ODE columnist Matt Petryni had a column yesterday laying into OSPIRG, probably one of the harshest criticisms of the group I’ve ever seen run in the Ol’ Dirty. To wit:

In the past, I have volunteered with OSPIRG. While there was some good work done, the program’s incredible overhead and fundraising operation clearly consumed most of its resources. It should come as no surprise, then, that more than two-thirds of its ASUO stipend goes not to on-campus work, but to staffers in Portland, Ore.

[…]

Now, let me be clear. If you want to donate to the harassment squad that trolls our campus on a near-daily basis, that’s perfectly fine with me. Should students be forced to pay a portion of their incidental fee to a program some do not agree with, few actually understand, and almost no one can account for? The answer is clearly no.

Yeah, get some! This is what the ODE opinion page needs more of: strongly worded columns about concrete campus issues. Petryni wins a beer next time I see him at the bar. Don’t get me wrong; I love reading Anastasia STRGAR’s sex columns, but …

It’s Halloween – the most riot-tastic time o’ the year in Eugene! Unfortunately, some people are trying to poop on everyone’s party:

Here at Oregon, numerous events are posted on Facebook and many more are flying under the radar. Drunken revelry is a definite for this Halloween weekend. In order to stay out of trouble, the ODE advises you to consider the choices you’re making this weekend.

We, too, advise you to consider the choices you’re making. Here’s a couple of tips to make sure you have a safe and happy holiday:

• Remember, don’t pick up the tear gas canisters with your hands. They are hot. Instead, kick them back at the police officers.
• Dumpsters, when lit on fire, are a great source of warmth and merriment for you and your friends.
• Cops only have as much authority as you let them have. You gotta fight the power, man!
• If a house party won’t let anymore people in, it just means they’re trying to hog all the young ladies and booze for themselves. Enter that party by any means necessary.
• Ladies: thanks to the wonders of the free market, you now have a wide array of costumes to choose from, such as Slutty Nurse, Slutty Witch, Slutty Devil, Slutty French Maid, Slutty Angel, Slutty Pirate, Slutty Slut and Sarah Palin. Choose carefully; you wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression.
• Try and find large mobs of people to travel with. Safety in numbers!
• That dude did just talk shit to you. I heard him, bro. You better shove a broken beer bottle in his throat.

Facing decreasing ad revenue and increasing production costs, the ODE, like many papers around the country, is slimming down it’s print content and moving online. As part of its new strategy, the ODE is finally forcing its staff to blog. Prognosis: delicious!

For example, check out the glorious prose of “Partygoing gets treacherous as weather gets cold” by Opinion Editor Anastasia Strgar in “Our Words,” the ODE opinion blog (emphasis added):

I went to a party on Friday night. It was themed and at a frat [!] just down the road from my apartment. Quite convenient, I figured. It wouldn’t be too long of a walk in my scanty little dress that I’d bought earlier that day at the street fair for only five dollars- what a bargain. As I sexified myself [!!], I danced to loud music in my room and pre-gamed it with my roommate and some friends who would be accompanying me. They were in similarly scant outfits and we were ready to party!

Reality hit us hard across the face [?!] as we stepped outside into the bitter cold of the early October evening. It had begun to get cold just a few days before. Fall seems to do that. We all could feel it, but all the same, walking to class when it’s cold in jeans and a sweatshirt isn’t quite as extreme as going in dresses meant for hot, sticky summer nights.

We made it to the party only to find that as soon as we stepped inside, we’d entered the haven of a hot, sweaty college party. Relieved, we threw ourselves into the orgy that is a frat party [!!!] and instantly, our goosebumps disappeared.

[…]

Even when it’s pouring rain and we have to risk our hair getting wet, college girls will almost always choose to party. Because getting dressed up, dancing, and making out with cute college boys is worth it.

In completely unrelated news, Strgar is hereafter invited to all future Commentator parties.

P.S. In fairness, the sports blog and photo blog have a lot of potential, and I’m glad the Emerald is finally getting a handle on this whole “Internet” thing.

