VOLUME 76 • ISSUE 12 • JUNE 29, 2021
IT’S BEEN NEARLY A YEAR SINCE CPSO PLEDGED TO DISARM.
Y L L A N I F T I WILL ? L L A F S I H T N E HAPP NEWS Will CPSO be disarmed by September? P. 4 –5
SCIENCE & TECH The science behind the PNW heatwave P. 6
SPORTS Vikings speak on gender inequality in the NCAA P. 7
CONTENTS
COVER BY SHANNON STEED, COVER PHOTOS BY SEAN BASCOM/PSU VANGUARD
INTERNATIONAL THIS WEEK AROUND THE WORLD
P. 3
NEWS WILL CPSO BE DISARMED BY SEPTEMBER? SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY THE SCIENCE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR WEATHER EXTREMES
STAFF EDIT ORI A L EDITOR IN CHIEF Nick Gatlin MANAGING EDITOR Morgan Troper NEWS EDITORS Conor Carroll Danny O’Brien INTERNATIONAL EDITOR Karisa Yuasa SPORTS EDITOR Eric Shelby SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Ryan McConnell
ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Béla Kurzenhauser OPINION EDITOR Rachel Owen ONLINE EDITOR Lily Hennings COPY CHIEF Mackenzie Streissguth CONTRIBUTORS Sean Bascom Allison Kirkpatrick Analisa Landeros
SPORTS GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE NCAA REMAINS A LIVE ISSUE
P. 7
P. 4–5
ARTS & CULTURE ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE INTERROGATES SURVEILLANCE IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM
P. 8
P. 6
OPINION NO POLICE OFFICER IS ABOVE THE LAW
P. 9
PHO T O A ND MULTIMEDI A MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Olivia Lee
A DV ISING & ACCOUN TING COORDINATOR OF STUDENT MEDIA Reaz Mahmood
PRODUC TION & DE SIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Shannon Steed
STUDENT MEDIA ACCOUNTANT Sheri Pitcher
DESIGNER Kelsey Stewart T ECHNOL OGY & W EB SIT E TECHNOLOGY ASSISTANTS Juliana Bigelow Kahela Fickle George Olson
STUDENT MEDIA TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR Corrine Nightingale To contact Portland State Vanguard, email editor@psuvanguard.com
MIS SION S TAT EMEN T 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.
A BOU T 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 Tuesdays and online 24/7 at psuvanguard.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @psuvanguard for multimedia content and breaking news.
THIS WEEK 3
around the
WORLD
June 21-26
1 2
4
KARISA YUASA 1
June 21
TEHRAN, IRAN
Ebrahin Raisi, Iran’s president-elect, made his first remarks since his election win on Saturday, according to Reuters. In his remarks, Raisi supported talks between Iran and six other nations to revive a 2015 nuclear deal—but refused to meet with United States President Joe Biden. “We support the negotiations that guarantee our national interests,” Raisi said. “America should immediately return to the deal and fulfil its obligations under the deal.” According to Deutsche Welle, Raisi will become the first Iranian president to be under U.S. sanctions before entering office, due to his involvement in mass executions in 1988. The Iranian election faced controversy, as candidates were chosen by Iran’s Guardian Council. Out of the 592 candidates that registered to run for president, only seven were approved by the Council, according to Al Jazeera. 2
June 24
HONG KONG
Following the arrests of five top editors and executives and the freezing of $2.3 million of its assets by police, Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy print newspaper, Apple Daily, sold out of its final edition within hours, according to AP News. “This is our last day, and last edition, does this reflect the reality that Hong Kong has started to lose its press freedom and freedom of speech?” asked Dickson
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
Ng, an Apple Daily graphic designer, in comments to AP News. On the night of June 23, supporters gathered outside of the office and shined their phone flashlights in solidarity. The paper printed one million copies for their last issue, compared to their typical 80,000 copies. “The forced closure of Apple Daily is the blackest day for media freedom in Hong Kong’s recent history,” said Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director. “This is an unacceptable attack on freedom of expression.” According to BBC, Hong Kong’s government accused the newspaper of publishing reports in violation of a national security law. 3
June 25
GIBRALTAR
Officials announced an ease on Gibraltar’s strict anti-abortion law following a referendum vote on June 24, according to Reuters. The British territory of only 32,000 people has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in Europe: all abortions are banned and punishable by up to life in prison. According to BBC, approximately 62% of voters supported the change, which would allow pregnancies to be terminated by a physician within the first 12 weeks, depending on the potential risk to the mental and/or physical health of the pregnant person. “I am not pro-abortion, but I am pro-choice,” said Sheela, a Gibraltar resident. “I think every person should have, at the end of the day, their own right to do what they want.” Gibraltar’s
