Hall residents
need to be
less wasteful
When kids come into the residence halls, they learn a lot beyond their school subjects. One of the things they learn — or don’t, as the case may be — is how their presence affects the world both socially and environmentally.
Kids in the halls waste hundreds of paper plates and cups every year, and many of them don’t think once about where that paper is coming from or where it is going. As dramatic as it may sound, residence hall students learn to live unmindfully here, and then they feed into the workforce and into influential positions, and still don’t care about their waste.
When I try to bring my own plate to Common Grounds, I usually get the response, “It’s a cleanliness issue.” If this is a true concern for the housing food system, then why is it that a place like the Buzz Café is so accepting of the idea that they give customers a 20-cent discount for using a personal cup? We need to change the system in the residence halls so that those of us who want to bring our own cups and plates can, and then maybe we can influence others not to waste either.
Amy Seidenverg
sophomore
English
Support international
students on campus
We are writing to express our support for University students from largely Muslim countries who have been required to register in person with the INS. We are concerned that these students are being subjected to intrusive practices (e.g. fingerprinting, questioning and photographing) and have been placed under suspicion for no other reason than their nationality.
Studying abroad in itself can be a stressful experience. Just imagine what it would be like to be thousands of miles away from your family and friends, and then to have to travel to Portland to be interrogated by federal officials, knowing that some of your compatriots have been jailed for minor visa infractions. Perhaps we would say the wrong thing. Furthermore, we might be reluctant to seek support from our friends because of the stigma. At the end of the day, many of us would feel alienated and afraid.
In acknowledging the position of students from largely Muslim countries, we in no way intend to diminish the very real stress and hardship that other students may be experiencing. We draw attention to this group because they are among the most vulnerable members of our community, targeted for suspicion and denied legal rights.
In the spirit of creating a safe and inclusive community, we ask all of us to be aware of the stressful circumstances these international students are facing. We invite students, faculty and staff to reach out and let these students know that they are valued and have friends here.
Edel Davenport, M.S.
Mark B. Evans, M.D.
Robin Holmes, Ph.D.
University Counseling and Testing Center
Pipe raids waste
of tax money
We must all give praise and thanks to the great hero Attorney General John Ashcroft and all those brave people who worked under him and spent god knows how much of our tax dollars to raid the dangerous criminal masterminds that blow glass.
We can’t afford to fund our schools, but at least we can prevent people from making pipes that could potentially be used to smoke marijuana (gasp!), a very evil drug. After all, according to the DEA, no amount of marijuana that a person can smoke or ingest constitutes a lethal dose. But alcohol, a good and legal drug, is a poison that can kill you if you ingest too much, is involved in the majority of traffic fatalities, and is known to loosen inhibition, which I’m sure we’ve all seen lead to a violent outburst at some party or in some bar.
When was the last time you saw a pothead do something violent? Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like they should be spending our tax dollars on something more useful, like keeping our friggin’ state budget afloat or preventing some wacko from crashing an airplane into
a building.
But then again, I guess it’s pretty important to make sure someone isn’t smoking dope. It could lead to all sorts of dangerous behavior like playing video games, eating junk food and sleeping.
Mason Gummer
senior
sociology
Don’t blame the
high school kid
I was casually reading the editorial “Sex,drugs, booze at college parties? Why, we never!” (ODE, Feb. 14) until the last line, “Perhaps he could have told us … and saved everyone a lot of grief.” Sounds as though the editorial board was blaming the whole thing on the high school kid.
Most, I would think, would have blamed the older, more experienced and presumably wiser person as the responsible party. But to get the school and the star athlete off the hook, the board chose to go with, “Perhaps he could have told us.”
Vince Puleo
Eugene