The Pioneer Log, April 22, 2011

Opinions 7

A message to Lewis & Clark from President Barry Glassner

The rookie year of a new college president has plenty of serious moments, but its some of the not-soserious ones that have really driven home the reality of my new role. Like finding, as I did a few weeks ago, my face photo-shopped onto a fast-food chicken bucket in the April Fools issue of The Pioneer Log, and finding on the next page, a typographic likeness of me lampooned as a clueless first-year uttering profundities like, I am so glad they let me bring my car. Truthfully, I thoroughly enjoyed that issue of The Pioneer Loger, The Mossy Logjust as Ive relished my ongoing engagement with Lewis & Clark students throughout my first year as president. In the email message I sent to students, faculty and staff on my first day in office, I invited people to introduce themselves when they saw me on campus. It soon became very clear that LC students accepted the invitation wholeheartedly. Those conversations and many others Ive had with students this year have confirmed what I believed even before I arrived. You are an enthusiastic, intellectual and inspiring student body. I have been impressed by the quality of your questions and insights and by your commitment to critical thinking even when youre engaging with the president. Weve had great conversations this yearat lunch and dinner in Fields (thank you for tolerating my habit of joining your tables unexpectedly), at events like Jerry Harps fireside dialogue in Tamarack and in classroom and colloquia discussions. And, not that the hubbub was conducive to deep conversation, but who could forget The Bash? At most inaugurations Ive attended, events were tailored to trustees, visiting dignitaries and the faculty, but rarely to the group that should stand at the top of our priority list: the students. I was determined to rectify that in my own inauguration. I told everyone involved in the planning that I wanted the big event on the night of the inauguration to be something by and for students. In one of my better acts of delegating, I asked Dith Pamp, President of ASLC, to take charge by consulting students as to what they would want and then making it happen. You know the result: The Battle of the Bands and the big night at the Crystal Ballroom, where LC students were the talent on the stage and the audience in the house. Its not just your talent as musicians that impresses me, of course. Your engagement with the world is unsurpassed, as witnessed by the fact that about two-thirds of you take part in our overseas and offcampus programs. The outsized number of honors you win from organizations bearing the biggest names in academiaRhodes, Fulbright, Goldwater, National Science Foundationtestify to the quality of your intellect and commitment. So did the large turnout of some 250 students for Spring Into Action, the student-organized day of service that took place on the last day of inauguration weekend. The conversations between us this year have featured some great questions, but none better than one put to me during the fireside dialogue hosted by Professor Harp. In the midst of a wide-ranging conversation about everything from presidential responsibilities to my work as a sociologist to concerns about staffing, someone asked the kind of question a college president can only love: What can students do to help? How gracious of an undergraduate student to ask me how students could help in the mission of moving the college ahead. I do want your help, and I appreciate the good start weve achieved this year, the exciting times ahead and the fact that I get to bring my car to campus. Have a great summer.

A final word on the Voluntary Employee Severance Program

takes time to cultivate and nurture both those relationships and ones place in the institution. Please remember that as you take classes with new professors: they are learning to know who you are as well as how best to work with you. As I said, this takes time.

Letter from the Editor

ize how lucky we are when were busy cramming for the next exam or banging frantically on the Razs closed doors as it glides by us in the interest of time. But now that I can finally see the speck of light at the end of this long academic tunnel, I cant help but be grateful for all that Ive learned in the past four years. Heres a taste of it: 1. Just because you liked the intro class doesnt mean youve found your major. I wish someone had grabbed that major-declaration sheet out of my hands in 2008 and yelled, Oh yeah?! You feel like a BAMF in your IA-100 class? Have you TRIED Psychology? English? Communications? NO? You havent!? Then what the hell are you doing signing the next three years of your life away? I plan to use this lesson when the Starbucks manager tells me I would get health benefits and free scones. 2. The Bon is ridiculously great. There is just no way for you to understand this completely until you walk into a gigantic room of all-you-can-eat food prepared by professional chefs after five months of tired late-night dinners consisting of bland spaghetti and low-fat yogurt that you bought because it was on sale. Somewhere in this is a lesson in privilege and entitlement; Im just too busy typing on this gigantic Mac screen in Dubach to bother figuring it out. 3. The administrators are not hell-bent on ruining your life. It has just been a very, very long time since they took a hit. 4. Never again will world-renowned experts gather 500 feet from your bedroom to tell you about the exciting things they have discovered. Never again will great minds work their underappreciated scholarly asses off to make a theoretical discussion among you and your peers interesting. Never again will you be able to stand up to law enforcement officers without putting your life in danger. So go to as many symposiums as possible, get embarrassingly engrossed in class discussions and when Campo trashes your room during an unwarranted search, raise hell and take photos. Live it up. As sincerely as ever, Natalie Baker

