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Archive for September, 2007

OC Blog Archives Update

September 30th, 2007 by Sho

Back before the word “blog” was a buzzword thrown about by political campaigns, advertising executives, and talking heads (okay, maybe it was already a buzzword), the Oregon Commentator decided to take a break from reading the Onion and searching for pictures of Brooke Burke to give blogging a shot.  Now that WordPress and Blogger play nice (sort of), the OC blog posts pre-dating April 2004 are now online.  There are still a few kinks to fix, and certainly many of the links leading to stuff on the blog and elsewhere are broken, but all-in-all it is complete.  Enjoy the ramblings of Hunt, Jacobson, Dreier, Ruff, Atkinson and company.

Just another Friday morning…

September 28th, 2007 by Ossie

Hey there. Just sittin around. It’s early. Not really doing much. Wondering how the day will…what the hell, the ASUO drafted a diversity plan? This can’t be any good. Let’s see, mission statement. Contact with diverse member of the community, sounds good to me. Encourage groups to participate in activities about diversity, not sure why that needs to be said, but ok. “Create ways for students to engage one another on issues of diversity.” Nice. Oh please let there me something about a central place for students to meet and chat like a bar or a pub or a tavern or a brothel.

Ooo, ten points to follow, maybe the bar is in there.

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Friendly Public discussions

September 27th, 2007 by Ossie

The Co-Chair of OSPIRG wrote this shameless plug for yesterday’s ODE letters to the editor:

To start with, there are tons of great causes to get involved with such as all the student unions, political groups, and/or environmental causes. Groups like the Multicultural Center, OSPIRG, or the College Democrats would love to have your support or maybe just your signature.

The Commentator decided it needed to respond:

We agree that extra-curricular activities add to students’ well being, but we encourage students not to participate in the unethical management that is perpetrated year in and year out by groups like those listed by Hough.

Paging Larry Craig …

September 26th, 2007 by CJ Ciaramella

Well, school is officially back in session here at the U of O. Days are shortening, skirts are lengthening and new professors are cruising Knight Library looking to have sex in the bathroom. Wait, what?

P.S. Craigslist is not exactly safe for work.

P.P.S. Sorry for breaking the streak of serious ASUO posts, but c’mon … prof seeking anonymous sex in a public bathroom.

Minutes for tonight’s ASUO Senate meeting

September 26th, 2007 by Ossie

I apologize to the Commentator staff for not sending this out 48 hours early. Please don’t fire me

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Rosenberg’s letter to Con Court

September 26th, 2007 by Ossie

Jonathan Rosenberg sent this letter out yesterday in response to the grievance filed by Brown.

Dear Constitution Court,

The meeting of June 13, 2007 was an emergency senate meeting called by student senators to make way for new appointments to the ASUO Senate, consider surplus funding requests, and formulate summer senate. As a result of this meeting, four appointees were confirmed to senate, thus enabling the senate to make quorum for summer session. Because this meeting took place during finals week, the staff member who normally took minutes during senate meetings was unable to attend the meeting. This staff member called me within a reasonable period of time and informed me that she would be unable to take minutes for the June 13th meeting. I unsuccessfully attempted to find someone who could act as a replacement. The controversy over June 13th began when I inattentively forgot to appoint a senator to take minutes for that meeting.
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Brown Files Grievance against Senate

September 25th, 2007 by Ossie

ASUO Senator Neil Brown has filed a grievance against 2007 Senate President Jonathan Rosenberg, who is no longer in office, so Brown says he views “the entire Senate as a proxy for this grievance.” Brown is asking the Constitutional Court whether all business matters from a Senate meeting held on June 13, which the Daily Emerald discovered violated Oregon Public Meeting Laws, and which the Commentator staff celebrated as a great day, to be voided. There were no minutes taken until after the fact.

“The ASUO Executive crafted minutes over the phone with former Senator Rosenberg. These minutes were submitted the evening of Friday, June 15 with the intention of Senate filling in the remaining details as they can remember them. The Senate would essentially not pass the record until a consensus had been reached. The minutes are missing a substantial amount of information, including dollar amounts, vote records, and adjournment time, and motion-makers. Not only do these missing pieces of information violate the prescribed requirements for minutes in the statutes of Oregon Public Meetings Laws, but they also fail to record the “substance” of the meeting, as stated in the Senate Rules of the Green Tape Notebook.”

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Our forefather were Satanists? Holy crap!

September 24th, 2007 by Ossie

If you are bored, and I mean really bored, check out the “true” makings of America at this link. Who would have guessed that there are over 20 complete zodiacs in Washington D.C.?

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Summer Issue Distribution

September 23rd, 2007 by Sean Jin

The sun was out, and it was a beautiful day. Freshmen girls were out. So was the UO Duck and our most beloved President Frohnmayer. Four brave, valiant warriors carrying a box and a stack of magazines ventured out onto the campus as itp9210846.jpg sprung to life.

