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Work
It! A year ago I got lucky and landed a great gig teaching writing at the university. Sixteen students, a 10-week term. First day of the term, even before I am struck by their youth, I am struck by their attention, their aye-aye-captain attitude for what lies ahead in the term. They take notes with sharp pencils and fresh fine-point Uniball pens in notebooks that are crisp and smooth as new linens. It surprises me that this eagerness, though it wavers during fifth-week midterms and sputters a bit before finals, stays pretty much intact throughout our time together. These young people manage to balance impressive academic loads with part-time jobs, active (I suspect sometimes overly active) social lives, club or volunteer work, and even occasionally partners and children. They seem focused on the here and now, the things to be learned right this moment. What to do with all this learning, however, still remains a little fuzzy. Work and jobs are constant themes for the students. Given an economy that feels less sympathetic than usual toward writerly types, the question of how to make a future living comes up again and again. But work and jobs also play a role for many of these students through their college years. All told, I have 48 students over the three-term school year. At least one-third of them work during the school year to help pay for their education, or to earn the mad money that subsidizes the social life part of their education. One young man works part time as the manager of his apartment building and part time as a Wal-Mart clerk. Another puts together website info for The Caddis Fly fishing shop. One young woman, a few weeks into the term, quits her job as a telemarketer, just in time for her freezer to break down, ruining nearly $100 worth of groceries. According to UO Career Center Director Larry Smith, the number of students overall at the UO who work during the academic school year fluctuates between 40 and 70 percent "depending on the survey and the point in time." I find that there are no dramatic differences in class schedule conflicts or deadline problems between these working students and their job-free classmates. Says Smith, "Obviously so much depends on the individual student, but there are studies that show that working while in college, your grades go up. You get more efficient at your studying; you get better at managing your time, using it effectively. There are students who are working 40 hours a week, taking a full academic load and have a family." I have one or two of these individuals during the year, and I have to agree with Smith when he says, "I mean, those are stars in their own way, to be able to manage all of that." In terms of how such a busy schedule might adversely affect a student's grades, which may not look so hot to prospective employers, Smith explains, "Yeah, they may lament, 'Gee, I wish my grades had been a little bit better. But let me tell you what I was doing.' And the student's job, of course, is to communicate that to employers, who may worry about things like GPA." I start each term by talking a little about jobs, dream jobs in particular. "What's your dream job?" I ask them. "Travel writer," says one. "Sports writer," replies another. "Teaching," says yet another. One girl falters a little, opens and closes here mouth once, then twice, shakes her head, smiles and says, "I have no idea. I just have no idea." A couple of students look at her then look at me. I nod, "Great," I say. "No problem. There's plenty of time to figure it all out, plenty of time to put the bigger picture together." All of them, even the would-be travel writer, sports writer and teacher, seem relieved.
Ryan Earley, a student in the Honors College, is tall of height and broad of shoulders, with a shock of dark hair over an imposing brow and blue eyes. After a class where a freelance writer comes in to guest speak about the work involved in pitching successful query letters and the effort it takes to build self-sufficiency as a writer, I ask the students for feedback on the presentation. Ryan offers, "Well, I don't know. With all it takes to free-lance, I kind of wonder if I shouldn't just apply to law school." For now, Ryan is sticking with writing and has decided to apply for a part-time job during school as an academic tutor. It will be his first effort at trying to work during the school year. Over the course of an average year, his expenses are: zero for tuition, thanks to a scholarship he receives (resident tuition and fees run about $4,875; international students pay $16,416, according to the UO Financial Aid website); $600 for books; $3,800 for rent; $2,500 for groceries; $800 for gas and transportation; $1,800 for car insurance; $400 for broadband Internet service; and $1,000 for general spending. (He does say, however, general spending money "fluctuates depending mostly on how much money there is in the bank account to begin with … and whether or not I have a girlfriend at the time — what can I say, I'm a fool for the ladies.") Ryan covers his expenses with the scholarship, summer jobs, and an occasional financial pitch-in from his folks. About the summer jobs, Ryan says, "I have worked terrible temp jobs every summer since I started college. They are easy to find and ask no commitment of you, but are always mindless and occasionally hurt. This summer, I have packed soy cheese, unloaded semi trailers full of dishes, folded T-shirts, scanned inventory for Nordstrom, put away and picked stock for various warehouses and worked on an assembly line that manufactured keyless entry devices." As for the income, he says, "I have saved nearly all of it, but the work has been less than steady and the paychecks have tended to be small."
