Janitors are human beings first
An incident happened Sunday evening that concerns and appalls me. A female student came to the door of Grayson Hall at about 10:50 p.m. wanting to get in but discovered it was locked (the building normally locks at 10 p.m. — much later than most).
She saw a custodian, a classified worker on this campus, and asked him to let her in. He told her that he couldn’t let her in (as is policy), and then was about to explain that she could use the outside phone to contact DPS to let her in. In an angry tone she replied, “you f—ing a–hole,” flipped the custodian off and then said, “Enjoy cleaning your toilets, loser!”
This behavior is completely unacceptable. By dehumanizing this human being, she made herself feel better. When will we learn that people are human beings first and that the job they do is not who they are? Did she know anything about him? Did she just walk away? No, she had to dehumanize him first.
Please, remember this the next time you look at someone working on campus or anywhere else. They are human beings above all else.

Cheri Smith

University classified worker


Office Specialist I

We shouldn’t subsidize Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is being touted as the new economic driver for our state. On April 20, the House of Representatives began considering House Bill 2941, a $150 million lottery bond measure to build a baseball stadium in Portland. This bill will divert money that could be providing rural infrastructure across Oregon, offering jobs where they are sorely needed. What’s more, the bill doesn’t provide decent jobs for Portland residents whom it is supposed to help — selling peanuts doesn’t pay the rent.
Portland and Oregon should not be sucked into baseball’s sales pitch. Communities across the country have spent millions of dollars subsidizing sports teams only to realize no return on the investment. What is worse, the teams often threaten to leave once the government has built their infrastructure.
In fact, no baseball stadium project has ever returned more to its subsidizing government than it cost. An independent study from Lake Forest College found that of 30 cities, 27 of them experienced no significant economic impact from new stadiums, while three experienced a negative impact. Those are not winning odds for citizens of Oregon and our $150 million.
Building a stadium in Portland is not economic development; it’s a subsidy to some out-of-state millionaire team owner. If you believe we should spend our resources on transportation, education and rural infrastructure rather than a stadium, call or write your legislators and the governor and tell them to stop HB 2941. Baseball for Portland shouldn’t be Oregon’s favorite subsidy.

Jason Franklin

Portland

Horowitz is raising awareness of reparations movement
David Horowitz’s “Ten Reasons” is an “infomercial” for his pocket-sized book, a full half of which is reproduced in the advertisement. If you’ve read the ad, you know everything he has to say about reparations. Send him your money, and he’ll help prevent others from receiving your money.
Yet this ad also gives public attention to a movement that is striving for greater public visibility and increased dialogue, without which reparations will not be made. Frederick Douglas’s published ads to purchase African-Americans out of slavery as a means to abolition. Let Horowitz’s ad serve as a catalyst for dialogue and attention to the views of diverse scholars, activists, leaders and citizens who support reparations.

John Shuford

graduate student


philosophy

One person can create change
Apathy and ignorance is failure.
Seventy species all over the earth go extinct every day.
In the next few years, 200 timber sales in national forests in the Northwest, encompassing 60,000-plus acres of ancient forests, could be cut, pushing hundreds of threatened forest species closer to the brink of extinction. That’s just the tip of the glacier.
It’s hard to think of us as the most advanced society on Earth as we blindly stumble toward our own demise day after day. Our society has all the knowledge and technology to completely reverse our current direction, yet greed, deception, apathy and ignorance perpetrate our biological annihilation.
You say, “I am just one person or family — what can I or we do? We and I are so inconsequential.” That is exactly what the corporate capitalist system has trained your mind to believe.
The truth is that the individual or small group creates most of the positive change in the world. They always have and likely always will. These people will set the example or precedent and others will follow. The problem is that there are more and more of those who blindly follow the corporate institutions into the abyss of personal psychological annihilation.
Apathy and ignorance is failure. So become one of those individuals or small groups and create the positive difference in your household, your neighborhood, your town, your county, your state and in our natural world. Becoming empowered leads to genuine freedom and success in this sweet life.

