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Archive for the 'Ol’ Dirty Emerald' Category

Crime Alerts Are Not For Fighting Rape Myths

November 4th, 2014 by Neil Killion

The level of absurdity surrounding the sexual violence discussion is starting to hit critical mass. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year, you should be aware of the ongoing debate surrounding sexual violence, how it is handled, and how to eliminate it.

The debate though is hitting a point in which people are wanting changes where no change is needed, or should occur. In an article posted in the Ol’ Dirty, there was a complaint that campus crime alerts are reinforcing rape myths. This is ridiculous and can be added to the long list of absurd claims made by people that have somehow become the gate keepers of sexual assault prevention.

Crime alerts should be used when there is an ongoing threat. An unknown rapist on the loose fits that bill. An identified rapist does not. The police are here to fight crime and clean up messes. They are not here to educate the student body about the dangers of assault by a known predator.

Although sexual assault is usually perpetrated by someone a victim knows, it does not eliminate the fact that there is still assaults done by unknown subjects. You do not ignore the less likely situations because it might lead to a misguided understanding.

There have been a string of break-ins in the Kinsrow area that unfortunately is going to end up in an assault if the violator is not caught. That is exactly what these crime alerts are supposed to be utilized for.

Using the crime alerts to announce events in which the accused predator is known violates the whole premise of innocent till proven guilty and due process. I realize this is not a big deal to those in academia. We have seen how the mere accusation of being racist, homophobic, or sexist can destroy someone regardless of the facts.

This is also part of a list of absurd actions by some. Women should not arm themselves or carry whistles because this also perpetuates the rape culture. After all it is better a woman is defenseless in the case of an attack as long as we can feel good because men are told not to rape. Reality is people get raped, usually by someone they know, but other times by a stranger. People should have the tools to defend themselves when and if a situation happens.

One of those tools is the crime alerts. If there is a dangerous person out there then we should know about it. We do not need to know if they already have the person in custody or are investigating the situation.

Let educators educate and let the police department police. This is how the system should work. I will also remind people that dead rapists, known or unknown, do not continue to rape.

The Ol’ Dirty

March 10th, 2014 by Martin Hallstrom

We were gonna say that the Emerald was starting to do better. The Ol’ Dirty had seemingly radically cut down on the number of bullshit articles(fluff!) which is a curse for us at the OC. Without a constant stream of bad journalism who are we supposed to make fun of!?! But relax, the Emerald is still as dirty as ever which the recent plagiarism/fabrication scandal shows. Don’t get us wrong, the OC is far from perfect, our magazine seems to copy edited by a blind dyslexic after all and during our 30 years of existence surely one of our writers made something up or screwed up. Shit happens but the Emerald seems to have more shit than others.

But the real story in today’s issue was the cover article about ASUO president Sam Dotters-Katz and Professor Bill Harbaugh.  Apparently the Emerald show of its journalistic integrity by publishing wild and unfounded accusations. Without any evidence or basis the Emerald still decides to print words that frame Harbaugh as having vandalized both Dotters-Katz’s and Ehlen’s car . Shit, even Ehlen himself says that it is “farfetched” that Harbaugh would have vandalized Ehlen’s car. Dotters-Katz is also quoted as saying “I don’t know if Bill did it personally. I’m not necessarily making that accusation…Even the professors I’ve talked to who hate Bill say this isn’t his M.O. I agree, but that’s not to say he’s not involved indirectly.”

Why the hell would you ever even print such wild indirect accusations? There are no grounds for it unless you count the personal feelings of two people towards a third as conclusive evidence. Naturally, we don’t know what happened and who did what to the cars and that’s the problem. That the Emerald knowingly perpetrates a person as a criminal even though there is no evidence besides the hunch of two people who are feuding with Harbaugh. The car incident should even be mentioned as there is no evidence and anything other than evidence found by the police investigation is just useless navel-gazing. But as usual the Emerald actually has a nugget of something interesting in the article but fuck interesting and important things when you can publish rumors and private beefs! Roughly 90 % of the article is spent prying into the personal issues between Sam Dotters-Katz and Harbaugh  while only the last part is actually devoted to the real issue; the lack of transparency within the University and many of its operations.