Maybe two-thirds of the students in my classes know what they want to do after graduation, but even they seem to have only a vague idea of how to get from where they are in school to where they want to be when they get out of school. "There's an internship coordinator right in this building," I say. "Do you know about her? Have you been to the career center?" They stare at me a little blankly, a polite, collective stare that yawns and says, "Huh, you don't say?" While it's true that there's plenty of time to get a sense of direction, to get a sense of that bigger picture, I know that they have to actually be working at that a little. I barely succeed in restraining the urge to shout that there are more resources consolidated to help them here than there will be at almost any other future point in their lives. Ashlin Salisbury, a recent journalism graduate says, "When I was in school, I basically lived off of student loans. I worked for two of the years I was [at school], but the last two years I wasn't able to get work-study …. I worried constantly about making ends meet, especially my senior year when I was living alone." Ashlin is currently living in Portland and searching for a job. "I've applied for numerous jobs, too many to count. … I have another interview [coming up] … it's for an office assistant, so it's not a glam job but hey, it would pay the bills." She questions right now the value of her education in the job market. "I really don't think that I will utilize my journalism degree to any extent. I think school in general taught me the value of communicating with others, but as classes go, I don't feel like I really learned that much of anything, aside from a class or two." She does concede, "Granted … some of the blame lies with me, as I'm sure I didn't fully take advantage of the programs available to me."
In one class, a bright and talented young man gets a half-serious idea that he pitches for his student life issue-related feature assignment: Maybe there's a class action lawsuit for students who put in their time at college and get booted into a market where there are no jobs for them. Let's sue the university for our unemployability. Viva la revolution! I catch one of his classmates, a woman who is a grad student maybe 15 or 20 years his senior, smiling and shaking her head, politely refraining from a big give-me-a-break eye roll. She works full-time with the elderly while pursuing her master's degree and this dream of being a paid writer. She says to me after class, "Sometimes I just have to bite my tongue. Jobs are not an entitlement! It's always difficult." Nicole Sangsuree, a recent graduate in theater arts, with a minor in women and gender studies, knows this difficulty firsthand. "I'm working five jobs," she tells me when I meet her during training as a receptionist for Imagine, a local salon. Nicole finished school debt-free, without having to rely on credit cards or student loans. She was able to do this with through a Diversity Building scholarship, and, as with Ryan, help from family. Now that she's graduated, however, Nicole is committed to supporting herself. She has realized that her true dream is to be a singer, someone who encourages social progress and awareness through music, a la Ani DiFranco or Tracy Chapman. With that dream in mind, she is also in the throes of learning to support herself, pay her bills, and hopefully save enough money to make a trip to her family's homeland of Thailand, where she will search for inspiration and experience to fuel her music. Thus, five jobs. Finding those jobs, she says, wasn't easy. Nicole's original plan was to take a job waitressing. Intelligent, articulate, and the holder of a bachelor's degree, she says, "I thought I could at least be a waitress." But with the market in Eugene as competitive as it is, and Nicole having no waitressing experience, that door was closed off to her. So it started to turn into scurrying for something, anything. She found, "If you get a job, any job, you just take it." Here's what she's landed: driving and stocking pamphlet containers for an HIV outreach organization; working as an entry person at club music shows for Steinberg Presents; answering phones and making appointments for Imagine Salon; working as a stock person in the UO Bookstore warehouse; scheduling and performing her own paid singing gigs, where she also tries to sell her CDs. Here's what Nicole's schedule looked like last week: Monday she worked the day at the warehouse, then covered the front door for a show at John Henry's that night. Tuesday she worked during the day at Imagine, then left at 5 pm for her own gig in Portland. She stayed overnight in Portland for another gig Wednesday, then headed north for yet another show in Seattle on Thursday night. After the Thursday night show (1 am or close to closing), Nicole headed back to Eugene to try and be ready for her 9:30 am shift at Imagine on Friday. To put it mildly, Nicole feels a little frazzled. But she also thinks she should work as much as she can to save as much as possible. She worries a little that all of the side jobs are taking away from her ability to get things done for the singing career, such as rehearsing and burning CDs to sell. She knows, however that this isn't a permanent situation. And, she says with more than a little satisfaction, "When I get a paycheck, it feels like, 'Wow.' It feels like freedom."
