote from Oregon Hillel executive director Hal Applebaum on the significance of the iconography:

Thats not necessarily against Jewish students. Its against gosh knows who and gosh knows what.

Quite. (Although he missed a chance at what would have been perhaps the greatest Big Lebowski reference ever.)

Swastikas have been the go-to Bad Symbol for attention-seeking idiots for a good long while now. It’s important to keep such incidents in perspective, and send a message that these rather pathetic people cannot strike fear into the hearts of students by carving a few lines in a table. Let us hope nobody infers the existence of a neo-Nazi cell on campus from this douchebaggery.

I can’t… words fail… I don’t know how to describe… this is… this is unbelievable. I’m certainly laughing from an inner state of jollification, if I wasn’t before - and yet even with all the wine I’ve spilled over myself, I’m still not sure how I feel about the base degradation that now defines us both. Oh, just read it.

People in the Middle Ages knew how to throw a party that everyone was invited to.

That’s… an interesting way of putting it, Ailee. Not a History major, I’m assuming?

Early nominee for Column of the Year, I’m saying. At this rate, Ailee Slater should be all over the front page of the Huffington Post within a couple of years.

The SCOTUS mulligan pick is apparently this fellow. What does this mean? No idea. What makes these nominations so fun is that whenever one is announced everyone has to run around frantically trying to learn about the nominee’s judical record, (unlike the previous two, Alito actually has one) and a crucial element of randomness is introduced to the learning process by the fact that most of us are not lawyers. (UPDATE: some of us are less like lawyers than others.)

So, on the one hand, Alito ruled that a law banning student newspapers from running ads for alcohol was unconstitutional (Yay!); on the other hand he ruled that “Not only is strip searches of 10-year-old girls okay [sic], but of wives as well since they are all merely that man’s chattel.” (Boo!)

Wait a second. No, he didn’t. The thing that’s really fun about these nominations is the ideological pie-fight that’s about to ensue. For what it’s worth, enough of the right people seem to be happy, and that’ll do for now.

Meant to pick up on this one yesterday. ODE editorial here. Not a huge amount to take issue with in the coverage, although the editorial wrings its hands a bit much. (”We must ponder who should be held responsible for this flagrant incident. The individual or individuals who made the alleged remarks should clearly be accountable for their actions. But…”) and the last paragraph is phrased strangely:

We are shocked that this sort of flagrant behavior would happen on campus. Administrators and student groups have taken steps to create a welcoming environment and a more diverse mix of students, but these efforts are in vain if students espouse racist attitudes.

The overuse of the word “flagrant”, in this context, is quite odd. I also think the conclusion is unduly defeatist. A world in which no student acts like an asshole is, alas, an impossible dream. That doesn’t mean a robust mechanism to punish people who (say) make racially motivated death threats to non-white students is a vain effort.

University Housing needs to investigate this seriously. Unfortunately, in order to do so they need concrete allegations against the individuals responsible, and at this point it’s not clear whether any will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, a point worth making again: if someone is found to have threatened the life of an incoming freshman - based on his race, his height, his sexuality, or because he looked at them funny - it’s not a “hate crime”, it’s a crime, and here’s hoping they find themselves in a whole world of trouble.

For no other reason than to scoop the Emerald on an otherwise unremarkable story, I describe to you the scene at the intersection of 13th and Hilyard roughly twenty minutes ago on my walk home from class: a young man wearing flip-flop sandals over socks, lying motionless on his backside next to a very nice bike in the street. There is no visible blood. A pickup truck with police lettering idling in the intersection, lights flashing with no siren.

Two black-shirted Fire Rescue personnel kneeling afront the fallen rider and one pink-shirted matronly lady kneeling behind him, asking questions/ providing instructions that are inaudible from the sidewalk. A maroon minivan is also idling in the street, but it moves curbside on Hilyard and another black-shirted authority approaches, asking questions, maybe looking at insurance info. There is no one in handcuffs. A fine assortment of gawkers on all four corners, asking questions of one another regarding the obvious. The fallen rider puts an arm into the air (right only) and squeezes his fist. He moves his right knee up and down. He tries to sit up, looks at the crowd, and one of the Fire Rescue guys puts out an arm, presumably saying, “Slow down, guy; take it easy.” He lies down again. Traffic is still moving, slowly, through the intersection, and no one is trying to stop it. Sacred Heart Medical Center is directly behind the fallen rider’s location in the street. Everyone wonders when the stretcher will arrive, or whether perhaps the fallen rider will walk away without one. I don’t have time to find out.

