Page 38 RAIN Winter/Spring 1991 The students, however, do not know that they can initiate projects. Certainly schoolwork and play .interfere . with participation, and their brief stay in town hmd~rs. then interest in long-term planning. But they are apathetic m part because no one asks them anything. . The administration does not generally give to the campus community the political power to make decisi.o~s. Recently, despite overwhelming disapproval, the administration banned a rock group, The Grateful Dead, from playing on campus. At a public relations "meet th.e University President" chat with students, the President responded to criticism with patronizing generaliza~ons and bureaucratic doubletalk: the band was not banned, Its contract simply was not renewed. This was damage control for an administration that did not want to defend the Dead from people who complain about deadheads. If, however, the band was granted permission to play through a campuswide vote, the administration would have a mandate to allow the performances. At the University, a small committee will talk about a problem until they are sick of it, while others who would be keenly interested do not even know that it is being discussed. The fault does not lie with those who are supposed to disseminate this news. Responsibility lies with the very process of making decisions exclusively in small user groups. It is nearly impossible to reach out to everyone who might be interested. If instead the entire campus community was regularly informed and asked to make decisions, planning meetings would run very differently..More evidence would be brought before the public, and committee members could not rely solely on their own opinions. There are some projects that have been pulled out of The Experiment's planning process altogether. A small band of patricians has taken it upon themselves to spend millions of dollars from city and University funds to build a high-tech research park. Financially, parks like this are failing all over the country, but these lessons go unheeded, and public hearings on whether or not to build have long since stopped. This kind of arrogance would be much less likely if the whole campus community was regularly informed and asked to vote on policy. Those responsible for running the University assume, without evidence, that there must be high level, autocratic, administrative decision-makers on a campus of some 20,000 people. Of course, this assumption reflects power structures both inside and outside the campus. The campus community could publicly prioritized problem.s, and everyone would know that specific user subcommittees were forming. Committees could then justifiably make decisions within their own domain. As it is, the administrators are responsible to the state for their jobs, which means in practice that they are uninterested in encouraging students to make decisions. The Neighborhoods surrounding campus also need a say in both University and city affairs. The University has been mostly accommodating to neighborhood groups, but issues involving the city are nightmares. Tiny committees working "within the system" on tiny aspects of major problems have no way of coping with the city wi~out political mandates. Their impotence is directly visible in issues of transportation and housing. neighborhoods Before the 1960's, the University had a stranglehold on student activity, where the school acted in loco parentis, in place of parents. With the cultural upheaval of the 1960's, the University dropped the policy, but the result was not only student freedom. Corporate consumerism was given a free hand. The limitation on bureaucratic interference did not come with limits on corporate interference. The neighborhoods surrounding the University have taken a severe pounding during the penetration of the student market, and the changes in student needs, since the 1970's. The University has stopped acting in place ofparents, and Coporate America has tried to take the role. The University is a magnet to traffic in Eugene, being the town's single biggest business. But the automobile traffic, as distinct from pedestrian and bicycle traffic, stems from the inability of the immediately surrounding neighborhoods to provide housing, jobs, services and other marks of a community. Students often have jobs, and with tight schedules many must drive to school. Their jobs may require a car, and they are in little position to argue from an entry-level job in an economy in recession. There is a shortage of parking on the campus, which means there are too many cars. There are a spectacular number of bicycle riders on campus, because the campus proper is nearly impossible to get around by car. But when parking is tight, how can the campus community encourage more alternative transport when the surrounding community is built for automobiles? In Eugene, like in most of the US, shopping, child care, jobs and residential neighborhoods are all miles from each other. The Oregon Experiment fights to maintain a small, integrated, pedestrian community in the middle of a high-speed, far-flung suburbia. The influence of the University community is behind the building of bicycle paths and the maintenance of bus routes throughout Eugene. But these facilities do not
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