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The annual Lewis & Clark College Gender Studies Symposium starts this week on Wednesday!

This year the symposium explores an unusual and often ignored theme in the realms of gender studies: the science of gender and sex. Join us for three days of over 25 panels, presentations, workshops, and performances centered on topics ranging from the biological basis of gender identity to Darwinian feminism to the medicalization of sexuality to how Portland sex workers reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

This student-steered symposium brings together local community members as well as experts and attendees from across the nation. Every year, a cohort of LC students work with faculty advisors to begin planning this symposium nearly a year in advance. If nothing else, please attend a panel or two to support all the work that has gone into making this symposium rock.

The full program can be found online here. All events are free and open to the public, in case you needed more incentive. Also, there will be buttons. Drop by the info table outside Council Chambers to get free buttons and printed programs.

As you probably know, the LC student body received formal notice of a change in the policy dictating how the school will handle infringement notices it receives from copyright holders.  In the past, I think the policy was basically “tell people to stop.” Now, it seems to be basically “tell people to stop and make them exert minimal effort to prove that they have stopped.”  Seems pretty straightforward to me:

Greetings CAS Students:

My name is Dan Terrio, Chief Technology Officer at Lewis & Clark. I am writing to you today to make you aware some changes in procedures with regards to handling received copyright infringement claims.

If you are not aware, this past fall Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). The new law includes provisions addressing illegal peer-to-peer file sharing on college and university networks. The law requires regular communication with students about college policies with regards to copyright; a formal plan to effectively combat copyright abuse on the campus network that must include one or more technology-based deterrents; and we must offer alternatives to illegal downloading (and uploading).

The purpose of this message is to let you know what our formal plan is for combating copyright abuse on the LC network. As the institution’s registered digital millennium copyright act agent, I regularly receive (over 10 per week, on average) copyright infringement claims from agencies such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), NBC, HBO, FOX, etc. These infringement claims identify the file name, the time of infringement, and the IP address associated with the infringing activity.

From that IP address we can usually determine the individual on our network that has made that file available for sharing. In the past we had sent email notification to the individual, asking for a reply to confirm receipt and understanding about the infringement claim.

In my observations, most students that I have spoken to about copyright infringement claims, have been unaware that they had been sharing files. There seems to be a misunderstanding that although a peer-to-peer application may used to download files, in most cases, there is a “piece” of the application running all the time, sharing all files on a computer.

It is not the intent of the College to block the use of peer-to-peer software applications, as there are legitimate and legal uses for those applications. However downloading and sharing (freely) copyright protected files does violate federal copyright law.

In light of the requirements of the HEOA, we will begin to use new procedures beginning Monday, March 1.

When an infringement claim is received, if an individual can be associated with the IP address identified in the claim, we will immediately suspend network access until it can be verified at the IT help-desk that the peer-to-peer application/software has been removed or sharing has been turned off. Anyone that has network access suspended will know when he or she logs onto the network, as he or she will be redirected to a webpage explaining the situation and providing information as to how to have network access restored.

Personally, I don’t think these changes are even going to affect the vast majority of us, but I guess we’ll see.  What I think is actually more notable is the barely-mentioned provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act that mandates that schools:

(B) will, to the extent practicable, offer alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property, as determined by the institution in consultation with the chief technology officer or other designated officer of the  institution.’ [link]

So, the obvious question: what action is L&C taking to provide us with an alternative to illegal downloading?  What does that stipulation even mean, legally?

The simple/obvious route would be to say “use hulu.com and go buy a Netflix account,” but is that enough?

I don’t even mean to imply that I agree with the idea that the college owes us something in order to deter us from committing information crimes on our own, but it would seem that the government does… so hook me up.

P.S. If you happen to be one of the students who get caught and lose internet access for awhile, quit using Limewire or public BitTorrent trackers and do some research (and then never pirate anything ever again).

David Coleman, “the real Hitch,” administered a syringe of dating advice to a full Council Chamber on Sunday. The Dating Doctor, as he calls himself, promised to teach inept Lewis & Clark students how to catch and keep the interests of potential romantic partners. However, the performance failed to provide the solutions it advertized, violating its own promises and leaving students with a detrimental message about how to create and maintain healthy relationships.

