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Show H 1 L UTAH Y C 0 H N I C T TaqacTjfl; 0000"" THE CHRONICLE VIEW - ' fnHMD I l""rr""l,lfl - """ r ii .Minim.. " """ " m;m M. Ml- ,n,, .- " h I OAR Proves U Students Do Care very once in a while; Uni yj versity ot Utah siuaents will J do something surprising, something that stands apart from the norms of commuting, studying and working. Every once in a while, students will sacrifice for something other than grades. The Student Organization for Aniniai Rights is a group of such U students. With their tents pitched outside the A. Ray Oipin University Union, SOAR members are taking their message of animal rights to the campus; they are sacrificing sleep, showers and even food to bring attention to their efforts to end animal, testing on the U campus. The protestors plan on calling the union patio home for the next mosith, and while most students are vacationing during Spring Break, SOAR members will spend the week fasting. Many students, facu!ty and staff don't agree with SOAR's politics. Regardless of whether or not they share the same idea3 as the members of SOAR, everyone on this campus should be proud that their colleagues and fellow students care enough about something to participate in such a dramatic and public protest. U students are constantly criticized for being apathetic. Ironically, SOAR's protest began during the same week as elections for the Associated Students of the Uni- Utahan versity of event that many say epitomizes the apathy on campus since only a small per- centage of U students actually vote. However, SOAR is proving that U students aren't apathetic at all, U students care deeply about a myriad ot things, whether it's demonstrating against animal testing or feeding a ycung family. SOAR's protest is also s good example of how students can exercise their rights and use their voices, loo often, students don't speak up when they have legitimate complaints, which means (heir concerns w ill never be addressed For the next month, U students, staff and faculty will have a veiy hsrd time forgetting about anini3i rights because SOAR members are willing to band together and racri-fic- c to get their message acrcss. SOAR's demonstration is' a refreshing change for a campus that many accuse of being isolated and devoid of acth'i.sin. Hopefully, SOAP's message will be listened to and at least treated politely. And hopefully, other students and student groups will take notice that ihcir voices can, indeed, be heard, with a little planning and a lot of sacrifice. - LETTER TO THE EDITO enators: Please Show up Editor: There has been a lot of ASUU legislation and debate conthe University of Utah's cerning the funding of radio station. Two bills were voted on recently by the ASUU senate. The first bill was written to remove a "sunset clause" from the P,edbook which was implemented over a showed a lack of growth. It's fundyear ago because ing was scheduled to end June 30, 2001, Since then, has expanded its listener base to include more than the entirety of campus. The signal is available on Channel 6 in eight of the new dorms, and we anticipate being heard in 20 in the near future. signal is also available on the Internet at www kute.org. e The second was a bill requesting a grant of FM for obtain the costs to $23,000 startup license that we are pursuing from the Federal Communica studen- E, t-operated so-call- ed K-U- K-U- one-tim- Low-Pow- tions Commission. This would extend the broadcast range a radius in excess of 3 miles. The money would go towards legal research investigating the possibility of obtaining this license, and the equipment required to take advantage of its privileges. We eagerly anticipated the Senate meeting. Once it commenced, we were much less excited and, overall, very unimpressed with the quantity of members present. There are 16 members of that Senate (after several resignations, and one impeachment). Last night, only 11 decided it was worth their time to attend. For a bill to pass, it must receive of the votes of all Senate seats, not just those present. With only n members of the senate in attendance the night of the meeting, a single "nay" vote would have killed any bill. of the station to two-thir- er see page 8 Unalienable Rights Should Apply at Work encroached upon by the federal government, and not even by state governments, Matheson said. State governments could legally deprive their citizens of rights that DAVE HANCOCK Chronicle Editor in Chief Thomas Jefferson, in perhaps the most expression of the American ever the Declaration of Independence wrote that certain rights are so important they are inalienable. Ostensibly, the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights which Scott Matheson Jr., the dean of the University of Utah's law school, discussed Wednesday morning at the Hinckley Institute of Politics secures the very freedoms Jefferson was writing about when he penned his defense of liberty. Unfortunately, it affords nowhere near the level of protection that would exist if the United States really saw those rights as unalienable. After all, something that is unalienable cannot be separated from its owner, even if he or she wants it to be. In that way, only the most very basic freedoms are seen by the U.S. government as unalienable for example, slavery is illegal; even if both the parties agree they want to enter into such a contract, they are forbidden by law from doing so. The Bill of Rights, in fact, originally only guaranteed citizens' rights from being CHRONICLE Jefferson would have deemed unalienable. Basically, the Bill of Rights protected citizens from only one of several potential entities that could deprive them of their rights the federal government. It vas not until after the Civil War amendments, in particular the 14th Amendment, were passed that a slow but steady process called incorporation began. Because the 14th Amendment conferred upon the federal government the responsibility of protecting individuals' rights from their state governments, the Constitution now effectively forbade state governments from infringing upon certain rights. Today, a state has no more right to establish a religion, restrict free speech or perform an unreasonable search and seizure than does the federal government. That step of incorporation was perhaps the most important in U.S. Constitutional history. Yet it still did not fulfill the promise implicit in Jefferson's words. Even today, the Constitution only protects citizens from one of several entities that could possibly deprive them of their unalienable rights the government, be it federal, state or local. The problem is that the organizations which have perhaps the most real and substantive effect on people's lives, their workplaces, are not compelled to grant them the OPINION EDITOR rights embodied in the Bill or Rights. For example, a company doesn't need any sort of reasonable cause to inspect its employees' email or desks and it can look for just about anything. The typical boss argument that these guarantees shouldn't apply runs something like this: Well, the company actually owns that desk, and supplies the email strictly for work. So, no employees' rights are violated because people cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy 'if the equipment does not even belong to them. Well, tell that to the good employee who follows all the company rules and regulations, clocks in and out on time every day, and yet gets the occasional personal email from his girlfriend. Some of them might even be a bit racy. Or tell that to the woman who keeps applications to other jobs in her office desk. Obviously, these very reasonable people expected that their private working areas and email accounts whomever provided them were private. They would undoubtedly feel as though their rights had been violated if their respective bosses found and got some chuckles from those racy emails or discovered those job applications. Unfortunately, the only punishments those bosses would face would have to flow from the corporation itself. They did nothing illegal. The Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures KATHRYN COWLES LETTERSCHRONICLE.UTAH.EDU is just one of the many examples; another is the Sixth Amendment's right to confront an accuser. Companies need not incorporate that into their termination hearings. The problem, though, is obvious. Getting fired is just as substantive and real to a person as is a $5,000 fine. It doesn't really matter that one comes from the workplace and the other from the government. People should therefore have the right to confront the person who has leveled a charge that will result in their termination. Many say that the expansion of substantive rights into the corporate world would mean less efficient business. That is certainly true. The question, though, is this: Are there not some things that are more important than efficiency? Most corporations would likely say no, while most Americans would say yes. We ostensibly live in a democracy, and even institutions like corporations should have to subscribe to broad guidelines set by the American public. The Constitution already gives the U.S. Congess the right to regulate corporations in such a way. Given the U.S. Supreme Court's incredibly broad interpretation Of the commerce clause, Congress can impose its will upon about any business engaged in any sort of interstate commerce in other words, on any business at all. Americans just need representation that responds to their demands and protects their interests, instead of selling their supposedly unalienable rights to corporations. 501-704- 1 |