(We apologize for the delay for the posters. Proper Facebook clearance was needed.)

A little bit of deja vu as the UO looks at expanding the powers of our campus police force:

When a “telephonic search warrant” was issued by a municipal court judge to enter the Campbell Club after lack of compliance with police, residents then decided to cooperate.

As reported by the Ol’ Dirty:

After police finished their search, 14 residents were taken into custody and stayed the night in the Lane County Jail after being charged with prohibited noise — where six of those 14 were also cited for interfering with police in addition to one resident cited with resisting arrest. Another nine residents received citations in lieu of custody for prohibited noise, and eight minors received MIP citations.

See the old post by former Commentator CJ Ciaramella detailing a similar raid from about 5 years ago.

Once upon a time, in a land very near and dear, the University of Oregon:

On January 1st, 2011, former Editor-in-Chief CJ Ciaramella emailed a request for ASUO Senators’ email correspondence (i.e., those emails sent to and from [email protected] or [email protected]) to Public Records Officer Liz Denecke. As reading this previous post will inform you, Denecke responded via email to CJ’s request saying that in order to fulfill such a request, it would cost him a whopping $428.36– “about half” being used to cover the costs “producing the documents”  and “the other half […] for redaction, and that cost is estimated conservatively and will likely cost more than the estimate.” Denecke’s explanation continues, stating that such emails “will be student records, subject to the protection of student privacy laws. That will require a great deal of redaction and you may end up with documents that do not tell you what you want to know.” Denecke would later tell Ciaramella over the phone that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the students in this case, calling for intensive redaction of student names (i.e., the ASUO Senators’ names) and anything unrelated to ASUO business. Hence such expensive estimated compensation for the production of this Public Records Request. Because of this, Ciaramella abandoned the pursuit, deeming it stonewalled.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a giggle?

Here are a couple of article from the archives worth reading:

In Defense of Free Speech. January 16, 2010 by D.

12 Things My Dorm Fire Inspector Wasn’t Happy About. October 21, 2009 by Nick Ekblad.

Chip Kelly Writes Check to Aggrieved Fan. September 21, 2009 by Ian.

Determinism makes one more likely to be cheater, pumpkin eater. April 18, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella.

Give Them A Pulitzer. April 26, 2005 by Timothy.

 

Today’s Ol’ Dirty has a letter to the editor tackling an issue that has been oddly absent on this blog as of late: concealed carry on campus. In a letter titled, “Students should have wider gun liberties,” undergraduate student Andrew Saldana attacks the Oregon University System’s illegal policy on firearms on campus while outlining the importance of students and faculty being able to protect themselves.

People should be able to be in charge of their own protection. If an individual wants to take precautions to protect themselves, they should be able to do so as long as it is in accordance with the law. Nobody else is obligated to come to your aid if you’re in crisis — not even the police, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling stating that the police are in place to protect “society at large” not any one individual(s). Even if it weren’t the case, as demonstrated above, the response time of police is too slow to prevent people from dying.

The current policy restricts those who wish to protect themselves from doing so in an effort to stop those who do not follow the law already. Gun-free zones are indeed only gun-free because good-natured people who wish to obey the rules abide by them. Many, if not most, mass shootings take place on areas deemed “gun-free.” In reality, all gun-free zones accomplish is the disarming of those who do good and leave them at the mercy of those who wish to do harm. I implore you to view the testimony of former Texas Rep. Suzanna Hupp in relation to the effects that policy and legislation restricting carry can have.

The reality of the state of concealed carry on Oregon university campuses is that it is legal, according to state law (See ORS 166.370). It is only the Oregon University System that doesn’t allow concealed carry on campus — that is to say, you will get suspended, expelled or face other disciplinary action if you are licensed to carry a concealed handgun and do so on campus.

Oregon Commentator editor emeritus CJ Ciaramella wrote a blog post for The Weekly Standard on May 5, 2010 regarding this topic, and conducted interviews with representatives from the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus and the Oregon Firearms Federation. Which team is ahead?