If the University has nothing to hide and everything is completely kosher then why is so much hidden and blocked out from the public? This sentiment can of course be used to justify the NSA’s spying scandal but the difference is that what we’re dealing with here isn’t a private matter, this is a public university and we as students have the right to know where our money goes and how it is spent. Simple as that, or so you would think but instead the Emerald shys away from the issues and becomes a gossip magazine that spews out shit worse than a frat boy after 20 natty ice and a pizza.

We’re fucking psyched about this development, keep being dirty Emerald!

Journalists should be held accountable like you and me: A response to Kevin Sullivan

January 9th, 2014 by Thomas Tullis

Due to it’s timely matter, The Commentator has decided to publish this piece online. It will also appear in our physical publication later this month. 

On Monday, January 6th columnist Kevin Sullivan published an opinion column in the Daily Emerald that left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Of course, I’m not much of one to read the Emerald regularly (because I already know how to have fun in the snow in Bend and find an instruction manual for this not necessary), but when I happened upon Kevin’s most recent opinion piece “Athletes should be held accountable like you and me” I knew a response from The Commentator would be necessary. Of course, here at The Commentator, we couldn’t agree more with Kevin’s notion that athletes are a favored bunch throughout our national universities (and especially here at UO). Kevin, we commend your effort to put these athletes in their place and ensure that everyone is held accountable for their actions.

The problem with Kevin’s piece is his insight into the Jameis Winston rape case that was closed a little over a month ago in December. Writes Kevin:

         Imagine a case of sexual assault. A 9-11 call surfaces after a month of the case being in the mainstream news but a year after the survivor first reported the rape. The survivor has already identified the man who had raped her and DNA evidence had proven that he indeed had sex with her.
        This guy was obviously convicted right?
        Wrong.

Now hold it right there, Kevin. Why should this guy obviously be convicted? Based on the story you just told, I reached the conclusion that the man should obviously not be convicted! We’re supposed to think that DNA evidence proving that two people had sex is evidence of rape? Because there’s no such thing as consensual sex, right Kev?

I’m not here to argue against the innocence of Winston […] I’m here to state the truth writes Kevin right after conclusively referring to Winston as “the man who had raped her“. Welcome to America, where all are guilty until proven innocent… good thing our justice system doesn’t operate on the same rules that Kevin does.  All I’m saying is that we have words like “alleged” so that journalists can refer to the accused without definitively calling them, as Kevin does,  “the assailant“. Throughout his piece, it is clear that Kevin has made his mind up about the Winston case. He repeatedly refers to the accuser as “the victim” and contextualizes the story in a way that makes it obvious to us all that the tenant of “innocent until proven guilty” is only applicable until an Ol’ Dirty Emerald columnist decides that it is not. And all this in a piece where Kevin calls out the media for not properly framing a story and for “poorly reported stories“. Kev, we’re all beginning to drown in the irony here.

Of course, I cannot disagree with your main point that the accuser received a lot of hate from FSU fans and the public alike. Yes, that happened, but it does not determine whether or not Winston is guilty or not. Let’s be honest this rape allegation will always be tied in with Jameis Winston’s name as well. The truth is, there just was not enough evidence to convict Jameis of anything. This doesn’t mean that he isn’t a rapist, but (without concrete evidence) we will never know what happened.  Of course, since Kevin is already sure of his verdict, we invite him to pour through the case evidence that the state attorney released.

The point is, while there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with our judicial system, it’s ethically wrong to debase the innocent until proven guilty that our justice system is based on. Kevin, until you’re ready to present concrete evidence that Jameis Winston is a rapist, we cannot refer to him as one. And when you do have that concrete evidence, we highly encourage you to fax it over to the Tampa police so the case can be reopened.

It was not only Kevin’s absurdly definitive reporting of Winston’s guilt that infuriates us here at The Commentator. It seems like it would also be relevant to point out here that the opinion piece misreported a couple things. Writes Kevin:

[O]ne insightful anchor on “Good Morning America” put it on Dec. 12, “I just want this one to go away.”
Let me repeat that.
One of the anchors from ‘Good Morning America,” the leading morning show in America, said that he wanted the story of the Winston case to “go away.”

