Portland State Vanguard Volume 77 Issue 13

ARTS & CULTURE

COVER PHOTO BY ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI

DESIGN BY WHITNEY McPHIE

OPINION

NEWS

ARTS & CULTURE

ADVISING

MISSION STATEMENT

Vanguard’s mission is to serve the Portland State community with timely, accurate, comprehensive and critical content while upholding high journalistic standards. In the process, we aim to enrich our staff with quality, hands-on journalism education and a number of skills highly valued in today’s job market.

State

ABOUT Vanguard, established in 1946, is published weekly as an independent student newspaper governed by the PSU Student Media Board. Views and editorial content expressed herein are those of the staff, contributors and readers and do not necessarily represent the PSU student body, faculty, staff or administration. Find us in print Wednesdays and online 24/7 at psuvanguard.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @psuvanguard for multimedia content and breaking news.

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VANGUARD IS HIRING INTERNATIONAL EDITOR

LETTERS TO

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.

TANNER

A STRONG OPINION ABOUT CURRENT PORTLAND EVENTS?

PSU’S NEW CUBA CLUB ADVOCATES FOR SOLIDARITY

PENDING OFFICIAL STUDENT ORGANIZATION STATUS, THE CLUB SEEKS TO EDUCATE AND ENGAGE

NICK GATLIN

As one entered the Smith Memorial Student Union second-floor lounge at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 5, they would find a curious sight. Tucked in the right-side corner of the room, abutting the Littman Gallery and the panoramic row of windows overlooking the South Park Blocks, sat a huddled group of twelve students facing a large paper sign affixed to the wall, which read “PSU Cuba Solidarity,” flanked on either side by two speakers, Stella Burlingame and Michael Chamberlain. This was the first meeting of the Cuba Solidarity Club.

Anyone who has walked through campus in the past two weeks has likely encountered one of the new student group’s bright-pink posters pinned to various bulletin boards in Smith and elsewhere. If not, they may have seen Burlingame or Chamberlain advertising the group at a folding table on the pedestrian walkway between Smith and Cramer Hall.

Burlingame and Chamberlain—the group’s founders, and president and vice-president of the club, respectively—seek to counter what they view as anti-Cuban bias by mainstream media and popular culture. The Cuba Solidarity Club, according to the founders, is an effort to organize and educate Portland State students about the true Cuba. “Really, we’re united around two things,” Chamberlain said. “One is opposition to the U.S. embargo; the second is educating and informing people about the Cuban reality. We think the U.S. public has been mis-educated.”

Their official mission statement is to call “on the U.S. government to lift its 60-year economic embargo—or blockade—on Cuba, and normalize relations. As a student organization, we seek to pursue this outcome through the education of ourselves and our community on the history and current reality of Cuba, inclusive of the United States’ policies of imperialist aggression toward the island nation.”

“We’ll want to do our own internal education, but we’ll also want to do a lot of outreach,” Chamberlain said regarding the club’s goals. “We want to work with other student clubs on campus who have common goals… bring speakers, [and] show support for what the citywide group [the Portland End the Blockade Committee] is doing.”

Chamberlain spoke at length about his views on Cuba. “I’ve been active around a lot of different issues, but Cuba’s always been dear to my heart because they’ve stood up to the U.S… and there’s a lot of things [in Cuba] that I think are really admirable,” he said. In particular, he spoke about Cuba’s social safety net, including its national healthcare system and its medical brigades which travel the world to provide emergency medical aid.

Speaking on the U.S.-imposed economic embargo on Cuba enacted by the Kennedy administration, Chamberlain said, “The Cubans call it a ‘blockade,’ because it’s not just a passive unwillingness to do trade—which is what most people think of when they hear ‘embargo’—it’s really an active economic war against Cuba.”

“At the very least, the U.S. should just keep its hands off,” Chamberlain said. “Let [Cubans] determine their own future, including letting them make their own mistakes. It’s their right to make their own mistakes.”