Currently, 26 states ban handguns on campus, even by those with concealed carry permits. Twenty three other states leave the decision to individual colleges. Only Utah explicitly prohibits public colleges from banning licensed handguns on campus.

Pro-concealed carry individuals and groups, like Saldana above and representatives from the Oregon Firearms Federation, argue that allowing individuals to carry on campus adds another level of protection for students, allowing them to defend themselves with more rapidity and agility. Those against concealed carry on campus argue that campuses are already relatively safe, and introducing guns on campus will serve to create more dangerous environments.

But let’s not forget the reason that Saldana wrote the letter in the first place. On May 26, the Emerald printed a story called, “University, law enforcement prepare for campus shooting scenario.” The story focuses around what DPS, the Eugene Police Department and SWAT can do in case of an on-campus shooting. As our favorite anonymous professor points out, the story serves to prop up the mission of the Department of Public Safety, which is to get more money to create an on-campus police force (maybe he and we are both too cynical, but whatever).

The SWAT team will be activated in such a scenario, but SWAT officers might not necessarily be on duty at the time and may have to travel from their homes to the police department to gather their equipment before heading to the scene of an incident. Klinko said this process could take up to 40 minutes, depending on where an officer lives.

Eugene has no full-time SWAT officers; the team members have regular duty assignments in addition to their SWAT duties. Additionally, there are not enough vehicles to allow SWAT officers to take their cars and equipment home with them. Despite the department’s efforts, financial constraints prevent the department from being as prepared as it would like to be.

This predicament was expressed to the Oregon House Judiciary Committee by EPD Chief Pete Kerns during testimony earlier this month.

This is where Saldana’s point peaks: in order for Eugene to accurately prepare for an on-campus shooting, a significant amount of money and time would need to be poured into the creation of an on-campus SWAT team. Students would still need to rely on the Department of Public Safety and the Eugene Police Department for their protection. That’s the ultimate disconnect between pro- and anti-concealed carry on campus: those who favor concealed carry on campus believe students should be able to defend themselves, while those who are opposed feel that students and those with concealed carry licenses are somehow not equipped to handle the magnitude of that task.

This files well into the next common argument, which is the blunt, flat, “guns are dangerous” slogan that is heard over and over from anti-gun advocates. In order to receive a concealed carry license in this state, it requires not only a class and a test, but also a willingness to follow the law in order to carry a weapon. It’s not the individuals who have gone through the process of receiving a concealed carry license that universities need to worry about — it’s those who don’t have the training, those who come onto campus with malicious intent, those who got their guns illegally, or who don’t have the training or credentials to carry their weapons on their person. The responsible individuals who sought out their concealed carry license are by definition equipped to handle the magnitude of their own safety. That’s the point.

Finally, these are our rights. These rights, just like all other rights we are legally entitled to, are granted to us from the United States Constitution. These individuals already have the right, through the same process, to carry their weapons almost anywhere else in the state. University campuses should be no different. Ciaramella hits the nail on the head here:

Indeed, if students’ First Amendment right to free expression does not end at the school gates, as the Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines, why should they be denied their Second Amendment right to self-defense?

As more and more policies are put into place to create a campus bubble, an ivory tower where only certain ideas and practices are allowed (smoking ban, Pacifica Forum, the Bias Response Team), the future for concealed carry on campus seems fairly grim. Students and administrators need to realize that universities are supposed to prepare students for the so-called “real world,” where people smoke cigarettes, say things not everyone agrees with and, yes, carry concealed weapons. It’s time for us to wake up and realize that we shouldn’t be sheltered from the realities of the world outside the gates of our university. It’s time for us to demand that we be able to exercise our rights.

It’s time to stand up.

Tonight, the UO’s esteemed Public Records Officer Liz Denecke spoke at the ASUO Senate meeting about public records requests and how they relate to the Senate.