Good thing you repeated this twice, Kevin. Does that mean we can charge you with two accounts of false reporting? Take a look at the video that is being referenced, and I think it will be as clear to you as it was to me- Stephanopoulos says “They just want this one to go away.” Of course, by changing this one critical word you completely change the intention of Stephanopoulos’ comment. I see what you did there. Clever, Kev. Very clever.

Of course, why stop here? Let’s also get a source for those statistics you’re referencing. Writes Kevin: “the percentage of women who falsely report rape is very low and not any higher than any other false reporting of other crimes” I’ll forget about how terribly phrased this sentence is for a minute, so I can present some statistics:

Since 1996 “unfounded” rape accusations are reported by the FBI to be around 8%, while other index crimes have been around 2%.  Of course, “unfounded” does not necessarily mean “false allegation”. It is almost impossible to discover the true percentage of false rape accusations, but many estimate that they are higher than index crimes. Of course, I’m guessing Kevin found his statistics in “Against Our Will”. Nice. Very reliable source, Kev.

“Football should not trump […] our judicial system” writes Kevin in conclusion to his article. Let us remind you, Kev, that bad journalism should not trump our judicial system either.

Alright, kiddos, that’s all we’ve got until we hear back from Kevin. In the meantime let’s all remember that everyone accused of rape is guilty, especially if there isn’t enough evidence to prove it.

Thomas Tullis

Win a Sudsy T-shirt!

March 4th, 2013 by Nick Ekblad

Want to win one of these??

sudsy_tees

Where in the world is the Oregon Commentator? Do you know where we moved the distribution box missing from the picture below?

Email your responses to WINTHINGS(at)OREGONCOMMENTATOR.COM and win a free Sudsy t-shirt!

Disclaimer: Sudsy t-shirt must be picked up on campus.

13th & Uni

The Commentator has fallen victim to dismal segregation and hilarious categorization. The photo above demonstrates how bigotry can have a serious effect on a journal of opinion. The Commentator distribution box just couldn’t take it anymore and ran away to another location. Can you find it?

And anyway, who’s decision was it to put the Emerald next to the Register Guard and the Weekly? The latter two clearly contain news of some manifestation.

Favoritism and Plagiarism in the Ol’ Dirty?

February 21st, 2013 by Nick Ekblad

I don’t use Facebook and haven’t perused the UO Confessions page, but this link was sent to me: I’ll let this speak for itself.

“Let me tell you about the state of the Emerald right now. A article regarding UO Faculty was written and the UO administration got fired up. They then chewed out the Editor-in-Chief of the Emerald, who has been described by various employees of the Emerald as being tyrannical. The EiC proceeded to blame the online and print news editors, as well as the reporter who wrote the story. The issue was that the writer didn’t incorporate the administration’s side of the story in the article. The managing editor, who is responsible for approving the stories, was then subjected to harsh and unfair criticism by the EiC. The managing editor, fed up with the lack of leadership at the top, put in her two-week notice a few days later. The EiC then “dismissed” (fired) her on the spot. Both the online and print news editors, who have written some of the Emerald’s most read stories in the last two years, then resigned. As of yesterday, after being fed up with management and the way things are being run, the author of the original article resigned. The news desk is now down to two people. On top of this, the EiC is seriously considering hiring a former friend he worked with at Lane’s newspaper as managing editor. This individual worked for the Emerald during the summer and PLAGIARIZED stories. He is the leading candidate for the job despite two other current Emerald staffers who have applied. Welcome to the chaos of Revolution 2012.”

 

Ol’ Dirty Drops the D

June 5th, 2012 by Ashley

D for Daily. They’ll always be Dirty in our hearts.

Starting next year, the Daily Emerald will cease production of their daily newspaper, and instead turn their attention to becoming an all-encompassing media company called the Emerald Media Group. This will entail publishing two bikweekly printed issues, as well as featuring “real-time news, community engagement, photo galleries and video on the web, mobile and social media, new web and mobile apps,” according to Ars Technica.

According to the Emerald, part of the reason for the change is financial, with advertising dollars disappearing while publishing costs remain the same. “The competition for the student ad dollar today is not (another newspaper.)” said Emerald publisher Ryan Frank in an interview with Ars Technica. “It’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. This is about following where the industry is going, about how we train our students to do the jobs that exist today.”

