Taking away student rights in the name of “progress” has never really been my jam. It is with this in mind that I say WHAT. THE. HELL. ASS. AMELIE.
President Rousseau is gearing up to back the Smoke Free Task Force in attempting to make campus smoke-free. This is not news. But now, with an article in the Ol’ Dirty, she has made it news again.
ASUO President Amelie Rousseau is pushing for a smoke-free campus and has joined the University’s Smoke Free Task Force to start gathering support.
The task force, a group of mainly University faculty created in the 2007-08 school year, surveyed students, faculty and staff in April 2008 and found support from 75 percent of its 4,769 participants.
…
Rousseau said a major component of a potential smoking ban would be preventing second-hand smoke on campus.
“It’s about protecting students and staff from second-hand smoke, because our campus is a workplace, and people do have to travel between buildings and are exposed to second-hand smoke,” she said.
She also referenced the Smoke Free Task Force survey that said 3,576 of 4,769 University respondents, 75 percent, were “occasionally or often bothered by second-hand smoke on campus.”
So, according to the Daily Emerald, everyone who is occasionally or often bothered by second-hand smoke on campus supports making the space smoke-free. That seems like putting the cart before the horse a little, no?
Unfortunately for students at the University of Oregon, this is how our ASUO is operating right now. The folks in that office make absurd claims and leaps of logic to prove their point over and over, and I am starting to get sick of it. Just because students are frustrated by second-hand smoke does not necessarily mean they want to start taking away the rights of students. This is a slippery slope.
But students who smoke on campus say a major part of it is the convenience of a cigarette after class.
“After class, it’s really nice to just be able to walk out the door and smoke a cigarette and then walk out to the bus or something,” University freshman Ben Danner said.
Rousseau hopes a cigarette ban on campus would make this habit a chore, which would in turn discourage smokers.
“We want to make it easier for people to live healthy lives,” Rousseau said. “We want UO to be a healthy community, and that starts with being tobacco-free.”
Let’s tackle the health issue here for a minute. Our student union has a contract with the fast food company, Panda Express. Panda Express serves many meals every day. Through some quick and unscientific observation, the most commonly ordered item is a two-entree plate with Orange Chicken, Beijing Beef, and a side of Chow Mein. According to the Panda Express website, the nutrition breakdown of these items is as follows:
In the interest of not making you take out your calculator, that’s a total of 1,650 calories, 82g of fat, and 2,820mg of sodium. That is a lot. I am not suggesting that the EMU take Panda Express out of the building. I am suggesting that we allow students to make their own choices about their health on campus. Nowhere on the UO campus are cigarettes sold.
Additionally, there are designated “smoking stations” located more than 10 feet away from the entrances to buildings. People smoking by the door and under breezeways are a problem, but there is no entity on campus enforcing the current rules. I think it’s a little quick to say we need a smoke-free campus, when the intermediary steps are not being taken. Even designated smoking areas is a better idea. Overarching University-wide rule changes should be well thought out and the student government and other interested groups should take an interest in process and talking to students.
Beyond all this, I understand the desire to make campus smoke-free. But Amélie claims to want to eliminate student smoking altogether. Rousseau said she wants people to stop smoking because of what a chore it is to walk off campus. Nowhere does she address the safety issue, which I brought up in the Back to the Booze issue of the Oregon Commentator. To ban smoking on campus is to push smoking students off campus and out of Department of Public Safety jurisdiction. While the ASUO is continuing to fund a 24-hour Knight Library, it doesn’t seem entirely in the student interest to make us leave campus to smoke and subsequently put us in the path of the 3AM riff raff of the West University neighborhood. Assaults happen in the areas directly adjacent to campus a lot more often than they do on campus.
Just because you make us move, doesn’t mean you’re going to make us quit. No member of the student body — elected or not — should be able to tell another member of the student body not to exercise their rights. You won an election. You are not my mother.
A friend of mine made another point — if students are forced off campus to smoke, won’t students entering campus be faced with a lot more second-hand smoke in a lot more of a concentrated area? I guess Rousseau doesn’t care about that, because it’s not on campus. It is, however, a legitimate concern.
There is a lot to consider here. Think about it, and do some research. And pay attention for an announcement about a smoke-in happening soon. For the final word, I’m going to turn it over to President Bartlet and the championship status of Aaron Sorkin:
I love it when it’s “everyday students” who start railing against the ASUO, and not those who are watching their every move.
As an addendum to Rockne’s post below, here is the video of Amélie’s convocation speech (this is the whole convocation, her speech starts at 12:30). It is, as Rockne professed, embarrassing, and incredibly disrespectful to those who allowed her the microphone in the first place.
There is a certain level of responsibility that goes with the title of ASUO President. When you speak in public, you are speaking on behalf of more than yourself and the little office you work in. You are speaking on behalf of every incidental fee-paying student at the University of Oregon.
This poses a considerable problem when you are charged with making a speech to introduce a batch of around 4,000 brand new students to the University. As ASUO President, you have not made any headway in trying to deduce how students feel about any particular issue — mostly because students are not informed about most things happening on campus. It is for this reason that most convocation speeches (at least in the last few years) by ASUO Presidents have been largely apolitical, for fear of misrepresenting student views and being disrespectful to students in the process.