As some of you may remember, I submitted a public records request to the ASUO Senate for correspondence over the Senate listserv. That request was referred to Miss Denecke and, according to her testimony at tonight’s meeting, that was the appropriate avenue to take.

At the meeting, Denecke made it clear that the ASUO is an entity of the University, and all public records requests should be forwarded to her. She also expressed that the emails sent between senators discussing the business of the Senate or governance are a part of the public record.

It is with interest, now, that I take you to a recent request that was made for records on the ASUO Senate listserv. The request was not made by me — it was made by Oregon Commentator Editor Emeritus CJ Ciaramella. Below the jump is a series of emails between Ciaramella and Denecke. Read on if government transparency is important to you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Probably recognizing they will be unable to receive a contract for the 2011-12 fiscal year, the Oregon Students Public Interest Research Group is on campus collecting signatures for a ballot measure to appear during the ASUO election during weeks one and two of spring term. The text of the ballot measure is as follows:

Should the ASUO fund the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) at a level that allows OSPIRG to hire professional staff to advocate on behalf of students locally, statewide, and nationally in places like the State Legislature and Congress?

OSPIRG is a statewide, student-directed and funded organization that strives to fulfill the public service mission of the University by combining student activism and professional staff to do advocacy, organizing and research for the public interest on campus, statewide and nationally to lower healthcare costs, stop global warming, protect public health, make textbooks more affordable, and increase public transit. OSPIRG is controlled by an all-student Board of Directors.

A YES vote is a non-binding statement that the ASUO should fund OSPIRG at a level that allows OSPIRG to hire professional staff to advocate on behalf of students locally, statewide, and nationally in places like the State Legislature and Congress on issues such as those described above.

A NO vote is a non-binding statement that the ASUO should not fund an OSPIRG program, as described above.

First of all, this is the exact same ballot measure that was on the ballot last year. Word for word.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lane Community College has chosen to ban smoking on their main campus, save for four designated smoking stations on the perimeter. The University of Oregon has also been exploring a tobacco-free campus, but have not yet come to a decision on whether, when and how to implement. According to surveys on the LCC campus, the smoking ban has had overwhelming support, but there are some students that are still frustrated with the decision. From the Register-Guard:

Jessica Rainbow, a business major, said the college initially argued that the ban was needed to prevent litter and only changed to a health argument later. She said the move will be hard on students who smoke because they’re already under enough pressure with schoolwork and rising tuition costs.

“There’s just so much stress,” Rainbow said, adding that smoking breaks during her pre-calculus class help her relax and concentrate. “Now I just have to hold it in and hope I don’t freak out on someone.”

…

“We felt like there was really the need for some accommodation of limited, designated smoking spots on the perimeter,” [Kate Barry, vice president for academic and student affairs at LCC] said. “But that would still mean the people in the core campus were not coming into contact with secondhand smoke.”

Even so, smokers used terms such as “discrimination” and “segregation” in their reactions to the change. They also worry about safety because of all the traffic in the parking lots, and say the smoking areas will be too distant for students who only have a short break between classes.

A survey conducted last year at the University of Oregon by the Smoke-Free Task Force also showed that a large majority of students were in support of mitigating smoking on campus, but the support was focused more towards designated smoking areas rather than a total smoke-free campus. You can find the Smoke-Free Task Force’s report to UO Vice President of Finance and Administration Francis Dyke here.

As the situation stands right now, the logistical questions are too great to really implement any change at the UO. I am of the personal belief that the first step should be to enforce the rules that exist currently — most specifically, City of Eugene ordinance states that there shall be no smoking within 25 feet of an entrance to a public building, and that is most definitely not enforced at the UO.