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo announced that the new law would be implemented within 28 days. “Today Gibraltar voted yes—yes for human rights, yes for women and girls, yes for trusting doctors and healthcare professionals, yes for choice, yes for compassion and empathy,” said Isobel Ellul, a campaigner for the change in law. 4
June 26
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Australia entered a strict two-week lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the Delta COVID-19 variant, according to Reuters. 110 cases of the Delta variant have been detected in Sydney. Darwin, a city in Northern Australia, also entered a two-day lockdown after a cluster of cases were linked to a mine worker and authorities were unable to track down all close contacts. “Given how contagious this strain of the virus is, we do anticipate that in the next few days, case numbers are likely to increase beyond what we have seen today,” said Gladys Berejiklian, Premier of New South Wales, at a news briefing on Sunday. Al Jazeera reported that the lockdown requires people to stay home for 14 days with exceptions only for buying essential goods, exercise, medical care and school, as well as for those who are unable to work from home. “I would rather regret us going too hard, too early than go too easy and risk it all,” said Chief Minister Michael Gunner.
INTERNATIONAL
3
SEAN BASCOM Portland State President Stephen Percy announced in early June that the school’s Campus Public and Safety Office (CPSO) has plans to begin unarmed patrols as of Sept. 1, 2021, but activists in the campus community remain skeptical. The recent statement comes after years of pressure from groups like DisarmPSU, the 2018 killing of Jason Washington by armed CPSO officers James Dewey and Shawn McKenzie and previous promises to disarm last year. Pressure mounted with over a year of protests for Black lives, against police killings and focused on racial justice in Portland and the United States. As of Sept. 1, 2021, according to CPSO Chief Willie Halliburton, all campus police firearms will be stored under lock and key in CPSO headquarters and would only be released to officers under specific conditions at the discretion of the CPSO Chief. “There has to be a major incident on campus for that to happen,” Halliburton said. An Intergovernmental Agreement between PSU and Portland Police Bureau provides the potential for additional armed officers to respond. “That means that if there has to be an incident on campus where there's either weapons involved or there's an uptick in danger or increased danger to an officer who's unarmed,” Halliburton said. The decision to disarm patrol officers was made by the entire CPSO team, including Halliburton, last summer, but CPSO says changes in policy and staffing resulted in the new Sept. 1 date. Several officers who recently left CPSO reportedly cited the climate of protests and negative sentiment towards law enforcement in the city as one reason for their departure, according to Halliburton. All campus police officers will also now rid themselves of their
1956
saying that the school needs to show specific actions in order to rebuild trust within the community. If patrols do disarm, it will still only take a radio call to CPSO and PPB to bring guns to any given place on campus. DisarmPSU will hold a march and vigil with Jason Washington’s family on Tuesday, June 29, according to an Instagram post from the group. PSU President Stephen Percy spoke at length with Portland State Vanguard about “reimagining campus safety.” He began by crediting Halliburton for the “brave stance in deciding to pursue policing without weapons.” A few reasons he gives for the year-long delay in disarming patrols are hiring replacements for officers who retired this year and updating lengthy policies to reflect the new patrol model. CPSO is now prioritizing staffing levels that allow for two police officers to be on duty at any given time. “I think some of our earlier timelines turned out to be too optimistic because of the work we had [left] to do and because of the pandemic,” Percy said. “But we never stopped doing it, working towards fully disarming.” Percy added that Halliburton has been working without a firearm for some time now. Percy and Halliburton both stress that this is new territory the university is exploring by moving to unarmed campus police. This may indeed be true, however, some historical context on both PSU and the state of Oregon’s policies regarding armed police on college campuses provides clarity on the subject. Students, faculty and community members have pressured PSU leadership since the 2015 decision to form an armed campus police force, warning that incidents of perceived racial profiling, harassment and misconduct would only get worse. “From the formation of PSU in 1946 until 2015, campus security in all of its various forms did not have firearms,” said Gould, while discussing this recent history on campus.
