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A vote for Obama is a vote for sanity Vanguard 2012 election endorsements opinion page 12
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PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
PUBLISHED SINCE 1946 Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 | vol. 67 no. 18
Professors PSU hosts EcoDistricts Summit tour weigh in Walking showcases on election sustainability features at Local candidates offer few substantial differences
university Andrew Lawrence Vanguard Staff
Ravleen Kaur Vanguard Staff
With about one week left until ballots are due, a question is beginning to surface: Does it really matter who wins? Portland State’s political science faculty tackled that question on Wednesday evening in a panel composed of professors Richard Clucas, Phil Keisling, Kim Williams and David Kinsella. An attentive audience of about 25 people gathered in the Urban Center to take part in the discussion, which was broken into local, state, national and international subtopics. “Does it matter who wins? In Portland, not a great deal,” Clucas said, discussing the implications of the mayoral and city commissioner races. Portland’s unusual form of government leads to a somewhat diminished role for the mayor, with most of his or her power ending up being informal rather than direct, Clucas explained. On top of that, mayoral candidates Jefferson Smith and Charlie Hales share miles of common ground. “This is a liberal town,” Clucas noted. Still, the city council will see a shake-up of fresh faces—three of its five seats are possibly up for grabs. “I do not anticipate profound changes in the city,” Clucas said, See election on page 3
In Portland, the terms “sustainability” and “green building” are used so often that when such concepts are actually put into use, one can miss them—even if they are literally right under one’s feet. From the fifth-floor courtyard of the Academic and Student Rec Center, the stones that make up the outside flooring seem suspiciously far apart. Instead of drains, vegetation covers a good portion of the patio. This isn’t a sign of shoddy building or dilapidation, though: Rather than sloshing onto the streets or into the city’s sewage system, water drains through the cracks and plants, supplying almost all of the non-potable water for this Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Goldcertified building. As part of the fifth annual EcoDistricts Summit held at Portland State last week, the Vanguard went on a walking tour of sustainable features in the South of Market EcoDistrict on and around campus. Led by Fletcher Beaudoin, partnerships director at PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions, the tour highlighted some of the roughly 20 sustainability features in the EcoDistrict, one of five in the city defined by the ISS as “a neighborhood or district with a broad commitment to accelerate neighborhood-scale sustainability.” During a brief respite from the rain, Beaudoin praised the recent
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fletcher beaudoin, partnerships director at PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions, highlighted the university’s eco-conscious features at last week’s EcoDistricts Summit. The four-day event brought dozens of speakers to campus. weather to the tour group, which included members from England, Australia, Japan, Brazil and Italy, among others. “This is the time of year you can actually see the sustainable water features in action.” From the sky bridge on Southwest Broadway, Beaudoin pointed out something else that might not be recognized as a sustainability feature: the bicycle lane pulsing with jacketed road warriors. “If you guys can imagine, about 30 years ago this used to be a four-lane highway, essentially,” he said. A cycle track gives more safety to bicyclists by separating them from traffic, in this case with a row of parking. There was a dual purpose for the creation of the track, though, as Beaudoin pointed out: “We wanted to make it easier for our students to get across here without dying.”
Aside from the track, the district is a pretty hard place to bike to, Beaudoin said. The ISS is working with the city to find other avenues to get bikes and people into the south downtown area since Portland’s bike infrastructure, while good by U.S. standards, still lags behind other cities, especially some in Europe. “I was giving a tour to the mayor of Copenhagen and a delegation, and when they came here and looked at our bike infrastructure they kind of laughed at us,” Beaudoin said. The sky bridge itself is in a way a sustainability feature, carrying the piping for the district energy system that connects 17 buildings on campus, efficiently redistributing energy around campus for heating and cooling.
Electric Avenue, on Southwest Montgomery Street between Broadway and Sixth Street, is another sustainability feature that might be easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. Through a partnership with Portland General Electric, the city and a few others, PSU has helped set up a row of seven charging stations for electric vehicles. The stations have varying degrees of strength, from a quick 30-minute charger to a longer 8-hour one. The electricity is free, while parking is paid for like any other spot in the city. The idea, Beaudoin said, is for people to drive their electric cars to the Avenue, hop on the MAX to go to work, and have their cars charged by the time they’re ready to go home. See sustainability on page 4
Women of color combat abuse with activism WRC talk opens dialog, spurs action Andrew Morse Vanguard Staff
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S. Renee mitchell performs spoken word about the feelings involved in emotional abuse at a Friday talk held at the Women’s Resource Center.
What does domestic violence look like in communities of color? And what can be done to stop it? About two dozen students and faculty gathered Friday afternoon to ponder the answers to these questions at the Women’s Resource Center for a talk titled “Resisting Violence in Communities of Color,” sponsored by the WRC’s Women of Color Action Team. It was the WRC’s final event related to Domestic Violence
Awareness Month, a nationwide movement held every October. Tonya Jones, a graduate student in the Postsecondary, Adult and Continuing Education program, coordinated the event in conjunction with her participation in the WOC Action Team. “We’re looking at it from the unique perspective of women of color,” Jones said. She hoped the event would encourage people to engage in activism. Action teams are part of the WRC’s programming, formed to tackle specific issues that more
general programming can’t adequately address, Jones explained. Friday’s event was designed to deal with specific issues related to domestic violence. Two guest speakers led the talk, and an open discussion among the attendees followed. The first speaker was S. Renee Mitchell, a former Oregonian journalist and founder of the Healing Roots Center. She emphasized the different ways domestic violence and abuse can manifest. Portland State Black Studies professor Walidah Imarisha spoke second and focused on alternatives to engaging with the prisonindustrial complex. See WRC on page 3