Incidentally, CJ Ciaramella and I started a student group called the Coalition of On-Campus Smokers (COCS), a group of individuals who are concerned about a smoke-free campus and are looking to implement more practical solutions to the litter problem that on-campus smoking creates. We will be having our third smoke-in and cigarette cleanup on Thursday, May 27 at 1pm in the EMU Amphitheater to protest the decision on the LCC campus. Bring things to smoke — cigars, hookah, cigarettes, pipes, whatever you feel. Let your voice be heard, even if it’s scratchy.

I read a really terrible letter to the editor this morning from a pro-OSPIRG supporter. Anne Ward is the author of the letter, and tries to refute the claims that “saving the world” isn’t a good use of student tax money.

“Why can’t $1.90 go to “saving the world,” if that’s what a significant portion of students desire?”

Of course, no one has shown any proof that paying that $1.90 is something that a majority of students desire. You could even argue (although methodologically it may be subject to questioning) that the majority of students are against OSPIRG based on the votes of their elected representatives in the ASUO.

In the “significant portion of students” I am sure that Ward is referencing the petition signatures that OSPIRG has gathered in the last few months. Of course, such signatures are subject to scrutiny, as Sen. Demic Tipitino remarked at the last ACFC meeting for OSPIRG, “I watched one of your petition gatherers one day. I saw her fill up an entire side of a sheet of signatures without once turning it over to the other side so that the people signing it could read what they were signing.”

Ward goes on to “inform” students of the changes OSPIRG has made in their lives.

The accomplishments OSPIRG has been able to achieve for students are incredible. They’ve signed over 2,000 faculty across the country to commit to open source textbooks, and have been lauded by congressmen as leaders in reforming the textbook market.

What Ward didn’t tell the dear students is that only one UO professor has signed up for open source textbooks. But the number “1” looks pretty shitty compared to “2000 across the country.” Here’s where OSPIRG’s arguments get difficult. With all the of the factors, nationally, that go into making textbook prices rise or fall, it’s impossible for OSPIRG to say that they directly influenced it in a manner that is an efficient return on student money. The statement is overly broad and does not take into account the hundreds upon thousands of factors nationally and worldwide that effect such things.

Ward ends her argument saying she’d gladly pay the extra $1.90 for such “good” things to happen. Of course, Ward isn’t pledging her money, but asking 20,000 students to pledge theirs. And here’s where I see the color of many OSPIRG supporters. They want your money. And they want a lot of it. They can’t work with some smaller amount and alter their model at all — they just want the whole thing. That’s the kind of inflexibility — really, the inflexibility of vision — that made it possible for the ACFC to tell OSPIRG “No.” So why not an attitude of “anything can help” or “we will work with what we’ve got”? For that, I only have one answer in the form of an example.

At the first ACFC meeting for OSPIRG back in February, a fiery CJ Ciaramella asked a rather pointed question to the all-OSPIRG crowd, “So OSPIRG does all these great things right? They’re saving the world? And they don’t have any funding, right? So how many of you here today have donated, privately, to OSPIRG?” With a crowd of about 35 pro-OSPIRG people, only 3 people raised their hand–two OSPIRG employees and a Lane student.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Ciaramella.

Members of the ACFC listen to presenters during OSPIRG’s hearing.

Yesterday night OSPIRG went in front of the ASUO’s Athletics and Contracts Committee. OSPIRG’s members went through a presentation talking about all the “wonderful, amazing and good-hearted” things OSPIRG does. There were some particularly ridiculous moments. One Lane Community College OSPIRG member (I have no idea why they were there) said during public testimony, “If there was no OSPIRG, there’d be dead whales all over the ocean.” Immediately to my right, CJ Ciaramella had to give him a knock.

Of the people who spoke during the public testimony portion, only three of them were against funding OSPIRG’s current request–Me, Lyzi Diamond and CJ Ciaramella. In part, Diamond’s testimony quoted from a Matt Petryni opinion column that appeared in the Daily Emerald in 2008, “More than two-thirds of its ASUO stipend goes not to campus work, but to staffers in Portland, Ore.”