Jesus, this is what happens when I only read the FIRE website once in six months. I blame burnout from the whole PFC debacle. How the hell did we miss this story?

Someone see if they can get some MCC cash to get Chris Lee’s Mangina Monologues to come on tour, stat.

UPDATE: It continues. By the way, how creepy does the Office of Campus Involvement sound?

Price adjustments have also been made. A range of $5 for students to $100 for WSU or University of Idaho administrators will be enforced.

As for Lees upcoming plays, [Center for Human Rights Director Raul] Sanchez plans to attend in case another controversy arises.

Itll probably shorten the amount of investigation we have to do if Im actually a witness there, he said.

Sanchez is not usually comfortable discussing cases, but Lee has made the case public already, he said.

Sounds like it’s getting personal up there.

One to keep a wary eye on in the Midwest.

From reading the FIRE release above (and not being a lawyer) the critical designation seems to be that of a “non-public forum”. While this could apply to student-run newspapers bearing the imprimatur of a university or college - although it’s a fairly horrifying and authoritarian notion - I’d be curious to see how extensively such a decision could be applied to, oh, student-run online forums like, say, this one, or the ODE’s largely dormant blog smorgasbord. My instinct is that cracking down on online expression in all its depressing forms would require some even more heinous work of douchebaggery, and so, depending on whether SCOTUS decides to hear the case, we might be heading for a serious old media/new media schism on campuses nationwide.

Embattled illustrator speaks!

You know, with all the lunatic cartoonists from the Baggs/Layton school the ODE has employed down the years, it’s weird that this is the one defending himself on the Commentary page. Not even Bret Furtwangler’s overtly Republican (and very well-drawn, by the way) pieces drew much of an outcry, which always disappointed me.

Anyway, the only real point of interest in DuChateau’s column is the bit where he takes a shot at his predecessor:

…repetitive, cryptic and had virtually no relevance to campus life and the everyday activities of the majority of Emerald readers…

If he’s referring to Furtwangler there, I’m not sure what to say. Those cartoons were many things, but - assuming the majority’s everyday activities include “reading a newspaper” - “cryptic” is not one of them.

I’m blown away:

Tonya Harding tussled in her home with a man she described as her boyfriend, prompting an emergency call by the figure skater-turned-boxer and an arrest of the man.

Christopher Nolan was charged with assault and pleaded not guilty Monday. He told deputies Harding threw him down and bit his finger when he said she had too much to drink on Sunday. The 27-year-old Nolan was ordered to stay away from Harding and to avoid alcohol.

Is there any Oregonian more famous than Harding?

The Register-Guard covers our own little peace activist who couldn’t, here. In the process, Greg Bolt uncovers a serious objection that actually hadn’t occurred to me before. Bogart’s proposed (I think - the specific goals seem to change from week to week) restrictions on permissible funding sources would be a major blow to the academic freedom that not only allows working scientists to seek external support to make research projects possible, but also allows (to deploy a cheap example) Ward Churchill to rant and rave to his heart’s content. Bogart appears to be claiming that any research the Department of Defense is willing to fund is inherently bad, no matter what. This is unlikely to please many of the people actually trying to get the funding; here, for instance, is UO research chemist Michael Kellman:

If the university ever tried to tell me I couldn’t apply for (unclassified research) grants from the military, I’d be out of here and so would a lot of other people, I would think. I wouldn’t stay at a place like that.

Bolt makes the point that it is already against the rules to use University resources to engage in classified research projects - research the fruits of which the University community would not be able to subsequently access - which seems reasonable. Meanwhile, Bogart and the inevitable Frank Stahl sound more and more like they’re living in some as yet unmade Terminator prequel:

“I think if a lot of American universities recognize the wisdom of this stand, it could have an impact,” Stahl said. “It could retard the rate at which the Department of Defense becomes so high-tech and so effective that a small group of very rich people could control the world.”

Right, because a low-tech military is a much better idea. Contrast with the following entirely refreshing quote, also from Kellman:

I believe the United States should have a strong military, and I believe that the military needs the best research available. I think it’s fine to be helping the U.S. military, and it’s fine for the University of Oregon to be doing that, and I think 80 percent of the people of Oregon would agree.

Most of the establishment seems to be ignoring Bogart and waiting for him to go away, which is a very sensible course of action, but it’s still good to have someone, just once, say that in public.

(Full disclosure, for anyone who cares: Prof. Kellman was on my Ph.D. committee. However, I hasten to add that none of my research has any conceivable military application - although who knows whether it’s sufficiently “people-based” to be conducted on a college campus?)