In today’s Ol’ Dirty, Matt Petryni has done the world a favor by distilling the last eight years of the progressive movement’s bitterness, victim posturing, and recent Obamic messianism into what is surely going to top peoples’ lists for “Cutest Little Article of the Year“, starting thusly:

Since the 1980s, political liberals have largely been thought of as the minority. Their views were quickly discredited, their programs systematically dismantled, their diverse ranks were painted as latte-sipping demons who sought to micromanage the lives of “real Americans.” Any attempt to deny this is to deny reality… 

The liberal voice was, for the most part, silenced.

Thankfully, the revolutionary vanguard was struggling to ensure that folks like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Jon Stewart, every pot-smoking, bedreadlocked college kid, and millions of anti-whatever protesters were spared a midnight visit from the Gestapo during these last 28 years of jackbooted oppression!

After this pouting, he intones a litany of boilerplate college progressive criticisms of the Bush Administration and Republicans in general, with a dash of hyperbole thrown in for good measure (“Our economic crisis, now front and center, will likely rival even the Great Depression in its severity.” The horror!)

But all that’s just a warm-up for the real meat of the article: Liberals only want to help, so vote for change! After informing his readership that there is no “good” way to resolve our country’s problems, he assures us that “[t]he only true way to effectively resolve the crisis we face is the liberal way”:

Liberals seek not to overburden the taxpayer with regulations, with social and diplomatic causes. They seek only to prevent the taxpayer from being burdened with the consequences of not pursuing those causes and regulations. Without levees, cities flood. Without allies, wars fail. Without regulations, greed prevails, and dangerous risks are assumed. And without environmental protections, natural resources are degraded. Without planning and prevention, consequences and costs result.

All of these terrible things are, of course, assumed to be the natural by-products of “conservative” boogeymen and their disastrous policies, which he goes on to limply admit that are arguably not to blame at all.

Instead of attempting to actually refute that criticism, however, Petryni simply suggests that we, as a society, “change” and start living up to our responsibilities as members of the “American community”, by which he presumably means “vote for Barack Obama”. After all, once Obama is President, things’ll be so great that taxes won’t even really be like taxes anymore — they’ll really be more like “investments”! Whether or not American “investors” will be “investing” their money in stuff like billions of dollars of bailouts for the financial industry and Detroit is left unsaid.

“What a monumental fuck-up,” indeed.

Has the Ol’ Dirty Emerald joined the fight of The Oregonian’s hack-of-an-editor Sandy Rowe in transforming daily newspapers into complete rags? On the front page of today’s Ol’ Dirty is maybe four inches of news. The cutout of LaGarrett Blount in a teaser is the same size of actual news story on the front page. Dirty, what are the students paying you for? What a joke.

• Sports Editor Andrew Grief has an interesting article about the rise in applications for concealed carry permits in the wake of budget cuts that have gutted the Lane County Sheriff’s Office:
  

Faced with longer response times and fewer deputies, many of the 93,500 Lane County residents who live outside city limits in the county believe having a concealed handgun is a necessary step. The Sheriff’s Office expects a record of more than 1,250 permits to be issued this year in the county, up from 680 in 2005, 811 in 2006 and 950 last year. 

Huh. It’s almost like people feel like their Second Amendment rights are valuable and necessary when the government cannot provide for their well-being.

• The OC’s own Drew Cattermole and his upcoming radio spot, The Cattermole Minute were mentioned in a story about upcoming ASUO programs. The Commentator, however, is disapponted that Senior News Editor Robert D’Andrea (who got a special birthday shout-out at last week’s roller derby) mistook Drew’s ASUO president bid last year as “not-so-serious”. We can assure Mr. D’Andrea that Drew Cattermole was deadly serious. Deadly.

• A whole page of re-printed Associated Press stories, with a couple more spread around the issue for good measure? Really? I mean, seriously… this shit shows up every day in Firefox’s built-in RSS news feed. It seems like that space could’ve been better used re-printing some of the more colorful posts left on the comments section of Jeffrey Dransfeldt’s infamous piece on wrestling. I mean, there’s 813 of them to choose from, and most of them are more fun to read than a recycled story about Ehud Olmert from a few days ago. Highlights include:
  • “Jeffery, maybe Mommy didn’t love you enough. I don’t know what your problem is, but the anger you carry from your early puberty is going to hamper you throughout life. Taking glee in the demise of people who have sacrificed more than you will ever know is just a sign of the sickness that dwells in your tortured little body and shadow of a soul. Your rantings sound like those of the VT shooter.”
  • “Your arrogance is disgusting.”
  • “With your neck as shown in the picture, you’re lucky you broke your arm.”