The Doc began with the admirable sentiment that to be datable, you have to like yourself. Contrary to this positive sentiment, throughout the performance the Doc’s humor frequently descended into name-calling and derision. Full disclosure: he repeatedly singled out one of the authors of this article. Rather than asking me my name, he referred to me exclusively as “Freaky.” He expertly steered the audience into laughing at me, disparaging me for my sexual preferences and practices. While I am self-confident enough to handle ridicule, that does not give anyone the right to deploy that style of humor against another person. It certainly does not teach self-appreciation.

The Doc promised that his performance would be inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender identities. In reality, his treatment of the LGBTQ community was demeaning. He opened his talk with a disclaimer that his advice was applicable to all students, whether gay, bisexual, transgendered, or aroused by the microphone stand. Not only was this a false promise of inclusivity, it belittled the LGBTQ community by equating same-gender attraction with attraction to an inanimate object, thus reducing it to ridiculous. He tacked the phrase “we’re all adults here” onto his disclaimer, implying that potential criticism of his performance’s privileging of heterosexual experiences would be immature and not worth his consideration. However, the Doc’s language was so explicitly gendered that it was almost impossible for queer listeners to tease out any advice we could apply to ourselves. The Doc made it clear that much of what he said was not meant to apply to LGBTQ people. More than once he had an aside in which he was “politically correct for a second” and explained that though his advice may or may not apply to queer people, what was important was that it did apply to straight people. Queer students left the performance with the understanding that we were a politically correct aside to dating. A truly inclusive performance does not preface itself with a disclaimer about its inclusivity; instead, inclusivity is inherent throughout the performance, eliminating the need for a disclaimer.

In addition to assuming queer audience members would be able to reframe his advice to fit their deviant ways, the Doc stereotyped men and women. His performance did not acknowledge or value differences between genders. The Doc relied upon convenient gender tropes, equating women with feelings and sensitivity and men with facts and boorishness. He admonished men for asking women the wrong questions, advising that a man should ask, “How did that make you feel?” instead of who what when where why. The implication is that men should feign interest in a woman’s feelings in order to con her into dating him. It would have been far more valuable for the Doc to advise honest communication and consent.

The concept of consent was absent from the Doc’s performance. Although never stated explicitly, the tone of the performance sounded a lot like if she says no, she’s playing hard to get. He told the women in the room that one way to know a man is interested is when he is not deterred by the barriers a woman puts up. He explained further that women have a flashing neon sign that reads “you have a penis, I don’t trust you” on their foreheads. A man that is interested in a particular woman will ignore her neon sign and persist in his quest to get to know her, and ostensibly to bed her. The message is clear: though the woman is apparently portraying that she is uninterested in the man, the man must persevere because she doesn’t know, or doesn’t show, what she really wants. Her no actually means yes.

The Doc sought audience response – unequally – to prove his claims about gender. In his advice to women regarding how to keep a boyfriend, the Doc prescribed “FEED HIM.” Then he asked the men to stand if they were even remotely hungry. Men shot to their feet – it was, after all, more than four hours since most of us had eaten brunch. Point made, he moved on, never asking women to stand if they were hungry, therefore neatly perpetuating the ideology that men eat and women feed them. Some of the gender stereotyping the Doc evinced from the audience could lead to dangerous misinterpretations. When an image of puppies flashed onto the screen, it was met with a rousing, “awww!” to which the Doc said “Men, when you hear ladies make that sound, it means you’re in for some serious lovin’.” Take note: it is quite possible to perceive something as cute without going to bed with it.

The performance did have a few enjoyable moments that could have been expanded to project a more positive, useful message. When the Doc inventoried types of bad kissing, he avoided gendered language and used humor without targeting specific individuals. Advice on how to be a good kisser would have been a helpful next segment. The section listing where women like to be touched could have been useful had it been expanded to include men too; the erogenous zones the Doc identified are body locations abundant with nerve endings in people of all genders. Instead, women were transformed into a Twister board for men to touch in the right spots without bothering to ask the girl if it is okay to touch her in those places first. The Doc’s advice for approaching a love interest, “be a fat penguin – break the ice!” would have been more helpful had he provided effective ways for people to overcome their reservations.

