A look at Hollywood’s straight shooter Django Unchained and 20 years of Tarantino Arts & Culture page 6
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Portland State University Portland State University Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013 | vol. 67 no. 27
Rent with Why was the power off? caution ‘Deferred maintenance’ is on PSU’s to-do list Isaac Hotchkiss Vanguard Staff
Textbook rental only cost-effective in some scenarios Isaac Hotchkiss Vanguard Staff
Classes have just started up again. At the Portland State Bookstore, a line of customers loops around the store, through the aisles and down the staircase. They’re waiting to pay for books they are buying or renting, a backto-school ritual for thousands of PSU students each term. Textbook rental is at an all-time high, according to bookstore staff, since the bookstore now offers a rental option on all textbooks. Is renting the best way to save money on books? Representatives from the bookstore admit it’s not always cost-effective. Introduced in winter 2011, the rental option allows a student to rent a textbook for the term at a lower cost than buying. The student then has the option of either returning the textbook at the end of the term or buying the book for the difference of the rental and purchase cost. There are times when renting the book, purchasing it at the end of the term and then immediately selling it back to the bookstore costs significantly less than renting alone. Students assuming it’s cheaper to rent and return can unknowingly lose money. When the Vanguard asked Nebraska Book Company, new operator of the PSU Bookstore, why it allows for scenarios like this, Area Vice President Courtney Gruber said it’s all about giving customers choices.
Intentional blackouts hit 13 university buildings for as much as an hour at a time during winter break. From Dec. 23 to Jan. 1, outages occurred almost daily. The west campus electrical infrastructure is poorly documented, leaving it vulnerable to failure, and the outages were part of an assessment to fix this problem. While the $200,000 maintenance project wasn’t reported to have any cost savings to the university, it was a
necessary maintenance exercise, said Quinn Soifer, facilities engineer. Outages did not affect residential buildings, and only affected buildings used primarily for research, classes and office space. Many of the PSU science labs are located in the affected areas, however. Soifer explained that, in meetings with the departments, PSU Facilities and Property Management reached an agreement that one hour was the maximum amount of time a lab could be without power without damaging research. Generators
were on site in case of failure during the maintenance. Chemistry professor Niles Lehman manages one of the affected labs, where origin-of-life and prebiotic chemistry research is performed. He explained that nothing was harmed during the power cuts. Except for having to briefly shut down computers, research was unaffected, and he and his students were able to work during the break. But what, specifically, did FPM do during the shutoffs? Soifer explained that the electrical infrastructure was long overdue for maintenance because of all the small repairs and adjustments that had occurred over the last 20 years. “We were able to install sensors on the cabling and test the integrity of cabling periodically as needed so
Debate simmers after shooting Stephanie Tshappat Vanguard staff
Corinna Scott/VANGUARD STAFf
Sgt. Joe Schilling of the Campus Public Safety Office patrols campus. In the event of an active shooter, the Portland Police Bureau would need to respond.
See books on page 3
we can better plan for the future,” Soifer said. Scott Gallagher, PSU’s director of communications, said improving the documentation was a part of PSU’s deferred maintenance list— the schedule of noncritical projects the university works on when it has available funds. “It’s not anything that’s been ignored,” Gallagher said. “It’s just on the list. You know, it’s like your house.” Departments, lease holders and lab managers were notified and encouraged to make the appropriate adjustments and remove perishables. The maximum duration of any outage was one hour, with additional power bumps and outages of 15 to 30 seconds.
Last month’s tragic shootings at Clackamas Town Center and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. bring even more attention to an ongoing issue at Portland State: the possibility that PSU’s Campus Public Safety Office may soon become a sworn law enforcement agency with armed police officers. People all across the country are asking questions about how to prevent the next horrific act of school gun violence, while at PSU our own debate has been simmering for months about whether campus security officers need their own guns. How would CPSO’s response be different if PSU’s officers were armed? The key difference lies in the extra minutes it would take for armed officers to arrive at the scene of a crime. While there are emergency plans in place for a variety of incidents, campus security functions more as an incident in an emergency situation, CPSO Chief Phillip Zerzan said. See CPSO on page 2
Students share perspectives Capstone brings students together from worlds apart Jaime Dunkle Vanguard staff
COURTESY OF Seth Thomas
A protester climbs a light pole in Tahrir square in downtown Cairo. Seth Thomas was able to snap this photo and snare it on his blog for his capstone course.
Watching the sun set against the Giza pyramids, tasting authentic pastries in France or riding a bullet train in Japan—any of this could be part of your senior capstone curriculum. Designed for students studying abroad, the “Reporting Live” capstone connects Portland State students in foreign countries with middle schools and high schools in the Portland area via online blogs. Students participating in the program have reported live from all over the world: East Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.
Other than studying abroad, requirements for entering this program include being able to write with a conversational voice and being blog savvy, according to Reporting Live Program Director Kate Kangas. Since no final exam is taken, students instead meet with their class face-to-face at the end of the term, a “finale celebration.” “I’ve offered it now for two fall terms in a row, with plans to offer it again next fall,” Kangas said. “We’re hoping to expand it to spring term as well.” Blogging from the biggest city in the Arabic world—Cairo, Egypt— PSU junior Seth Thomas shows Leslie Burgoine’s sixth-grade social studies class at Lane Middle School in Portland what life is like in the desert metropolis. “I wanted them to hear about Egypt without always hearing about ancient
Egypt,” Thomas said during a brief stay in the U.S. “I wanted them to hear about what’s going on today.” Trains in Egypt give women the option to ride with men or on women-only cars. Thomas discussed this cultural difference with his class. “I talked a little bit about sexual harassment, and it was difficult to figure out how to talk about that,” Thomas said. If you think the program is cakewalk, think again, Thomas warned. It’s not focused solely on the blogosphere. “It’s a lot more work than it appears at first, because it’s not just blogging once a week,” Thomas said. “You also have readings and you have to respond to at least two students’ blogs each week.” See Reporting Live on page 2