Smith says, "For some students, there is a sense of entitlement. 'Gee, I've gone to college. Now where's my job?'" What students may not realize is there's another leap they have to make to connect the education with the job. "We do a lot of things," Smith says, "to help students, including workshops on resume writing and interviewing and job searching strategies, class presentations that we make, career fairs, of which we have one each quarter, including a special one called the Humanity and Environment Career Fair that focuses on students looking for an alternative to the traditional corporate kind of direction." He explains that the UO has an employer relations coordinator in Portland who is out talking to employers, developing relationships, orchestrating a plan to identify organizations from across the spectrum of industry, because today's world of employment fundamentally rests on networking and relationships.
Are students relying too heavily on the Internet to come up with their employment game plan? "If one is doing a relatively balanced career search," says Smith, "the Internet would be about 30 percent and they would learn very quickly that they would have to have very strong experience in the position advertised [to have a chance]. The balance of their job search strategy should revolve around networking." To support students and to get them understanding those relationships, the career center has a mentor program that's intended to teach people how to do an informational interview and get them talking to people who are doing work that's of interest to them.
In my year of teaching, in spite of the harried schedules and workloads, students are successful, for the most part, at landing on their feet. I worry a little when they pitch story ideas about paralyzing credit card debt, or students they know who discover "creative" ways of making money (young women selling their eggs, students signing up for welfare, to name a few). But in the bigger scheme, they work, study, play and get ready for life after graduation. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that, given the political and economic climate of things, they realize they're fortunate to be in school, that it's a valuable opportunity to be supported and encouraged in the pursuit of their interests. They work through class assignments and side jobs, and more than a few work successfully through to landing great internships or excellent entry-level jobs right after graduation. An education, it seems, pays for itself in lots of different ways.
Fires
of Rebellion Corporations have taken over the world and are running amok with power and corruption. Politicians, eating out of their hands, have stolen the basic rights of citizens around the world. It's a big, bleak mess, but somehow, Jim Hightower, the old-timey Texas Democrat who put the pop in populist, isn't angry or depressed. His newest book, Thieves in High Places, outlines the corporate/political quagmire we've wandered into with example after example of greedy corporate underhandedness, yet he writes it with lightheartedness, even offering solutions for a way out. His rallying cry is to become energy independent and to take back our country politically, economically and socially.
Hightower will be in Eugene on Thursday, Oct. 9 to give the keynote speech for the Peace, Justice and Media conference presented by the Justice Not War Coalition, Northwest Media Project and Eugene Weekly. Conference events will take place on both the UO and LCC campuses. (See insert this issue.) I chatted with him earlier this week about his book, now in its fourth week as a bestseller, and the future of America. EW: In your book, you cover some pretty dark stuff, but you write it all with such good humor. It seems crucial to me that we remain positive and not get angry and send out even more negative energy into the universe. How do you maintain a sunny outlook, and not let anger drag you down? JH: I'm lucky in that I get to travel a whole lot and so I don't get my perception of America from nightly news or The New York Times; rather I'm out in the countryside where I find in every place there are tremendous people and groups lighting little fires of rebellion against political and economic exclusion. I'm much encouraged by the activism, humor, the success of — and plain old pluck of — the typical American. EW: Where we both live and work, we've surrounded ourselves with liberal people and sometimes it's easy to forget that not everyone thinks the way we do. Do you think middle America is catching on to the corporate domination of the world? JH: Yes. In fact, at some levels they get it quicker than a lot of liberals because middle Americans are the ones who are experiencing the corporate powers up close and personal. A lot of Bush supporters do not agree with Bush that he should be squishy-soft on polluters, that he should be pursuing more of these global trade scams that are knocking down our economy; do not agree with the PATRIOT Act, or the underfunding of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, a lot of former Bush supporters have now found the economy is not an abstract discussion but rather a matter of whether they are going to have gainful employment or not, particularly high-tech workers who were told that was our middle-class future. The old manufacturing jobs are now being shipped off to Pakistan, Russia and elsewhere. Now former manufacturing employees are asking how to spell union. EW: You write, "It's a great time to be alive and progressive in America." But can anyone really make a difference? Are progressives crazy to be working so hard? JH: No. This is an urgent moment for America itself — for the big idea of America, which is that we have the possibility of creating an egalitarian society based on economic and social justice with equal