Author: Sascha Krader

Students who have chosen through Banweb to make their addresses and phone numbers private may be surprised to learn that public records law makes student directory information available anyway.

Portland City Council member Erik Sten and Portland Development Commission (PDC) Chair Mark Rosenbaum debated at the City Club Friday whether the PDC should be subject to oversight. The two spoke at the downtown Governor Hotel about Multnomah County Ballot Measure 26-92, which would redefine the PDC’s mission and make the City Council the PDC’s budget committee.

A new Portland State club will co-sponsor a team in the Rose Festival’s dragon-boat races for the first time this June. The recently formed PSU student club is joining with a seasoned dragon-boating team from Portland Community College. Together, they will compete both in the Rose Festival and in dragon-boating competitions this spring throughout the region.

Hundreds of students gathered on the Capitol steps in Salem Thursday, asking Oregon’s legislators to increase funding for higher education. In what was said to be Oregon’s largest rally for post-secondary education since 1999, students talked about how tuition hikes and campus budget cuts affected them.

Phil Busse wants to educate the nation’s future rabble-rousers The former managing editor of The Portland Mercury and one-time mayoral candidate has started a summer program for aspiring activists and media professionals. The 11-week program, called the Northwest Institute for Social Change, will educate undergraduates about media and social movements through a combination of academics and hands-on experience.

An Israeli and a Palestinian, both former combatants now touring the United States to advocate for a peaceful two-state resolution to the region’s troubles, will be speaking at 3 p.m. today in the Multicultural Center in Smith Memorial Student Union. The Palestinian, Suleiman Al-Himri, and the Israeli, Shimon Katz, are both part of Combatants for Peace, an organization founded in 2005.

PSU Professor of history Jon Mandaville will speak on Palestinian arts and the difficulty of creating a national culture in a time of statelessness at 7:30 p.m. today in Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 338. Mandaville’s lecture evening is part of an ongoing series of forums co-sponsored by local organization Palestine Lebanon Emergency Action (PLEA) and PSU’s Middle East Studies Center.

Spring is seven weeks away, and the short, cold days of winter mean that Portlanders are still suffering the coughs, colds and flu endemic this season. For relief, some people will look past the typically prescribed medications to complementary and alternative medicines-a set of therapies that includes naturopathy, acupuncture and massage.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would slash the interest rates on Stafford need-based student loans if the Senate approves the bill. The bill, House Resolution 5, would phase in over the next five years, eventually cutting interest rates by 50 percent.

Many commonly held ideas about Palestine and Israel are wrong, said a visiting scholar from the University of Arizona to a packed crowd Monday in the Smith Memorial Student Union Vanport Room. Dr. Charles D. Smith was visiting Portland State University as part of an ongoing lecture series designed to educate Portlanders about Middle Eastern issues, titled “Palestine: Current Issues and Future Prospects.