Both Burlingame and Chamberlain have prior experience with activism. “I’ve been a social justice activist since I was in my teens,” Chamberlain said. “I was an election observer in the first all-race elections [in South Africa].”

“I actually met Nelson Mandela, I shook his hand,” he added with a smile.

Burlingame spent the summer in Nicaragua with the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC)—in English, Association of Rural Workers. “Going to Nicaragua and attending that delegation… I met some Cuban activists, and basically the moral of the delegation was, ‘we need people that

are in the belly of the beast to be doing this work in solidarity with us,’” Burlingame said.

The president and vice-president met at a lecture about Cuba given by author Helen Yaffe and organized by the Portland End the Blockade Committee. Over the summer, they began to talk about forming a student group at PSU. Their first meeting about the club was at the restaurant Cubo de Cuba on Southeast Hawthorne, which Burlingame explained was a happy coincidence. “We weren’t trying to find a Cuban place… he lives in Milwaukee and I live in Northeast [Portland], so it just happened to be right in the middle,” she said.

The Cuba Solidarity Club is currently not an official student organization, as it waits for approval from Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP). Once the club is approved, Chamberlain explained, they plan on hosting a variety of events and activities, including guest speakers and coordination with other PSU and Portland groups. “We’re classified as an ‘advocacy group,’ I’m told, and there are other advocacy groups we’d like to talk to,” Chamberlain explained.

On Wednesday, the first meeting had a slow start, with half a dozen early attendees quietly sharing their names, majors and places of origin. As noon approached, however, the group grew larger and pulled in more chairs to fit a total of 12 students, not including the club leaders.

Spread out on a table against the wall was an array of literature on Cuba, including copies of the group’s flier; a pamphlet on “freedom of religion in Cuba;” and a variety

of books such as Che Guevara Speaks, Cuba for Beginners and A History of the Cuban Revolution. Also on the table were two miniature Cuban flags and printed copies of news articles regarding Cuba.

The meeting began with introductions. The group included a wide variance of political experience, with some students being committed activists and others entering politics for the first time. There were a variety of majors as well. Some were studying political science or sociology, while others came from such disparate fields as computer science, applied linguistics, Spanish and psychology. What united them all was a shared interest in Cuba.

As the official meeting began, Burlingame and Chamberlain sometimes struggled to be heard over the din of the student lounge—the scrape of chairs, coughs and conversations which echoed through the hall often overtook the speakers’ voices. “Once we get recognized as a student group, we’ll be able to reserve an actual room,” Chamberlain said to the group.

by the leaders first, however, a discussion regarding the company Meta’s ownership of the app—the same company that owns Facebook—led the group to ultimately vote to use Signal, an encrypted messaging service.

The meeting closed with a degree of uncertainty about the club’s status as an official student group. There is an unclear timeline on when SALP approval might happen, Burlingame told the group, due to the slow pace of “PSU bureaucracy.”

One student who attended the meeting, who asked to be identified as Hunter, spoke to Vanguard about their interest in Cuba and experience with the country. Before attending PSU, they were stationed in Guantanamo Bay working as an intelligence analyst for a U.S. military joint task force. The experience exposed them to regular Cuban people, they said, and highlighted the divide between U.S. perceptions of Cuba and the reality for the people there. The base at Guantanamo Bay has “a real Florida retirement home vibe,” Hunter said, a stark contrast to the world outside the base. A non-disclosure agreement they were made to sign prevented them from discussing many details about their time in Cuba, they said, but they explained how the experience had radically changed their worldview.

WhatsApp was proposed

Next on the agenda was the reading of the club’s mission statement, which was agreed to without amendments. The election of officers was a similarly short process with Burlingame and Chamberlain voted president and vicepresident by a simple voice vote. After that, an attendance sheet and schedule planner was passed around the group to determine when each member was available for meetings and activities, such as tabling or poster-making. To end the meeting, Burlingame asked for each person’s contact information in order to start group communications.