I also highlighted the point that the issue at hand, as it always has been with OSPIRG, is not whether they do good things. It is merely the proper use of student funding. Further, OSPIRG’s budget accounts for $103,000 to paid employees, $70,047 on non-student, non-campus employees alone. I noted that over 60% of their budget directly says that it does not go to students, and that responsible fiscal oversight by the ASUO was not possible with OSPIRG’s current funding model.

One awkward moment happened immediately after I spoke, as I saw CJ Ciaramella outside, and motioned to him. He didn’t see me, so I walked to the door to go get him. A man, probably in his 50s, stopped my as I walked by. His name is Paul Tanner and he is a student at LCC. He asked me, “Are you leaving?” To which I replied no, I was merely going to get CJ. He then told me that, “Because if you get up there and make a statement like that, you damn well better sit here and listen to what others have to say.”

At that point, I removed his hand from my shoulder and told him, “Don’t ever fucking talk to me like that again.” I got CJ, came back inside, and stopped by Tanner to reiterate how he was to speak to me. By the way, the meeting lasted about 3 hours. After about hour 2, I could no longer find Paul Tanner in the room, and he was indeed gone before the meeting ended. Thanks for staying, Paul.

Read the rest of this entry »

In accordance with the post I published on Feb. 1st, it seems more and more OSPIRG representatives (many of them non-students) are milling around campus, collecting signatures for their upcoming ballot measure, handing out stickers etc. I’ve stood by and heard the pitch to unassuming students and it goes something like this, “Are you a student? Do you want to help get lower textbook prices and tuition? I’m from OSPIRG and we’re trying to get our funding back so we can send students to work on issues important to students here at the UO.”

What they do not volunteer, however, is how their funding is appropriated from our students. That is, unless you’re like our distribution manager, Nicholas Ekblad, who had a conversation with one of the signature gatherers in which the OSPIRG employee gave up asking for his signature once it was evident Ekblad was aware of how their funding worked.

If you want a primer on the OSPIRG situation in general, CJ Ciaramella wrote a great article about it last year. If you want to see how and where OSPIRG is suggesting appropriating their budget, you can read my post from this Summer.

What is concerning about the signature gatherers, however, is their lack of explanation regarding the appropriation of would-be OSPIRG funds. To be honest, the fact that OSPIRG isn’t telling students that $103,000 would go directly off campus seems pretty predatory. Under the premise of “saving students money” OSPIRG wants to recklessly spend over $100k off campus. Of course, there are still some people who believe that the money–for some astounding reason–should go off campus.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty-five years of commentary, bound

December 3rd, 2009
Page 4B
By Ott Tamik
Scene Reporter

[please note the lack of the Emerald’s copy-editing during the last 3 paragraphs. Yes, this is how the story was originally printed, complete with duplicate paragraphs.]

Despite multiple defunding attempts and death threats, the Oregon Commentator has survived at the University for more and a quarter century, and – nobody asked them but – the publciation now has a book to immortalize its journey.

Edited by University senior Timothy Dane Carbaugh, “By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator” documents all the juicy details and scandalous episodes of the OC, some of which the publication’s alumni were not even aware of.

As the second-oldest student publication at the Unviersity, the libertarian magazine begins its nostalgic overview with a comment from none other than University President Emeritus Dave Frohnmayer, whose fake obituary was printed as a joke on the front cover of the November 1999 issue.

“Picking up a new issue of the Commentator is like acknowledging an unwelcome addictive behavior. The Commentator is useful every several years to test UO administrators’ resolve to defend the First Amendment in the face of outrageous journalistic excess,” Frohnmayer wrote.

Das Frohn (as the OC nicknamed him) is not alone in noting the OC’s “indifference to the law of defamation” and failure to live up to “any minimal standard of editorial good taste.” From the beginning, the OC has taken editorial journalism to the extreme. And from the beginning, its philosophy has been that the University is a battlefield for ideas. Not only that, they actually feel it is their duty to pick fights in order to advance the community’s ideas.