When ASUO President Dotters-Katz kicked the OSA campus coordinator off campus, you could almost hear the heads exploding at OSA headquarters. Now, like any good lobbying group that has been called out as unnecessary, the OSA is in full-on self-justification mode. And it begins with a story in the Daily Emerald, in which we are introduced to a troubling side effect of Dotters-Katz’ rash move: without OSA there will be no voter registration at the UO. Well, according to the student body president of PSU, anyway.  “I let him know how hard it’s been to not have (a campus organizer) for the last couple of months,” ASPSU President Hannah Fisher confides to the ‘Ol Dirty. “If U of O fails then we all fail,” says Fisher of the OSA’s statewide voter reg effort. “If it’s not broken you don’t fix it.”

But Dotters-Katz doesn’t seem too concerned about the dire warnings from Portland. In fact, his executive has publicly committed to registering 10,000 students at the U of O. Dotters-Katz tells the ODE: “there’s going to be a huge presence on campus, and we expect that we will met our goal due to the effective planning of my team and the work of a huge corps of volunteers.” From classrooms to club sports to the Athletic Department, Dotters-Katz plan seems to have left nowhere to hide from hordes of voter registrators. And yes, he does somehow expect to do this with help only from Building Votes, a Bus Project-affiliated initiative.

And what of the criticism from Fisher that “not having a vote organizer on campus is going to make it a lot harder to meet his voter registration goal?” Well, if we look back to the last election year, we can see that the OSA (via then-Legislative Affairs Honcho Emily McLain) registered “only” 6,876 students. Now that’s quite an accomplishment, but it also means that if Dotters-Katz only achieves half of his goal he’ll still nearly match the OSA’s last election year result. And he’ll have saved students $30k, or over one dollar per student per year in the process. So when you inevitably get hassled to register to vote this fall, please just do so. It’s an easy way to reward leadership that takes on challenges to save students money, instead of outsourcing a simple job to a cynical lobbying group.

The Emerald today is carrying a guest commentary by Dr. Jerry Rosiek, who expresses concern over the recent controversies over the University’s affirmative action and diveristy hiring programs. Far from being concerned about whether or not the accusations are true, Dr. Rosiek is instead worried that the lawsuit filed by Joseph Wade might “distract” people from more important things — namely heaping accolades upon the diversity program:

The danger is that the University’s new leaders will be distracted by things like Wade’s suit, and will not appreciate the important work that has recently been done by the OIED under Dr. Martinez’s leadership.

Never you mind the man behind the curtain!

(more…)

The double feature you’ve been waiting for all year is finally here. 32 pages of Hate + 16 pages of Hack Attack = the apocalypse – if not that, at least one uproarious read. Enjoy.

Deborah Bloom, opinion writer, known for her ODE column “Anything but Apathy” has something to say about her newest and last column, published today. The piece, linked previously, was edited by Elon Glucklich, and according to Deb’s comment on the ODE website, was published with a completely different intent than the original. Luckily for us, Deb also posted in her comment, which *UPDATE* has now been taken down.

In response, Elon sent Deb an email calling her writing self-involved drivel and wishing her a great summer.

It’s been suggested by one of my OC colleagues that Deb is welcome to stop by the office if she needs a shoulder to cry on. I think I know someone that may have two ready and willing shoulders available, eh Vincent?

Also, have an amazingly great super-stellar awesome summer guys!

In case you missed it, ODE Opinion Editor Elon Glucklich took on the 2nd Amendment yesterday in a piece titled “Gun argument lost in divide between sides.” He was spurred in large part by our latest issue, which contained a couple of articles about guns. In fact ol’ Elon mentions us in the lede! But here’s Glucklich mending bridges on the contentious topic:

Like I said before, my narrow-mindedness has prevented me from rationally approaching the issue of gun-ownership. Even now, liberal guilt pangs within me for having written a hundred words without demonizing gun owners as backasswards white trash that threaten our children’s safety.

