CARS OR PEOPLE?
FESTIVAL
ADVISING & ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTANT
STUDENT
State
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After a month-long hiatus from publishing, the Portland State Vanguard is back—with an update! We will be reviving our “Letters to the Editor,” a recurring Opinion feature that publishes and spotlights voices from around PSU, as well as the larger community of Portland, Oregon.
This is a section devoted to spotlighting the opinions and feelings of our readsers, rather than the writers and contributors in our newsroom, and we welcome submissions from anyone. We’re particularly interested in perspectives related to current Portland events and community issues, as well as circumstances that impact the Pacific Northwest overall. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on stories we’ve covered—if you have a strong opinion about something we’ve reported, write us! We’ll happily read your submissions.
To share your letters for publishing consideration, email your thoughts to opinion@psuvanguard. com with the heading LETTER TO THE EDITOR, followed by your subject line.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
The Vanguard Editorial Staff
TANNER TODD
HAVE A STRONG OPINION ABOUT CURRENT PORTLAND EVENTS? SHARE IT!
Film and dance come together in a symbiotic relationship in the upcoming sixth annual Portland Dance Film Festival, which will be held at the Portland Art Museum from Oct. 7–9.
The event came into being six years ago, after its organizers recognized the lack of representation of dance films in Portland.
“Six years ago, we just kind of had this moment of like, ‘I think, I think that Portland needs a dance film festival,’” said Jess Evans, one of the event’s organizers and a founder of the festival. “[We said] I think we have the stuff to do it, and it sounds fun.”
The festival was a success right out of the gate, and six years ago they easily filled out their venue, which was then located in a theater on the Portland State campus. Each year the event grew in size, eventually moving to the Clinton Street Theater and finally to where they are now at the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium. Despite having to go completely virtual in 2020, their numbers remained strong as their audience went from local to worldwide. While numbers did drop during their 2021 hybrid festival, seemingly due to the Delta variant and Zoom fatigue, organizers are confident that numbers will return to normal as people are ready to get back in the swing of things.
Several films of varying lengths and styles will be screened during the three nights. While the nights do not focus on a particular theme, they are curated to flow from one film to the next seamlessly. “We start just looking at flow generally… Our first night this year has a lot of solos and processing and themes of working through what we’ve all been through as individuals and collectively, and there’s some healing in it,” Evans said.
She said that the later portions of the event see more featurelength films and longer works.
“The second night, we decided to pair some of the longer films together because there’s just a different pace to watching longer films,” Evans said. “We wanted that to be known, so our audience’s nervous systems could settle into a pace and absorb and interact in a more coherent way.”
Given the multiple films each night, organizers said they are confident that viewers will find a way to connect with the material, which is one of the highlights of a film festival format. “Maybe you go in, and you don’t necessarily resonate with the second film,” said Festival Director Kailee McMurran. “You’re getting a variety each night and one of the films is gonna connect with every member of the audience and hopefully, more than one.”
The combination of dance and film was a crucial element to organizers when curating the festival. “What we generally are looking for in a dance film is a marriage between dance and film,” McMurran said. “One thing that I’m always asking myself when I watch the films… ‘is the film and the editing and the cinematography actually adding to the art and elevating it?’”
The film element also adds relatability and accessibility for the average non-dance layperson. “Watching TV and movies, we’re comfortable with that interaction which is why live theater and dance is so amazing, because it’s live,” said festival organizer Tia Palomino. “But in terms of approachability and accessibility, this might be a stepping stone for someone to engage with dance.”
Dance film is ultimately more understandable to lay
audiences, and there is an increased opportunity for connection with the material and the story.
“Dance film feels more accessible,” McMurran said. “I think that sometimes when people who haven’t grown up in dance or around dance go and see dance, there’s a little bit of a barrier to understanding or wanting to find the meaning or the story and not finding it.”
McMurran went on to say that the framework of film creates an additional context, which can help orient the audience.
