offer an alternative to people stuck in the town economy. Changing this is a political problem: no one can or should force a change in lifestyle on those to whom the car has become a necessity. These people are victims of the economy, and their reaction to parking restrictions is rarely to encourage transportation alternatives. Instead there has to be broad recognition of the problem, and concerted action taken to gradually change the layout of the town. Unfortunately, the city government is calling for more sprawl, not less. The most promising political units for action against the city are the neighborhood groups. Eugene, a city of about 100,000 people, is officially divided into 19 neighborhoods. The groups most sympathetic to making structural changes are the 3 surrounding the University. But to implement the necessary changes, they need some control over their own districts, and some of their own tax money. Wresting control and money from city, county, state and federal government is a problem familiar to most advocates of social change. Although Alexander has no pattern for effecting political change, The Experiment has helped to provide a forum for these issues. Gap Christopher Alexander is not the first person to feel that "people can only have a genuine effect on local government when the units of local government are autonomous, self-governing, self-budgeting communities, which are small..., Politicians, administrators, financiers and big business executives are not threatened by Alexander's preference for independent and democratic communities. After all, independence is already part of the ideology in this country. But there is little autonomy or democracy at the University, or in the surrounding political regions for that matter. This is not necessarily an ideological defieiency. Winter/Spring 1991 RAIN Page 39 National ideologies are so abstract that it is easy to believe that they reflect reality. The bureaucracies of modem nations rule with impunity by keeping a great distance between the people and the Capital, center of decisions and rhetoric. It is easier to fool people at a distance. In the community of a college campus, however, it is a little harder to fool people. Faculty and their students have some time to examine problems close at hand, and Alexander helped to create regulations to allow their participation. But the regulations have not lead to direct democracy, only a very distant representative democracy. The transition from an ideology to a working system of full participation, a genuine community and culture of egalitarianism, would be a great leap at any University. Hierarchical and authoritarian relationships are the norm at schools with the authority of accreditation. This limits equitable discussion. The resulting curricula are irrelevant to most students. Everywhere on campus, near graduation time, students can be overheard expressing disappointment in the direction offered by the University. These students, and not only the star pupils, will be citizens shaping the future. Does The Oregon Experiment do anything for them? Although there is little opportunity for students to participate in direct democracy, people who on many campuses might not interact are talking more, collaborating to resolve issues. This is certainly something that would be part of Utopia University, so it is probably unnecessarily contentious to claim that the implementation of The Experiment only proceeded as far as needed to keep campus activism cooled to below the revolutionary boiling point. Protests on campus today are happily plentiful. There are many more issues to be discussed than the ones in the planning office, such as the University's social role, its elitism, and its increasingly warped, establishment curriculum. The Oregon Experiment has made the work ahead a little easier.
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