The Scene Home
Alumni Website
Online Community
Contact Us
Submit Class Notes

In Pursuit of Excellence
Head of the Class
Double Vision

Reader Feedback
Editor’s Note
Tidbits and Briefs
SOE’s New Direction
Pelton’s Five Years
Eaton Hall’s Renovation
Establishing a Gift Annuity
Alumni News
Advancing our Legacy
Tribute to Buzz Yocom
Helping WU One Smile at a Time

ONLINE ONLY
A Walk to Victory: Sammie's Journal
Alumni Cruise Photos
Alumni Holiday Party Photos

Changing Gears
Willamette s School of Education adopts new strategies to recruit students and innovative programs to cater to students needs.

The latest issue arrived at my home here in England today, and as usual I read through it and was, again, especially interested in the articles that set out the importance of honoring diversity. I especially appreciated the statement of Willamette’s president, which drew on his experience.

I came to Willamette in 1957 from the University of Washington where I had pledged to a fraternity until I found out that neither Black nor Jewish pledges would be allowed to be part of the fraternity. This was the common practice of fraternities in those days. I decided I did not want to be part of fraternity life.
My experience of Willamette in those days was that fraternities were very central to much of what took place on campus. I was not in a fraternity, but was involved in sports (tennis) and the honors program, which started with our year (as juniors in 1958).

I have very mixed memories about my undergraduate years at Willamette, and am delighted that there is presently the strong commitment to diversity. Have fraternities changed? Are they still central to the social life of Willamette? Where is the place for diversity in the midst of fraternity/sorority commitments?

With best wishes for your future issues,
Bob Bennett ’60

Dear Willamette,
You are so proud of the diversity you are achieving among your students and the high academic status of your students. Yet, simply by insisting on such a high academic standard for your students, you are excluding a group that could add so much depth to your university. There is a minority group you are actually very discriminatory towards. I know. My daughter was interested in Willamette. She maintained excellent grades and was involved in everything she could get her hands on. She always came out at the head of her class. Then she was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy and the condition began to take its toll on her physical body.

Being involved in extracurricular activities was out of the question. Just keeping up with academics, doctor appointments and unusual health situations was a full-time occupation. Yet she persevered and was involved in Running Start her junior and senior years. Every year since her junior year in high school, she dealt with a major health situation that would have sent the rest of us home to try again next year. She graduated from high school with her class and from junior college a year early with a 3.0. This sounds to me like the type of student Willamette enjoys mentoring. She had heard a lot about Willamette from her relatives who are alumnae, her mother, two grandparents, three uncles and an aunt. Consequently, Willamette was the first campus she visited. However, the condition had taken its toll on her G.P.A. and she’d had no extra time or stamina to pursue a lot of community service. One of the first things the academic counselor told her was Willamette doesn’t accept students with her type of G.P.A. (In fairness to Willamette, her G.P.A. was below a 3.0 at the time.)

My daughter is currently enrolled in a state university and doing very well. Yet Willamette’s attitude toward the disabled community has frustrated and disappointed me. Many disabled are just as intelligent as their able bodied counterparts. Yet, they can’t focus as intently on their studies because of health and physical situations. You harm your institution’s diversity when you discriminate against the disabled. They are becoming more and more a part of the every day world and your students need to be familiar with them and understand the disabled are regular people too.

I have searched The Scene for some time now as you have proudly spoke of your work to include minorities. I know you have disabled students (you had the foresight to have a disabled student show my daughter around campus), but they are an invisible population at this moment. You need to bring the disabled to the front of the minorities you include on you campus.

Sincerely,
Beth Turner Ginther ’74

Dear Editor,
After reading the summer and fall issues of The Scene, is occurs to me that those charged with publishing the magazine have failed to do their homework. First, as noted by Phil S. Myers ’69 in his letter (fall issue), you failed to mention in the summer issue the AFROTC detachment present on the Willamette campus of 1951, and many of its members went on to careers in the military. Further, during the mid-50s, thanks to the many members of the Music Department who were in AFROTC, we had the finest marching band of any military organization on the Pacific Coast.

As to the diversity touted so highly in the fall issue, I suggest your editorial staff review any of a number of football programs during the 50s. Names such as Ewaliko, Kukahiko, Kekahio, Minn, Noa, Koani, Sequiera and others will jump out at you. And, if we gawked at those individuals while on campus, it was not due to their racial ethnicity or skin color, but rather because we were in awe of their athletic skills. But keep looking. I’m confident a cursory scan of the Wallulah or a list of graduates during the past 60 years will reveal a number of Willamette scholars with non-Anglo-Saxon names. Racial diversity has been a fact of life at Willamette for quite some time. I would also note that during my subsequent studies following my time at Willamette I attended Auburn University in the 70s and the University of Michigan in the 80s.

Racial diversity was a fact of life at both those great schools during those times, but neither University deemed it necessary to boast about it.

I suggest in the future you focus on how you are preparing all those 1200+ SAT score students for the real world, and how they are performing as members of the Willamette family instead of putting out a magazine which reads like a South East Conference recruiting ad from the early 1960s.