“A lot of things we have said have not been liked over the years, and I thought there was a story to tell,” said Carbaugh, who spent more than 400 hours researching newspaper archives and interviewing alumni for the book.

Former Editor-in-Chief CJ Ciaramella (now an Emerald news reporter) first got the idea when he noticed a similar book written by the conservative Dartmouth Review, and he thought it was a good way to utilize the OC’s savings from selling T-shirts and other fundraising efforts from over the years. The project was started numerous times without success until Carbaugh, the current publisher, took the lead. Carbaugh, a history major who has been on the OC staff since last March, worked from May to October researching, writing and compiling the book.

“You feel like you’re making discoveries like an archeologist brushing off dirt with a brush. It’s worth the work,” Carbaugh said.

Interestingly enough, Carbaugh did not pick up the magazine to read as a freshman because he was a Democrat and heard that the OC was highly conservative.

“Three years later, I’m the publisher and I’ve written a book,” Carbaugh said.

OC contributor, copy editor and former publisher Guy Simmons said the new book exceeded his expectations in every way.

“It’s neat to see a student produce something that is worth reading. I think it’s a pretty good job for a couple of undergraduates,” Simmons said.

For Simmons, the OC is important because it is one of the few student organizations that is entirely student-run, without and “meddling authority figures” to help it function. That is what he calls “the magic of the OC”.

But it is also one of the only publications in America to reprint the controversial Danish Muhammad cartoons in full. Issues of the OC have been dumped in protest by the thousands, and its contributors have even been called into the national arena of debate by The O’Reilly Factor.

Simmons reflected on the OC’s inability to keep quiet.

“I don’t think there should be any kind of censorship of ideas. If people have ridiculous things to say, let them say them so they can be exposed,” Simmons said.

Yet the OC had 18,000 hits on its blog last month, and the book’s existence demonstrates the passion that people have for the OC’s cause and the extent that fellow Commentators will go to justify the publication’s integrity.

The OC staff feels its first responsibility is to provide compelling content for a college readership and to avoid “overly cautious and dull” newspaper writing. “We’re not cautious to print material that might be offensive to some people. We’re cautious to be confident in our own opinions,” Carbaugh said.

The Commentators don’t expect always to get positive feedback, but that’s not the point. Simmons believes the number and variety of student media is lacking in a university with thousands of journalism students. The OC sees itself as the voice of a demographic that would otherwise go unheard, and its purpose is to open a dialog between people with opposing viewpoints. Carbaugh agrees. “The OC has defended those who haven’t had the voice to defend themselves on campus,” Carbaugh said.

Simmons recalled several instances in which he angered fellow classmates simply by asking unpopular questions.

“I think that at the University of Oregon, if you’re not marching on party lines, you have a strong chance of being silenced in classes. Altruistically, I think the war of ideas is important and at the UO there is a certain accepted storyline, and if you try to deviate from that, expect to be punished,” he said.

If for nothing else, the book is an unusual student effort to tell stories of the University. Sometimes they are stories people would prefer to forget. Nonetheless, Simmons, the book’s publisher, was surprised at the lack of institutional memory at the University. At one point, the ASUO was unable to identify who had been its vice president in 1994.

Carbaugh said there will always be a thirst for the Commentator on campus. “I’m hoping the book will put the commentator [sic] in perspective. It’s also a tool for future generations of Oregon Commentators to look back and contextualize it,” said Carbaugh. “The OC needs to know where they’ve been to understand where they’re going.”

“By the Barrel” – a flashy and professional hardcover book with pictures – can be purchased at the Duck Store for $10 or directly through the Commentator through its website or by visiting its office.

“I’m hoping the book will put the Commentator in perspective. It’s also a tool for future generations of Oregon Commentators to look back and contextualize it,” Carbaugh said. “The OC needs to know where they’ve been to understand where they’re going.”