“Who wants a Go Ducks magazine?” we asked. “Also known as the Oregon Commentator.” we carried p9210851.jpgenlightenment too the campus. The incoming freshmen greedily took stacks of the Commentator when they gazed upon the back cover. Just inside the cover, they were greeted with the phallic depiction of the Obelisk in the quad. Fresh malleable minds. Nothing makes my day more than twisting the first impression of students of the campus. And nothing is more exciting for an OC staffer than Distribution Day.p9210848.jpg

Amongst the recipients of our disbursement, notables are:

The UO Duck

duck.jpg

Freshmen and their parents

adam.jpg

Stefanie Loh

And most importantly…our very own President Frohnmayer, whom by the way was hanging out at Rennie’s, not just the cool place for OC staff, but also the cool place for the high echelon of society.

frohn.jpg

Corporate Library

September 23rd, 2007 by Sean Jin

Everyone loves being in a Office Space scenario. I’m stuck in a mandatory customer service training session for the library, discussing what ‘customer service’ means. Give me a freakin’ break, people…I’ve been here for the last two years. The fact that I’m still working here is a testament to the fact that, if I haven’t already figured out what good customer service is, a stupid hour and a half session won’t teach me.

All I’m doing is sitting here, listening to a fat butch woman drone on about statistics about the libraries on a PowerPoint with the occasional ‘interactive’ survey. Amongst the other presenters are an ADD woman with no sense of humor and a pseudo-dyke computer technician. I’m managing to stay sane by amusing myself by skewing the survey results.

The statistics are somewhat interesting…here are some of the notables:
Over 300 students are employed by the library.
The ratio of urinal usage vs. sit-down toilet usage is 1 to 3.
Probability of any library patron being a public masterbator is 1%.

Press Release from Party Patrol

September 22nd, 2007 by Ossie

Press Release (more…)

EW sets standard for fact checking

September 22nd, 2007 by Ossie

 

The cover story of this week’s Eugene Weekly is about Oregon’s booming wine industry reaching into the Southern Willamette Valley. The article contains numerous stats and number-crunching. For the brief history section of the article, Lance Sparks does some crack reporting.

“A Wikipedia entry traces the pace of that growth: By 1970, we had five bonded wineries and 35 acres…”

 

Yes, the Weekly used Wikipedia as a source, and admitted doing it. I will let you judge for yourself.

Eugene City Council high on downtown ideas, weed

September 20th, 2007 by CJ Ciaramella

If you picked up the Register Guard today, you probably noticed the headline “Council high on downtown ideas“. Somebody down at the RG must have been having a chuckle, or else they’ve never been downtown.

But I can see why they must have thought the city council was high. The story is about the multitude of proposals being considered by the council for developing downtown Eugene. Here’s the lead:

Condos. A four-screen movie theater. Restaurants. A grocery store. Even a 24-hour newsstand.

The Eugene City Council on Wednesday liked all of those ideas and more for revitalizing two blocks in the heart of downtown.

A 24-hour newsstand? God, they must have been baked. “Imagine, like, a newsstand … a newsstand that you can go to anytime, and the guy there will tell you what the news is, like, right at that moment. Whoa.” However, these were just a few of the 123 recomendations submitted by the West Broadway Advisory Committee, all of which sound totally awsome when you’re stoned. (more…)

Get Your Sudsy On

September 20th, 2007 by Ossie

The Annual Oregon Commentator Pub Crawl will be Friday and Saturday this week-end. We will begin Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Good Times. From there, we will head downtown to John Henry’s, Jameson’s, Horsehead, Joggers and anywhere else we end up. On Saturday, we will be at Rennie’s watching the Ducks trounce the Cards, beginning at 6 p.m. We will spend the rest of the night staggering between Rennie’s, Taylor’s, Max’s and the Indigo (we will probably spend no more than spend 10 minutes in the Indigo). All are welcome to join.

Don’t Tase Me, Bro 2: EPD Bugaloo

September 20th, 2007 by Timothy

Hot on the heels of a severe and unwarranted electrocution at the University of Florida, the City of Eugene has decided to give those who serve and protect some cattle prods Tasers. Prompted by the shooting death of a mentally ill teen late last year, the committee has taken all of ten months to decide that giving police one more weapon to use against drunken college students is the right solution. I might have fired the officers involved, maybe tried to have them arrested for murder, and considered taking away options for force rather than granting more, just a thought. It’s nice they have another committee studying mental illness intervention, but wouldn’t proper intervention technique obviate the need for Tasers which will inevitably get misused?

Most disturbing, however, is that the EPD will be in charge of evaluating the success of the pilot program:

Although the policy has been written, the work is not over for this committee. It will need to shape the evaluation process and decide how police will determine the success or failure of the pilot project.

Brown stressed the policy was designed just for the pilot project.

“The Police Commission will take the data and community reaction and input and then decide whether Tasers are going to be a permanent part of the police arsenal,” he said.

So they’re going to buy a bunch of Tasers, give them to the police, and let the police decide how well the community reacts…hmmm…does anyone else see a potential problem with that approach? No conflict of interest there or anything, move along.