opportunity for all people. The very idea is under assault by Bushco and the corporate Kleptocrats who have decided they can separate the good fortunes of the few from the well-being of the many. I believe we're in the middle of one of those "When in the course of human events …" moments Jefferson wrote about. With the assault being made upon us by our own leadership, this is the time when the activist citizenship of ordinary people is most required. Only through activism can we ever hope to have a functioning democracy and hope to achieve our egalitarian ideals. EW: You were the editor of the Texas Observer. How do we journalists do a better job in this strange, new political world? JH: I think continue to do what you do, particularly in the independent media: to bring to the forefront not only problems in the community, country and the world, but also to bring stories of folks who are happily engaged in the battle to take America back from the thieves. And to do that with a sense of optimism and humor. One of the reasons I did the book was I thought it was essential for folks to know they're not alone, to believe in their aspirations. Their instincts are widely shared by the American people. It's indeed possible to team up and take our country back. EW: You also had a radio show, but Disney didn't like you criticizing capitalism so you were knocked off. Any thoughts on trying to reclaim radio and other mass media? JH: In August 1995, I criticized the passage of the telecommunications act that allowed greater concentration of the airwaves. That's when Disney took over ABC. I went on the air that Saturday and lambasted both of those actions as inevitably going to lead to more domination and less democratic discourse and I had a Mickey Mouse character work for me. My show was on ABC and Disney didn't have a great sense of humor about that. It wasn't really a function of that — it was just a little bit of fun — but the fact that the Disneys, Clear Channels and other conglomerates don't want any on-air discussion of money and corporate power. Within six weeks I was off the air. But I came back on within a year with a daily two-hour weekday talk show. I quit doing that show in late 2000 when I sensed what was going on in the countryside and I wanted to be more connected to that activism, which meant traveling. Now, as my book is proving, we have a whole lot more media outreach than we realize; it's in little bits and pieces: independent media, websites, community bookstores. When you connect that up you actually reach tens of millions of Americans. The issue of media concentration has got to be a central part of the new politics put forward. The willingness of the public to support that was shown in response to the FCC effort this summer to impose new ownership rules of the airwaves that would further lock up our democratic outlets. Community radio really led the charge on this, like Paul Revere. On the Internet, Moveon.org and Truemajority.org sent a deluge of protests to Congress and in August the House voted 400 to 230 to overturn the FCC rules and the Senate voted 59 to 41 likewise. Bush says he'll veto it, but we'll see. Here's an example of a fight over an arcane issue of media ownership rules by an obscure agency of the government that people got involved in and essentially have won. EW: Other issues have also been won by word of mouth. In fact, you mention in your book that kitchen tables are the setting for many a burgeoning grassroots movement. Terry Tempest Williams says all the good work is being started at dinner parties. Your scene's a bit more downhome to me. Here they'd be munching on chips and tofu paté. What about in Texas? JH: Chips and salsa. I very much believe in kitchen table democracy. We need more potluck suppers and festivals so politics is not boring — so it becomes a part of our social existence. EW: You were a Nader supporter. Would you support him again, knowing everything you do now about the Bushites? JH: An unanswerable question. It never occurred to me that Gore could actually lose to that dweeb — and in fact, he didn't — but he ran the worst presidential campaign in Democratic Party history. Nader was the best Democrat in the race. He was the only one saying what the party should have been saying. EW: Who would you choose now: Kucinich, Dean, or someone else? JH: I haven't really chosen anybody. We've got a blessing of Democratic candidates this time. At one level or another, they're raising the progressive, populist, Democratic flag. Kucinich is raising it to the maximum, but with Dean on health care and the war and other issues, he's also running as an unabashed Democrat. Even the more establishment candidates, like Clark, Kerry and Gephardt are certainly raising different progressive issues. So the American public, particularly those who have not been voting, can begin to hear their issues in the public debate and that can only work to our advantage. But we've gotta quit thinking somebody running for president is going to create a progressive movement and we as progressives need to use the candidates rather than letting them use us. We must applaud anything progressive they say and give those issues and voices as much exposure as we can. And then unite behind whoever comes out to defeat Bush because those people are nuts and they're dangerous. We've gotta take the power out of those plutocratic, autocratic hands. But we can't fool ourselves that that's a progressive victory; that only gets us back to ground zero, to where we can focus on the issues we want to put forth – to have the world we want to see. Jim Hightower speaks at 7:30 pm, Oct. 9 in LCC Building 19. Doors open at 6:30 pm with information tables and showing of Independent Media in a Time of War. Tix: $5 adv., $8 dos. Available EMU ticket office and other local bookstores.