“With dance films, there’s a lot more opportunity to give context to your story or theme or concept with location and props and movie magic,” she said. “I don’t wanna say that, like, dance film is better than a live performance, because I think that they’re equal… But there is something unique to dance film with the ability to give context.”
The ability to understand dance can allow more viewers to get the most out of the experience, which can be healing and cathartic for some.
“It’s a different way to engage and learn about other people’s lives, through the body,” Evans said. “I think it touches something different in us. I feel like it’s just really valuable… It kind of sits us into our bodies, and I personally think that’s like medicine for our culture and our society.”
Evans and the other organizers hope that viewers allow these films to cultivate their empathy. As Evans said, “watching so many stories of the body, you can’t really deny it, you know—deny someone’s story and their truth when it’s through the body in that way.”
Cigars and United States culture have a long and entwined history, and the state of Oregon is no exception. Oregon’s oldest continually operating cigar shop, Rich’s Cigar Store, opened in downtown Portland in 1894—just 35 years after Oregon was admitted as the 33rd state in 1859.
Cigars and all forms of tobacco remained a common activity until the 1960s, when the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee released a report linking tobacco smoking and lung cancer. Since then, the U.S. has had a steady decline of cigarette smoking, with 42% of adults smoking in 1965 compared to 13% in 2018.
The numbers show that popularity for tobacco products has been on a steady decrease with “88.3% of the U.S. population approving government regulation to curb tobacco use.”
According to a 1999 newspaper article published in the Salem Statesman Journal, there was legislation approved by voters to instate a tax of 65% on the wholesale value of cigars.
Oregon tobacco merchants were quick to react. Jan Esler-Rowe, owner of Cascade Cigar & Tobacco in Happy Valley and an anticigar tax activist, is often credited for leading a campaign which replaced the original tax proposal to a flat tax of 50 cents per cigar.
While she is often identified as the primary leader in the effort to reduce taxes on cigars in Oregon, she herself credits the late anti-tax activist Don McIntire of Measure 5 attention
“I would not have gotten anywhere with the cigar tax cap without Don McIntire,” Esler-Rowe said.
She explained that it was McIntire’s expertise in lobbying that enabled her to help reduce taxes for cigar smokers in Oregon, though he was never credited for his efforts. She mentioned that one of the strategies used to incite support for
reduced taxes on cigars was starting a letter writing campaign from her customers in which they came through.
“One of the senators was complaining because he had over 2,000 letters in his bill file,” she said. “They gave it to us because the people wanted it [cigar tax cap reduction]... when Don passed away in 2012 we lost all his expertise. He was a friend and a mentor.”
Victory for cigar retailers in Oregon did not last forever. In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 108 which increased tax on tobacco products—cigars specifically were increased from a straight 50 cent tax per cigar to a cigar tax cap of 65% of wholesale with a max of $1 per cigar.
According to Esler-Rowe, this was a blow to cigar retailers in Oregon. “It affected our business,” she said. “We were hit with a double whammy with COVID and now they’re trying to tax us to death... a box of cigars comes in a pack of 25. At least the customers were willing to live with 50 cents, which is an additional $12.50.”
“The consumer will not pay $25 in tax on a box of cigars purchased from in-state retailers when they can purchase the same cigars tax free and pay shipping of less than $25,” she said. “They loved the tax cap because they want to support local retailers, but the state is sending them back to the Internet.”
According to a cigar shop owner who declined to be named, customers in general did not seem to be particularly dissuaded.
“What really bothers me is that the politicians and non-smokers just can’t seem to understand that cigars are pure tobacco that doesn’t have all the chemical crap that goes into cigarettes,” the cigar merchant said. “Cigars aren’t addictive. Unlike cigarette smokers, I never needed a cigar, I only wanted them.”
This line of argument is a common one. Cigar smokers often defend the practice of smoking by citing a study that allegedly found that smoking cigars has a negligible causal effect for cancer. They also flat-out reject statements that suggest they contain chemicals, despite claims by health institutions such as the Mayo Clinic that cigars contain the same chemicals as cigarettes.