However, distribution and mission-related concerns also played into the final decision. As the Emerald notes in their brief on the new plan, “Daily is too slow. Our newsroom will report in real-time on our website, on mobile apps and through social media. We will wrap up our report with a morning email edition Monday-to-Friday. We will add blogs on topics relevant to college students, such as football, fashion and sex. We will engage with readers through whatever digital channel is most relevant to them.”

Only time will tell if this grand experiment succeeds, or falls flat on its face. Maybe it’ll take off, maybe even fewer people will read the Emerald. Maybe Ethos will laugh at EMG’s layouts at every turn. Hopefully fewer printed dailies will end up clogging storm drains on Alder. It’s going to be an experiment, and one hell of a jump.

“It’s time for a revolution,” the Emerald claims in a video promoting the upcoming change in direction. “Something completely different.”

However, one thing’s for sure: the Commentator will always find a way to make fun of our friends at the Ol’ Dirty. Cheers.

ASUO ELECTIONS ’12: I’m Tellin Y’all It’s SABOTAGE

April 9th, 2012 by Rebecca

Updated 4/9/12 – 3:35 PM

1) ASUO Constitution Court rules “these matters are best left to the ASUO Elections Board for adjudication.”

And also! Both related and unrelated..

2) ASUO Constitution Court rules to remove VP Candidate Lamar Wise from his position as ASUO Senate President as a result of a grievance filed by ASUO Senator Lindy Mabuya.

A Statement from the Katie & Alex Campaign:

“We made it a standard to run a clean campaign and I am extremely disappointed that this isolated incident has occurred where two individuals exercised extremely poor judgment. It saddens me immensely that this has occurred, as the rest of the Katie and Alex team, as well as the Ben and Lamar team, ran an amazing outreach drive to engage students on extremely important matters. The individuals responsible for this have been removed from the campaign.”

Ben Bowman and Lamar Wise of the Ben & Lamar campaign, along with Sam Dotters-Katz of the YES (Your EMU SRC) campaign, have filed grievances against the Katie & Alex campaign; they claim to have been hacked by Chuckie-D himself (Former OSPIRG Chair Charles Denson, spouse of VP Katie Taylor), and that their campaign materials were fucked with.

Wait what? Ben & Lamar’s management team confronted the Katie & Alex campaign, and “at least five” members “came forward with this information and all showed remorse except for Denson*.”

Hacked how? Wise says he lost access to his Gmail after opening a phishing website disguised as a Google Calendar component. Dotters-Katz says his email was also tampered with.

Fucked with how? Denson apparently used “find and replace” to jumble 12,000 phone numbers on a contact list of possible Ben & Lamar voters. The grievance states that hundreds of volunteer hours were wasted making calls to the wrong people. Dotters-Katz had a similar complaint, claiming that contacts of the YES campaign were either deleted or tampered with. Among the deleted was a list of student leaders in support of the campaign.

So who exactly? The grievances name Katie Taylor, Charles Denson, Kerry Snodgrass, Molly Bennison and Andrew Rogers as the people aware of the act.

Sam Dotters-Katz is calling this an “unprecedented act of cyber espionage.”

The Ben & Lamar campaign is calling for an immediate injunction on the election.

As for us at The Oregon Commentator, we’re calling for Katie Taylor and Charles Denson’s expulsion from planet earth. That’s right. We’re tired of writing about them. Did you think we were actually surprised by this? They’re simply living up to what we’ve called them out on being all along: the devil’s spawn. Look, this isn’t an absurd accusation. They’re a young married couple! Why else would they devote themselves to a life’s work of student manipulation? It just doesn’t make any sense.

We’ll just have to see what the ASUO Constitution Court  ASUO Elections Board does about this. Since these grievances concern the devil himself, let’s hope the Court Board likes a good exorcism.

Demons be gone!

*This post is a regurgitation of this ODE article, so read the original. Love you Emily!

