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Deja Vu can either be a great experience, as is the case when you find yourself cracking open a new bottle of Jack and have the strange feeling you’ve broken that seal before, or it can be a terrible, disheartening instance of realizing you’ve already banged your head against the monstrous, unforgiving wall that is the ridiculous University of Oregon freak show. Unfortunately, that momentary nausea is all that a levelheaded student is left with now, as this year is shaping up to have all the earmarks of another year of administration debacles, ASUO malfeasance and galling acts of political correctness run amok.
The following are just a few of the problems that highlight the annual orgy of cosmic injustice.
Back of the Bus, White Boy.
At this university, Rosa Parks is sitting up front and she’s not taking any crap from Caucasian males. Possibly the most outlandish and insulting move this year has come directly from the office of the president and his legal dream team, who apparently have very little understanding of Title IX. After a complaint was lodged against the university for providing the Safe Ride service solely to women, General Counsel Melinda Grier told the Emerald that she couldn’t understand how the Federal Office of Civil Rights could possibly think that it was wrong to serve only one segment of the population. So now the administration has cooked up a plan to serve all but one segment - the Night Ride shuttle, which should begin operation by summer, will now serve men but will be targeted to those segments traditionally thought by liberals to be especially burdened, such as the gay community, men of color and transgenders. All we need now is a gay Polynesian prostitute with Spina Bifida and we’ve got ourselves a whole new little yellow school bus for Larry the Leper. How about we just make one Title IX violation trade for another: give us back our goddamn baseball team and you can keep your women-only service and everyone will be happy.
Pro Player Hall
The administration has had the uncomfortable issue surrounding the naming rights of Grayson/McKenzie Hall. As reported in this issue, the former law school building had to be renamed after the donor was found to have embezzled the funds he paid to the University Foundation to get his name slapped on the doors and printed on campus maps. Once the university illuminati realized it faced a lawsuit by parties with claims on that money, and once it became clear that Grayson had stiffed them on half of his pledged donation, the decision to temporarily rename the building after a polluted Willamette tributary river. The foundation is likely to seek another donor in the coming year, and if there aren’t any rich alums ready to fork over the cash, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see the organization seek out a deal with a junk food company to compete with the high class naming of Oregon State’s Reser’s Stadium. No official word has been issued, but we’d put our money on Political Science majors spending a lot of time in the Sizzler Hall salad bar line next year.
Nilda and Joy’s Stalingrad.
The ASUO Executive wasted no time this year creating their own mischief. After working to cover up questionable incidental fee spending practices by ethnic student groups they fired former controller and current Commentator business manager Justin Sibley ostensibly for helping news organizations legally locate information on the misdeeds. After purging their perceived enemy, the pair have since turned their attention to the exhausting work of hunkering down in their office place and offering no evidence of effectively leading students in any meaningful direction.
Besides these offenses that have already occurred, there are surely more to come this year, as there are still the ASUO elections in winter and a spring ball for protestors to don their cheapest slogans as if they were going out of style.
It is a natural response to look around for the nearest bathtub full of warm water and a razor blade and look for the quick exit out of this hell. But that is probably not the best bet for long-term success in improving the local environment, so the only recourse for students weary of the endless absurdity of The School That Time Forgot is to start telling everyone around them that the university must join the new world, where equal rights still apply to white males who need a safe ride home, where campus buildings should only be renamed once a decade and where the student body representatives have at least a small amount of integrity and an IQ of 75 or greater.
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