It is not impossible to host a show that combines dating advice and humor to create an empowering and sex-positive message – New Student Orientation hosts Sex Signals every September! Some people left the Dating Doctor feeling offended, alienated, or apprehensive about the Doc’s advice. More concerning to us is that the vast majority of people we spoke to left believing they received an afternoon of great dating advice and some quality entertainment. For a community that prides itself on its ability to think critically, Lewis and Clark students disappointed us by their obedient swallowing of the Dating Doctor’s faulty prescription for how to woo and screw.

-Maisha Foster-O’Neal & Allison Weith

If you’re a senior like me, you’ve witnessed the once-eargerly-anticipated Casino Night go from an awesome party/good time to a sparsely-attended, security-guard-policed cash sink in the course of three years.  Something needed to change.  Luckily, Student Activities has taken Casino Night in a new direction: take that money and plan a cooler event instead.  This year, we’re having Spring Fling, which, from what I can tell, is basically a Springtime bash on-par in coolness with the ridiculously successful Homecoming reboot “Fall Ball.”

There will be food, dancing, and booze for those who are of-age.  It’s $15 in advance , with a $5 discount if you take the the shuttle from campus (as in you will be handed a $5 bill when you get on the bus), or $20 at the door.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Spring Fling is taking place at the brand-new PDX venue The Leftbank Annex, which has its grand opening this week.

come to SPRING FLING on February  27th at 8pm.  Check the Facebook page for all the details.

Hey, just a friendly community reminder that the advertisement that ran in this past Friday’s PioLog is almost definitely a scam.  So, please don’t follow up on it, and if you do, keep your wits about you and don’t do anything that seems odd.

Here’s the text of the advertisement in question:

Looking for a part time offer where you can earn $1400 to $2400 every two weeks?

Are you dedicated? Over 21? Computer literate? And have access to the internet one to two hours a week?
If you answered ”Yes” then we have your career waiting for you!

Canes Ultralights Inc. is currently seeking store managers, assistant managers,payroll reps and payment clerks to work at your own flexible schedule! And it only takes a little bit of your time!

If you think you have what Canes Ultralights is looking for,
contact us with your resume @ rjordan263canesultralights@gmail.com
that’s rjordan263canesultralights@googlemail.com

Hurry..don’t wait! This great opportunity is limited so contact Canes Ultralight Inc. today!

Here’s why it’s fake:

• The Better Business Bureau has no records of a company called Canes Ultralights Inc.
• vague purpose, type of business, job description, etc.
• typos
• the e-mail address is unofficial and does not even match itself.
• the company does not have a website or even a web presence aside from this exact ad, ver batim, pasted all over the place.
• no one pays a college student $1500 for two hours of work unless it’s illegal.
• there’s an unanswered Yahoo! Answers page asking if it’s a scam.

So…

Edit: as has been pointed out in the comments section of this post, the Source article has been updated to clarify what was meant by a “net gain” of positions.  One position was eliminated from IT, but there are plans for 4.5 new positions in the bookstore-run computer purchase program.  I’ll try to maintain the relative objectivity of this post and refrain from commentary except for in the comments.

An announcement has been posted to The Source about the Board’s approval of the budget for next year.  It’s kinda depressing.  Not that I thought it wouldn’t be.  There are already rumors flyin’ around, none of which I have heard substantiated on the record.  So far, all we have to go by is the announcement, which gets pretty vague near the end (perhaps just from uncertainty rather than intentional omission).