Moving forward, Burlingame said, “the more people who hear about what we’re doing and want to join, the better, because that’s fighting that mainstream narrative that we’re inundated with, which is that Cuba is this horrible, repressive communist dictatorship.”

PHOTOS: SOLIDARITY FOR CUBA’S FIRST MEETING ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF SMSU. ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI/PSU VANGUARD

ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE CENTER OFFERS WALKING TOURS

As each of us moves throughout our daily lives, our eyes constantly encounter spaces, places and things that scream for our attention, from our phones beeping and buzzing to the Portland Transit lines inching across our sightlines in every direction. In these moments, we feel as if we are in command of what we truly see and what we disregard in the indistinct periphery.

But is that true? How do we know that the things we miss or don’t engage with aren’t the things to which we should be paying attention? While various factors play a role in keeping buildings or spaces intact, the driving force will always be the communities they serve, and the neighborhood support they may receive.

To that end, and to keep our eyes on the bigger picture, the Architectural Heritage Center (AHC) housed on SE Grand Avenue provides weekly walking tours of sites around Portland, Oregon—stretching from the Mt. Tabor neighborhood to the Hawthorne Neighborhood to the Pearl District, while also providing context to surroundings that are closer-to-home like that of Broadway & Midtown. Their walking tours are available every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

This concept of preservation can transform for each of us differently over time, connecting us to the past in ways that can be both direct—such as the color of a house being similar

to that of your childhood home—and indirect, such as the emergent features of a city which call back to associations of past social and cultural environments.

“One way to look at older buildings is that the architecture is representative of the art form of what was popular/cutting edge in its time,” said Val C. Ballestrem, the AHC’s Educational Manager and author of Lost Portland, Oregon. “Buildings are also representative of the aspirations of their time. In this way, they help tell the story of a place, like Portland, shedding light on our history or heritage.”

In this sense, they help people to understand better not the things we see but the unseen things around us—things sequestered within their architectural facades, fragments of memories sculpted in their ballasts and interiors or within the topographical landscapes themselves.

Through this lens, viewers can begin to look around, searching for what our memories tell us should be there and trying to validate these saved accounts by portraying their realistic conditions. Trying to understand the impacts of our phenomenological situations—the world we see (foreground), the community that surrounds us (middle ground) and the city we live in (background), allows us to focus on what our values are as individuals and as a society. What things

do we demand from our built environment? What level of consciousness in our lives should we be promoting?

The AHC walking tours encourage viewers of their tours to go deep and explore these questions. “We [try to] do various tours around the city that touch on a variety of themes relative to that place and that provide a representative sampling of the architecture there,” Ballestrem said. “Find a theme that fits with a walking tour—Ladd’s Addition—and that has buildings that have a story to tell in conjunction with their human stories. Who was in that building? What was there before? We try to think of the tour holistically, including the time available and route available.”

While these instinctive feelings can collapse on themselves, they can also build proverbial skylines in our thoughts—reacting and tracing Portland’s continual pace of urban renewal projects throughout the city along with our collective desire for modernization and integration with advanced architectural technologies.

Like many things in life, dredging up past stories can create uncomfortable situations—but it can also allow us as a culture to cultivate dialogue about what we once thought, in a way that prepares us for the future in the proverbial civic garden we call our home.

37TH & HAWTHORNE LOOKING WEST. COCHRAN CIDER CO. 1921. COURTESY OF AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE CENTER

PORTLAND LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL RETURNS TO PDX FOR ITS 16TH SEASON

OTHERS

It’s a commonly accepted notion among those who travel: traveling forces one to open their mind and worldview to other cultures in a way that virtually no other experience does. Unfortunately, traveling is not financially or physically accessible for many, but the need to learn about other cultures and perspectives remains. Enter the next best thing—film festivals that allow you to explore different cultures through the silver screen.

One such festival is Portland Latin Film Festival (PDXLAFF), which has films showing until Dec. 7 and allows one to explore Latin American culture in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay and the United States.