4
NEWS
tactical vests, opting instead for a plain uniform with a Taser, radio and pepper spray attached to an internal vest worn underneath. “Feedback I've heard from our citizens out there is that it is less intimidating [because] it doesn't look militaristic,” Halliburton said. Corrinne Gould, who works for the PSU School of Business and is affiliated with the advocacy organization DisarmPSU, is not convinced by the newest round of public assurances from PSU management. “There was the expectation that CPSO would be patrolling without arms at the start of the [2020] fall term,” Gould said. “In the end of October, students were actually seeing CPSO patrolling with firearms and were like, ‘hey–this feels like a violation of the promise that was made.’” Gould said DisarmPSU started receiving emails from students last Sept. regarding armed officers, which were eventually followed
by PSU’s statement in Oct. that disarming was not yet happening. Gould cited other public shows of planned changes like a pricey consulting group’s report and the 2019 Plan for Holistic Public Safety at PSU. This led to the creation of the University Public Safety Oversight Committee at PSU, and to the continued hiring and training of armed campus police, while simultaneously creating language that placed an increased responsibility for campus safety upon students, instead of PSU leadership and law enforcement. Even if CPSO does fully disarm its patrols this fall, Gould believes that it’s still not enough to effect real and lasting change. “We know that violent encounters with police officers at a national level are disproportionately affecting BIPOC people, LGBTQ people [and] people with disabilities,” said Gould. She highlights DisarmPSU’s demands for accountability from the university,
WILL CPSO BE BY SEPTEM In fact, only in 2009 was campus security staff given “stop and frisk authority” and the ability to arrest persons for probable cause by the now-repealed law ORS 352.385. This was then ratcheted up in 2011 when OR Senate Bill 405 provided for state universities to form police forces with “all of the authority and immunity of a municipal police department of this state,” including the use of firearms and the legal doctrine of qualified immunity. The shift to campus police at PSU did not happen overnight. In 2013, then-President Wim Wiewel assembled a task force with the express aim of planning and implementing an armed campus police force. This team then published their findings and sent recommendations to Wiewel. By 2015, with the blessing of PSU’s Board of Trustees resolution yet at odds with many on-campus activists, CPSO began patrolling with armed police officers. Then, in 2018, CPSO officers shot and killed Jason Washington during an incident outside the Cheerful Tortoise bar on SW College St., igniting an even stronger opposition to armed police on campus. In 2019, as PSU was in the middle of digesting the report from the consulting group and creating the Holistic Plan for Campus Public Safety, OR Senate Bill 576, aka Kaylee’s Law, was passed. This law rescinded the authority given to campus security officers in 2009, leaving campus police officers as the only agents with search and arrest authority. Specifically, when Percy and Halliburton say that policing campus with unarmed officers has never been done before, they mean unarmed police officers that work for the government—who retain all authority and immunity that come with it—not campus security. The question over the presence of police officers or security on campus, armed or unarmed, has been debated since PSU armed its security, with politics and reports of violence constantly stirring up sentiment between academia, the administration and policy makers. Students, however, have been answering ‘no’ to this question
for years, reporting racial profiling of Black and Arab students by CPSO security officers. “They’re distracting and aggressive,” said recent PSU graduate and former Vanguard photo editor Annie Schutz, who is Black. “I’ve been stopped, followed and bugged by them since the day I transferred. I’ve seen them constantly messing with other people too, homeless especially.” One new development over the past year has been the formation of the Reimagined Campus Safety Committee (RCSC), which is the most recent assembly tasked with addressing how PSU treats campus safety. “[President Percy] did not come to us and dictate what that outcome should look like,” said RCSC steering committee member Jose Coll, who is also Dean of the PSU School of Social Work. “[This] has allowed us as a committee to be brave and constructively think about multiple models of campus safety,” said Coll. Maintaining transparency and regaining the trust of the community, both on and off campus, is a primary goal of the assembly, according to Coll. The RCSC states that it aims to work within task groups over the next year to create a whole-system recommendation to Percy, who states he puts enormous trust in the RCSC’s work. The RCSC’s remit has no bearing on the upcoming Sept. 1 disarm date, according to Coll, and Percy appears optimistic that these changes will usher in an era of a safer and more accountable campus security force. If asked by Percy, Halliburton or the RCSC, Schutz said she would recommend “completely defunding CPSO. We don’t need it—they don’t do anything. Redistribute the funds. The Black Studies department is continually at risk of shutting down because of how little support it gets from the school.” Schutz’s take on the situation is decidedly less positive than that of Halliburton or Percy. “I think they’re full of shit. They’ve had a year to disarm, they told us last year and nothing changed.”