Because the use of cigars is traditionally inhaling and releasing by the mouth, they argue that cigars are not addictive. Despite their claims to the contrary, there is a substantial amount of evidence that cigars cause cancer and are addictive.
Despite evidence that indicates somewhat similar effects, the cigar retailers that Vanguard talked to do not like to be mixed with cigarettes and go through great effort to distance their products from cigarettes.
Jan Esler-Rowe’s own store, Cascade Cigar & Tobacco, goes as far as to not sell cigarettes at all.
Cigar smoking is also a relatively unpopular choice for smoking, especially among youth. Only 2.1% of high school students between grades 9–12 have smoked cigars, in contrast to E-cigarettes, which are actively smoked by 19.6% of high school students. Marijuana is an even more popular choice, with the majority of high school students having smoked marijuana at least once and 22% smoking within the last 30 days.
“My granddaughter doesn’t even mention to her friends that her grandmother owns a tobacco store,” Esler-Rowe said. “Young people want nothing to do with it [tobacco]… they’re all smoking pot now.”
With cigar smoking trending downwards and the increased tax caps on cigars, it appears that cigar retail will become an increasingly difficult industry to operate in the state of Oregon, despite the long history of cigar smoking within the state.
Created in 2020, Affordable Rents for College Students (ARCS) is a program intended to assist college students who are struggling to get housing. While it was originally started with the aim to serve community college students, it has expanded its services over time.
In 2021, Portland State University posted an announcement saying that it had joined the program to help assist university students in their housing needs. According to PSU, “PSU’s Homelessness and Research & Action Collaborative found that 16% of PSU students had experienced homelessness in the previous 12 months.”
ARCS has served over 100 students according to Ryan Sturley, who serves as the Director for Real Estate and Development of College Housing Northwest (CHNW), which is a partner contributor to ARCS. Initially assisting five students at Portland Community College, the program expanded dramatically in the following two years. It served just under 20 students in spring 2021 and now serves 52 students, with 12 of those students attending PSU.
“We… know that many community college students we’ve assisted have gone to PSU,” Sturley said. “And we continue to assist them.”
ARCS assists students by providing a “50% rental assistance subsidy every month,” according to Sturley. “So for example, say rent is $1000 a month, our students pay $500 a month. In addition, we’re [CHNW] a nonprofit student housing organization and our houses are already below market—probably 15–20%.”
In addition to providing affordable housing, ARCS also aims to reduce the barriers that prevent students from having additional housing.
“A lot of affordable housing resources exist in the U.S., such as the Section 8 voucher,” Sturley said. “If you’re a full-time student, even if you’re experiencing homelessness or low income, in the majority of cases you are not eligible to receive affordable housing resources.”
Besides providing a rental housing subsidy, ARCS eliminates other barriers to student renters.
“[Students] don’t pay security deposits, we don’t require guarantors, previous rental history, free wifi, no utilities,” Sturley said. “So any ancillary costs… you don’t pay.”
In addition to reducing the barriers that block students from affordable housing, Sturley added that ARCS also assists students by providing support services to help ensure that students are doing well in
housing and school. “A lot of students might have past trauma from being homeless, so it is an additional layer of support for students,” he said.
Sturley gave a specific example of support where a coordinator will check on ARCS students’ housing needs and inquire if they have issues paying rent, as well as help these students plan financially to pay rent.
Initially starting out with around $20,000 in support money for students to assist in rent, ARCS mostly relied on private support in the beginning. This changed in 2021 when Senator Chris Gorsek of District 25 sponsored Senate Bill 851 (SB851) which granted $280,000 to ARCS to help provide additional housing for students. Now, after helping a total of 100 students and currently assisting 52 students, ARCS is running out of funding.