Here’s what I’m seeing (let me know if I misinterpreted something):

• tuition increases, especially in the law school.
• $500,000 decrease in budget support from endowment
• salary freezes for faculty and non-union staff, 2% salary increase for Law School faculty and staff
• computer purchase program moved to bookstore’s jurisdiction (net gain of 3.5 positions).
• one new Law School position
• 1% reduction in institutional contribution to employee retirement plans
• $500,000 Strategic Initiatives Fund held as contingenc
• elimination of the vanpool
• a tighter policy on College cell phones
• lower insurance and workers compensation costs
• implies that there will be no layoffs

The Board of Trustees has unanimously approved the 2010-2011 budget, which maintains faculty and staff salaries and wages, maintains positions, and reduces by one percentage point the College’s contribution to employees’ retirement funds.

Under the financial plan voted on by the Board at its meeting last Friday, CAS and Graduate School tuition will increase by 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively; Law School tuition will rise by 9.75 percent for new students, and 4.9 percent for returning students.  “Over time, the Law School’s tuition has fallen significantly below other comparable schools,” said Carl Vance, vice president for business and finance.  “Even with this increase, Law School tuition will still be thousands of dollars less than peer schools’ average.”

In presenting the budget to the Board, Vance stressed that uncertainty from the recession continues to cloud the institution’s financial situation, as it did in last year’s budget process.

“Because net tuition revenue remains the primary source of income for all three schools at Lewis & Clark, each will be tested in 2010-11 by students’ ability and willingness to pay for private higher education,” Vance said.

At this point in their admission cycles, both CAS and the Law School have matched last year’s applicant pools both in size and quality.  (For the Graduate School, it is too early in the process to make any judgments.) Despite those positive signs, operating budget margins are being substantially increased for all three schools as a hedge against possible net tuition drop-offs.

In addition to the effects of the recession, the budget must absorb the impact of the reduction in endowment spending rate enacted last year, which will mean a $500,000 decrease in budget support from the endowment for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

As one major response to the financial challenges, wages and salaries are being frozen for faculty and non-union staff in the Graduate School, CAS, and Common Services; a 2 percent compensation increase is budgeted for Law School faculty and staff.  “The Board of Trustees specifically noted that these are tactical decisions in response to the recession,” Vance said. “The Board remains committed to increasing salaries in the future so Lewis & Clark is competitive with peer institutions.”

By moving to a self-operated bookstore CAS plans to add a net of 3.5 administrative and staff positions.  The new bookstore will assume responsibilities from Information Technology (IT) for campus computer sales, which will require changes in several IT positions.  The Law School plans to increase its faculty by one.  No new positions are planned within the Grad School.

Additional savings are being realized through the one percentage-point reduction in the institution’s contribution to employee retirement plans, from 10 percent to 9 percent. Vance explained that those involved in the budget process preferred lowering the retirement contribution over the other two logical options for reducing compensation costs—layoffs or salary reductions.

“Of the three options, cutting retirement benefits has the least impact on employees,” Vance said. “Most employees with discretionary income still have the option of taking money out of salary and putting it into retirement. And those staff members who would prefer maintaining take-home pay will be able to do so.”

Just as in this year’s budget, the $500,000 Strategic Initiatives Fund—normally allocated for select one-time projects—will be held as a first-line contingency against enrollment deficits. In addition, the new budget reflects decreases in operating costs achieved through the planned elimination of the vanpool, a tighter policy on College cell phones, and lower insurance and workers compensation costs.

With an eye toward greater cost efficiencies in the future, the College is engaging Pappas Consulting Group to study current administrative structures and make recommendations for possible improvements to the next president.

“We’ve been living under the cloud of this recession for roughly two years now, but next year is probably when private higher education in general and Lewis & Clark specifically will be hit the hardest,” Vance said. “Fiscal year 2010-11 will be the real test. I’m hopeful we will start coming out on the other side of this challenging period it in 2011-12 and will find ourselves on more solid footing in the years to follow.

“With this new budget, the Board, Executive Council, and I are confident that we have realistic projections for revenues and expenditures, and that the necessary contingencies and margins are in place to get us through the year with our financial health and workforce intact, and while continuing the highest quality education for our students,” Vance added. “We have weathered the financial storms up to this point, and I feel very strongly that we will continue to do so in the year ahead.”