Over at the Ol’dirty our favorite Emerald staffer, CJ Ciaramella has a great blog post on UO President Richard Lariviere’s guest commentary piece in Sunday’s Register Guard.  Lariviere’s commentary piece did not seem to make any mention of the ongoing problems he is facing with the UO’s faculty. The  Register Guard is reporting that the UO faculty are considering about starting a union.

The thought of unionizing the faculty at the UO has been up in the air since early 2007. The UO’s faculty is normally ranked at the bottom of Oregon College’s faculty pay scales, averaging about 80% of the average pay at other state schools in Oregon. Portland State University, Southern Oregon University, Western Oregon University and Eastern Oregon all have faculty unions. It’s ironic that President Lariviere’s guest commentary mentioned that Oregon was the “flagship university” in Oregon yet none of the faculty seemed to be getting paid on par with other Oregon state universities (actually one faculty member gets paid well, Frohnmayer, who will be paid $245,000 to lead a freshmen seminar).

Moving on, GAMEDAY is coming to Oregon for the USC game on Halloween night. The Riot Watch committee at the OC has moved the probability of a Halloween night riot from “maybe” to “definitely.” However, ODE thinks everything is going to be alright, in their “This Week in History” piece  it reads,

“In 1997 and 1998 when Halloween fell on the weekend, riots broke out in Eugene. In 1998, rioters town tore down street signs and set fires, and thirty rioters were arrested. This year the ASUO will provide free pizza on Halloween night, so everything should be fine.“

Everything will not be fine, the ASUO’s promise of $2,000 worth of free pizza is not enough to save Eugene from impending riots. Police maybe, pizza no. I did the math and it goes: Halloween+Gameday+ USC+ Blackout at Autzen= riots. I’m suprised Robert Husseman’s article in todays ODE reads “Fan, save yourself for the weekend” and not “Fans, save yourselves this weekend.”

Start stocking up on canned foods and freshwater, this weekend is going to be one for the history books in Eugene.

“Simpsons did it!”

It has recently come to our attention that the Comic Press, a “newspaper” at the University of Oregon, has been running a twitter feed titled “ASUO Spew” for quite some time. We have sat idly by while the Comic Press has made use of our own recycled jokes, references and phrases over the last two years, but this is the final straw.

Read the rest of this entry »

To be honest, I was looking for SPEW content.

That isn’t to say that I’m not opposed to the idea of finding something readable in the pages of our campus newspaper. I’m just not used to it. I happened upon a blog post by opinion columnist Greg Dewar about concealed carry on campus and it made me wonder:

Could the Emerald be good this year?

We’ve seen over the summer that opinion editor Robert D’Andrea has been able to levy fairly reasoned judgment on rather large issues–quite a difference from last year in which the opinion section of the Emerald resembled the diary of a 13-year old girl. “I just like, think we should, like, all get along and junk. You know?”

And not to toot our own horn or anything, but Commentator editor emeritus CJ Ciaramella has been lobbing intelligently written news pieces since day one–in fact, the first regular issue of the Emerald this school year had a front-page article by Ciaramella… not like that reflects well on the Commentator or anything… just saying.

The point is, with an opinion editor that seems to be able to regulate idiocy from his pages, a news team that’s gaining strength and an already top-notch sports section, we may be in for a good year of the Oregon Daily Emerald.

This is not a bad thing for anyone. This campus desperately needs a newspaper that isn’t filled with single-minded, prattling Obama lovers spewing all over its opinion page. The reporting on campus, since I’ve been here, has been atrocious as well–the AP feed the Emerald pays for should take a back seat this year with a precedence on local and campus news. Lord knows there’s tons of it out there, they just need to go and get it.

We all know that this campus has a major, respected journal of opinion. You can’t deny that fact. The Emerald needs to step up this year and deliver a real newspaper to run along side us.

I think they’re doing a great job so far.