“We will be approaching the state for more funds with this program in January of 2022,” Senator Gorsek said. “Hopefully, we can expand this program. We want to cover more students… we plan to pursue basics like we’ve already done, but we also pursue an attempt to convince the legislature to at least partially fund further housing projects.”
Sen. Gorsek is also a professor at Mt. Hood Community College and a former police officer. He said that he has witnessed the un-ideal situations college students go through when housing difficulties are thrown into the mix.
“I’ve had some students that were homeless,” he said. “I remember one student in my summer class where her kids lived with her sister but there wasn’t enough room for her in the apartment, so she lived in her car while she was taking classes… it’s awfully difficult to take classes when you’re living out of a vehicle.”
Gorsek himself has had difficulty with housing as well. “As a doctoral student at PSU in the 90s… I was a homeless student and the only option I had was that my parents allowed me to stay with them,” he said. “I was lucky my parents were willing to help out that way and unfortunately not everybody has that opportunity. I’ve had this experience myself and know how disturbing it is and that’s with family help. I can’t imagine how much worse it is without help.”
Students with housing difficulties who are interested in applying for ARCS are recommended to contact their Basic Needs Navigator under the CARE Program. Currently ARCS has a nine person waiting list.
Letters to the Editor are unpaid guest submissions from our readers. The opinions, attitudes and beliefs expressed by the writer(s) are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions, attitudes and beliefs of the Vanguard’s Editorial Staff.
On August 19 of this year, the Student Fee Committee (SFC) voted to propose three different annual budget cut scenarios for Fee-Funded Areas, 4%, 7% or 10%. The SFC will spend this budget cycle deciding the cuts for each of the 32 Fee-Funded Areas. These cuts will go into effect starting July 2023.
To members of the Student Fee Committee,
The student workers of various Fee-Funded Areas wish to clearly express our shared disappointment and concern with the forced budget cuts being made on student-operated services and student media. Student jobs continue to be cut while inflation and student fees have increased drastically. With no options to receive funding at our current service levels, the persistent cuts are unsustainable for our already small budgets and will affect our already stretched staff. Cuts to student-run areas leave student workers underpaid and understaffed, which leads to burnout and employee turnover. If our budgets are cut, even at a minimum proposed cut of 4%, the following will occur:
• Reduced student employee hours
• Reduced operating times
• Eliminating unique student employee positions/personnel
• Fewer student leadership opportunities
• Reduced quality of student-operated services
We hope for these student employment opportunities to be prioritized by being clearly stated in the SFC Funding Philosophies and protected in the budget cycle. These cuts and the loss of jobs goes against supporting the basic needs of students. We remind the SFC to be cognizant that student employees use their wage to pay their tuition and student fees as well as their housing costs in the 12th most expensive city in the country. When you force us to cut already struggling students’ wages, roles and hours, you cut off their livelihood and their access to housing, food and education from your university.
The SFC continues to prioritize professional staff over student labor and student needs. This summer, the SFC voted to approve a request to spend last year’s unspent student fee money to fund Campus Rec’s revenue shortfall while a $1,300 student wage overage by student media and a request to utilize $70,000 of unspent student fee money on student wages for the Cultural Resource Centers were denied. Food vouchers, gift cards for students and emergency grants were denied while furniture and office supplies for professional staff were approved. We ask that unspent student fee money supports student jobs, provides basic needs support or goes directly back to students.
Research on higher education consistently demonstrates that participation in extracurricular activities and leadership opportunities are important for building a sense of belonging on campus within students, and that this sense of belonging is a powerful and positive predictor of student persistence. The findings show that this effect is particularly important for the retention of first-generation students and students of color, i.e. those who may not initially feel welcome in the more rarefied and historically exclusionary environment of
postsecondary education; these are also both populations that PSU claims to serve and wishes to serve better. Therefore, the cutting of paid student positions not only undermines student success, but has a particularly deleterious effect on precisely those students whose success PSU explicitly claims to be trying to facilitate.
