Students Work to Stop Tuition Hikes

During the last session, the State Legislation mandated the community colleges, along with other programs, hold back 3.5% of their funding and told them that next year they are going to see less revenue than expected.

The Community College and Workforce Development (CCWD) fund was initially supposed to be funded for $410 million this year. Since the State Legislation has mandated a 3.5% holdback, they are now being funded roughly $395 million. The CCWD propositions funds for Oregon’s community colleges.

If the 3.5% is not restored back into the legislation, then the CCWD will have a $14.5 million gap and community colleges will be forced to raise tuition.

Along with 3.5% being held back from community colleges, the State Legislation has also decided to holdback funds for the Oregon Student Assistance Commission (OSAC), which funds the Oregon Opportunity Grant. If funds are cut here also, there is the chance of 1,150 scholarships being reduced. For every 3.5% cut from the OSAC, 1,875 awards will not be given to students.

On February 13, students and the Oregon Community College Student Association (OCCSA) traveled to the State Capital for ‘Lobby Day’, the first meeting ever held about this situation. Students were there to ask for their 3.5% restored.

“Students are the sole purpose of this event,” said Eric Noll, OCCSA Board Chair. “Even though we’re all from community colleges, students still have a voice and it needs to be heard.”

The meeting started with Noll reading a ‘Letter of Solidarity’ which was written by the many students that were not able to attend. The students all signed the letter concerning tuition and concerning the nature of their financial aid not going up with their tuition. There were a total of 1,398 students that signed the letter.

There were four major questions that were asked to the panel and asked to the three out of six representatives that bothered to show up. The three representatives present were Rep. Mark Johnson, House District 52, Rep. Michael Dembrow, House District 45, and Rep. Peter Buckley, House District 5. The representatives not present were Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, House District 17, Rep. Betty Komp, House District 22, and Sen. Michael Devlin, S-District 19.

“Funding will always open up many questions and debates,” said Ricky Zipp, LBCC SLC President.

Question 1: What will you do to help lower taxes and tuition for students?

Buckley: We have an overall problem collecting revenue and creating a rainy day fund. We need to invest education back into America. If we don’t create a rainy day fund, we will repeat ourselves again.

Dembrow: Community colleges have been grossly under funded. Students who need community colleges has gone up and help for them has gone down and by raising tuition, cutting classes, and cutting teacher hours isn’t helping them one bit. We need to try and turn around the 3.5% holdback as soon as we can.

Johnson: We can correct this problem in two ways. 1.) By observing and hold certain institutes accountable and 2.) Advocate for greater economic growth. We need to regulate spending.

Question 2: How can we help the economy grow if we’re backed up in student loans?

Dembrow: We need a society that invests in the Oregon Opportunity Grant. Community colleges’ have the hardest chance of getting this grant and it needs to change.

Johnson: We extend our resources, both traditional and non-traditional. We need to invest in the Oregon Opportunity Grant and tell stories of students that need this grant.

Buckley: We have to choose to invest in the Oregon Opportunity Grant. We need to give every student the same opportunity as everyone else for this grant. The state is out $300 million and we need to find where to invest. I know that for the next academic year we are putting $10 million more dollars into the Oregon Opportunity Grant.

Question 3: How specifically can state representatives close the gap for the 40-40-20 legislator and the levels of funding plan for community colleges?

Johnson: We need to begin to adopt policies that help us improve that area. We need to ask ourselves, what can we do to make students better prepared and have a little bit of money when they start school?

Buckley: We have to push students even harder to pass the 12th grade because 10% of a school’s budget is spent on remedial classes. We need to make sure we’re reaching every goal possible. It’s not just the teachers, but the parents that need to help. Parents need to make sure to invest in their kids’ future and make sure they’re ready for the next grade.

Dembrow: We need more money out of the system.  Our spending more money on corrections than education needs to change.  We’ve been ignoring higher education for too long.

Question 4: What will state legislators specifically use to employ OSAC?

Buckley: The next academic year $55 million dollars is going into the Oregon Opportunity Grant. In order to do this, we’re cutting money by closing the courts nine days this year, taking more police off of the road, cutting money to prisons. It costs more money to incarcerate someone than it does to educate someone. We are going to push more for higher education than other topics.

Dembrow: One of the challenges that we’ve faced is that people are losing their jobs and are then going back to school. The Oregon Opportunity Grant has a deadline and the people that come in late, aren’t eligible. Apart from extending the deadline, we need to make it available to part-time students as well.

Johnson: We’ve got to advocate for sound policies that puts more money into school budgets. We need to think of more revenue and need to pass bills that create more jobs, which in turn will create more revenue and put people back to work and will put more money back into Oregon.

Recycling on Campus

Recycling on campus has just completed their second full term. To help support the recycling program, the bookstore has been selling specific merchandise, e.g. t-shirts, hoodies, water bottles, and lanyards. Since September, they have sold $2,915 of merchandise and have profited $1,422.