 

Ol’ Dirty’s Attempt to Save Trees Deemed Outragiously Racist

April 5th, 2012 by Nick Ekblad

On March 6, during an intramural basketball game, a fight broke out between opponents from each team. Becky Metrick covered the story the next day in Daily Emerald, which can be found here. Today, the Emerald‘s front page features an article by Josephine Woolington covering the meeting organized by Kendaris Hill (former president of the Black Student Union). According to the concerned students of the Black Student Union, the Ol’ Dirty‘s placement of the photo (probably the first or third one in the series here) of Amin Tufa being taken into custody by DPS officers was inappropriate. The picture was placed on the front page next to an unrelated headline regarding crime in the West University neighborhood.

Let me just say a few things:

1. Black people have been on the front page of newspapers before! It’s not a new thing.

2. Crime happens. And if it happens next to or on campus, perhaps it should be covered in the campus newspaper, no?

3. I sure as hell did not immediately pin all of the crime conducted West of campus on Tufa when reading the headline. That would be racial profiling.

4. Finally, Black Student Union… You do know that the editor-in-chief of the Emerald is black himself, right?

Editor-in-chief Tyree Harris as quoted by Woolington in today’s Ol’ Dirty: “The story was clearly questioning everything involved in the situation. […] Nobody in the newsroom was trying to portray this story in a stereotypical way.” I agree with Harris’s assertion that the stories were indeed questioning the situation.

Apparently, the Ol’ Dirty better think twice before putting a picture of a black man next to the word “crime” in a cramped newspaper– lest they hurt somebody’s feelings. Ol’ Dirty, why must you be so environmentally conscious so as to save space by putting your stories so close together! Haha, I kid, but basically, these complaints translate to: “It confuses people when the word ‘crime’ and a picture of a black man appear together but do not relate nor coincide!”

So, perhaps the next step is to start giving each story a 1.5 inch border between it and any other story, making the newspaper a more safe and pleasant thing to read. However, complications may arise with the Climate Justice League. Seems like Ol’ Dirty is in some hot water! The links to the ODE stories are above– Your thoughts?

Holiday Reading

December 22nd, 2011 by Melissa Haskin

Mobile Mayor Sam Jones holds intruder at gunpoint; man says God sent him

Cat travels 200 miles under car hood in Ohio

Swallowed pen still works 25 years later

12 Horrible Christmas Gifts To Help Say, “I Hate You” Though, we’re still not sure why these are bad ideas. I mean, we got #4 for the Ol’ Dirty. Also, really, I can think of worse things: a life’s subscription to the Ol’ Dirty, used underwear, rotten moldy apples….these people are just not very creative.

David And Janean Richards Set Guinness Record With 331,038 Xmas Lights

 

Vandals deface estate, Peter Parker gets there to photograph it

November 27th, 2011 by Spencer Madison

When an “anonymous tip” was given to the Oregon Daily Emerald Staff, intrepid journalist and photographer Peter Parker was first to the scene of the crime. He arrived at 1:35  in the morning, in time to see the culprits sprint away from the hit and run deed in a sparsely populated suburban neighborhood not anywhere near where a reporter would be imagined to be at that hour. Hell, the photographer even reacted faster than the Chancellor and his family who were home at the time. After snapping a photo of the web-slinging vigilantes so clear he had to be standing to take it, and not running after the culprits who would have surely seen the bespectacled reported just gawking from where the crime scene was, he raced back to the Daily Bugle, where his boss Mr. Jameson had no clue how he was the only one capable of getting a clear shot of the radioactive renegades. Pausing a moment to clench his cigar in hand and declare that Spider-Man was a menace and that the city has no room for vigilantes like him, the meek Peter Parker stepped out with his payment, changed in a phone booth, and fought the Green Goblin on top of a building, because he was goddamned Spider-Man and only an idiot wouldn’t realize that for a photographer to get such a clear shot of the vandals in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, they would have to have been party to the valdalism and the vandals are a little less “unidentified” than the Emerald lets on.

Seriously, the photo snap is from behind, but the reporter knew that they were not only all wearing bandanas and masks, but that they were all male. How did they accomplish such investigative journalism? Because they were in the same group and are using the Emerald to give their boring, unimaginative vandalism the attention they crave by legitimizing it with a report. Seriously, either their stories have no editorial process or their editor missed some Blue’s Clues shit here.