A more reasonable and considered statement I have never read. Of course, the rest of the article can’t maintain these lofty heights of rhetoric, but it’s still pretty good. See how many factual errors about guns you can find.

UPDATE: Turns out Elon was on Lars Larson yesterday talking about his opinion piece. I’ve been trying to find some sort of audio or transcription of it, but Larson has the worst website ever.

The ODE issued an editorial today criticizing plans to make campus smoke-free. However, it didn’t take an absolutist stance on the issue. Instead, the editorial suggests placing designated smoking areas on campus. From the article:

Further regulating the areas where people can smoke on campus would be a more reasonable, effective and generally welcomed change. People who smoke cigarettes right outside of campus buildings are a nuisance to non-smokers who must pass through the toxic cloud on their way to class, but they shouldn’t be forced from campus. Smoking is a vice and an addiction. This is common knowledge, and as a society we have chosen, as illustrated by our laws, to maintain cigarettes as a legal right to citizens who choose to consume them. If cigarettes are indeed banned on campus, smokers will simply go elsewhere when their nicotine cravings strike, or more likely will just flout the law and light up anyway. Nevertheless, they won’t stop smoking. University officials need to realize when their attempts to regulate student behavior will have palpable effects, and when they will fall on deaf ears.

Many of the other Commentators and I believe that a much better solution than both of these proposals would be to simply enforce the existing rules that ban smoking within a certain number of feet from a building entrance. The majority of complaints about smoking on campus are due to people smoking in front of doors. If the rules were actually enforced, I don’t think the smoking ban would have half the support it does.

Ol’ Dirty Editor-in-Chief Laura Powers has filed three grievances against the Senate Vice President Patrick Boye, Sen. Billy Hatch and the remainder of the Senate over-realized fund committee for deliberately violating Oregon’s Public Meeting Law.

The Student Senate over-realized committee met last night in what members said was an unofficial meeting after no public notice of the meeting was provided 24 hours in advance, a violation of Oregon Public Meetings Law.

A notice of the meeting was e-mailed at 2:06 p.m. The meeting began at 7 p.m.

… Powers told the committee it would not be in compliance with the law and the meeting should be postponed. Senate Vice President Patrick Boye said the meeting would continue in an informal capacity.

The committee discussed the proposals for over-realized fund projects, did not take minutes, did not follow Robert’s Rules of Order and used a voting system of thumbs up, thumbs down, and sideways thumbs, Powers said. It is unknown if they took a recess to play Heads Up Seven up.

Senate President Athanasios Papailiou sent out public notice last night at 7:01:39 p.m. that the Senate over-realized committee will be having a meeting today at 7:00pm in Room 175 of the Law School – in order to approve the proposal that was created last night – and that the Senate meeting has been moved to 7:20 p.m. I hate to be a stickler, but the notice went out 23 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds before the meeting, making it also invalid.

Powers said she requested the senators be penalized one month’s worth of stipends.

This is the lede of the ODE’s front-page story on Ben Linder, a university student who was killed by contras while working in Nicaragua (emphasis mine):

Inspired by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a socialist political party that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and helped some of the nation’s poorest people, Ben Linder of Portland moved to Nicaragua after graduating from the University of Washington in 1983.

That’s odd, considering what the Library of Congress Country Study on Nicaragua has to say (once again, emphasis mine):

In its eleven years in power, the Sandinista government never overcame most of the economic inequalities that it inherited from the Somoza era. Years of war, policy missteps, natural disasters, and the effects of the United States trade embargo all hindered economic development. The early economic gains of the Sandinistas were wiped out by seven years of sometimes precipitous economic decline, and in 1990, by most standards, Nicaragua and most Nicaraguans were considerably poorer than they were in the 1970s.

“Homeless frequent West University area”

The real prize in this ODE article, though, is a quote from a member of Eugene’s thin, blue line, Officer Jennifer Bills:

Bills said many homeless people also have co-occurring disorders: They may suffer from both a mental disorder and a dependency on alcohol or drugs.

“These people are not cool, not a novelty. They are mentally ill,” she said. “You don’t treat people with cancer like they’re a cool novelty.”

What?