The festival first kicked off in 2007 in the Whitsell Auditorium and has switched venues a few times to the Living Room Theaters and the Broadway Metroplex, eventually finding its home at the Hollywood Theatre about 10 years ago.

Maria Osterroth—the founder, director and curator of the PDXLAFF—put much effort into curating the film festival with her husband. “We curate all the films, I travel to Mexico for the International Film Festival, and that’s an opportunity for me to see films from Latin America,” Osterroth said. “They have a great marketplace, and you can meet the directors, the producers, the actors and all the people involved in the industry.”

Osterzroth said she found it very fulfilling to support her community in this way. “I’m from Mexico City, so I want to bring people the possibility to see those films in our modern language,” she said. “But also it’s not just to watch a film, because you can watch films even on your phone, right? But it’s not the same experience. We want to bring the community together and also enjoy the films on the big screen.”

This element of bringing communities together is an essential function of a film festival and seems especially relevant and precious after over a year of being isolated from community, especially community events such as these. “You are supposed to watch [the films] and share the experience with other people,” Osterroth said. “And after the film, have the opportunity to have a conversation to discuss the film. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, but it gives you an opportunity to interact with other human beings. Especially right now that people tend to be more isolated.”

The intention of the festival is to select films that are not accessible on any other platform or in any other theater, making this festival the only place to see these works for now. “The festival films are maybe not like very big projects, but they all are very well done,” Osterroth said. “Maybe they don’t have a lot of special effects, but talk

about humans like you and me living in different realities in different contexts and help us to understand and respect others even more and celebrate our differences as well.”

While these films might not be recognizable to many, they are still incredibly well-made and have often won awards. For example, the upcoming Bolivian-based and inspired film Utama , playing on Oct. 12, has won several awards and recognition from extremely prestigious film festivals like the Sundance Film Festival.

Another notable film playing Oct. 23 is titled Home is Somewhere Else . “What is interesting about this film is it touches the topics about migration,” Osterroth said. “So the voices in this documentary are the voices of the people that are telling their stories. You don’t see their faces, you just see, like, drawings of them. But you have the opportunity to learn about their lives and their journey.”

Another notable film playing Nov. 16 is a fictional story that touches on a non-fictional problem. “It touches on this problem of violence or gangs in Panama,” Osterroth said. “They have some professional actors, but some of the actors are also like, people, like young kids from the street. They chose this boy who was really good... and he participated in the film. But when the movie was gonna be released, he could not go because, unfortunately, he was shot by one of the guns on the streets of Panama. So the movie talks about a very serious problem and, unfortunately, this young guy was a victim of the problem that the movie was showing us. So they are realities.”

The realities that film allows us to see include the existence of other cultures, which will enable us to see both the hard things and the good experiences. “It brings the world closer to us, but not just the world, other human beings talking about their feelings, about their needs, about their dreams and about their challenges,” Osterroth said. “And at the end, we realize that all of us have dreams, desires, needs and the need to connect with other humans.”

Connection is vital, and we must understand that while we might be different, we connect through our shared humanity. “If I understand where other people come from, I also will understand, okay, I’m different… but in the end, we are all human beings,” Osterroth said. “That’s what really matters at this moment where we are so divided, and not just in this country, but in the whole world. When we don’t understand each other—we hate each other, and we separate them from us. So for me, this is a possibility. This [film festival] is like a window where you have the opportunity to put yourself in the shoes of others. And maybe you don’t understand others, but at least respect others.”

ABOVE:

A SHOT IN THE DARK

SHOTSPOTTER ISN’T THE SOLUTION

NEO CLARK

ALEX ALDRIDGE

Mayor Ted Wheeler recently voiced his support in moving forward with a pilot program to implement a gunshot-detection technology called ShotSpotter with the intent to reduce gun violence in Portland. At the same time, local stories of shootings—like the nine shootings occurring over a weekend at the end of August—seem to be popping up in the news with uncomfortable and increasing frequency.

