I Quit*

*Effective Date: September 26, 1994

I'm about to exit this university as I entered it--feeling vaguely unloved and persecuted, disgusted and yet oddly hopeful. I managed to survive my first twelve years of education by basing it on the promise that college would be the best time of my life. I hope that the promise was not fulfilled. It has to get better than this.

My final term at the University of Oregon has been remarkably similar to my high school years--petty bureaucrats who fancy themselves educators and scholars, have locked themselves in a fairly shabby Ivory Tower, and probably could not successfully distinguish their asses from holes in the ground, much less make a coherent distinction between political science and history. I've been taught the lesson that would have been helpful to know four years ago upon my entrance to this fine institution: a degree in political science doesn't matter--so sayeth Professor Skalnes, right before he decided that I couldn't have one.

Well, now that I've purged that bit of bile, I'll get on with it.

I like to think that I've made a difference here in the last four years. And my life has certainly changed drastically. It's just a pity that only I can see it. There are people on this campus and in this community who still believe that I chose this school (apparently with no small does of some perverse clairvoyance) because of one Owen Brennan Rounds. I won't go into the exact decision matrix that brought me to Eugene's patchouli and pot aromas instead of to American University's stench of bitterness toward Georgetown. However, I can assure you all that it had nothing to do with Mr. Brennan Rounds, charming though he may be.

There are those on this campus who think that if they interrogate me long enough, I'll crack and reveal to them the safe under the asbestos in my office where I keep the right-wing money. So to them, I offer my final response to the following questions:

1. Where do you get your money?
   Incidental fees to the tune of about $11,000 a year (roughly 22 cents per student per term), supplemented by my written grant requests, which have raised about $7000 over the last three years.

2. What is the source of the grants?
   The Collegiate Network, which is associated with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and countless other conservative organizations. The good news is, they give us the occasional grant, send us to the occasional conference, ask us for copies of the magazine, and leave us to do our own dirty work. I'm not even sure they like us very well, but we love them--if for no other reason than that they give us money and don't try to run the editorial positions.

3. How many people do you have on staff?
   Anywhere from 15 to 30 people regularly attend our staff meetings. We've got 20-some people in the staff box. And they include Asians, Jews, Hispanics, women, democrats, independents and republicans. So there.

4. How many issues do you put out each year?
   When I joined staff, we put out 12 or 13 issues. Now, we publish 15 issues, including double issues like this one, a summer issue for IntroDUCKtion, and some 32 page issues with full color covers. So there.

5. Why do you hate OSPIRG?
   I don't. But I've never been able to figure out how the incidental fee dollars that we spend on OSPIRG get spent on our campus. OSPIRG sends all of its money to Portland, claims that we get back most of our investment, but still has to come for the occasional special request for on-campus programming. I've got eight volumes of discovery in my office from a lawsuit against OSPIRG, and nowhere is there an account of how UO's OSPIRG money gets spent, on campus or off. So, yes, I got a little gleeful at the outcome of the recent election, and yes, I also think OSPIRG can serve a grand purpose here in Eugene. Maybe this lack of funds will give them all a little time for reflection. Maybe they'll even come upon that moment of unemployed clarity that befalls us all sooner or later. And maybe they'll get their acts together. I don't really care.

But I have a few questions of my own. I don't understand how the Commentator can print that OSPIRG is a money-laundering organization so the ASUO can call us evil while the Administration does nothing except perhaps look at their wingtips and ahem a few times. I don't understand how the Commentator can print that a new conduct code lacks due process in the same way (if not more so) than the old code did so the ASUO can call us evil while the Administration does nothing except look at their wingtips and ahem a few times. In fact, whenever we have called some discretion, wrong-doing or bit of outright corruption to the attention of this campus, nothing has happened except that the ASUO has called us evil while the Administration does nothing except perhaps look at their wingtips and ahem a few times.

I've spent some time in Johnson Hall getting to know the kids. Some of them give me warm fuzzies and think as I do. Some of them are outright liars. And in the middle sits President Frohnmayer, a President who does not believe in judicial review from his office, who is in fact content to sit back and let our system rape students collectively in the form of incidental fees, or individually by way of the conduct code.

And then he has the gall to send us a letter to incoming freshmen, requiring them to be engaged learners and active participants in the campus community and model citizens. Based on whose example, President Frohnmayer? Ben Unger's? If there is a God, God help us all.

I can understand how members of my staff get frustrated and enter into their first midlife crisis at 22. They think, misguided children that they are, that if we print it, someone might take notice and work to change it. In my four years, I've watched the opposite happen. We've printed it, alright, and people have noticed. And then they work overtime to ever more deeply entrench the corrupt and useless system that we have shown to be corrupt and useless.

We haven't ever had activism on our campus, with the probable exception of members of my staff, a few people in the JSU, the occasional odd-man-out in Suite Four, and a senator or two. What we have had is the realization of Focault's vision: we have a dichotomization of campus that manifests itself in one of two forms. We can be either blessed by God and on the side of Justice and Democracy, or we are Evil Incarnate. Take a look at the Constitution Court petitions, or any meeting of the Associated Students President's Advisory Committee. It's all about good end evil, those who are persecuting and the persecuted. And if you believed the popular rhetoric spewing out of Bill Miner and Ben Unger, you would think that them King Arthur and Sir Lancelot to the Commentator's fire-breathing dragon.

I've got news for them all. The Commentator is about irreverence and respect, cynicism and idealism. We have learned that people are by nature hypocrites. That's okay. But better to be hypocritical and still honest than one-sided and delusional. Unfortunately, this whole campus is one big delusion. The most fundamental realization I have had in the last six months--aside from the fact that I'll never eat pork products again so long as Poland is fresh in my memory--is that Eugene and this campus are not real. And for that reason alone, I submit my resignation effective September 26, 1994. If only I'd turned it in on time. I might not be paying so much for therapy.

Farrah Bostic, a senior majoring in Journalism, is Publisher Abroad of the Oregon Commentator