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
2021
ACTIVISTS WORRY GUNS REMAIN A RADIO CALL AWAY
2020
2019
UNARMED MBER?
2018 2015
2014 2013
PSU President Wim Wiewel’s Task Force on Campus Safety recommends formation of an armed campus police force
2011
2009 SHANNON STEED
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
NEWS
5
THE SCIENCE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR WEATHER EXTREMES RYAN MCCONNELL Portland made national headlines this weekend over the rare heat wave weather event, causing temperatures to rise above 110°F, with night temperatures remaining as high as 90°F. Cooling shelters have been set up around Portland to provide refuge from the triple digit heat. Many are citing this event as an example of climate change and the greenhouse effect; however, little is understood about how exactly climate change is affecting this already unusual weather event. Before understanding how climate change plays a role in these weather extremes, what, precisely, is the greenhouse effect? Like an actual greenhouse that traps heat inside a sheltered area through glass walls, Earth’s atmosphere traps and maintains heat through gas molecules. Naturally, this heat is how life is able to sustain itself on Earth, and is part of a balancing act that the planet uses to give back the energy it receives from the sun back to space. Greenhouse gases only make up a small proportion of our Earth’s atmosphere, unlike Venus which has an atmosphere almost entirely made up of greenhouse gases, making it so dense and hot it could melt lead. The main contender for what is causing such extreme climate changes has to do with the element carbon, and how we as humans have transmuted it since the Industrial Revolution. Our dependence on fossil fuels and our interference with the natural carbon cycle through means of burning forest lands, mining and burning coal and extraction of natural gases have transformed solid carbon into its gaseous state. This gas is often in the form of carbon dioxide, which is adept at absorbing radiant heat energy. As more carbon dioxide rests in the atmosphere, more heat gets absorbed and stays inside the Earth’s atmosphere instead of escaping back into space. This is how global warming happens, and why climate change is, in fact, a human-made phenomenon. Extreme heat waves are very rare events for the Pacific Northwest, but they are events that have been recorded roughly once every few decades—since before the effects of the Industrial Revolution took hold. Records have previously recorded temperatures as high as 107°F, so this isn’t the first time our region has seen such hot temperatures. However, because of climate change and the greenhouse gases multiplying in our atmosphere, the intensity of these waves are amplified. “The additional warming over the decades with greenhouse gases makes these heat waves more severe and last longer,” said Dr. Paul Loikith, Associate Professor at Portland State University and Doctorate of Atmospheric Science. “CO2 breaks the [carbon cycle] balance, because it
6
has to get warmer in order to balance the energy the sun gives it. What you’ll start to see then are hot days getting hotter and cool days becoming less cool.” This means that our record-breaking heat this past weekend will not be the last time we see this, and it will only continue to get worse and longer as time progresses. “Bad news is we cannot reverse this change we’ve already caused,” Loikith said. “There’s not much we can do to slow it down in the next 20 years.” The problem has to do with the lifespan of CO2 in our atmosphere. Loikith explained that it takes a couple of decades for the CO2 to dissipate and let the heat adjust. It’s understandably a lot to take in, especially knowing that as these temperatures rise, so do the health risks for the elderly and individuals who cannot afford air conditioning in their homes. Solving this in the long run is no simple task either. We know we must dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, not just nationally, but globally as well. Accomplishing that task is far easier said than done. The Trump presidency showed us just how easy it is for our own country to reverse course on handling climate change when put in the wrong hands. Even as early as last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation into law preventing Florida cities from making 100% renewable energy goals, literally mandating the use of fossil fuels. The continued lobbying and pushback from fossil fuel industries only delays our idealized future of reduced greenhouse gas production. For now, to look at this issue realistically, dedicated scientists have gathered a large amount of information about what changes to expect as time progresses. “With that information, there’s a lot of power to adapt,” Loikith said. Adaptation and collaboration are skills humans do best as a species, and while the course may be irreversible, the information available can provide the best resources for communities across the country. Oregon is already providing legislation that is geared towards protecting local communities from wildfires, and plans to phase into 100% renewable energy resources for the state. Water resources can be made more resilient, and we can create greater access to safe, cool spaces to house people in the meantime. While they will not resolve the global dangers this planet faces from climate change, there are resources to keep our communities and our families safe from harm. OPB is a great resource to check out places to call and find the closest cooling shelter upon extreme weather events such as these. Portland State has also offered their on-site locations for students to escape the dangerous heat.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
