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Oregon baseball winning
Oregon’s baseball team did well enough on the road against a Hawaii team that’s not actually that bad. After under-performing with high expectations last season, an above-average baseball team could be fun to watch. Don’t like sports? Doesn’t matter — baseball is a sport you can watch while keeping up a conversation. Big Duck fan? It’s just another sport that can fill the void between basketball and football.
Hundreds rally in Salem against cuts
The Oregonian reports @@checked@@that there were over a thousand rallying in Salem Monday against state budget cuts in a “Presidents Day” support for public schools and social services. This is a message students should — obviously — support, and the fact that its message is resonating somewhat is encouraging. We hope this message continues to resound in the legislature when they open up their session again today.
 
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DPS gets guns for training
In the last two weeks, we have found out that DPS has guns stored on campus and have seen @@both checked@@the invoice for the weapons purchased. This is rather unfortunate, as the community and legislature has not yet given its approval for firearms and in fact has outright opposed it a couple of times. And the “just for training” argument that we expect to get in return just doesn’t work. Why would we waste thousands of dollars for firearms that we didn’t have some plan of using. We need more of a campus conversation before the department moves anywhere on this issue.
DFC gets turned down by Senate
Last week, the Senate voted to turn down the Department Finance Committee’s final budget and send it back for revisions. The committee deals with departments as defined, but also some smaller student-directed projects that eventually become co-opted by the University’s administration when successful. The Senate’s issue with it was it included money for things that the ASUO didn’t have enough power over. Although we agree that things like security for the all-night operation of the Knight Library would make a bit more sense under general University funds, this is not the time to fight this battle. By making this an issue in the crunch time of Senate budget approvals, important services are endangered and Senate meetings are slowed down.