Posted: Sunday, May 6, 2007 12:00 am
Why so old-fashioned on advice?
Why does the Sunday paper continue to publish the anachronistic screeds of parenting commentator John Rosemond? I've read several of his columns and I still don't know what he's for, but I sure know what he's against: apparently any parenting philosophy that suggests children should be treated with patience and respect.
Also, he refers to those he doesn't agree with as "limp-wristed." Classy. Is that the best we can do? Is there not a parenting columnist out there with a less juvenile world-view?
Ted Brekken, Corvallis
More provosts and deans at OS?
Recent stories about the absorption of various departments and schools into others at OS(U) seem to miss the point.
At OS(U), the provost, and perhaps the president, is trying to transform the staid Land Grant school into a third or second tier university. It is more than conceivable that the College of Liberal Arts will be merged with the College of Science. The E-Campus division has already been merged with Extension. Instead of departments of Biochemistry or Microbiology or Botany, one can sense a push for a Department of Biology with sub-components of cellular, molecular and organismal biology with perhaps emphasis on biochemistry. I can envision a College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences that would gather up a grouping of agriculture, forestry, botany, etc and, after a suitable time in Corvallis, perhaps send it over to the OS(U) campus at Bend or perhaps LaGrande or Roseburg.
As a graduate in Animal Sciences, I certainly would welcome an agriculture school home where the locals (students and residents) weren't ashamed of straw, manure and judicious field burning. My only hope is that consolidation should also include the high priced administrators as well as the classified dishwasher.
Please, we don't need more provost- or dean-level positions.
What bothers me both as a graduate of OS(U) and a taxpayer is a lack of real direction by the OS(U) folks as well as the OUS administrators.
Presently we have 10 campuses and two centers in the OUS system. How about consolidating them? Does a state with 3.5 million residents need this many schools in OUS? We certainly can't seem to afford it. And frankly speaking, I would rather spend money in K-12 levels to teach students to read and write, rather than spend even more money to do it remedially at the college level.
If OS(U) students want liberal arts courses, send them to Eugene. It would be cheaper to pay for a bus and driver than faculty and administrators. Or have them go to E-Campus for the needed credits. The idea that you have to have a brick and mortar school, faculty and administrators is equivalent to saying that books must only be purchased in a physical store. It might be nicer, but it is not the only way.
How about something more drastic? Let's create an instructional faculty whose sole job it is to teach. While there are benefits in the sciences to having instructors who are also doing research, it makes more sense to pay for instructional personnel separately, and for those who are researchers only, require that they get their salary from grants. So we would get people dedicated to teaching as well as those dedicated to research.
Don Chen, Corvallis
Cartoonist distorted the truth
No one expects the funny pages to reflect the same level of journalistic fairness that news pages do, but when a cartoonist gets it as wrong as Garry Trudeau did recently, it's worth taking the time to correct the record.
Garry Trudeau has made a tidy living for the past four decades poking fun at pop culture and politics, but his pen shouldn't come with a license to blatantly distort the truth - and that's what he did on April 15.
Comics are meant to make us laugh, and I like a good yuk as much as anyone, but there's nothing funny about the mean-spirited mistruths Garry Trudeau tried passing off as satire in a recent strip. James Dobson has been openly critical of two of the men Trudeau alluded to, saying he couldn't vote for either. That's not the position of a partisan, it's the boldness of a man of principle.
Based on the news reports I've heard, Dobson has made some of the same points as Trudeau about some of these men - their walk hasn't backed up their talk on the issues that social conservatives care about.
Trudeau appears to support gay marriage, as the cartoon's second-to-last panel indicates. Maybe that's why he took this unwarranted shot at Dobson - a vocal proponent of defending marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Dislike the guy as much as you want, but it's not Dobson whose blind allegiance to a political ideology is on display here.
Betty Burge Ferren, Albany
Today in History: Rest of the story
"Today in History" (April 29, Opinion page) states: "In l86l, Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union."
Was there any debate? What happened to Maryland dissenters who had serious objections to President Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional war preparations? What happened to Maryland newspaper editors and legislators who favored allowing the Southern states to leave the union peacefully? By staying in the union, Maryland did not avoid the full weight of an oppressive military occupation by Lincoln's government.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, in his book "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War" writes: "The majority of Maryland's political leaders favored peaceful secession in l86l, not necessarily of Maryland but of the Southern Confederacy. However, they were all arrested by federal soldiers under orders from President Lincoln, who suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and were never permitted to assemble in the state legislature to even debate the issue of secession."
DiLorenzo continues: "By September l86l Maryland was under complete military occupation. Lincoln was taking no chances that the Maryland legislature would convene to discuss secession - or even vote to remain neutral in the conflict - and sought to prohibit it from doing so by military force."
Maryland state legislators, a member of Congress, the mayor of Baltimore, and newspaper editors and publishers, were arrested and imprisoned at Fort Lafayette and other places. Others fled the state of Maryland.
David R. Prichard, Corvallis