White Stag worthy words

Randy's right. That would be Portland city commissioner Randy Leonard.

Plastering “The University of Oregon” on the “White Stag” sign is a condemnable waste of public space. Provincial, provincial, provincial!

(And these university people are supposed to be smart and creative....)

Here are some one-liner candidates to greet folks as they exit the Banfield Freeway. After reading each, imagine it on the sign.

“Weird forever!”




“You’ve Arrived, again!”




“The Time is always NOW!”




“Just how awake are you?
Yes, YOU!”




“Endings are beginnings”




“Oregon: A State of Mind”

"Peace is the Way"

Your turn.

Harvard has heft on Oregon ballot

This morning I went through the voters’ pamphlet and tallied who won.

How’s that? The votes aren’t counted until May 20.

The count I did was of colleges and universities. Which of the four-year undergraduate and graduate programs produced the most candidates?

If my count is correct (than this can be an eye-glazing exercise), the winner is (drum-roll….)

Portland State with 20 followed closely by the University of Oregon with 19.

No real surprise there.

But what happened to Oregon State with a measly 2? (OSU graduates may know something the rest of us don’t — like politics is a waste of time?)

Even Purdue in Indiana produced three candidates, including Will Hobbs, my Democratic choice (and The Oregonian’s and Willamette Week’s) to replace lack-luster incumbent U.S. Rep. David Wu (Stanford, BA; Yale, JD).

I got into this college-counting exercise because as I read the candidates’ statements, Harvard kept popping up with surprising frequency. Fourteen times to be exact, (one being for Barack Obama). In fact, Harvard ranked third, after PSU and UO, as an alma mater in the Portland-area edition of the pamphlet.

Rival Yale wasn’t even close with three (among them Hillary Rodham Clinton).

Stanford came in with a mere four.

Oxford University, of all places, had three (one more than OSU). Oxford’s graduates in the pamphlet are Metro Councilor Robert Liberty, and two state reps. Steve Griffith (R) and Ben Cannon (D). Liberty got a law degree from Harvard, and Griffith earned a bachelor’s from Harvard and a law degree from Stanford.

Oxford’s rival, Cambridge, produced Amanda Fritz, a Portland City Council candidate, a fellow SW Portlander and an avid blogger.

Not to make too much of this, but a couple of observations come to mind.

Many of the University of Oregon and Harvard candidates went to law school on the campuses. If you want your graduates to become politically influential, be sure to have a law school.

The other point is that political candidates are, by definition, aspiring, if not always inspiring. If Harvard and PSU have one thing in common, it’s that they attract aspirants — but in different ways. Harvard gets youth who are obviously aiming high from the start. PSU often attracts those who kick into high gear later in life.

By the way, I didn’t tally community college graduates, but I probably should have. From my PCC teaching experience, I know community colleges attract scrappy older students. My recollection is that community college grads are well represented in the pamphlet.

Sign of the weird at PSU

Yesterday's post mentioned that I saw a puzzling sign at the construction site of the new Portland State student recreation center that read "Academic Student Recreation Center." After the only reference to the center I could find on line was to an "Academic AND recreation center, I began to doubt my reading of the sign.

The whole thing was quite bizarre. "Academic students"?

"Academic and Recreation Center"? What could that be?

Haunted by uncertainty about what the sign actually said, I returned to the site today to re-read the words. (I know, I know, I need to get a life. But, hey, it was Sunday.)

As you see, my memory had not failed me. Under construction, according to the sign, is an "Academic Student Recreation Center."

I dare not ask what the City of Portland Archives and Records are doing cheek to jowl with exercising academic students. (See the sign.)

Did someone say we must keep Portland weird?

Not to worry. We are on track at PSU.

A Center for Push-ups and Chaucer at PSU

As I walked to a meeting at Portland State University this morning I passed one of Portland’s many big-hole, tall-crane construction sites.

I thought the sign on the site read, “Academic Student Recreation Center.”

The name gave me pause. “Academic student”?

What, pray tell, other kinds of students are there at PSU? Non-academic? Are they going to ban blue-collar vocational students from the new center?