We plead that the Student Fee Committee members vote to maintain the current service level for studentoperated services and student media for the 2023–2024 Academic Year, in order to protect the scarce student employment opportunities. The SFC should specifically and clearly outline the protection of student employment within the budget cuts in their funding philosophies and actively avoid cutting small budgets that are primarily student employees. The current budget deficit caused by enrollment decline cannot be solved through consistent cuts that run deep for our small budgets and incapacitate our unique student employment opportunities. We believe the SFC has the capacity to balance the budget in a way that does not significantly impact student labor through large cuts to larger budgets. We demand that you protect student jobs and provide the current service level.
With the installation of the Blumenauer Bicycle Bridge, I have to ask if perhaps some of Portland’s more pressing issues could have been addressed with the tax money spent on it?
For context, the Blumenauer Bicycle Bridge allows for an easy crossing from the Lloyd Center to Eastside Portland. Crossing the 84 freeway with its earthquake-proof design, its hallmark is its welcoming and eco-friendly nature as a completely bicycle and pedestrian-only bridge.
It is similar to the functionality and idea behind the Tilikum, just half the size and maybe not as essential. Roughly 1,000–2,000 people bike across the Hawthorne bridge, if not more, which is not too far off from what Tilikum supports.
The intent of this project is clear, and it’s quite a good way to connect these two neighborhoods and introduce a more walkable and healthy lifestyle. However, in my opinion the location doesn’t seem quite right in terms of where Portland’s next bike bridge should be. So while I’m not trying to throw shade at Blumenauer—congratulations on having a bridge be named after you as a champion of bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure—but with the project coming in at a total of $19 million, I wonder if this bridge was really worth it.
One of the first things that comes to my mind is what the whole point of the bridge is. It feels pointless when you can already walk or bike less than 5–10 minutes to an already established multipurpose bridge on 12th and Lloyd or to the even closer bridge on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Seeing as we already have two close bridges that connect these two neighborhoods, I ask again, why was this necessary to build? It’s not like being on a closedoff bike bridge will protect you from biking five minutes onto a street as busy as it is dangerous. The bicycle infrastructure around these two neighborhoods is not perfect, but it is still very functional and accessible. Still, that doesn’t ensure that it is going to be entirely safe from car traffic.
Continuing south after crossing the bridge will spit you out at 7th Street, which always has lots of aggressive car traffic. That area never feels even remotely safe, and accessing the bridge from NE 7th Ave on the Lloyd side is not improving the overall safety of the area. This bridge feels like a false solution. I often commute by bike to Portland State and I avoid having to cross and ride on the street leading up to the I-84 bridge crossing because it doesn’t seem safe to me.
I would rather have had that $19 million put towards a MAX/light rail that connects North Portland to Vancouver, Washington. The pros of such a project far outweigh the cons in terms of functionality, accessibility and the main reason why people should care about such projects.
I just don’t see the reason why they decided to make this bridge. In the project byline they mentioned the crossing at 12th and Lloyd and conflicts commuters have been facing, but this bridge just leads to another street that is just as busy. If they decided to build a bridge like this and had the funding to follow through, why couldn’t it be in a better location?
People are struggling on our streets, we are in a crime wave that seems like it’s never going to stop and there are various bike accessibility issues across the city. This bridge seems pointless because Portland, while known for its bike-friendliness, is still dominated by car culture and prioritizing driving over walking, cycling or using public transit. The U.S. feels like it’s 10 years behind Europe in that regard.
I recently traveled to Vienna for school and it was like a flip-flop from Portland. Everyone was biking and using their U-bahn (subway). It smelled good, city blocks were meant for walking and bikers had a sidewalk separate from the street that didn’t allow them to even get close to cars. All this comes down to the history and construction of buildings. The city was built not with driving in mind, but rather commuting by foot or bike. Streets are compact and everyone is out and about vibing and not rounding their shoulders waiting in an endless line of traffic.
