Local papers miss

athletic story
“Faculty aims to slow athletics ‘arms race’” (ODE, Feb. 17) caught the editors of The Register-Guard and The Oregonian with their pants down. Both commercial newspapers have chosen to protect their interests in the college game by ignoring a story that could develop into the most significant about sports in the past century.
While praise is due the Emerald, they also made a serious mistake — not in a fact, but in burying the big story near the bottom of the article. Not until the 27th paragraph was reference made to the fact that the big boys — university boards of trustees — finally have recognized the problem of excessive athletics spending, and will address it at meetings with faculty senate leaders and the NCAA.
If those who control education purse strings — administration and trustees — don’t take serious action soon, college sport is headed over the cliff of financial and moral disaster. The city newspapers ignored the story, even though it was featured (with deserved recognition to University faculty) in The New York Times exactly a month before the Emerald article. It also appeared in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
We’ll need to count on the Emerald staying on top of the story, while self-serving editors of the commercial press persist in ignoring a major story until it explodes in their faces.

George Beres

Eugene

Column sheds light

on Iraq threat
I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed “Time for action against Iraq” (ODE, Feb. 17), and while reading it, I was reminded of the eloquent words of Tony Blair in a speech in Glasgow, Scotland, on Saturday. At one point, Blair said, “At every stage, we should seek to avoid war. But if the threat cannot be removed peacefully, please let us not fall for the delusion that it can be safely ignored.”
Salena De La Cruz’s conclusion was as forceful and well-put as the always straight-talking Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said on Jan. 15: “Let me go back to what’s been going on up on the Hill. They have been trying to connect the dots about Sept. 11. What did somebody know? How did it happen? Was there some way to stop it and save the lives of those 3,000 people?
“In the case of Iraq, the task is to connect the dots before there’s a smoking gun. If there’s a smoking gun, and it involves weapons of mass destruction, it is a lot of people dead; not 3,000, but multiples of that.”
Her column very neatly and concisely summed up why it is so urgent that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his addiction to weapons of mass destruction be dealt with once and for all. I think her excellent column today will go some distance in helping the anti-war crowd understand just what is at stake here.

Sean Walston

sixth-year graduate

physics

Eugenics proposal should prompt action
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published “A Modest Proposal.” The pamphlet concerned a plan to sell poor Irish Catholic babies into a meat market to feed rich land owners. The satirical piece was addressing the overwhelming poverty and unemployment of his countrymen. Probably to Swift’s disappointment, the article did not cause the shock he intended, and was largely dismissed as a joke.
Peter Sur did not have this problem. While I do not know him and therefore couldn’t state for certain whether he believes his stance in “Selective euthanasia can save the world” (ODE, Feb. 7), the tone of his article suggests not. Rather, he seems to be following Swift’s model, begging awareness for problems which require more creative answers than those currently offered.
The response to this article has been disappointing. Yes, eugenics plans should be considered evil. But what solutions should be considered in a government that will not provide adequate funding to care for the homeless, sick, prisoners and other “undesirables”? What’s more, how better to take care of the dissidents whose freedoms our government seems bent on suppressing?
Our nation is burdened by problems that our leaders would rather ignore than address. However, unless Sur’s plan is carried out, we cannot expect society’s problems to simply “go away.” This proposal should be seen as a call to action, not to mobilize for selective euthanasia, but to invent creative and constructive solutions to the very real issues we face. Surely we can do better than Sur’s.

Katie Drueding

junior

history

Put your butt

where your mouth is
I read the Oregon Daily Emerald almost every day. And I’ve been noticing an increase in passionately worded commentaries and letters to the editor praising the merits of a “preemptive” attack on Iraq and deploring all of us willy-nilly (even treasonous) “peaceniks,” who aren’t convinced that such a war would be either necessary or just.
So, I’m wondering, why aren’t all of you pro-war (and oh so knowledgeable) tough-talkers in the military? I mean, shouldn’t someone who believes so passionately in a hyper-militaristic foreign policy be willing to put their pro-war butts on the line for their supposed convictions?

Paul Griffes

senior

geography