Problems
for Parody
San Francisco Mime Troupe's newest show, Veronique of the Mounties, chronicles the U.S. mission to continue to bring democracy to the world after its victories in Iraq, Syria and France. Now the U.S. has its sights on terrorist-threat Canada, and all that will ultimately protect America is Operation Frozen Freedom. Meanwhile, the Canadians mobilize to fight off invasion and Royal Canadian Mounted Policewoman Veronique Du Bois is given the mission to journey into the heart of American darkness and recover the object that may stop the U.S. military's insane rush to the Great White North. The SFMT appears as part of the Peace, Justice and the Media conference, presented by Eugene Weekly, Justice Not War Coalition and Northwest Media Project, which takes place Oct. 9-12 at LCC and the UO. Formed in 1959 under the direction of R.G. Davis, SFMT performances began in lofts and basements. When Davis discovered commedia dell'arte (Italian Renaissance marketplace comedy), he began a nearly 40-year tradition of free shows in San Francisco parks. SFMT became a collective in l970, and has performed melodramas, spy thrillers, musical comedies, epic histories, sitcoms and cartoon epics. Most shows draw from a variety of these genres and all have in common a strong story line, avowed point of view, and larger-than-life characters. And of course, political parody. Michael Sullivan, SFMT director and co-writer, along with lyricist Bruce Barthol, says he's actually had a hard time coming up with material. "In a way, for each of the last four years we've had a hard time. How do you overstate something when the dangers are so clear and present? Genetically modified food, corporate domination … this administration is not even trying to cloak anything; it's transparent. Giving jobs to children, husbands, wives and giving money to buddies." In the past, SFMT has toured extensively, but when the National Endowment for the Arts began slashing funding, it took a serious hit. Often, the troupe toured college campuses. With university funding also under the ax, fewer colleges can now afford to bring in bigger name acts. But when SFMT does hit a college town, Sullivan says he notices some differences in the student body. The conservative tide that began to sweep across campuses in the 1980s and '90s hasn't abated much, although he says, now "there is a strong and vocal minority of activist students." But for the most part, he adds, when it comes to fighting for ideals, "Students don't want to be bothered. They just want to make money, and that's disturbing." The future shouldn't be governed by money and profit, he adds, pointing out, "We're still benefiting from what our grandparents built at the end of the Depression, but now people aren't interested in spending money on schools, roads, the electrical grid. It's all 'I'm gonna get mine and screw you.'" That's depressing. So how do you make that funny? "We show viciousness — when you pull the mask away it's scary but it's funny. Making it comedic is the way to get the audience to get their minds to open up to other ideas and solutions. If we were doing a dry economic dissertation … we'd have a small crowd for one thing," adds Sullivan. Instead, SFMT shows solutions — to an engaged audience — to hopefully activate participants. While political satirists will make fun of all sides equally, Sullivan believes that doesn't leave the audience with anything to work toward. The message he wants to send his audience home with is simply, "There's a problem — our democratic republic is in danger right now and you need to do something for yourself and your country. What kind of country are you going to leave your kids?"
Shaping
a Dream As a high school student in Oregon, Liani Jean Heh Reeves would often find a group of girls waiting by her locker. They'd push her, taunt her and scrawl racist epithets on her locker door.
