Hate

I Hate Everyone

The student population not covered in this rant is small enough to fit in the Commentator office. What a coincidence.

I started my college career as an innocent 18-year-old, full of love and song in my heart, who was searching for wisdom and truth at the University of Oregon. Coming from a small town in rural southwestern Oregon and not knowing any better, I believed that it would be here that I could learn and mingle with the cream of the crop.

Four years have passed since I naively bought into that package of lies and luckily, I will be graduating from this wretched institution in June. Sometime during my four-year journey here I stopped caring for this University and the people who attend it. Not only did I stop caring, but I now find myself walking down 13th Avenue between classes staring at my fellow students with bitterness and contempt. I don't know most of these people, but I have a strong feeling that if I did get to know them, I wouldn't like them.

I have neither the time nor the desire to single out particular individuals and describe why I hate them. Instead, I will make broad generalizations about the different groups of students I have encountered during my time here. So please: kick back, grab a nice stiff Crown and Coke and enjoy my hate. (Note: Groups are not arranged in any order. I hate all groups equally unless specifically noted.)

WRC Protesters: You idiots are fresh in my mind, so let's start with you. For almost two months, your little agenda has been the hot topic of discussion here and has even gained national attention. Not only do I hate you, but I am embarrassed that I attend the same institution of higher learning as you.

If your goal was to drive donors away from the University and then ignorantly say you speak on behalf of the students, then congratulations, you have succeeded.

If your goal, however, was to stop inhumane labor practices by Nike in third world countries, then you failed. Knight pretty much gave the UO and the WRC the finger, so what cards do you have left to play? How are you supposed to regulate Nike now? There is no way that WRC regulators are going to enter privately owned factories now that Nike doesn't support your organization. So much for helping the people of third world countries.

Your strong-arm tactics will surely cause other apparel companies to pull out of developing nations and leave thousands jobless with no chance to industrialize. Without a chance to industrialize, these nations will remain third world countries. You are worse than any corporation that has ever set foot on foreign soil.

Athletes: Before I came to the UO the only thing I knew about it was Duck sports. I saw Oregon highlights as I grew up and was eager to meet these future superstars. Boy was I surprised to find that the majority of student athletes are border-line retarded, arrogant, and could care less about the fans who support them.

There are some student-athletes who are respectable human beings, and some are even halfway intelligent. But you'll usually find these people in sports that consistently lose money (that includes every sport save football and men's basketball).

What really irks me is that roughly 90% of these self-absorbed, egotistical football and basketball players don't even make it to the professionals, and those who do usually don't stay there too long. It is one thing to be an arrogant SOB if your next step is the NFL or the NBA, but when the best post-college offer you studs get is working at Hyundai or Romania Subaru (Oregon superstar point guard Kenya Wilkins once attempted to sell me a 1983 Subaru Brat), then it is time to get off your high-horse.

You may accuse me of being jealous. You're damn right. I bust my butt and what do I get? Two pages of space to spew my hate that will probably only be read by the editor, me, and some homeless person ready to wallpaper their box or wipe their butt with this issue. Foreigners: You read foreigners and automatically think that I hate people from outside the United States. No, my xenophobia reaches much further.

I'm talking about people from outside the state of Oregon. I'm sick and tired of these Washingtonians, Californians, and all the other out-of-state scum filling up space at my school.

Foreigners remind me of locusts. They swarm in from their overly populated states and fill our lecture halls (taking all the good seats, I might add), clutter the roads with their cars, and block the stairs in Rennie's when I'm trying to get downstairs to relieve myself of a few pitchers of domestic brew.

My question is: "Why are you here?" The UO has decent programs in psychology, journalism, business, and architecture, but are they so great that these people would pass up UCLA, UC-Davis, Berkeley, University of Washington, and the College of the Redwoods to come to Eugene?

