OSPIRG is major asset to University community
There is a student group here at the University that I would like to talk about.
Last term alone this group did a major campus-wide research project on the true average cost of textbooks, collected more than 800 pounds of food on Halloween for Food for Lane County, held three river clean-ups picking up trash and debris along the Willamette River and helped more than 100 renters with their housing problems, to name a few things.
Who is this student group, you may ask? It is OSPIRG. The Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group has more than 100 members on campus and affects 20 times that many students at the University of Oregon through class presentations, research, educational events and the training of new leaders. I have only highlighted a few of OSPIRG’s accomplishments. This group does so much to help the environment, protect student and consumer rights and promote an atmosphere of out-of-the-classroom education. To have a chapter here at the University of Oregon, and to continue the great work that affects so many students on campus and in their daily lives, OSPIRG needs to be fully funded.
A college campus is the birthplace of great ideas and even greater movements. OSPIRG is one important student group that fosters that same idea. I urge the PFC to consider the impact of this great group and allot them full funding.

Arista Hickman

sophomore

environmental science

Television plays major role in pushing drugs
Does anyone else feel that the “One Voice: Media United Against Drugs” is a bit hypocritical? The “media” in this case seem to be television media. And dollar for dollar, television commercials are the biggest drug-pushers in America today.
They push Viagra, Lipitor, Procrit, Caltrate, Imitrex, Wellbutrin and Plavix, not to mention all the sugar and beer commercials. After watching football and drinking beer for years it suddenly dawned on me — I don’t like beer.
And these are not just poor street kids pushing drugs. These are highly educated, highly paid drug-pushers. These pushers have been taught advanced psychology at prestigious universities to trick you and your kids into buying their drugs.
Now I realize that the local media are trying to do a public service with their “Media United Against Drugs” campaign, but to paraphrase Pogo: “You have met the enemy and the enemy is You.”

Chris Pender

Eugene