First thing’s first: Congratulations Pete Carroll on a record-setting game!

Today the Ducks scored the most points ever on a Carroll-led USC team.

The concern now moves to the post game celebrations. With the increased amount of over-entitled DPS officers bicycling about the last few days, it’s only a matter of time before some cop bothers a law-abiding student just trying to walk to the next party in the West University neighborhood before someone gets fed up and throws a bottle or burns something.

Who wants to take the over-under on taserings? I’m setting it at 2.

In any case, I hope you’re all going to be safe out there… and that riots actually do not happen tonight.

By the way, kudos to TJ for intercepting that last pass. Eat it Pete Carroll.

Read this. Just do.

As we approach Saturday let us take into account that Halloween has been a historically bad day for Eugene. Riots in the early 2000’s and late 90’s on Halloween night have been a catastrophe–just wait until you mix in a night game at Autzen coupled with the emotional high/low of the potential outcomes. The Commentator is no stranger to the riots. A former unnamed staffer is on the front cover of a late-90’s Daily Emerald ripping up a stop sign. It’s fun for the whole family.

It doesn’t help that, according to today’s front page article in the Emerald, the Bias Response Team was called when a student organized a “blackout Autzen” facebook group. Reactionists and non-sports fans alike came together to question the student’s motivation for the event and its “racial implications”.

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“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.

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Man Set on Fire During Assault

Case No. 09-17789

Eugene Police are looking for information regarding an incident early Saturday morning, in which a man was lit on fire by an unknown assailant.

At about 3:00 Saturday morning, an adult male reported that he was walking on the sidewalk near E. Broadway and High when he heard footsteps and was bumped from behind. As he turned around, there was the sound of fire quickly igniting and he was on fire. He said he stopped, dropped and rolled. After the fire was out, he walked to the Campus Inn, 390  E. Broadway, and called out for help from an employee. He was taken to a local hospital with what appear to be non-lifethreatening but painful burns on his hands and face.

As improbable as it may sound, the PIRG system is actually slimier and more corrupt than previously believed. From the Daily Beast:

The nation’s largest fundraiser for progressive causes issued checks to thousands of former workers in the last several weeks after settling a $2.15 million class-action suit alleging it subjected workers to grueling hours without overtime pay.

The nonprofit Fund for Public Interest Inc. was set up in 1982 as the fundraising arm of the network of Public Interest Research Groups, which was founded by Ralph Nader. It deploys legions of door-to-door and street canvassers—and once counted a young Barack Obama as one of its New York City organizers—to solicit contributions for the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, Environment America, and other groups that together spend millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress.

[…]

Managers pushed employees to work long hours by repeatedly stressing that they were taking part in a campaign to better the world, not a traditional job. Federal and state labor laws do not recognize the distinction. Some said their experiences led them to give up on activism altogether, which troubled those behind the lawsuit. “I was getting tired of seeing people leave the movement,” Miller said.

In the summer of 2005, the activists tried to unionize their Los Angeles office. The canvassers voted to organize with the Teamsters, Miller said.

“Management basically started changing office policies to try to systematically fire all union employees, while stalling the contract,” he added. Eventually, Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), now Labor secretary, wrote the Fund pressing it to negotiate with workers, to no avail.

Then suddenly, Miller said, “they changed the locks on the doors and they were gone. We were shut down overnight.”

In a separate case in 2006, the office of the Labor Commissioner of the State of California determined that the Fund had denied rest breaks to a worker, awarding a cash payment. The Fund subsequently changed its policies to provide overtime pay. In 2009, it agreed to settle the class-action suit.

But remember: It’s all about “student voice” and “empowering people.” These criticisms are just a vast, right-wing conspiracy to silence progressive voices on campus. Just keep telling yourself that. Seriously, though, this is the group that we so desperately need on campus? The group that is so vital to student activism? Remember this when the OSPIRG neophytes come crawling back to the ASUO next year, begging to be reinstated as a student group.

Hat tip to Reason.

Earlier today (well, yesterday) a suspicious bag was reported in Lawrence Hall by a stupid paranoid student, Junior Ben Reider. The ‘suspicious’ was a backpack padlocked to the bathroom stall by fellow student, Garret Soan Lon Len, for ‘safekeeping’.

DPS, EPD, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING?! WHAT?) responded to the call with bomb-sniffing dogs. In retrospect, it looks like an over reaction, but every false threat seems like an over reaction. Calling in DHS might be a bit much, but it’s that one time you under react to a real threat that it’s game over.

Turns out that there was nothing suspicious about the backpack…except for the fact that it was padlocked to a bathroom stall. Great going, Mr. Len, you really showed your mental prowess there in trying to keep your bag safe. Or were you just so damn lazy that you couldn’t carry it on, oh I don’t know, your BACK? Mr. Len is being charged with disorderly conduct, which holds a minimum fine of $255. I thought disorderly conduct was being a drunken douchebag bro and pushing people on the sidewalk in front of Taylor’s, but I guess leaving backpacks around constitutes a similar offense.

But it’s not all Mr. Len’s fault. How paranoid do you have to be, Mr. Reider, to automatically suspect that a backpack is a bomb? And just think for a moment, why the hell would anyone want to bomb Lawrence Hall? Well, maybe all the architects stuck there on Friday night in Studio…anyways, good job. You’ll forever be known as the College student who cried wolf. I think you should at least have the courtesy to offer to pay for half of the disorderly conduct fine.

The ODE has the rest of the story.

I hope everybody is having a good day.

Just make sure not to shoot your friend in the face, which, of course, is very likely to happen when you’re smoking The Devil’s Harvest!

From a Washington Post opinion piece and probably one of the best articles I’ve read on drug legalization:

Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.