SHANNON STEED
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE NCAA REMAINS A LIVE ISSUE
INTERVIEWS WITH WOMEN IN COLLEGE SPORTS REVEAL DISPARITY
KELSEY STEWART
ERIC SHELBY women in student athletics continue to expose the NCAA’s gender disparity in college sports—the elephant in the room. Portland State Vanguard interviewed Viking student athletes to hear their opinions on the inequality. In the 2020–21 season, University of Oregon forward Sedona Prince called out the NCAA for the infamous “weight room incident.” The women’s side consisted of only a small rack of 12 dumbbells at the annual March Madness basketball tournament, but the men’s side of the tournament did not experience the same problem. Basketball player Savannah Dhaliwal was not surprised when Prince pointed out the situation to the NCAA. “Everyone was blasting it all over social media but for me, I know how women are treated as I am a college athlete myself and so this was nothing new,” Dhaliwal said. “The only reason there was so much media coverage about it was because they had something to compare it to as the men were playing in the same tournament at the same time.” Fellow women’s basketball team players Jenna Kilty and Morgan Baird remarked on the way the media gained access to the story. “[Prince] is someone who has a really huge platform so she was able to reach a lot of people when she posted that video,” Kilty said. “Anyone who saw a side by side comparison of the mens vs. womens [sic] NCAA tournament
and the weight rooms, food and gifts they got, would be shocked at how different they were.” “[Prince] is using her voice to help improve the current situations in the NCAA, and to improve systems for future female athletes,” Baird said. “Portland State’s SAAC recently completed a campaign focusing on equity and social justice topics, including equity in NCAA women’s sports. Projects like these spread awareness on important topics that impact many people.” For the softball team, their tournament lasted less than a week with multiple teams having to play double headers; the Florida State Seminoles played 7 games in 6 days (including a game that ended at 2:18 a.m.). The baseball tournament, however, is almost two weeks long. Softball player Olivia Grey said “it’s a slap in the face” to see the difference in treatment between baseball and softball. “The recovery times need to be equal regardless of the sport or timing,” Grey said. “For softball pitchers as well, this puts them at even more of a disadvantage because of the lack of relief between games.” Softball teammate Emily Johansen agreed; “Recovery is just as important as the performance itself, and the men are given the opportunity to recover, so why aren’t the women?” Kilty sympathized with the similar circumstances of the softball team. “You play back to back games in AAU or other summer leagues,” Kilty said. “But college athletes work so hard and with conditioning
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
and weight room and all the other requirements that come with being an athlete, you get tired. I can’t imagine playing more than [one] game a day.” Some of the women’s teams are forced to play in the middle of night because of the brackets and timing, according to Grey, even though she says the revenue for the Women’s College World Series has been skyrocketing every year. “The NCAA can’t continue to blame funding on the shortened time span,” Grey continued. “The favoritism over men’s sports versus women’s sports is so obvious.” Johansen worries about accessibility of the games. “The [Women’s College World Series] championship game was played at 3 p.m. on a Thursday,” Johansen said, “That’s just a really inconvenient time to watch any game, no matter the sport, because if you look at the [Men’s College World Series], the final game is scheduled to be played at 7 p.m. Now I’ll ask you, which game do you think people would choose between given time constraints?” Many players expressed struggles with the NCAA. Johansen calls it a “lack of support” in “behind-the-scenes stuff: inconvenient game times for fans to show support, lack of opportunities for decompression after stressful situations for some athletes who are juggling stress of playing, outside judgement on social media, not to mention the demands of school on top of all of this.” According to Baird, the NCAA tournament for
women’s basketball isn’t even able to use “March Madness” on media posts—because it’s only “March Madness” for men. Grey spoke of concern that money and profit was getting in the way of “protecting and making the athlete's collegiate experience the best it can be.” Players also had suggestions on things the NCAA could do better to support women’s sports, like greater representation. “I think the NCAA can do a better job at branding women’s sports and sharing their stories just like they do for men,” Dhaliwal said. “Whether that’s having posters of women’s athletes around schools or in the media I think we are still being underrepresented. I think overall, people are becoming more aware of the disparities between men’s and women’s sports especially in college.” Portland State is helping lead that charge with a female women’s basketball head coach in Coach Chelsey Gregg, and a female athletic director in Valerie Cleary. Baird suggested that women’s sports need to have an equal focus, and the NCAA can improve their systems by hiring more women in leadership positions, such as coaches or athletic directors. “It’s really inspiring to see women in these leadership positions, who can use their voices to promote change,” Baird said. “Things need to change, and quickly,” Johansen said, “for the mental and physical well-being of all of the collegiate athletes competing in the next few years.”