I wondered as I ambled on whether an “academic student” was cut from the same rhetorical cloth as the “scholar athlete.” The latter term (reverently intoned by baritone sportscasters) suggests that all athletes are scholars (not mere students, mind). “Scholar Athlete” is a title worthy of undergraduate and alumni idolatry — and future product endorsements.

“Academic students” are really, really serious, I concluded. Not like those low-life, non-academic students who go elsewhere.

I’d like to think that PSU is secure enough with its admissions policy that it could refer to its students as, well, students. So why not just a plain, brown wrapper “Student Recreation Center”?

The name bothered me all the way home to my computer where I promptly searched “academic student recreation center.” I got only one hit, in the minutes from the May 4, 2007 Washington State University Board of Regents meeting.

What happens in Pullman stays in Pullman.

So I modified (as they say) my search and discovered that the name of the nascent PSU building is the “Academic and Student Recreation Center,” which is mildly less puzzling than “Academic Student Recreation Center.”

Questions remain.

Perhaps there are academic students out there who can explain what “academic recreation” is. Or does the name indicate that the center will be a place where academics and recreation take place under the same $71 million roof (yes, that’s the cost)?

Collegiate multi-tasking will have a new home on campus. Yes, you can do your Chaucer assignment and push-ups at the same time.

Or perhaps "academic recreation" is the logical consequence of the trend to make education a joyous romp, worthy competition for Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show.

PSU's new "killer" coach

I've written before about how the hyper-commercialism, and just plain hype, of big-time collegiate athletics is at odds with our universities' academic missions. How alumni pour money into athletics coffers while academics starve.

Here in Oregon, where higher education is on academic life support, the culture of intercollegiate athletics is so debased that fans refer to the OSU/UO rivalry as "The Civil War." Didn't a half million Americans give their lives in this nation's Civil War? Aren't Americans dying as I write because of a civil war in Iraq?

A football game — a war?

Now comes one Peter Reader (a great name, by the way) of Northwest Portland with a related complaint. This time it's about PSU and its new yahoo football coach, Jerry Granville.

He misses my larger point about the role of big-time sports on campus, but Peter's problem is part of the whole.

Writing in the letters section of the must-read Portland Tribune, Reader puts it to PSU for hiring Granville, known for his trademark black outfits and white cowboy hats.

Here's Reader's scorching letter, to which I say, "Amen!"

PSU’s best strategy: Find a new coach

Steve Brandon reports that “Viking coaches will be recruiting the rest of May” (PSU Football, May 11).

Here’s a suggestion: Send scouts to state and federal penitentiaries. There should be plenty of aggressive folks there who would be itching to follow Coach Jerry Glanville’s new direction for Portland State University’s football team.

For example, in the May 15 article “Viks warm up quickly to new systems,” Brandon quotes PSU safety Michael Dorsey’s admiration of Glanville’s teaching that encourages him to “hurt people … in terms of actual physical punishment. … There will be a chance for us to take a lot of kill shots. … We’re looking to take people out of games.”

Portland State University is my school. I graduated in 2005; I’m enrolled in its Senior Adult Learning Center. I want to be proud of my alma mater, its coaches and athletes, as well as its professors and students.

Coach Glanville is a disgrace to the institution. What kind of coach teaches his players to “hurt” and “kill”? What kind of coach wants to win by “taking people out of games”?

I’m not naive. I know that football has become a big moneymaker for colleges and that PSU is desperate for a winning team.

But at what cost? By turning student athletes into bloodthirsty monsters?

Coach Glanville should be teaching good sportsmanship, not cruelty. After all, isn’t the purpose of a college education to humanize people, not desensitize us?

What, I wonder, will Michael Dorsey glean from his experience at PSU? That it’s OK to hurt others?

I blame PSU’s administrators for this reprehensible situation. How could they hire such a dreadful person for their football coach? Is their silence tacit approval of his tactics? If so, they are one shameless bunch.

I, for one, would be happy to send Coach Glanville packing. I’ll even provide the hatbox.

Peter H. Reader

Northwest Portland