Don't you have your own state universities to attend? Why do you have to come to mine? I want a down-to-earth Oregon education, not one tainted with the likes of you people. Frat Dicks and Sorority Sluts: It is not the mere membership in one of these organizations that would cause me to hate you, because I have friends who are Greeks, but there is a huge difference between those who simply live in a house and those who go full throttle at being a frat dick or sorority slut. Let me give you some definitions.

Frat Dick: One who lacks all social interaction outside of his fraternity. Constantly refers to everyone he knows as his "bro." Uses the words "sweet," "tight" or "phat" more than once per sentence: "Bro, that function last night was so phat, and we had so many tight girls and such a sweet time." Wears a fraternity related T-shirt more than once a week (dudes, this does include shirts that have the words "Shasta" or "Whistler" on them). Does not wear any clothes that do not say Abercrombie and Fitch somewhere on them. Exclusively dates girls in sororities.

Sorority Slut: One who lacks all social interaction outside of her sorority. Talks about other girls as being her "sis" or "big sis." Uses the words "like," "yucky" or "totally" more than once per sentence: "I was like so drunk and like he totally tried to kiss me, and I was like yucky, you totally gross me out." Wears any sorority related T-shirt more than once week (gals, this includes any references to "Barn Dance" or "Formals" too). Wears Abercrombie and Fitch hats pulled down over their eyes. Smells like the friggin' perfume section at the Bon. Has an orange luminescence from the tanning machine, exaggerated by the inch and a half of make-up they have on their face. Exclusively dates guys in fraternities, save for the occasional promiscuity with members of the football or basketball team.

People Who Insist on Raising Their Hands in Class: I pay good money to go here, and for that money I expect some type of learning to take place. I have found that the best learning takes place when the professor talks and I listen to what he or she has to say about a given subject. I don't learn by listening to you idiots ask questions.

Here's something for you hand-raisers to know: professors have email, telephones, and office hours for you to ask your personal questions. Class time is for me to learn, and I don't learn by listening to you ask something that was covered in the last class that you missed.

I particularly hate it when you don't just ask a question, but when some douchebag wants to share his or her opinion about something, or wants to throw in a personal anecdote from his or her past. No one cares what you think, where you have been, where you are going, or pretty much what you have to say about anything at all.

Try not talking. When you feel the urge to speak, just write it down and save it. Hopefully, someday you will grow out of this need to make pointless comments in public and you can say to yourself, "Thank God for Andy Combs."

The ASUO: Are you interested in training to be a future ineffectual bureaucrat? You have the perfect opportunity right here in the inner bowels of the EMU. What good does the ASUO do the common student? Not very much. It's pretty blatant, given the annual turnout at the polls. Approximately 88 percent of our student body didn't vote in the last general election.

Some would say that people only vote when they're upset about something, and low voter turnout is directly related to complacency. I beg to differ. Even though most UO students cannot comprehend how the ASUO operates (ASUO officers included), they do have enough understanding of the system to realize that the ASUO doesn't affect their lives. OSPIRG: OSPIRG has been pretty much beaten to death, but this group is always worth a couple of quick jabs.

I would like to know just how in the hell is the Heritage Forest campaign helping me as a UO student? The dollars I give OSPIRG should be going directly to issues that affect me as a student, e.g. renters' rights, tuition freezes, etc.

I don't want to save the Heritage Forests. I want the Heritage Forests clear-cut and slash-burned. My Stihl (that's a chainsaw, pinko) and I have downed many a tree in my lifetime, and I'm willing to try to take down a whole Heritage Forest by myself if I have to. Some of you city-slickers may like the trees, but contrary to popular belief, they do grow back.

My time ranting here is now almost done. I apologize in advance if you belong to one of these groups but do not fit the characteristics I describe and insult. If you belong to one of these groups and actually do fit these characteristics, then I'm sorry, but I truly do hate you.

Andy Combs, a senior majoring in Billiards, is Publisher of the Oregon Commentator