While I question the accuracy of statistics from the Portland Police Bureau (PPB)—or anything coming from them, for that matter—shootings in Portland have seen a significant rise over the last couple of years, with 891 shootings happening from January through August of this year according to PPB data.

The ShotSpotter technology would be the latest in a series of strategies to curb the rising gun violence in Portland, including the introduction of PPB’s Focused Intervention Team (FIT).

In January of this year PPB introduced FIT with a stated primary goal of responding to shootings in progress. It is important to note how the mission of FIT is quite similar to the Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT), which disbanded in 2020 due to criticisms of targeting the Black community of Portland.

The community oversight group of FIT—the Focused Intervention Team Community Oversight Group (FITCOG)— recommended the ShotSpotter technology back in July. ShotSpotter works by placing 20–25 acoustic microphones per square mile throughout specific locations in the city to triangulate and capture the time and location of sounds which could be gunfire. According to their website, “this data is used to locate the incident and is then filtered by sophisticated machine algorithms to classify the event as a potential gunshot.” This data is then confirmed or denied by acoustic experts who work at the company’s Incident Review Center. If the noise is confirmed to be gunfire by these acoustic experts, an alert gets sent to the local police department in a process which they claim takes under 60 seconds.

Now that we have a rough idea of what the company claims its technology can do, let’s dive a bit deeper to see why bringing ShotSpotter technology to Portland is a terrible idea, despite the increasing number of shootings.

The first problem with the technology is its accuracy in detecting actual gunfire. While the company claims to save lives by helping assist local police departments by working in a partnership with their technology, a recent study done by Chicago’s Office of Inspector General shows some startling data. They analyzed all ShotSpotter alert data in the city of Chicago from Jan. 1, 2020, to May 31, 2021, revealing that of the 41,830 alerts which prompted a police response, only 4,556 of those resulted in the evidence of a gun-related incident, representing a 9.9% rate of alerts leading to an assumed outcome.

This highlights another problem of the technology—the communities and neighborhoods where this technology would be set up. FITCOG suggests the sensors be set up in areas with a high risk of gun violence, which seems reasonable on the surface until you realize these areas are likely to already have a higher police presence. This raises questions about the demographics of these chosen neighborhoods.

Adding to this problematic mix is how dangerous it will be for anyone in the area of an alert when PPB comes rolling through even more amped up than usual. Arriving at the scene of an alert ready to engage would potentially be dangerous for anyone who is having a mental health crisis in the area or anyone with a cell phone, a toy or any other object in their possession which police could mistake for a gun. This also creates the possibility of PPB arriving at the location of an alert and treating anyone walking or driving in the area as a threat, which could lead to searches of persons or vehicles which they deem as suspicious.

With the 9.9% rate mentioned above, we can reasonably assume nine out of 10 police responses to an alert would not only yield a possible false alert, but would terrorize residents in the community with an increased chance of PPB harassment and them possibly shooting an unarmed person—all thanks to some acoustic expert mistaking a car backfiring for a gunshot.

Putting this technology in the hands of the Portland Police Bureau is just a bad idea all around. A Department of Justice (DOJ) report which came out last year showed how the city of Portland was out of compliance with six of the seven sections outlined in a 2014 agreement with the DOJ and the city of Portland. Most of

these noncompliances have to do with PPB violating use-of-force policies—including failures to investigate and penalize PPB officers who have used inappropriate force against the public.

In the first civil suit against the city of Portland over police actions and behavior during 2020, three officers took the stand, including “an officer [who] appeared to not fully understand the bureau’s use-of-force directives,” revealing an unsurprising confirmation of how systemic being out of compliance with the DOJ agreement truly is.

These officers not fully understanding these use-of-force directives raises further concerns, because whether they fully understand the directives or not, police and their unions will continue to fight with everything they have to make sure they are never held accountable for their violent use of force—even when those actions go against their own policies.