Larry W. Pritchett ’54

I’ve recently come across the Willamette Scene website [www.willamette.edu/scene] and I must say that it is very intriguing. I am 100 percent Samoan, which is an ethnicity that is very scarce in the Willamette community. I would like to compliment The Scene for recognizing the minorities in this community. I find this website/magazine a valuable source of perspective that many minorities may find interesting.

Frank M. Kuresa ’04

Dear Editor,
I was appalled to find the fall 2003 issue of The Scene focused on diversity and affirmative action. When I was at Willamette University, the focal point was on academic excellence. I believe people should advance on the basis of their hard work, skills, abilities or achievements, not on their skin color. This is the same belief I hold for myself as a woman in the business world. I want to be promoted in the workplace for my hard work, not because my corporation has a female quota to fill.

In the article “A World of Difference,” you list clubs and special events celebrating diversity. I noticed the Angles: Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance club listed. Please explain to me what ones sexual perversion has to do with heritage and culture?

Under special events you have celebrations for Mexicans, Blacks, Hawaiians, etc. Why not celebrate “White Males”? The great majority of our most important inventions like trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, telephones and computers have been made possible by the minds of men such as Volta, Ampere, Bell, Edison and Einstein. The public education system teaches us that it’s a result of white racism and oppression that keeps men of color from reaching this type of brilliance. Yet the facts tell us that many of these great men pursued their genius at great personal risk – like the astronomer Galileo. If you ace out the white male with affirmative action, then say good-bye to our society.

For the first two hundred years, America was called the “melting pot.” When immigrants came to our country, they use to learn our language (that’s English). America benefited from the unification of the best of all immigrant cultures. We are Americans first and foremost.

The liberals have figured out that social disorder is a wonderful tool to help them escort in their socialist view. They sell multiculturalism as good, and favor it over nationalism.

With multiculturalism, immigrants don’t attempt to learn the dominant culture. Instead, they retain their distinct cultural heritage. They don’t bother to learn English, choosing to speak their own language and then command that we print ballots in 18 languages.

America the melting pot is turning into America the chamber pot.

This type of agenda opened the door to the terrorist who hi-jacked our planes, ran them into our buildings, and killed thousands of our citizens.

Willamette University Liberal Arts is becoming more and more “liberal” by the day.

Wake up Alumni! Your beloved University is turning into a political soapbox for advancing the socialist agenda. Is that how you want your donations to be spent?

Sincerely,
Kara Crisifulli ’86

Ladies and Gentlemen:
This letter is written in response to President Pelton’s article on upholding affirmative action in the fall 2003 Scene.

As a medical student in Missouri in 1969, I was on campus with the first Black student admitted to the school. The things he and his family had to tolerate from the surrounding community were much more than I would have been able to endure. While no one act was that great, they were still personal threats as well as questions of personal integrity and worth that no man or woman should have to constantly answer. I could fill several pages with lesson in racial bias that I observed while a student and as a resident in “inner city reaching hospital” environments.

In light of the above and many of the issues raised in Dr. Pelton’s article, affirmative action seems like the best was to assure “equal opportunity.” Unfortunately, affirmative action, as now practiced, usually includes either lowering the admission standards or denying opportunity to a candidate because of their race and gender, even though they have better qualifications.

In the academic setting the affirmative action recipient is placed in a competitive environment. If they do not have the same qualifications as their peers, they are often branded as “poor performers.” In the employment market, particularly public service such as fire and police where there is great pressure to diversify, the affirmative action recipient is caught, not only in a position of not being able to perform as well as their peers, but their poor performance poses an increased risk to their colleagues. The unfortunate reality is that affirmative action as it is now practiced, often serves to reinforce racial, gender and ethnic stereotypes, instead of breaking them down!

If we are to successfully integrate America and establish a society where all citizens are respected on the basis of their own merits regardless of face, creed, gender, political leanings, etc., then we must become a society of equal opportunity. In practicality, this means providing for the candidate for fire service, the opportunity of strength training and/or the availability of other classes to prepare the candidate for the various aspects of the civil service exam. For university admission, this may mean the provision of loans and other financial opportunity. Or it may mean providing the means for taking classes at the community college level to improve one’s academic qualifications. While it is easy to apply the principles of equal opportunity to the Latino youth from the inner city and Black Jewish woman, or even the poor white boy from the rural South, it also means the principles apply equally to the prep schooled white make Ivy League graduate. Any attempt to circumvent true equal opportunity for all will only reinforce bias because the attempt by its very nature is itself biased.

Norman Hunter ’68

64 years of bands at WU? I was in the band 70 years ago – 1933-35. I don’t recall the director’s name. That band was certainly a modest one and I was undoubtedly the poorest player. I came from a small Montana high school with no band but had a $20 Sears trombone and a correspondence school lessons that soon proved too complex. However, once I learned the tune I was able to contribute my share and we had a lot of fun playing at football games, parades and concerts. I especially remember marching down the street in Portland in a drenching rain headed for a ballgame at Portland U. I am sure the bands under Dr. Behnke’s direction were far superior to our little group. What fun it would be to attend the celebration and to participate in it. Unfortunately I no longer play the trombone and no longer take transcontinental trips.

Best wishes and congratulations to Dr. Behnke and to all.

Ely M. Swisher ’37