News

Finding work in a struggling economy is difficult, but if a law student were to believe the employment rates reported by their alma mater, finding high-paying legal work is a breeze. The problem is, those numbers might not be accurate.

Law schools have been under increasing pressure from outsiders to defend the claims they make with their post-grad employment rates and median salaries. In April of this year, 15 law schools faced class-action lawsuits for their allegedly inflated post-grad employment rate statistics. Among them were Villanova University, St. John’s University and the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Today, Commissioner Amanda Fritz is hosting a community forum on the state’s upcoming legislative agenda. The purpose of the meeting is to allow citizens to give their input regarding the city, state and federal legislative priorities for the upcoming year.

“The meeting is for people to come and say what they would like to see in the upcoming year,” Fritz said.

Today the Viking Vets—Portland State’s student veterans group—will host their annual Veterans Day celebration in anticipation of tomorrow’s national holiday.

The free event, which takes place from noon to 2 p.m. in Parkway North on the first floor of the Smith Memorial Student Union, is intended to honor and celebrate the service of Portland-area veterans, and is open to the public. The celebration will feature refreshments, speakers and information on resources available to local veterans.

According to communication major Paul Polsin, the vice president of Viking Vets, the celebration is a chance to “highlight how much we appreciate the veterans within the community and try to give back to them.”

Suzanne Bonamici has won the Democratic primary election for Portland’s 1st Congressional District and will face Republican candidate Rob Cornilles in a special election on Jan. 31 to determine who will replace David Wu as the district’s House representative.

Whomever takes home the win in January’s election will hold the position only temporarily; they will have to emerge victorious in next November’s regular election in order to officially begin their first two-year term as a House representative.

Although yesterday’s Democratic race was thought to be without a clear favorite, Bonamici ran away with the victory, collecting a whopping 66 percent of the vote. The next closest finishers were Brad Avakian (22 percent) and Brad Witt (8 percent). Recent figures indicate that around 37 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the election.

Andrea Vedder Ryan Deming At around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 4, David Baker of the PSU Campus Public Safety Office discovered two men sexually assaulting a woman between the Harder House and Parkway buildings, on Southwest Market Street between 10th and Park Avenues.

According to CPSO Director Phillip Zerzan, Officer Baker was alone and stopped the sexual assault in progress. Baker then detained the two male suspects, who were picked up by the Portland Police at 12:38 a.m. and booked into the Multnomah County Jail about a half hour later.
Baker was unavailable for comment at press time.

On Monday, Nov. 1, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore visited the Occupy Portland movement at Terry Schrunk Plaza, telling listeners that of all the Occupy movements he’s seen, Portland’s is by far the largest.

While reminding the audience that he was just one of the 99 percent, Moore fired up the crowd by thanking them, and saying how inspiring the movement is.

The TriMet YouthPass program lost its major source of funding and is in danger of being cut entirely. The current funding will continue until Dec. 31, 2011, at which point a new source of funding must be found if the program is to continue.

The program allows any high-school student currently enrolled in the Portland Public School District to ride public transportation (including buses, MAX and the streetcar) for free at any time during the school year.

YouthPass began as a pilot program for three schools in the PPS district (approximately 2,200 students) in the 2008–09 school year, and the following year expanded to include all the schools in the district (13,000 students).

Students can attend a lecture given by geoscientist Richard Alley on Nov. 8 from noon to 1 p.m. in the PSU Science Research & Teaching Center Atrium, room 274. This free lecture is called: “Tiptoeing Past Tipping Points: Ice Cores and Abrupt Climate Change.”

Alley is the Evan Pugh professor of geosciences at Penn State University, where he researches glaciology, ice sheet stability, paleoclimatic records from ice cores and climate and sea level changes. He chaired the National Research Council’s Panel on Abrupt Climate Change and served on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The month of November is nationally recognized as Native American Heritage Month. Across the nation, events highlighting the cultural diversity of Native American citizens are being held, and Portland State is no exception. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 10, in room 110 of the Native American Student and Community Center, PSU will host a free public event called “Reclaiming Our Waterways as Highways,” during which students will celebrate the canoe culture within Native American society. Chinook, Hawaiian and Maori canoe rituals will be discussed.

Canoe culture has slowly been reclaiming its presence in Native American society. The practice, along with a variety of other Native American rituals and celebrations, was forbidden by the Canadian and American governments and remained illegal until the ban was lifted in 1951.