Editorial

Double Exposure

There are two sides to every story: the side you hear and the truth. Nary a bad word is ever said about the Athletic Department by anyone, especially the local media. According to every media outlet that covers Duck athletics, including the Emerald, everything is peaches and cream in AD-land, a place where no one ever fights, no one ever cries and Uncle Ernie lulls his players to sleep with bed-time stories. What no one realizes is that this rosy image is the result of a ruthless, sophisticated spin machine - a machine dedicated solely to preserving its programs' post-orgasmic glow.

It is for this reason alone that you haven't heard about the strife within the basketball program since Ernie Kent's take-over. Fights in the locker room, revocation of juice-machine privileges, key players leaving due to conflicts with Kent and even a player being forced off the team are hushed by the Athletic Department. Media Services - the AD's frighteningly Orwellian Ministry of Truth - cranks out press releases by the barrel load to cover up for unflattering reality, sometimes with flights of pure fancy.

With the extreme actions that Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals takes against the University's animal researchers, you'd think they would sorely need a Media Services of their own. Luckily, SETA escapes the need for spin of any kind, if only because both the University and the ASUO have turned a blind eye to their destructive antics.

Due to this, the only exposure the average student has with SETA is from the group's own basically benign activism: handing out leaflets, organizing petition drives and pathetic protests such as their annual cage on 13th Ave. It is through this sort of activism that students derive a picture of SETA as mainly harmless, if a little annoying.

Students would certainly be surprised if they knew of SETA's Jekyll & Hyde nature. Professors who are the targets of their "activism" report fearing the destruction of their research at SETA's hands, being intimidated on the streets when recognized and being harassed both at work and at home. It is this SETA - the group that may very well be crossing the line between protest and criminal menacing - that only a handful have seen but everybody should be aware of.

There are no questions about the criminality of Michael Dixon's activities. Nevertheless, the story Dixon and his ardent supporters in student government and programs are telling is that Dixon is a wonderful guy and a dedicated student leader who has been unfairly and randomly maligned by an irresponsible Emerald. To his credit, Dixon also makes no bones about the fact that he did, indeed, get himself into serious trouble. He and his friends also say that Dixon has learned a lesson and is on the mend.

So which is it? Either he's an absolute gem of a human being who one day woke up and suddenly decided to abuse a position of trust he held within University Housing (an abuse that totaled over a $5,000 loss to the University) or he's a fellow with a checkered past who now holds the keys not just to a few dorm rooms, but to $6 million in student fees.

You're being screwed everyday by people in power promoting personal agendas by masking truth and withholding accountability. Every organization on this campus that has any influence at all has a fair number of dirty secrets it is trying to keep from your eyes and ears. For the love of God, get confrontational, shoot from the hip, do whatever it takes to make the spinmeisters aware of the fact that you know the score.

Call the ticky-tack fouls, send those boys to the line and make them prove themselves at the charity stripe - they will be so used to battling dirty on the inside and getting the easy put backs, post-ups and slam dunks that they will be uncomfortable at the line with nothing stopping them but their own flaws, inhibitions, and lies.

What will they do when they are removed from the physicalities of the game and forced to stand naked at the line of honesty?

What will you do when you realize that your foundational ideas and beliefs can't capitalize when the game's on the line?