OSU seeks pay cut for grad students

I am outraged by the Oregon State University administration proposals in its bargaining with the OSU graduate student union, CGE.

The union is bargaining to gain increases in wages and benefits for graduate students who perform many essential tasks for OSU, most notably serving as teaching assistants and conducting much of the research that keeps OSU a competitive university.

The administration's proposal effectively amounts to a pay cut since they propose to drop partial fee coverage, not increase wages, and not increase their percentage of health care coverage.

In sharp contrast, the University of Oregon's graduate student union's recently-negotiated pay package includes:

• 8 percent increase over the next two years

• 100 percent individual health coverage with partial coverage for dependents (OSU: 75 percent/0 percent individual/dependent)

• $56 per term fee reduction

Why are UO graduate students receiving better wages and benefits than their OSU counterparts?

Perhaps their administration appreciates their graduate students more than does the OSU administration.

Or perhaps their administration is better at getting funds with which to support their graduate students.

If this is the case, why is OSU doing so poorly?

Also, OSU faculty and staff are set to get pay raises this year. Why not the graduate students as well?

W. Terry Frueh, Corvallis

'Home, Sweet Home' caption insensitive

On page A2 of the May 19 edition of the Gazette-Times, you ran an AP picture of a Burmese family living in a destroyed house.

The caption above the picture, "Home, Sweet Home," was a callous and insensitive heading for this family's tragedy.

I'm surprised that the G-T decided to run the photo with that heading.

By doing so, the newspaper spread the stupidity of whoever originally assigned the title.

Erik Christy, Alsea

Softball team shows real sportsmanship

Roses to the members of Central Washington University softball team in Ellensburg.

On May 1, the Gazette-Times ran an article in the Sports section telling of Sara Tucholsky from Western Oregon belting her first home run. Realizing she missed first base she turned back to tag it, collapsed with a knee injury and crawled back to first. If teammates helped, she would be out. A pinch runner would only be on first.

Then Mallory Holtman, Central Washington's first baseman, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholksy.

He said there was no rule against it.

Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky's legs and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three covered the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg, an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Holtman said, "You deserve it, you hit it over the fence." What class and sportsmanship those girls had!

It was almost like the happy ending of a fairy tale.

Dorothy (Dottie) Jackson, Corvallis

Watch out for those who control money

All "biz-school" bad jokes aside, the responses to my April letter, about the inequity of tax raises, show their welcome concern.

Our nation's now at more difficult crossroads than ever before. The prior decade's economic decline, because of tax raises, bottomed out in 1997's plunge, Black Monday, that led to "business outsourcing."

Unfortunately, history seems to be the only school we learn from.

To help, we need to differentiate between "big money/control-seekers" and the average corporations/businesses we depend on daily.

Nearing election now, we'll hear a lot of empty rhetoric and experience harmful country and overseas economic blocks.

Thus, it's imperative that we keep current on issues, remember past solutions, and check each candidate's family background, education, reputation, and employment prior to them being in Congress.

Qualification, to do the job right, overrides personality and promises.

Our unique free-enterprise system keeps our market healthy, provides for individual achievement, and retains our government's stability by trusting it to us.

Business profits, checked recently, are still a survivable 8 to 10 percent average today, as were the nationwide-petroleum distributors I worked with 20 years ago.

Still, big-money seekers always need watching.

Teddy Roosevelt had to stop conglomerates in his day. And the 1929 depression was caused by a plan, to purchase our major commodities (shipping, railroads, utilities, banking, etc), by seven highly-respected financiers. But the resulting stock-market crash devalued everything, variously dumping them in the refuse barrel of disgrace, suicide, prison and lifelong poverty.

Joan Wheeler, Corvallis