It becomes much harder when you decide to throw all of your responsibility out the window and flat out lie to those sitting before you. Amélie’s description of the riot on September 25th — that the Eugene Police Department started taking action because of one person throwing one beer bottle at one cop car — is completely absurd. The crowd was asked to disperse because they were blocking traffic and being loud, and when they did not disperse, actions were taken. And then, in a stunning display of putting the cart before the horse, she goes on to talk about arming the Department of Public Safety. What? DPS was nowhere near the incident, as it was not in their jurisdiction, and the proposals for DPS do not include arming them — at least not at the moment.
Her criticisms of President Lariviere’s New Partnership proposal were just as absurd, if not more. I’m not even going to address this one, because you can all read the white paper and see for yourself just how misinformed she is. I wonder if she’s even read it yet.
The worst part about all of this is the 4,000 freshmen who believed every single word she said. I have encountered those people, and no matter how many letters run in the Ol’ Dirty Emerald, there is going to be a large group of people who believe what she says and continue to do so throughout the year.
If any University undergraduates are reading this, please do your part to get informed about issues on campus. Especially when it comes to the ASUO, titles are meaningless. Just because a president says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true.
Then again, just because a managing editor says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true either.
ASUO President Amelie Rousseau will likely not be excited to read page two of today’s Oregon Daily Emerald. In a letter from 14 undergraduates, Rousseau’s speech at Convocation was picked apart and shamed as turning a moment of celebration and unity within the University community into an opportunity for the lowest kind of political grandstanding.
According to the group’s account of events, Rousseau first apologized for EPD’s use of tear gas during the riot of two days earlier. “She then took that moment in her Convocation speech to encourage the audience to think critically about allowing the Department of Public Safety to become a full-fledged police department, asserting near-explicitly that the result would be more incidents like that Friday’s” Between this and her comments regarding UO President Richard Lariviere’s plans to separate UO from the rest of the Oregon University System, Rousseau seemed to be doing her best to upstage the Lariviere, the keynote speaker. Come on, Amelie, you can’t beat a hat that classy. Why even try?
Headwear aside, picking a fight over campus politics with the University President at Convocation is distinctly lacking in taste. If Rousseau wanted to rake Lariviere over the coals for his planned changes, I’m sure the ODE would have been happy to provide her the column inches to do so. Instead, she decided to wax poetic about how awful DPS and the UO administration are to a captive audience of people who are hearing about these issues for the first time. A student government president’s speech to freshman should deal with what’s really important for someone about to embark on the adventure of post-secondary education. To Rousseau, that message seems to be “cops are bad.” I don’t know if Rousseau’s performance was just a side effect of being without her Political Director, Robert D’Andrea, whose resignation had been announced in days prior, or just a lack of any kind of tact on her part, but I, for one, am embarrassed. Apparently at least 14 other students feel the same way.
Supwitchugirl is back, with slightly higher production value and (hopefully) slightly less legal trouble. I wonder if that’s going to affect the popularity of their new song / video, “I Love My Ducks (Return Of The Quack).” [Featuring Joey Harrington!]
The 2010 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, which actually reports on crimes committed in 2009, was emailed out to all UO students this morning. It is a loooooong summary of all the various rules and regulations surrounding campus crimes and prosecution of such crimes, but the good stuff is all between pages 32 to 40.
According to the email
“The Annual Security Report is prepared with data and information provided by the University of Oregon Department of Public Safety, the Office of the Dean of Students, the Office of Emergency Management, campus security authorities, and various law enforcement agencies who provide services to UO properties within their jurisdiction.”
Unsurprisingly, the most violated laws both on and off-campus were liquor laws with 1,287 violations that were referred for disciplinary action (aka deferral,) and 221 liquor law arrests. Of those 1,287 violations, 1,142 occurred in residence halls. Freshmen! However, this is a marked decrease from two years ago, when the number of residence hall liquor violations topped 1,266. The second most popular offense was drug law violation, which 299 students committed.
Interestingly, 31 percent of students caught with drugs were arrested, versus only 14 percent of those breaking alcohol laws, so if you want to stay out of jail get yourself a “green” card, or toke in extreme secrecy. Also notable, there were zero hate crimes reported in Eugene for the past three years. So that swastika in the LGBTQA Office was just for funsies? Right.
33 burglaries were reported, 25 of which were on campus. No shock there.
On a serious note, 9 forcible sexual offenses were committed on and off campus, 5 being in residence halls. This writer finds it disgusting that, apparently, the most dangerous place for the youngest females on campus is in their own dormitories.
Final Word: The reason why our university, and most in the country, are required to inform us of crime around our campus is The Jeanne Clery Act, a law enacted in 1990 that requires colleges to “make timely warnings to the campus community about crimes that pose an ongoing threat to students and employees.” Jeanne Clery was a freshman at Lehigh University in 1986 when she was tortured, sodomized, raped and finally murdered in her residence hall bed by a fellow student. There had been 38 violent crimes in the previous three years before she attended, a fact of which that no students were made aware.
Lollipops, ice cream, and salt-water taffy have all recieved the herbal treatment at cannabis clubs around the nation, and now soda pop from Dixie Elixirs can take you higher as well.
The Colorado based company offers drinks in seven flavors, including sweet tea, root beer, and pink lemonade. According to their website, the carbonation “delivers relief faster” and are directed at medical marijuana users who wish to be more discreet in their weed conspumtion. The same company also offers 1 ounce “dew drop” bottles in watermelon or spearmint flavor, which I am assuming to be concentrated weed shots. Salud!
No dispensaries in Eugene carry the sodas, but they can be ordered offline, for prescription-holders only, of course.