 

EDIT: Overnight the story, along with the images in question, was pulled from the ODE’s website. Luckily, the Register Guard still had a copy of the good one, because you can’t just upload things online and erase all traces of them.

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/27240641-41/lariviere-state-university-board-oregon.html.csp

Eugene has no need for vigilantes! Curse you, Spider-Maaaaaaaan!

As you can clearly see, the perps are all male and wearing masks and bandanas.

Evolution has nothing to do with science.

November 1st, 2011 by Shaggy 2 Dope

Shaggy 2 Dope is the Oregon Commentator’s science blogger. A guest contributor who is not a student, Shaggy enjoys music, professional wrestling, playing with his children, and anti-social acts of violence. He writes every week in response to JoAnna Wendel’s Oregon Daily Emerald science column.

Hello friends. I’m sorry it’s been so long since we last spoke. I realize that my nemesis, Oregon Daily Emerald columnist JoAnna Wendel, has published two articles since I issued a public challenge to her and I have not responded. I intend to. I’d say that being a multi-platinum recording artist, record label-founder and all-around renaissance man is demanding, but that’s no excuse. I’ll try to be on time next week, but here are my thoughts on Wendel’s work this week.

Wendel’s first column alleges that a new “species” of human has evolved. “Collegius baconus” is supposedly its name and Wendel says it has evolved in visible time, and that she’s surprised. Well, of course a scientist would be surprised.

What they don’t realize is that evolution is one of life’s little miracles, like looking into your son’s eyes after he gets into his first hockey fight or the little yellow powder that makes Funyuns so salty. “It’s just salt dude!” they’ll tell you. Maybe they’ll say, “Evolution is a natural process,” or, “Your son displays early signs of psychosis.” But no, scientists, who, as I have already elaborated, are all motherfuckers, are always trying to leech the magic out of miracles like evolution.

They are making me so pissed.

Everyone knows evolution has nothing to do with scientists. If scientists had their way, we probably never would have heard of evolution. Evolution: it’s something human beings have known about since the beginning of time. If we’d left it up to scientists, they’d probably tell us evolution is caused by “chemical imbalances of the brain” or “too much drinking” — just a few of the outrageously false explanations the medical scientists with which which I’m forced to talk try to come up with — and they’d be wrong.

Evolution is a miracle. It has nothing to do with science. You can’t explain it, just like you can’t explain what’s inside Fonz Pond.

Fonz Pond

I’ll tackle Wendel’s other article a little later. Shaggy out.

JoAnna Wendel: You are on notice.

October 22nd, 2011 by Shaggy 2 Dope

Hi there. My name is Shaggy 2 Dope Utsler and you may know me as a member of multi-platinum rap group Insane Clown Posse. My reason for writing this post is to warn JoAnna Wendel that I will not put up with her nonsense anymore. Wendel is a columnist for the campus newspaper here at the University of Oregon (her work can be viewed here). Her column, simply put, is virulent. It concerns science. I have made my opinions on science known before. They can be viewed in longer form here. To wit: the lies of scientists, all of whom are motherfuckers, are making me increasingly pissed. This means you Wendel. So every time you see fit to make me pissed by spreading your lies, I will publish a refutation of said lies on this blog. It is not enough, but I hope to do a public service in this way. And public service has always been the watchword for the Insane Clown Posse.

Emerald, too easy. Like always.

July 19th, 2011 by Melissa Haskin

Dear Oregon Daily Emerald i.e. Ol’ dirty,

You guys are seriously making this too easy. You could at least hide the egregious errorz. This is like handing out the Easter eggs two minutes into the hunt. Or maybe the West University/South Hills thieves got your copy editors (in which case I am very sorry for your loss–because that would not be a laughing matter at all. Not even a little bit.)?

Love always,

Theee Commentator

UO ASL Professor Fired For In-Class Comment

May 17th, 2011 by Lyzi Diamond

The Oregon Daily Emerald is reporting that University of Oregon American Sign Language Professor Peter Quint has been fired for a comment he made to a student in his ASL 203 course on May 4th. From the article:

Quint began the class Wednesday with a personal story about being confronted by a group of men with guns while traveling in Pakistan with a group of friends. According to students, Quint, who is deaf, explained he was able to get out of the situation safely because he could communicate to the men that he was not a threat.