“We are discussing right now, how we want to expand the merchandise selection, and maybe get a little more creative with the clothing designs as we build the brand and move towards 2nd generation merchandise,” said Lawrence LaJoie, LBCC Bookstore Manager. “The great thing right now is that the merchandise is simple yet unique, and universal to everyone.”

Throughout the entire Albany campus, there are four locations, the Courtyard Cafe, in front of Takena, in back of Takena, and at the bookstore courtyard, with orders for two more locations for Spring Term. In order to run each station, it costs $300 each term.

The recycling program has been very successful the last two terms and according to Lajoie, they will continue the program.

“We plan on continuing this program for the foreseeable future to cover all campuses with stations, estimating we need a total of approx 30 stations,” said Lajoie. “After that, we’ll focus on internal areas of campus as well, getting more concentrated on workspaces and classrooms.”

The response from students and staff has been very supportive, and along with the Bookstore’s efforts, they will be able to add more bins each year. The blue recycle bins in the main building hallways are placed and taken care of by college facilities and janitorial staff. They are well marked as to what goes in them.

The new set of recycle bins that the Bookstore has purchased from sales of their “green” merchandise will look different than the hallway bins, and serve the outside areas like the courtyard, the Bookstore atrium and in front of Takena Hall. They will include a bin for composting food items and biodegradable food and coffee drink containers from food services on campus.

“The issue has been education. Since we have new students coming in each term, we are always looking for ways to let new students know what can be recycled and composted on campus, and how to recycle,” said Lori Fluge-Brunker, Master Recycler and an active member of the Sustainability Committee. “We do often find trash in the recycle bins, which can cause the recycle to be treated, in essence, as trash. So educating people about recycling is important.”

In order to help bring awareness to recycling on campus, the Green Club hosted a “Know What you Throw” recycling table during fall term to answer recycling questions.

Along with that event, the Green Club will be hosting a “Waste Audit” where they collect trash from around campus, then sort and weigh the trash to see how much is actually garbage and how much could have been recycled or composted. This will be held March 13 at 1 p.m. and will be made visible to students and staff in the courtyard.




Most students and staff are interested in recycling and in doing it right, it’s just a matter of making it easy and clear for them to do it.

How Community College Journalism Can Thrive

“To be living in interesting times is to be cursed.” - Chinese proverb.

This is becoming too common a motto for community colleges that are losing, or have lost, their school newspapers.

Out of 29 community colleges in Washington state alone, over half of those schools have lost their papers. The reasons include budget cuts, elimination of journalism programs, and lack of student interest.

“Who’s your zombie?” asked the panelists at a discussion titled “How Community College Journalism Can Thrive Amid Cannibals and Zombies.” It was one of dozens of sessions at the Associated Collegiate Press national convention March 1-4 in Seattle.

According to Andrea Otanez, Everett Community College instructor, the “zombies” are a vast array of many different topics. These include not keeping journalism relevant at community colleges, a campus that doesn’t fully support the paper, fast-moving technology, and online websites replacing print.

How can students and staff make it to where these “zombies” don’t come onto every community college campus, totally wiping out the school newspaper and the journalism program?

Jeanne Leader, dean of Everett Community College, said the enemy is within the campus. Journalism is not expensive to have around, and newspapers always seem to do better with a journalism program, she said. Schools need to keep papers in the budget.

“There are certain community colleges that get bad press from the students and the staff about certain articles that were written,” said Leader. “We’re here to inform the community about what is happening, not about people’s hurt feelings.

“If they don’t like what was written, then they shouldn’t have said anything. Our challenge is to engage the community, and if stories are not relevant, then how will we inform the community and move forward as a student newspaper?”

Leader suggested paying students from $10 to $20 for each article, that way students are encouraged to get more involved. Leader also said that every paper should be about quality and quantity. It doesn’t matter if the campus paper is only a few pages long. As long as the articles are well written, that’s what counts.

To get students more involved, Leader suggested hosting a booth and giving away “swag,” such as free food, games, or free merchandise with the paper’s logo. It is all about under-selling and over-delivering.

Aaron Alan, a Seattle-area community college student, said his school no longer has a student newspaper because there wasn’t a budget for it and the students weren’t supportive of the paper in the first place.

“My school has been without a print newspaper for about four years now,” said Alan. “We were told that the reason why it got cut was because of certain articles that were written, and that they were not very suitable for the students to know.

“Students have the right to know everything, and if the only reason why they shut us down is because we wrote about a staff member that was doing something illegal, then I know we’re doing our job right.”

Alan and some fellow students have created an online edition of their old newspaper, and are continuing their journalism endeavors, informing the students about the community.

For more information on what is happening to today’s newspapers go to www.whoneedsnewspapers.org.

At-A-Glance:

What: How journalism can thrive amid negativity conference

Where: Seattle, Washington

When: March 3, 2012

Speakers: Jeanne Leader, Everett Community College
                Andrea Otanez, Everett Community College
                Michael Parks, Pierce College
                Rich Riski, Peninsula College 

                Aaron Alan, Seattle-area community college student