Target held a press conference at Jake’s Grill in mid-February to officially announce its project to bring a Target location into the heart of downtown Portland. The Minneapolis chain has already begun construction on multiple floors in the century-old Galleria building on Southwest 11th Avenue and Southwest Morrison Street.
In late January, Portland State’s Student Legal Services won the Most Outstanding Student Legal Services Office Award for 2011. Tucked away on the third mezzanine level of the Smith Memorial Student Union, far from high-traffic footways and lecture halls, the small legal office goes unnoticed by many students. Moreover, many students may not even be aware of the diverse legal services offered to students, or that those services are paid for as part of the student fee.
On May 15, Portland will vote to determine who will replace Sam Adams as mayor. Adams, who assumed office in January of 2009, made the surprising announcement in July 2011 that he would not be seeking re-election. Speculation has been rife ever since as to who will succeed him at the end of his term.
On Jan. 18, Portland State President Wim Wiewel and Portland Community College President Preston Pulliams met to sign an agreement that will alter the nature of the schools’ co-enrollment program. The changes will allow students concurrently enrolled at both PSU and PCC improved access to Portland State housing, among other benefits.
Earlier this month, West Coast-based Umpqua Bank became the latest banking company to come under fire for purportedly unfair overdraft policies. Amber Hawthorne, a former member of one of Umpqua’s California branches, filed a class-action lawsuit in response to what she perceived to be an unjust attempt to overcharge Umpqua customers for over-withdrawing from their debit accounts, also known as overdrafting.
Tomorrow at 7 p.m., Portland State’s Taiwanese Student Association is throwing a celebration at the downtown Hilton Hotel to ring in the Year of the Dragon. The Chinese New Year is considered by many to be the apex of traditional Chinese holiday festivals, both in matters of importance and excitement. This student-led event will try to live up to that reputation.
The Institute for Sustainable Solution encourages sustainable research and development at Portland State University through its 2012 Solutions Generator student grant program.
The program, which began in 2010 and is now in its third year, challenges groups of Portland State students to design and carry out proposals that would make the campus and nearby areas more sustainable—anything from organizing an event to raise awareness about sustainability to creating a green space on campus to conducting an audit to find areas of ecological waste and suggest potential improvements.
At well over six feet tall, Simon Ngawhika (Na-fee-ka) makes an impression on the audience gathered before him as he slowly approaches the podium—an impression underscored by his intonation of a song sung in his traditional Maori tongue.
A 27-year-old Master’s of Business Administration student at Portland State, Ngawhika agreed to speak last Thursday during the Native American Student Community Center’s “Reclaiming our Waterways as Highways” event, intended to celebrate and draw attention to the vibrant modern canoe culture that thrives across the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a topic that Ngawhika is well acquainted with; just this last summer he undertook a voyage that brought him all the way from New Zealand to the southern coast of California.