Shannon Wilson

Eugene

Alcohol is simply

a tool of rapists
In response to Tuesday’s article (“Judge urges students to drink, party responsibly,” ODE, April 23), I am quite dismayed by the way nothing at all points to personal responsibility of the rapist in the rape situation mentioned.
Comments such as “drinking too much alcohol leads to sexual assault” places the blame on the alcohol consumed, not the guilty party. All the alcohol does for the situation is make the victim less able to resist and the rapist able to justify his violence by saying, “But I was drunk.”
Alcohol in and of itself is not a catalyst for violence; it’s just a tool some use to commit violent acts and later justify them.

Randy Newnham

senior


linguistics/anthropology

Emerald is offensive during

Sexual Assault Awareness Week
As I opened the Emerald on my way to class and found the “lovematters.com” insert (an advertising supplement in the April 24 ODE), I was not surprised by the decision of the newspaper to allow it to be included. Instead, I just noticed the irony that during Sexual Assault Awareness Week, the Emerald would print material which contributes to the rape culture on this campus.
The intolerant conservative rhetoric spewed in this insert is appalling and offensive to many people. The inclusion of a relationship test given by Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who has repeatedly made homophobic remarks, and the article by Mike Mathews are just two examples of the ignorant and intolerant viewpoints expressed in this insert.
In his article, Mathews makes the ludicrous and extremely sexist assertion that a woman wearing sexy clothes is “actually guaranteed to cause men to dishonor and disrespect them.” Besides the ridiculous assumption Mathews makes that women need a man to fall in love with them, he is reinforcing the “blame the victim” mentality which is often used in rape cases.

Benjamin Goldman

senior


sociology

Stopping rape takes more

out of harm’s way
Not having attended the presentation, I do not know whether the speaker or the article is responsible, but regardless, I was troubled by the implications of Tuesday’s article (“Judge urges students to drink, party responsibly,” ODE, April 23). The ideas portrayed in the article failed to place the blame for sexual assault where it belongs — on the perpetrator. While I agree that alcohol is a major factor in many instances, the article seemed to place the responsibility of prevention on the woman.
The article refers to how people can help keep their friends safe by “stopping a drunk woman from going home with a man she doesn’t know, or taking the keys away from a friend too intoxicated to drive.” This troubles me for a couple of reasons.
First, it indicates that the woman is responsible for the incident, rather than the truth — that she may be in the wrong place at the wrong time, not the driver but the victim.
Second, these examples of “looking out for their friends” say nothing of the influence that friends may have in deterring a rapist. The emphasis is placed solely on keeping women out of the way, not on altering the behavior or mentality that is the cause of the situation.
These problems serve to perpetuate the attitude that the woman did something to deserve it. This attitude makes excuses for rape and does nothing to change the underlying problems that allow it to continue.

Gypsy W. Walukones

sophomore


international studies

Ads in the Emerald

shouldn’t preach
I find it both shocking and appalling that such an obviously religious and morally motivated
advertising supplement (“lovematters.com,” inserted in the April 24 ODE) would be included with the newspaper. As I consider this to be a fairly liberal campus, I find it almost laughable that a religious-right group would want to advertise here.
What is NOT laughable, however, is the fact that the newspaper decided to accept these people’s money and put this piece of drivel in with the publicly funded, public-school newspaper. I was highly offended by this, since I consider the advertisements that a publication chooses to print a reflection of the content and character within.
I don’t care if they offer the newspaper a million dollars; personally, I don’t ever want to see anything like this included with my paper again. I pick up the Emerald for campus and city news and current events — not to be preached at.

Nikki Le Fevre

junior


sociology

Editor’s note: The Oregon Daily Emerald receives some student incidental fee money as a subscription charge. The newspaper is independent and does not receive any public funding.