SPORTS
7
ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE
A TEST SUBJECT SUPERIMPOSED ONTO THE SUN. ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE/CINEREACH
INTERROGATES SURVEILLANCE IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM THEO ANTHONY’S SOPHOMORE FEATURE IS A MASTERPIECE OF DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING BÉLA KURZENHAUSER When utilized correctly, the documentary medium can not only be one of the strongest tools for changing a viewer’s beliefs, but also one of the fiercest weapons of truth. The best documentaries hide their opinions behind a sheen of imagery and spoken word, letting their subjects speak for themselves. Documentaries allow the audience to perceive their own world through another’s eyes, and the act of perceiving is exactly the focus of filmmaker Theo Anthony’s latest documentary feature All Light, Everywhere. All Light, Everywhere progresses through vignettes, stories and lectures, passing briefly and silently from one to another as Anthony slowly builds the foundation of his film’s thesis. A triptych emerges: in a community meeting
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ARTS & CULTURE
in Baltimore, the director of a private, aerial surveillance organization attempts to ease citizens’ worries about the implementation of his company’s 24/7 surveillance system. Just across the city, an officer in the Baltimore Police Department performs a body camera training session for other officers. Meanwhile, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a higher-up at Axon Enterprise—a company that produces body cams and Tasers—gives Anthony and his cameraman a tour of the company’s facilities. Throughout these three segments, Anthony examines the role of the camera in the history of law enforcement and the military. A faceless narrator waxes poetic over images from old textbooks, scientific illustrations and research papers. The narrator speaks about the first film ever made, the illusion
of perception and the truth behind perceiving; about the death of privacy, isolation and memory; and celluloid prisons and the body camera, which act as digital watchmen. Each part of the film works fluidly in its own unique way, presenting different but equally effective didactic and creative approaches to documentary filmmaking. When observing the police train with body cameras, or while seated in a community meeting, Anthony takes on the role of a fly-on-the-wall documentarian, simply observing, perceiving and recording what lies in front of him. While at Axon, however, the documentary shifts to a chilling tone. The camera moves almost inhumanely around Axon’s facilities, silently stalking the tour guide as it records an array of monotonous office workers shuffling over concrete floors and metal staircases.
The guide gestures to Axon’s research and development department, suspended in a black box at the very top of the building—a panopticon whose inhabitants are obscured from the sight of others in the facility. The camera passes by dozens of faceless individuals poking and prodding at pieces of metal and glass, as machinery clicks and clanks and whirs in the background, producing a symphony of mechanized melodies. Anthony draws parallels between invention and consequence, as the film’s narrator lectures about the connections between military weaponry and early motion cameras. References to scientists and artists are made to spark imagination and philosophical thought, as experimental photography dances through the lens and into each frame of the film throughout the entire runtime. Although All Light, Everywhere is ultimately focused on the presence of surveillance systems and cameras in law enforcement and the justice system, its ideas look beyond those subjects to paint a larger picture of visual theory and cameras in life as a whole. Early on in the film, an Axon employee states that body cameras are deliberately designed to capture less information than possible, because they must mimic a human eye to be useful in court. If a camera can hide that which is beyond its view, then how much of what the audience is seeing in a film is the whole truth? How much has Anthony distorted the truth in order to distill the dozens or hundreds of hours of footage captured into just 109 minutes? All Light, Everywhere is documentary filmmaking not just at its most precise, but also at its most freeform. It’s a documentary free from the shackles of talking heads and archive footage, unafraid of being critical of its subjects. Theo Anthony is surely one of the most promising up-and-coming filmmakers of this generation, and All Light, Everywhere is most certainly one of the best documentaries of its era.
