Author: Andrew Lawrence

Student groups and organizations are requesting funding in new ways this year. The shift is infuriating to some and a relief to others.

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 new MAX stops to the opening of an apartment building with nearly 1,000 beds, Portland State’s south campus area has been rapidly growing over the past year—but it’s not done yet.

With an eight-story, 129-bedroom mixed-use building at Southwest Fifth Avenue and College Street and three new eating—and one drinking—option on the ground floor of University Pointe just next door, the changes to this far end of campus are still coming.

As a streaming radio station on the web, KPSU gets around 10,000 unique visitors per month—not too shabby for a college radio station. But one would be forgiven for not listening to them at 98.1 on the FM dial, as the station’s reach is somewhat limited.

The fitness center has that new-car smell, the common areas have framed rock posters and the laundry machine texts you when it’s done.

A dorm this is not.

If you build it, he will come,” goes the famous line from the 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams. But according to the results of a study by two Portland State professors on the city’s uncanny ability to attract and retain young, college-educated students, a better tagline for Portland might be “Don’t build much of anything at all—they’re just going to keep coming anyway.”
Titled “Is Portland Really the Place Where Young People Go To Retire?”—a reference to the popular comedy Portlandia—the recently-released study finds that these young, college-educated (YCE) individuals continue to flock to Portland despite high unemployment, lower pay and a propensity for those who are employed to find only part-time work or work in “non-college” occupations, such as food service.

It was a hectic yet festive scene Friday at University Pointe, Portland State’s newest on-campus housing option. Hundreds of students and their families jockeyed for parking and a limited supply of large blue moving carts on official move-in day.