If Portland wants to spend $19 million on a bridge that doesn’t really do anything, we should ask what problems are we solving with it? I think Portland is delaying the inevitable by having projects like these. It’s like saying “hey, have we a cool little bridge that goes over the main way you actually get to work.”
Until we fully commit to reshaping our city and decentering cars and driving, projects like these will continue to seem more like a waste of money and time than an innovative act to encourage bikers and connect neighborhoods. All this bridge really did was allow pedestrians and bikers 45 seconds of not worrying about getting hit only to immediately spit them out into an area that becomes busier and busier with traffic with every block.
So what’s it gonna be, Portland? Cars or people?
Art often reflects the issues of its time, and the climate crisis is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today.
Portland State artist Lyla Rowen has created work which explores the impact of climate change through textile art. Her work—currently on display at PSU’s MK Gallery as a part of a showcase about climate change—is entitled Between Now and Nowhere and will be shown on campus until October 26.
The long journey towards Rowen’s finished work began not in Portland, but in Iceland with her fellow resident artists.
“We were there [in Iceland] for a month working on the loom,” Rowen said. “When we came back to Portland, we did the PSU textile residency… and finished [the pieces] using the surges and the textile workroom [at PSU].”
Rowen explored education in other art forms, but fell in love with textiles specifically. “I just like the community a lot,” Rowen said. “It’s the kind of overused metaphors like weaving things together and stitching things together that really is embedded in the textile community. It’s a very inclusive, sharing kind of community. And a lot of the methods that people are doing are really old. There isn’t a lot of, like, safeguarding… they’re just old traditions that have been shared for a really long time.”
Rowen said she also appreciates how textiles are an intersection of art and craft.
“I like contemporary art a lot visually,” Rowen said. “So textiles have been a way where I can, like, be in a community of craft people, but still produce contemporary art.”
Rowen finds her inspiration in the expanse of our earth. “I really find inspiration from the kind of overwhelming serene feeling from landscapes and the visuals and audio of nature,” she said. “I’m very inspired by color and how color mixes together, and I really wanna create work that evokes a feeling of like, reprise from the day and from thoughts… So I try to think about the shapes and colors in nature that make us feel that calmness and how I can translate that in a more abstract, conceptual way.”
One of Rowen’s pieces, titled “Looking Out,” seeks to draw on her experience of enjoying our world with a childlike wonder. “We were on this black sand beach that is in southern Iceland,” she said. “And I was thinking about how the whole Atlantic Ocean was below me. I was just tripping out over that… I was like, the whole Atlantic is below us, you guys, like the whole Atlantic, Europe, and Africa and America, like everything’s down there. It’s all just south of us. It makes everybody sad that our planet is in this immense change, and I have such an appreciation for everything that the natural world still has to offer. I guess that piece is just about that—having a deep appreciation and respect for the planet that we live on.” Rowen and the other artists address climate change in their work through reverence and beauty, as it is impossible not to recognize those impacts when the source of the artist’s inspiration is our planet.
“One of the ways to fight climate change is [through] education,” Rowen said. “I want people to still have hope, and I want people to still appreciate what we have while we have it. I hope that [the exhibit] inspires people to want to make a change… I think that we all need to be making a difference that we can, but I think also we need to enjoy what we have while we have it and appreciate things, and some really powerful people need to make changes that are really going to change things up.”
Rowen also explained how art serves as a record and a reminder to celebrate the things we no longer have.
“I think about in a really bleak world where we just continue on this climate collapse, and it’s like [the movie] Wall-E outside, and there’s no more nature—it will be held in art still,” Rowan
said. “There will still be paintings, and there will still be photographs. For as long as humans live, we’re gonna have this connection to nature. There’s a lot of art based around nature… and I like trying to create art that doesn’t just look like nature, but feels like being in it.”
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MONTH, READ ONE BOOK THAT SUPPORTS OUR VISIONS AND GOALS THEN JOIN US FOR SNACKS AND A LIVELY DISCUSSION!”
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