African-American students were treated the worst, says Reeves, who is Asian-American. "The administration was not equipped to handle the situation," she says. Many students of color dropped out of high school because of emotional and physical abuse from other students, she says. Now an attorney with the National Crime Victim Law Institute, and the public affairs chair for the Korean American Citizens League, Reeves feels strongly that Oregon's education system needs to be overhauled. "Access to education for students of color is not the same as access for majority students," she says. Efforts to raise awareness and promote dialogue about these injustices, she says, "are long overdue in this state." Oregon is not alone in the controversy over the status of minorities in education. "Oregon is a lot like the rest of the nation," says Peggy C. Ross, director of affirmative action at the office of the governor in Oregon. "There are areas where we have made tremendous strides; there are areas where we still have a lot of work to do." Most recently, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action sent ripples across the country, and set the stage for intense legal analysis, social project planning — and further debate. Bringing this debate to Oregon is UO's Center for Diversity and Community (CODAC), which has organized a summit on Oct.4 to discuss the implications of this Supreme Court ruling for Oregon's population. Ross, Reeves and a host of other leaders from Oregon's civic, legal and education communities will come together at the event called "After Grutter: Affirmative Action and Our Compelling Interests in Diversity." The case prompting all the excitement is Grutter v. Bollinger, where the Supreme Court decided in favor of a race-conscious admissions policy at the University of Michigan law school. This was unlike the summer's other affirmative action case, Gratz v. Bollinger, where the Supreme Court ruled against the undergraduate admission policy at UM because it was too rigid in its system of allotting a fixed number of points to applicants' race. But in Grutter, the Supreme Court approved of the way the Michigan law school kept race in mind as one more aspect of the applicant, basing admission decisions on a holistic review of the application. The court ruled that higher education institutions had a "compelling interest" in diversity. The judgment was hailed as groundbreaking. "I think that the decision in this Grutter v. Bollinger case is probably one of the most important decisions of our time," says Justice Paul De Muniz, a judge on the Oregon Supreme Court and the CODAC summit's keynote speaker. "In my opinion, this is one of those classic cases where you have the intersection of constitutional law and social policy." Half-Hispanic and the first in his family to attend college, De Muniz will address in his keynote speech the need for emerging leaders to be informed by diverse ideas, cultures and peoples. Diversity is about more than race and ethnicity, he believes: It also encompasses class and attitude differences. Exposure to different viewpoints is necessary "in order to compete in global markets, in order to have a strong military — all these things have to do with diversity in higher education," he says. The Grutter decision has been seen as a "blueprint" for implementing race-conscious admissions in higher education, "and possibly for practicing race-conscious decision-making in other areas of government policy, in a way that would withstand legal scrutiny," says John Shuford of CODAC, who helped organize the summit. However, Shuford says, "the impact of Grutter or the 'compelling interest in diversity' for a state like Oregon, and a university like UO, would remain to be seen — which is a large reason why we're having this public dialogue on Oct. 4." The disconnect between political representation and the general population, not just in Oregon but in the entire country, further shows the need for discussion on state diversity, says Keith Aiko, a UO law professor who will also speak at the summit. With the Hispanic population in Oregon doubling in the last 10 years, Aiko asks, why is there only one Latino among the 90 members of the Oregon state Legislature? The summit's experts hope to discuss possible ways in which the higher education focus of Grutter may help extend race-conscious policies to other areas like government, private employment and business. "Oregon is changing, and there is a need to increase and develop programs, resources, research and other means of addressing these changes," says Shuford. "Race, unfortunately, still matters," said the Supreme Court in the Grutter ruling. Reeves' experience through high school and her career stands proof. "The legal profession is a conservative profession and Oregon is not a diverse state. New people and new ideas are not particularly welcome in either," says Reeves. "I have to constantly defend my place as a woman and a minority because I am never looked at just as an Oregonian or just an attorney." The CODAC summit on Oct. 4 hopes to find ways to change that. Held at the Knight Law School, the event is free and open to the public. For more information, call John Shuford at 346-3212, or visit www.uoregon.edu/~codac/
Is
EPD Ready to Party?
College students are back in Eugene and starting classes this week, and the Eugene Police Department is anticipating the return of a fall tradition: riots in the west campus area. Kerry Delf, EPD public information officer, says that for the past few weeks more officers than usual have been assigned to patrol the area where parties are plentiful and where the slightest agitation can snowball into a major civil disturbance, as we have seen in years past. The West University Task Force was created in response to out-of-control parties like the ones that took place in May and October 2002, both of which brought out officers in head-to-toe riot gear. Thomas Hicks, interim director of the Department of Public Safety at the University of Oregon, says that DPS is working along with the police department to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible in the next few weeks. "The university pays for half of the cost of putting an extra EPD officer on the west university neighborhood patrol," he says. Although DPS does not patrol that area, Hicks notes that a big portion of the people drinking alcohol and getting out of control at parties live in the university residence halls. When parties get broken up by the police, a lot of intoxicated students make their way back to the dorms, he says. "The EPD usually does a pretty good job of breaking it up so that everyone doesn't leave in one big rush," says Hicks. "But we are trying to encourage the responsible use of alcohol. We have two officers specifically assigned to monitor underage drinking in the residence halls." So far, the extra patrols appear to be effective in discouraging student riots off campus. |
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