PHOTO BY ALICIA KROELL

BY LINDA ISAKO ANGST Guest Writer First, I want to thank Beau Broughton, Opinions editor of The Pioneer Log, for his invitation that I make the final contribution of the year to this page, and to Natalie Baker for being both a wonderful student and conscientious editor in seeking my concerns in the first place. Now, Id like to address the topic of VESP, taking the broader view on what it means to me and possibly to my other departing colleagues, though I speak solely from my own perspective. I have chosen to leave the college after 10 years of teaching here, and my departure is bittersweet. I believe that may be the case for many of us, but again, I say this informally, based on scattered conversations with staff and faculty colleagues. For us who have chosen the profession of college teaching, it is, as Max Weber tells us, a calling in the true sense of the word. This means it is not simply a job (in other words, it aint about the money!), but work in the best sense of it, in the Marxian sense of labor as connected to ones heart and soul. Teaching at a liberal arts institution, which is the only kind of college-level teaching I know, means that the distinction between personal and professional is a very thin line, if it exists at all. We know this when we get into the businesssuch a business! For one, it means that the connection we have with our students is deep and lasting. It also means that learning the culture of a school does not happen over night. It

The greatest single challenge to this institution is nurturing and protecting the delicate flower of diversity.
And it takes a village to echo the words of a most recent feminist candidate for the American presidency. It takes colleagues understanding how important it is to support and mentor new faculty, administrators who stand by faculty and staff and do the right thing when things go awry (as they do in any work place), and an understanding by all that doing the right thing in todays world also means that we are sensitive to the nuances of identity and experiences that are not necessarily that of the mainstream. The greatest single challenge to this institution, in my opinion, is nurturing and protecting the delicate flower of diversity that has been struggling to grow in our midst for a very long time. Understanding it intellectually is certainly important, but supporting it with right practices and rules that are firmly in place to protect everyone is also required. It also means being open to change and innovation, in teaching, learning and administrative practicesnot just saying it, but really understanding how to nurture such change. We VESPers have our various reasons for leaving the college now rather than later, and there is no unified response to the Why? that is being asked of many of us. But for certain, it is the case that all of us will miss working with you, our students, the very reason Lewis & Clark College exists at all. Farewell, and fond remembrances!

As you may know, this is the last Pioneer Log edition of the semester. But its also my last week as Editor-in-Chief. In a few weeks, this campus and my stint as a cautionary stress management tale will be nothing but a bittersweet memory. I can taste that fading sense of accomplishment already. Although Im excited to move on to the astoundingly lucrative careers Ive been offeredchief coordinator of daydreams and full-time Craigslist responder being my top choices at the momentthere are still plenty of things I will miss about this place. Its difficult for us to real-

4/20 receives too much attention

BY LINDSEY BOSSE
Editor-in-Chief

For the record, in the state of Oregon, all marijuana laws fall under the code 475; thus I begin my twisted argument with 4/20. On the one hand, 4/20 presents a relevant day to celebrate the existence of the popular drug we like to call marijuana, weed, pot or bud. But on the other hand, marijuana is illegal and thus creates problems with institutions and police. However, marijuana rates fairly similar to selling alcohol to a minor as far as Oregon law goes. The exception is that selling or giving alcohol to a minor is a Class A misdemeanor, while possession of less than an ounce is simply a violation. For giving alcohol to a minor, the person can receive jail time and have to complete community service. The weed and underage drinking actually only mirror each other when you compare fees which range from $350-$1000. So what

we have here is state legislature that actually illustrates the distribution of alcohol to minors as worse than the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. I have to ask: where is the concern when St. Patricks Day rolls around? How come weeks before 4/20 we are notified to behave, when much more illegal activity takes place about a month before. Granted, St. Patricks Day is a legitimate holiday, and therefore presents less of an opportunity for people to shut down its celebration. What is not official, though (at least to my knowledge), is that St. Patricks Day is actually code for Get Wasted Day. Maybe I am breaking the news to some, but the drive to get drunk on 3/17 is equivalent to the urge to toke on 4/20. Of course, the difference is that a portion of students on campus can actually participate in St. Patricks drinking legally, where as no portion of the campus can legally celebrate 4/20. The bottom line is that on both days, illegal ac-

tivity is going down, but only one of those days involves the potential contribution of alcohol to a minor. Im not saying we should smoke weed on 4/20, and Im not saying we should get drunk on 3/17. Im also not saying that we should refrain from these activities either, but instead I invite both the rule enforcers and the rule breakers to evaluate the actual state legislature that directly relates to their sin of choice. Its not up to us to come together and try to force some sort of understanding with the big dogs that makes it so this one day of the year we can smoke pot on the lawn, and its not up to the big-dogs to patrol us like preschoolers on a field trip, assuming were going to step out of line. It is, however, the responsibility of all of us to know what were doing and what the consequences could be. We all break the law; its just a matter of how smart or dumb we are willing to act when we make the decision to do so.