In 1993, his country was a free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this chilling — and prescient — warning to an international drug policy conference in Baltimore:

“The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the state, and if the state resists … they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages.”

Speaking of Baltimore, here’s David Simon, creator of The Wire, in a recent interview with Bill Moyers:

I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the incarceration money, all the enforcement money, all of the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash, I would hurl it, as fast as I could, into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs. I would rather turn these neighborhoods [ghettos] inward with jobs programs. Even if it was the equivalent of the urban CCC, if it was New Deal-type logic, it would be doing less damage than creating a war syndrome, where we’re basically treating our underclass. The drug war’s war on the underclass now. That’s all it is. It has no other meaning.

I tend to disagree with the some of Simon’s argument, which is fairly anti-capitalist (you should watch the whole video), but it just goes to show the breadth of drug legalization support.

For decades, people have been bemused by the fact that adults under the age of 21 can, in the United States, buy a lottery ticket, smoke tobacco, and even die for their country — but they can’t consume alcohol. Carefully noting this inequity, Oregon legislators have decided to rectify the situation by attempting to raise the legal smoking age to match the drinking age. Not only that, but one of the bill’s co-sponsors wants to make nicotine available by prescription only.

I’d like to say that I don’t think this has a chance of passing, but given the legislative successes that the anti-tobacco crowd has enjoyed of late, I think I’d be premature in doing so.

In related news, the Oregon Commentator will be holding its Second Annual Great American Smoke-In sometime during Spring Term (preferably when the weather gets a bit nicer). Watch this space and keep an eye on the magazine for details.

(via Radley Balko)

The ODE published an anonymous letter today, titled “Speaking out,” which related a tale of sexual assault. It’s a usual story of date rape: I thought you were my friend – I thought I was safe – I got sauced up on drugs and booze until I was comatose – I can’t believe you took advantage of me – I am traumatized – You are a jerk.

I am aware that I’m opening a real can of worms here because such conflict exists between the  personal responsibility and “blaming the victim” crowds. I just don’t think letters like these serve any purpose (outside of being therapeutic for the author). Sexual assault prevention advocates often defend the practice of passing out drunk by saying “girls have the right to have fun.” That’s true; they do. It could also be said that you have the right to sleep on train tracks, but that isn’t going to stop you from getting hit by a train. Which brings me to my point: No one ever talks about what is really important – not getting raped in the first place.

As the old adage goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” How come there isn’t any emphasis on teaching women that if they incapacitate themselves with drugs people will take advantage of them given half a chance?

If you know why, tell me all about it in the comments.

It seems that the Anti-Smokers group on campus finally has a time-table for getting rid of those dirty, evil smokers, two years. This according to an article in today’s Ol’ Dirty.

The Smoke-Free Task Force recommended to the University administration Monday that the University become a smoke-free area within two years. The University Senate will discuss the report during its March meeting, but the ultimate decision lies with the administration.

The decision lies with an administration that I think could choose to “enforce” this.

Ahh, it’s fun when people want the University to waste money. Instead of having DPS not do anything when crimes and such actually happen on campus now we can have them not do anything when someone smokes on campus.

I don’t remember when the last smoke-in was but I’m thinking another one might need to be called to order.

Breaking news from Teh Daily Squeak: Our old friend and former UO psychology professor Deb Frisch is facing felony charges of physical harassment and illegal use of mace/pepper spray/taser. (The charge is a catch-all, so I can’t say for certain which one.)

The inimitable Ms. Frisch has wisely rejected a settlement offer from the DA and decided to take the matter to trial, where I’m sure she will be found certifiably Not Crazy by a jury of her peers.

To catch up on all the Frisch fun, check out the archive. There’s also the Deb Frisch comic, which is one of the best things the Commentator has ever run in its 25 year history. If you want the history of the long, sordid affair, also look at the Deb Frisch Timeline.

One of the perks of being a “media outlet” is that we’re privy to press releases from the Eugene Police Department, complete with mugshots. For example:

Adam Wayne Klunder, age 21, a campus area resident and who identified himself as a University of Oregon senior on a full academic scholarship, has been charged with one count of Burglary in the first degree and investigators are looking into additional charges as they begin to link the recovered property to additional burglaries.

Among the items found at his residence were “high ticket” articles such as several flat screen televisions, numerous laptops, iPods, and Xbox game systems.  Based on the property detectives believe Klunder may have been responsible for as many as 20 burglaries throughout the campus area, which occurred while students were on winter break.

The Ol’ Dirty isn’t known for the high quality of its letters-to-the-editor, but one Chelsea Beebe really brought her A-game in the latest issue:

My personal experience with the Department of Public Safety has been a terrible one. Freshman year, my car was parked in the dorm parking lot, literally 20 feet from the dorm, and it got stolen. Where was DPS? Luckily my car was recovered, but it needed repairs, so while it was in the shop I got a rental. I went to DPS to get a temporary parking permit for my rental car, and not only did they make me pay for it, they would only let me have a permit that lasted two days at a time. I was busy and didn’t have time to renew the permit at one point, and only two hours after it had expired I had three tickets. So, lets recap: My car got stolen under DPS’s watch and it doesn’t have the courtesy to give me a free temporary permit for my rental car? That’s just not right. I wrote to you because four years later, I still fume about it and other DPS injustices (such as ticketing my fiancee’s car 10 minutes after his meter expired). I think UO students need to be represented and DPS needs to realize it has some unfair ticketing practices.

Unfortunately, it’s Finals Week and, with Christmas Break nearly upon us, the likelihood of the Emerald publishing a response to Ms. Beebe’s philippic seems slim. The Commentator would therefore like to address the following open letter to little Chelsea:

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