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
NO POLICE OFFICER IS ABOVE THE LAW
RACHEL OWEN
After a year of screaming “A-C-A-B” and demanding police reformation, Portland seems to be moving in a progressive direction. However, as cliche as it is, the saying goes that everything may not be what it seems. In what bureau officials call an “unprecedented decision,” according to OPB, all 50 members of Portland’s Rapid Response Team have resigned from their positions on the team. The Rapid Response Team is primarily responsible for “maintain[ing] public safety,” according to Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt; in the past year, the RRT has pursued that mission by policing protests such as the ones that occurred last summer. The members will remain in the bureau, but will no longer be on the team. All of the members including sergeants, detectives and officers reached the collective decision on June 16, with an official announcement the following day. The decision was reached after news broke that one of the team members, Officer Corey Budworth, would be criminally charged for assaulting a photographer during the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020. According to The Oregonian, the group cited “a lack of clear direction from the chief’s office, changing interpretations of police force directives and policies, officer safety concerns and what they called inconsistent internal reviews of officers’ actions” as their reasons for resignation. In a memo written to Police Chief Chuck Lowell obtained by The Oregonian, the commander of the Rapid Response Team, Lt. Jacob Clark, claimed the problems were so severe, “they cannot continue to serve on the team under the extreme liability they are currently facing.” “The team recognizes leadership is complicated and multi-faceted,” the memo reads. “However, they believe there has been little clear guidance offered to the team. The lack of clear guidance has led to the team to lose confidence in their decision making, and fearful of later repercussions which they are currently experiencing in the form of delayed internal investigations.” As city officials continue to crack down on police misconduct, officers are feeling increased pressure to relieve themselves from any future allegations. These resignations are not about police reform, so much as they are about redirecting the blame for the atrocities officers committed last summer. In an interview with OPB, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt stated that his office has been looking into cases on the use of force since last year. As the District Attorney’s office continues to investigate police misconduct, the pressures from within the Portland Police Bureau must be increasing. Since the Rapid Response Team was at the forefront of public review last summer, the cases that Schmidt’s office has reviewed have only grown. “We have looked at multiple cases already and I think there are still several more that we’re continuing to look at,” Schmidt stated. “So [one case is] not necessarily an outlier that way.” By removing themselves from the team responsible for these allegations, did these officers think that they were just going to get away with it? The summer of 2020 was a clear indication that police reform needs to happen and it needs to happen now.
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 29, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
The lack of guidance from any official within the Portland Police Bureau is astonishing. These officers were not given any clarity on what to do in the situations they were presented with. However, this does not mean that they can point fingers at someone else. At a certain point, individual moral responsibility has to take over. It is evident that is not what happened in this case. Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty responded to the resignations by stating, ”What today’s action says is that some Portland police officers believe they are above the law. I support District Attorney Mike Schmidt in his efforts to hold police officers accountable when they commit crimes themselves.” She’s right. Officers must be held accountable. While it is true that changes in leadership, policies and training must be made in order to create a better system, the act of abandoning ship is not acceptable. The members of the Rapid Response Team are not taking personal responsibility and instead are completely blaming the people in charge. In doing so, they are suggesting that the rules do not apply to them because the rules were not clear. What would have happened if the rules had been clear? Would they have followed them or continued to take matters into their own hands? The bottom line is that the Rapid Response Team’s approach to the near four-month Black Lives Matter protests last year was unacceptable. Whether that was the fault of bureau leaders or individual officers is not the point. The point is that mistakes were made and there were immediate consequences because of them. 50 police officers collectively deciding that they don’t want to be under scrutiny for something they were responsible for is inappropriate and elitist. Although the team has been deconstructed, the city will continue to work with the state to cover the responsibilities leftover. According to The Oregonian, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon and the lead FBI agent for the state issued a joint statement that urged “community members to join law enforcement in helping to ensure all future demonstrations remain peaceful and inclusive.” Resigning from a team is not enough. If Portland really wants to move forward with police reform, everyone involved must be held accountable. As Hardesty put it, “no one is above the law.”
SHANNON STEED
OPINION
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