Adding ShotSpotter into the mix not only expands the ever growing surveillance state, it also represents a societal failure in wasting more money on toys for police, which will only exacerbate their ability to cause harm to the community while remaining unaccountable themselves.

It hardly seems wise to implement ShotSpotter in the first place, but pairing this technology with a police bureau which shows evidence of failing to comply with use-of-force policies seems like an incredibly shortsighted and dangerous move. I propose the city of Portland use the money they were going to use for this technology—along with any other increases they are thinking of adding to PPB’s budget in the future— for the Portland Street Response and other programs like it which prioritize de-escalation and treating people in crisis as the human beings they are. The city of Portland does have an increase in gun violence to reckon with, but this questionable technology being used by an out-of-compliance police force is a baffling and dangerous decision.

KATU reported that while there is no timeline for when the ShotSpotter pilot program will begin, a proposal will be submitted to the City Council which will allow community input. I hope we all take the opportunity to voice our opposition to this, because there are many solutions to consider, but ShotSpotter isn’t it.

CRIME CRUNCH

CAN MORE RESOURCES TAKE A BITE OUT OF CRIME?

IAN MCMEEKAN

The past few years have seen a precipitous rise in crime across Portland. The Portland Police Bureau’s online reporting shows a rise in reported criminal activity from July 2021 to July 2022 of 5,618 to 5,960 reported cases. We should be asking what can be done to stop crime from rising any more than it already has and hopefully lower it overall.

One way to do this is to spread awareness of resources for those who may commit a crime. For example, say there is a theft due to a desperate person’s lack of employment. If the perpetrator of this crime had known of resources such as the organization Northwest Regional Re-entry Center (NWRRC)—which helps offenders make a safe and successful transition from prison back to their communities, and shares resources to prevent crime—perhaps they would not need to steal in the first place. This is because, as stated on their website , “securing employment, an appropriate residence, and adequate mentoring support is essential to reducing recidivism and strengthening our communities.”

Organizations like this are very important because they realize that those who commit crimes around our campus are not doing so because they are inherently bad people, but instead because they are in desperate situations and may have been excluded from traditional resources and modes of economic participation.

There are still many other forms of crime that do not have enough resources dedicated to prevention.

One such example is relationship-related assault, which could be addressed with counseling. If there were more

access to counseling for people in these situations, perhaps a counselor could help people in distress realize that violence isn’t the way to deal with conflict.

Unfortunately, the court system as it currently exists tends to fail domestic assault survivors. “The issue lies in the small percentage of the population who feel that they are above the law,” Psychology Today reported. The report continues that many “see a protection order as merely a suggestion. For these individuals, the idea becomes ‘don’t stop abusing, just stop getting caught,’ a mentality that is reinforced through a legal system that often fails to hold abusers accountable.” This demonstrates why we need to give far more resources to the victims and survivors of this sort of crime. If survivors had resources, they would have a backup plan for if this happened and somewhere safe to go to get away from the one committing assault.

Assault is far from the only crime that causes harm, and it’s equally important to have resources in place to prevent these. As previously mentioned, there are already many resources available to those who may commit a crime through organizations like the NWRRC. Organizations such as this are important because some marginalized people may feel that they have no option other than to turn to crime. These resources give them a better alternative.

Word must be spread about such resources. They should be advertised widely on the nightly news and in the newspaper so that they can be more well-known and utilized.

Resources are a step in the right direction, but there’s also much more that needs to be done. More security may help,

but we also need to not dehumanize the people committing crimes. Despite how horrible some of these crimes are, behind them are people that have serious problems and they deserve a second chance. Locking them away in jails and prisons is not the answer. Instead, what we need to do is give them jobs and lift restrictions on the employment of those with a record of felonies. The City of Portland did just this in 2014 by removing language from its employment applications requiring applicants to submit a criminal history statement.

