News

Portland State’s enrollment is growing: as of October 2011, total enrollment had increased by 50 percent in 10 years. And with it, so has the demand for both on- and off-campus housing. As a predominantly commuter campus, approximately 6 percent of all enrolled students actually live on the college campus. According to statistics released by University Housing and Residence Life, as of fall 2011, on-campus housing had a total of 2,047 housing beds at an occupancy of 93 percent. This means that more than 27,000 PSU students live off-campus. And some of those students would like to change that.

Boston College Professor Juliet Schor has an intimate knowledge of social economy—two decades worth of research, 17 years teaching economics at Harvard University, and New York Times best-selling books are testament to this. She has given lectures all over the U.S. and in cities like Paris and London, speaking about the economics of consumer society and the roles that environment, work, family and financial status play in consumer consciousness. On Friday, Feb. 24, Schor will be in Portland, delivering a lecture titled “Jobs, Markets and True Wealth.”

Google recently unveiled upcoming changes to its privacy policy, changes that have called into question whether Google users will have full control over their personal data.


Scheduled to go into effect March 1, the policy simplifies 60 product-specific polices under one umbrella policy, which will help Google aggregate collected user information.

The Portland State Environmental Club is organizing a week of celebration for Earth Day, dubbed Earth Week, to be held April 16–20, and is looking for organizations at PSU and in the community at large to participate in the event.

In celebration of Black History Month, the Portland State Black Studies Department is sponsoring a lecture event that examines the forerunners of civil rights. Titled “Freedom Fighters in the Americas,” the event will be from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.,Feb. 21, in the Smith Memorial Student Union, room 228.

The Broadway and Ondine residence hall buildings are the arenas for Portland State’s Eco Reps Conservation Challenge event, which runs from Feb. 6 to April 22. Aimed to help conserve resources at Portland State, the 12 events in the series promote sustainability and awareness of resource consumption. Each event challenges students to look at energy and water consumption, while offering prize incentives for students who take up the challenge.

Approximately 500 students, faculty, staff and community members rallied in the South Park Blocks against economic injustice in higher education on Nov. 16, 2011. They marched through downtown shouting cries of “Schools for students, not for profits,” and “Whose school? Our school.” That afternoon, close to 100 individuals stood in the rain for hours determining basic procedures of the general assembly, such as consensus versus majority rules on passing issues. The following week, close to 40 concerned PSU affiliates sat on the stage in Smith Memorial Student Union’s North Park room, setting agendas and demand points.

div id=”deck”>MESC continues its Lunch and Learn series