okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Discrimination
By Bobby Neal Winters
My wife and I are graduates of Oklahoma State University. Many of our friends know that, and as a result, I was kept apprised of OSU's recent achievements in basketball. They made the Final Four only to be beat in the final seconds by Georgia Tech and prevented from going to the championship game.
My disappointment in this was somewhat attenuated by having lived in a place called Iba Hall on the OSU campus. This was a residence hall, a dormitory if you will, that was named after Coach Iba, who was a great man in the history of Oklahoma State sports. For a time, Iba Hall was the residence hall set aside for the use of student-athletes on the OSU campus. This continued until my second year there, when it was turned into graduate student housing, and the athletes were moved elsewhere.
The graduate students moved into Iba Hall only after protest. We had previously lived in a dorm called Murray Hall. It was named after William H. "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, who was governor of the State of Oklahoma at the time the dorm was built in the vain hope he would improve his dim view of higher education. Though a showplace at the time it was built, Murray Hall's chief amenity was steam heat which worked winter AND summer. It was a thoroughly miserably place, but it was home, and we protested when we were forcibly moved to Iba.
There was one night we took our protest so far as to leave the lights on all night in Murray Hall to protest. (One my profs at the time commented, "That'll show 'em.") However, at the end of the day, we were moved, and our concerns were salved by the knowledge that Iba was air-conditioned. This was a big selling point to me as I had made a study during August and September that the temperature rarely sank below 90 at night in Murray Hall.
The move to Iba Hall turned out to be an educational experience in itself. It had not been given the respect something named after Coach Iba deserved. It the elevator all of the arrow light had been poked out and there was a big dent in the door. The rooms were spotty. Each had a 12-inch by 10-inch bulletin board on the door, and I recall one of these had "SATAN LIVES" written in felt tip pen on it. Footprints in the ceiling tiles were a common feature. One room had "CAOCH" written on a wall with a telephone number following it.
In hindsight, it was not much different than one might expect a dorm inhabited by undergraduates to be. However, we grad students felt very injured when we discovered the student athletes had not been moved to a different residence hall but into off-campus apartments. We were told NCAA regulations forbid dorms for athletes to be any better than those for other students, so an arrangement for off-campus housing was made. Quite frankly, I don't know how much of this is true, but that is what we heard at the time, and we sure wanted to believe it. The feeling of martyrdom is so sweet, and to us, this was a clear-cut case of discrimination.
Discrimination is a word of the English Language whose meaning has drifted in recent times. It used to mean simply "making a difference," but in the era when rights were being won for African-Americans in this country, it got stuck in the phrase "racial discrimination." Since racial discrimination is such an ugly thing, that ugliness got stuck to the word "discrimination," but discriminating in itself is not always bad. As a Yankee friend of mine once pointed out, "If I didn't practice discrimination, I'd be stuck drinking this 3.2 water you Okies call beer."
The folks at Oklahoma State were not discriminating against graduate students. To be honest, Iba was so much more comfortable than Murray it wasn't even funny. They were discriminating for their student athletes. Somehow the forces of the universe have decreed that you need to have competitive athletic teams at large State schools, and this was one thing the folks concerned with that thought they needed to do. (As it turns out, others were doing things totally beyond the pale at the time. They were caught, and the athletic teams were punished not long thereafter.)
One will also find discrimination other places on university campuses. When we award academic scholarships, in most cases we discriminate for students who have good grades and high test scores. When I assign grades at the end of the semester, I give better grades to students who do well on exams than those who do poorly. That is discrimination too. This type of discrimination is designed to promote a particular kind of behavior. I give better grades to those who do better on tests so my students will study and learn. I do this because I put a high value on knowledge. Maybe my values are messed up. I don't know.
On one hand, I believe on a certain level, everyone should be treated the same, but on the other, I believe there are certain things that should be encouraged, and discriminating in favor of those things is one means of doing that.
By Bobby Neal Winters
My wife and I are graduates of Oklahoma State University. Many of our friends know that, and as a result, I was kept apprised of OSU's recent achievements in basketball. They made the Final Four only to be beat in the final seconds by Georgia Tech and prevented from going to the championship game.
My disappointment in this was somewhat attenuated by having lived in a place called Iba Hall on the OSU campus. This was a residence hall, a dormitory if you will, that was named after Coach Iba, who was a great man in the history of Oklahoma State sports. For a time, Iba Hall was the residence hall set aside for the use of student-athletes on the OSU campus. This continued until my second year there, when it was turned into graduate student housing, and the athletes were moved elsewhere.
The graduate students moved into Iba Hall only after protest. We had previously lived in a dorm called Murray Hall. It was named after William H. "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, who was governor of the State of Oklahoma at the time the dorm was built in the vain hope he would improve his dim view of higher education. Though a showplace at the time it was built, Murray Hall's chief amenity was steam heat which worked winter AND summer. It was a thoroughly miserably place, but it was home, and we protested when we were forcibly moved to Iba.
There was one night we took our protest so far as to leave the lights on all night in Murray Hall to protest. (One my profs at the time commented, "That'll show 'em.") However, at the end of the day, we were moved, and our concerns were salved by the knowledge that Iba was air-conditioned. This was a big selling point to me as I had made a study during August and September that the temperature rarely sank below 90 at night in Murray Hall.
The move to Iba Hall turned out to be an educational experience in itself. It had not been given the respect something named after Coach Iba deserved. It the elevator all of the arrow light had been poked out and there was a big dent in the door. The rooms were spotty. Each had a 12-inch by 10-inch bulletin board on the door, and I recall one of these had "SATAN LIVES" written in felt tip pen on it. Footprints in the ceiling tiles were a common feature. One room had "CAOCH" written on a wall with a telephone number following it.
In hindsight, it was not much different than one might expect a dorm inhabited by undergraduates to be. However, we grad students felt very injured when we discovered the student athletes had not been moved to a different residence hall but into off-campus apartments. We were told NCAA regulations forbid dorms for athletes to be any better than those for other students, so an arrangement for off-campus housing was made. Quite frankly, I don't know how much of this is true, but that is what we heard at the time, and we sure wanted to believe it. The feeling of martyrdom is so sweet, and to us, this was a clear-cut case of discrimination.
Discrimination is a word of the English Language whose meaning has drifted in recent times. It used to mean simply "making a difference," but in the era when rights were being won for African-Americans in this country, it got stuck in the phrase "racial discrimination." Since racial discrimination is such an ugly thing, that ugliness got stuck to the word "discrimination," but discriminating in itself is not always bad. As a Yankee friend of mine once pointed out, "If I didn't practice discrimination, I'd be stuck drinking this 3.2 water you Okies call beer."
The folks at Oklahoma State were not discriminating against graduate students. To be honest, Iba was so much more comfortable than Murray it wasn't even funny. They were discriminating for their student athletes. Somehow the forces of the universe have decreed that you need to have competitive athletic teams at large State schools, and this was one thing the folks concerned with that thought they needed to do. (As it turns out, others were doing things totally beyond the pale at the time. They were caught, and the athletic teams were punished not long thereafter.)
One will also find discrimination other places on university campuses. When we award academic scholarships, in most cases we discriminate for students who have good grades and high test scores. When I assign grades at the end of the semester, I give better grades to students who do well on exams than those who do poorly. That is discrimination too. This type of discrimination is designed to promote a particular kind of behavior. I give better grades to those who do better on tests so my students will study and learn. I do this because I put a high value on knowledge. Maybe my values are messed up. I don't know.
On one hand, I believe on a certain level, everyone should be treated the same, but on the other, I believe there are certain things that should be encouraged, and discriminating in favor of those things is one means of doing that.