“This is a win-win,” Former Portland Mayor Charlie Hales said at the time. “This removes a barrier to employment with the City, which will attract a more diverse pool of applicants to City jobs—one step in addressing the collective impact of crime. Stable employment significantly reduces recidivism rates, building stability and breaking the cycle of incarceration for people trying to get back on their feet.”

While this is a step in the right direction, we still have a long way to go. Our city officials need to be working harder to solve this problem without relying on the use of brute force and punitive measures.

If we can develop more compassion and look beyond these problems toward their solutions, we can lessen the crime rate in our city. Additionally, we must also spread awareness about the programs that currently exist—resources are useless unless people know about them. At the same time, we need to reform the justice system away from the current reliance on punishment as a deterrence. Until that happens, we will be left with a city that is teetering towards seemingly ever-increasing crime rates.

CASEY LITCHFIELD

WHY INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS COME TO PSU

A LOOK AT THE EXPERIENCE OF STUDYING ABROAD IN PORTLAND

KELSEY ZUBERBUEHLER

Across the United States, international students make up about 4.6% of the student population. Historically, international enrollment in the U.S. has had a big emphasis on students from Asian countries, with Chinese and Indian students making up the largest two countries of origin for international students. This trend also lines up with Portland State’s enrollment demographics, which lists China and India in addition to a few other countries as the top countries that PSU represents. In fact, while international students make up 4.6% of the student body across the nation, 6% of PSU’s student body come from abroad.

“It’s really nerve-wracking being introduced to a whole new city, country and culture where you have nothing but stereotypes and social media as your background knowledge of the place to go on,” said pre-pandemic PSU alumni Karina, who came from Russia to study biology. “I admitted that I was surprised that Portland was not like New York and Los Angeles like you see on TV. Portland is a big place, but it’s not as big as you would think America is often shown on TV.”

Karina explained how coming to Portland was a shock, not only in the size of Portland compared to how Hollywood portrays other cities, but the cultural differences as well. “People in Portland like to say hello to everybody and they smile a lot,” she said. “In Russia we only smile with people we are close with or if something is funny…but the biggest surprise to me is how Americans are so dedicated to their work and just how much they work…I knew a student who was working one full-time job and a part time job as well while also being a full student…People from Portland are crazy.”

One of the commonly cited reasons why traveling abroad is an attractive proposition for students lies in the prospect of making more friends than just the ones they already know. According to Karina, meeting new people was not only one of the biggest things she believed made her experience a positive one, but also gave her a sense of greater appreciation for the Russian community. “Portland was so vibrant and full of life the few years I was at PSU a few years before

the pandemic,” Karina said. “I met so many different views of life from students who were all about providing for their family, others because it was expected and some because they had family in Portland. Being amongst such a different group made me actually more appreciative of whenever I met another student who came from Russia. In a world where your first language isn’t spoken very much, sometimes meeting another person who also came from the same world as you feels as if it’s just your fellow Russians against the rest of the world. Those small moments were really memorable.”

Beyond the cultural shock of being in Portland, Karina commented on how attending PSU in a new environment posed a lot of challenges. “If I went to school in Russia I would at least have friends or family who could give me good advice,” she said. “But when you’re in Portland on your own you have no one other than the fast friends you make to rely on for advice. It can be very lonely at times…I can only imagine what life would be

like in PSU if I was a student there with the Russia-Ukraine situation going on. That said, most people, especially the students, were really nice to me and I really appreciated my time at Portland State. I wanted to study in the United States and the Western U.S. was closer to Russia, and cities like Seattle or the cities in California, they’re just so much more expensive. Portland was the cheapest and I’m really glad I chose Portland State.”

Karina is currently a student in Germany doing more advanced studies. Karina said being an international student and studying abroad at Portland State prepared her to become a good student, and that studying abroad can be great for everyone. “You’re on your own and you have to adapt quickly or else you’re going to fail,” she said. “At Portland State my English was not good and my reading was even worse. But being a student at Portland State forced me to become good at English fast. I think that’s why my transition into German schools is so smooth, because Portland State has taught me what to do already.”

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