PFC Strikes Again!
This time, the target is none other than the UO’s daily paper, the Oregon Daily Emerald. Leading this renewed charge against the free exchange of ideas? Our old friend Mason Quiroz of course.
In a drawn-out debate that lasted more than an hour, PFC member Mason Quiroz made a motion to de-fund the Emerald completely.
{snip}
This renewed attack on the very idea of academic expression demonstrates not only that Quiroz lacks any understanding of viewpoint neutrality, but also is willing to undermine the principles of the academy in pursuit of his short-sighted goals.
Quiroz goes on to state the following which, if you’ve been following the Commentator’s on-going battle with these same forces of darkness, is so obviously untrue as to be laughable:
“I think the students deserve more than one paper, and I think the students shouldn’t have to pay $111,000 for a paper that isn’t read,” Quiroz added. “It is the responsibility of the PFC to the students.”
Attempting to silence the two most widely-read publications on campus by slashing their funding puts the lie to that now, doesn’t it? The OC and the ODE are easily the two most popular rags on the UO campus and to take a swipe at both of them within weeks of each other is sickening.
Granted, the ODE is only dependent upon the incidental fee for about 10% of its budget, and would probably be able to totter along all right sans that $100,000 or so, but losing that source of revenue would undoubtedly damage their ability to print, publish, and distribute. What’s more, even continuing to publish, lacking that $100,000 will damage the overall production value of the paper.
I’ll be the first to admit that I give the ODE a lot of crap, especially about their columnists and headlines. However, I recognize that putting out a daily paper is hard work, especially while trying to go to school full time (which you must do to be employed at the Emerald), and the value of a campus daily like the ODE is more tha worth the cost.
Not mention in the article linked above, however, is that the PFC debated a “lack of minority viewpoints” in the pages of the pages of the Emerald. On this I couldn’t agree more, but I think the PFC and I are operating on two very different definitions of minority.
To those PSST members of PFC and ASUO Senate, minority is only skin deep. Their complaint is that the Emerald staff does not have an appropriately diverse number of phenotypes. My complaint is that the ODE editorial staff lacks sufficiently many viewpoints. Granted, it is the Opinion section, but a paper that claims to be a paper of record should endevor to have as diverese a selection of commentaries as possible. Of course there are space constraints, et cetera, but I don’t think it’d be that difficult to find a few different folks with a few different ideas. Maybe all of them are working for us, but I doubt it. Also, before any of y’all get all twitterpated about the OC’s lack of ideological diversity, the Commentator has never made any claim about being a journal of record. We are a journal of opinion, and thusly shall remain.
Before I move on, I will commend the ODE for running a surprisingly wide range of guest commentaries and letters. I remember the Kleckner/Blanchard/Clifford days when only letters the editorial staff enjoyed were printed. So kudos to them on that, I still think the columnists could use a little bit of work, though.
The point of all of this, really, is that the PFC is continuing its poorly thought-out and highly illegal persecution of campus publications for their content. Have the Oregon Voice and Student Insurgent been subjected to this kind of thing? Is Quiroz after the ODE because of their support for the Commentator? With the PFC’s complete lack of justification for their behavior, and their inability to understand very simple rules, we’ll likely never know the answer. However, it is certain that if these matters end up being decided by the courts, history will not look favorably on the PFC.
That is why there are people like myself who are trying to turn the system around from the inside.
Trust me, things will be different. This I guarantee.
YAR…….Quiroz was the same member who wanted to table discussions and decisions last week because he was tired.
Hence the futile letter to the ed in todays ODE. As someone who couldn’t care less about campus politics, it takes a lot to motive my ass to write a letter to anyone, let alone the campus rag or this blog. Doing my part to stir it up a little…..
Yeah, it’s in an old bathroom above the loading dock of the EMU.
Honest!
We have a radio station?
Nice post, Tim. God, reading Quiroz’s quotes just give me headaches. If he were consistently using his own logic, he should be going after every student group that holds events that are open to the public.
In fact, I guess KWVA would be next, because people who aren’t students can listen in. And also because, you know, students deserve more than one radio station and shouldn’t have to pay for a station that isn’t listened to. Or something.
There have been numerous times when I was sleeping in a gutter and, unfortunatley for me, the Emerald box was devoid of any warmth giving paper. I guess I have Mason to blame for that. And as far as students not using the Emerald goes, I’ve wiped my nose, ass, windshield, other people’s windshields, etc. with the ODE, so I can attest to it’s multi-faceted utility.
M: I had a link to it this morning in my AIM away box and didn’t have a chance to blog it before I got to work. Also, RE: Texas, yes.
Dan: I hadn’t considered the theft angle, but now that you mention it the ODE should very much jump on him about stealing a few dozen copies of their issues.
Reminds me of some of the OC box-dumping arguments I’ve heard, mostly along the lines of “you can’t steal what’s free”. Which, really, is just stupid. That sort of logic implies that, because it is illegal to exchange money for sexual contact, taking it by force is A-okay. Things given freely without (direct) monetary cost to the receiver are not devoid of value, and I don’t think these putzes understand that at all.
If you want to get technical, neither the ODE nor the OC is free to students or anyone else. Neither would exist without the University of Oregon, which is subsidized by Oregon tax dollars, which are paid by all citizens of Oregon, thusly everybody has contributed at least a penny or two to each publication. Not that most of them really reap the rewards each has to offer or even really care, but still.
Futher, due to the convoluted way in which funding works, the incidental fee gets filtered up to the State Legislature and then sent back down, mixed into the general fund like everything else. So, from a certain perspective, the incidental fee (like the Social Security Trust Fund) only exists on paper as an accounting trick. Gee, yet another reason students shouldn’t be in charge of the damn thing.
…hate this campus?! Do you know how bored I would be if this were the utopian playground the higher-ups envision it to be? People like Mason give me something to cry out against, something to entertain me, something to think about, while I float effortlessly down the Undergraduate Degree River on my inner-tube.
More and more I hate this campus every day…with people like Mason trying to screw things up, every issue should be the Hate Issue. Oh I can’t wait…
Quiroz dropped stacks of Wednesday’s and primarily Thursday’s copies of the Emerald on the table.
“These are the Oregon Daily Emerald papers that were left in the rack today, and some from yesterday,” Quiroz said. “All of these are just from a few of the racks in the EMU.”
Those stacks are the ODE’s property, in which they grant an implied license to pick up and read in good faith. Removing them wholesale from the ODE’s distribution racks is a trespass on the paper’s property. Did Quiroz just commit theft? More or less. ODE should call him on it.
I think Quiroz is campaigning hard for a Tater award.
This is what confuses me:
Thierry is right on target pointing out Mason’s flawed logic: it makes no sense to defund a paper because they print “too many issues” when the number of issues printed daily is part of their contract.
Certain individuals should abstain from flipping any pages on the ODE. They might think themselves racist and self-destruct.
Way to jump on that Tim. Texas really that boring?
It is now official, through no fault of our own: UO student publications vs Mason Quiroz. Look out, Insurgent: you may be next.
You’ve got to be kidding me…
Maybe Quiroz and Co. are illiterate and fear the shame of exposure if their attention is called to any form of print media whatsoever. Signs to watch for: worsening grades, no matter how close to the chalkboard he gets; violent outbursts, a la that one made-for-tv movie where the inner city football player can’t read the playbook…