The story was intended to highlight the importance of communication, students said. It came about after several students repeatedly ignored Quint’s requests to only sign conversation. Quint lost his hearing due to meningitis when he was two and insisted students only sign during his classes so everyone could participate.

According to students present, later in Wednesday’s class, Quint noticed that a student spoke rather than signed, got upset and asked the student, “Do you want me to shoot you?”

“He wasn’t saying he was actually going to shoot anyone,” Claire Johnson, who is in several of Quint’s classes this term, said of the comment, adding that it was intended to relate back to the story and was taken out of context. “I didn’t find it threatening.”

While an inappropriate comment, certainly, was Quint entirely out of line? I’ve never taken an American Sign Language class, but I have taken the 200-level Spanish sequence, and in those classes we were required to speak Spanish. Indeed, in 201, if you spoke English at all the professor would not acknowledge your question or comment.

It doesn’t seem like this situation should be any different, especially since ASL now counts for language requirements in preparation for a Bachelor of Arts degree. And especially since Quint could not hear his students, whereas most if not all Spanish profs at the UO can speak English, the need to sign was even more immediate.

According to the rest of the article, the students in Quint’s classes were not given much if any say in the process of his termination. Who made the decision to fire him, and what was their motivation? Did Quint have tenure, and did that contribute to his firing?

This story, needless to say, is developing. We’ll provide more information as it comes available.

Did the Ol’ Dirty ever have class?

May 12th, 2011 by Lyzi Diamond

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

That was my reaction when I opened to the opinion page of the Oregon Daily Emerald today and found this:

Top 10 Ways you know you’re Republican

Whether you’re a gun-toting Texan or a money-hogging oil tycoon, the GOP has enough emphasis on “good ol’ American family” to make you idolize people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

If you don’t know whether you’re a Republican at heart, we have 10 signs that show that you are indeed a Republican.

1) Your idea of a tea party consists of 40-year-old men with guns
2) You’re pro-child and against educating them
3) You still think Barack Obama was born in Kenya
4) You believe Judgment Day is May 21
5) Women’s Rights?
6) The thought of things trickling down turns you on
7) Sarah Palin? Michelle Bachman? Total RILFs, bro
8) You’ve gone through three divorces, but you think gay marriage will ruin the American family structure
9) You think Dick Cheney is a good hunter
10) Your news is fair and balanced

Let’s let alone for a minute the fact that the Emerald opinion desk wouldn’t know subtlety or humor if they walked up and introduced themselves. Let’s also let alone the fact that there are so many better things the Ol’ Dirty could have put in that space that students would have cared about. (While we’re at it, we can also ignore the gross misspelling of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s name, although it will serve to illustrate my point.)

This list shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of the Republican Party and what it’s about, especially in Oregon.

I am a registered member of the Oregon Republican Party, and a proud one at that. I am a member because of the three things the Oregon Republican Party stands for: accountability in spending, protecting our environment and protecting our schools. The misspelling of Rep. Bachmann’s name was not the only flaw in the severely misguided column; it is clear that when it passed through the opinion editor’s desk, it was never fact checked, not even a little bit.

Not every Republican is a tea-partier, a birther or a social conservative. We’re not all religious nuts, and we don’t all blindly stand behind elected leaders from our party.

Republicans identify as such because we believe in fiscal responsibility and civil liberties. We believe that all our constitutional rights should be exercised to their fullest extent, including the right to keep and bear arms. We believe in national defense, a free market and energy independence.

We believe in making a better America for all citizens.

At the Oregon Commentator, we publish blog posts and articles that are based on facts. We make fun of people, too, but it is always warranted and has a point. And we make sure to fact-check our pieces to the fullest extent, especially if we’re going to call someone (or a group of someones) out.

I would implore the folks at the Ol’ Dirty Emerald to, in the future, do some fact-checking, research “humor” and find some class. That is, if they haven’t strayed too far from it already.

I’ll leave you with three reasons it’s awesome to be a Republican:

1. Save what you make. Keep what you earn.
2. Avocados, papayas, bananas and every other fruit and vegetable that isn’t grown in the Willamette Valley (nom).
3. Teddy Roosevelt. Enough said.