I have been following the debate regarding OSPIRG for over a year now. I have read the articles, the letters to the editor and the blog commentaries with a growing bewilderment and disdain.The great controversial contest that by now has overwhelmed countless square inches of the ODE, has been reduced to petty quibbling and cheap shots. While senators, journalists and involved students bicker over the success of OSPIRG’s open source textbook efforts, I believe the heart of the matter and the true function of the OSPIRG program have been overlooked.
Sure, OSPIRG may be overly ambitious at times. Perhaps some of its campaigns have been less successful than others. Regardless, it is a visionary program that has continuously attracted some of the University’s best and brightest students towards the pursuit of social, environmental and political justice.
OSPIRG has provided an outlet for dedicated student activists to fight for their beliefs, whether rooted in local ecology, global climate change, health insurance, renter’s rights or even affordable textbooks. Whenever I meet a member of OSPIRG, I am astonished at their commitment to their cause. Generally they are active members in numerous other student groups, and they are working tirelessly and passionately in the name of progress. Whether that progress comes fully to fruition, to me, is irrelevant. The student experience facilitated through OSPIRG serves a far greater function than simply reducing the cost of textbooks.
What is the true goal of our University education? Our time spent at the University, in essence, is training for future careers. Here, we are learning to develop the skills necessary to accomplish incredible feats as activists, community leaders, politicians, lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs and citizens. What I see when I look at OSPIRG is a program that has served an invaluable role training fellow students for the challenges they’ll face with their degrees in hand.
So what if OSPIRG’s student members weren’t able to stop global warming in their four years as students? Perhaps they will 10 years from now. OSPIRG is a critical organization for students who care about real-world issues; it provides UO students with a vast, cause-centric national network and introduces them to the trials and tribulations of large-scale grassroots movements.
To lose OSPIRG is to lose a spectacular tool for student development. As a catalyst for individual progress, it is certainly doing far more than the football game tickets (that I have never used and never will) and the LTD (that I never ride). What long-lasting legacy has a football game ever left? I would much rather fund the potential for great change that OSPIRG brings. For a mere $5.70 per year, one-thirteenth of the $70-plus that I’ll spend on football tickets I don’t care to use, I can see no better outlet for my incidental fee than one that fosters such incredible student growth. Bring back OSPIRG. It will pay off later.
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