Inspired by Salute Your Shorts, The Serious Club brings their signature form to The Laff Shack (opening for Dustin Diamond), Thursdays at 6:30pm. Weaving together shades of D-Day and Saved By The Bell: The College Years, The Serious Club creates an incredible tapestry of late-Victorian family politics but still with engaging, grounded scenework. Like the subprime mortgage crisis meets improv, The Serious Club’s laugh-ripping brand of comedy is sure to leave you tickled to the point of exhaustion. Be sure to catch this near-equity-eligible group the Naperville Gazette calls ‘bonkers.’

Via The Improv Show Description Generator.

Background on the club.

A recent PioLog article prompted me to consider a topic that pops up in conversation from time to time.  How should we feel about theme floors?  The institution’s viewpoint is pretty clear: L&C is for them:

Theme housing options are designed to enhance your residential experience by supporting your academic interests or lifestyle preferences. Themed communities allow students with common interests and pursuits to live together and support each other through planned activities and informal interactions. [link]

Already, we have the opportunity to apply to live in halls themed around wellness/health, a shared Exploration & Discovery course, multiculturalism, the environment, visual/performing arts, foreign languages, and outdoor pursuits.  With the addition of an Interfaith community next year, we’d each be hard-pressed to find a floor that didn’t appeal to a personal identity or interest of our own.

My question, I guess, is whether this is a good thing.  I honestly (non-rhetorically-honestly) don’t know whether this sort of factionalizing is achieving the intended outcome.  I’ve heard that the theme floors can and do greatly enrich some students’ college experiences.  I can’t argue with that, nor would I really want to if I could.  That seems all well and good.  I can’t help but consider, however, if others’ college experiences are being affected in some way by lacking daily community interactions with large portions of those whose interests or identity has led them to pursue living on a floor populated largely by likeminded individuals (not necessarily in specific opinion, but at least in a shared identification).

Is Lewis & Clark large enough to be able to offer so many theme floors and still maintain a diverse and enlightening communal-living experience for those of us who never chose to pursue life on a theme floor?  Perhaps some of the best “college” learning happens outside the classroom–in dorms and lounges and evenings in Portland.  Especially during the first and second year of school, people’s friend groups are largely comprised of hallmates.  If most students’ halls are guaranteed, by the existence of theme floors, not to be comprised of those of us who are the most passionate about the various identities and interests represented by theme floor opportunity, especially things as contentious as religion and diversity, is the community better off?

Likewise, are the lives of theme-floor-living students impacted detrimentally by their lack of interaction with people who have very little in common with them, accounting, of course, for any benefit of living on a theme floor?  This is not to say that theme floors are populated by people who are remarkably similar–they’re not–but reflecting on some of the great friends I’ve made at Lewis & Clark… there’s no way we would have interacted with each other if not for the serendipity of random housing assignment.

Here’s the angle I approach the issue: in college, people with similar interests *will* find each other.  Artists will find artists, religious students will find religious students, environmentalists will find environmentalists.  The social system on any campus is such that people can network and associate remarkably easily.  From what I can tell, the only two institutions in place to force continued interaction between a random (used more in the “unconnected” definition than in the true definition) group of people at L&C are housing assignments and Exploration & Discovery (freshman-year seminar class).  As housing is increasingly becoming more nuanced towards preferences people think they have, do we lose some of the academic and social richness that often comes from taking a group of unconnected people and forcing them to become friends (or at the very least amicably coexist)?

Obviously, I don’t know the answer, but I am hesitant to simply accept the notion that themed housing, especially in the abundance that L&C provides it, is beneficial to large-scale community interconnectedness.  Dare I make a baseless hypothesis that the existence of things like theme floors may even contribute to the apathy many have observed of the student body here.  Does it not seem to follow that if we strongly institutionally reinforce the tendency to seek interaction with people of similar interests, it’s no wonder that our community seems to be troubled by issues of non-cohesion and indifference towards occurrences outside of our specific interests?

As I said before… this is just my musing, and I’m sure someone else has probably thought of it all first… I might be totally wrong (and I don’t really know how one would even begin to find out how to test this sort of thing).  I’ve also probably simplified the issue much more than it deserves.  Either way… it’s something I sometimes think about.  So I’ll tell the internet about it.