WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2009 • PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY • VOLUME 64, ISSUE 22
Event of the day Joshua Kendall, senior editor at Viking Press in New York and Tom Bissell, writer and professor in the PSU Creative Writing MFA program, are presenting a seminar today entitled “The Writer/Editor Relationship.”
When: 4 p.m. Where: SMSU, room 327
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INSIDE NEWS Senate committees back in action Senate finance committee starts meeting with SFC PAGE 2 The Daily Cut Your world in brief PAGE 3
ARTS
Need to listen to this band Needtobreathe are doing fine and want you to share the love PAGE 4
30-year tradition continues Volunteers and students contribute, Red Cross reaches goals Sarah J. Christensen Vanguard staff
Compassionate students gathered at Portland State on Jan. 15, 1979, to give blood for the American Red Cross. Thirty years later, the tradition of students donating remains. Yesterday, the American Red Cross finished its second day of their Fall Term PSU Blood Drive. The drive exceeded the goals set by Student Health and Counseling Outreach Coordinator Gwyn Ashcom and her Red Cross counterpart, Joseph Shockley. “It’s been a slow build,” Ashcom said of their yearly total. “From February of last year to October of this year—to this drive—we’re at 934 [units].” This drive has seen a jump in the number of donors. “Our goal was 144 units [Monday] and we reached 150,” Ashcom said. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without the donors.”
To register for an appointment visit www.givelife.org. Food for the living and flesh for the dead Portland Zombie Walk sponsors the Oregon Food Bank PAGE 5 A different take on Oz Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road may be unexpected, but it’s not bad PAGE 5
OPINION
What’s news got to do with it? Sensationalism is ruining local news PAGE 6
The volunteers Clark and Donna Smith, husband and wife volunteers, have been helping with the blood drives for several years. “We come here four times a year. This year was the first year with two days,” said Clark Smith. “I didn’t realize this school has more students than U of O.” Ashcom hopes to benefit from the fact that Portland State has the largest student body in Oregon. “Our goal is to get a full week drive to match up to U of O,” Ashcom said. Another bonus of the longer blood drives is the availability of “double reds” for students. “The double reds—where they take out the plasma and give you back the fluids so you don’t have to replace them—is a great thing,” Smith said. This allows donors to skip some of the side effects that accompany giving blood. “I’ve been volunteering since I retired, about 12 years,” said Smith. “My wife and I will volunteer again and will be at Ronler Acres in Beaverton tomorrow.” Helen Ladarre, another volunteer, looks forward to the drive coming back in February. “You guys are just great,” Ladarre said.
Robert Britt/Portland State Vanguard
Donating blood: Cynthia LeBlue, Red Cross team supervisor, prepares to draw blood from Portland State senior Carolyn Abercrombie.
The donors Most people giving blood yesterday were Portland State students with a long history of donating blood. “I’ve been donating since I was 18, so 31 years,” said Deane Stitt, Portland State senior. “I think it’s about 5 1/2 or 6 gallons now.” Others were new to donating. “I started a few years ago,” said Christine Zeiner, a senior studying chemistry and mathematics.
Looking ahead Ashcom and members of the Red Cross are working to increase the number of days of the drive in future years.
“Next year we’ll have our first four-day drive with a goal of 1,486 [units],” Ashcom said. “The transformation of signing up online is so convenient.” The next Portland State blood drive will take place from Feb. 1 to Feb. 3 and Ashcom is also hoping for a good turnout. “We have a lot of regulars,” she said. “That’s what I like about it here, it’s so inclusive of everybody in Portland.” Ashcom credits the use of eDonor, an interface that allows people to make appointments to donate blood online, for the increase in donors—about 50 the first day.
Alerting PSU ASAP Test of emergency system planned for today Danielle Kulczyk Vanguard staff
Most of the time, receiving a text message in class can get you called out by the professor, but in the case of an emergency at Portland State, professors could be grateful for the interruption. Portland State’s emergency notification system, PSUAlert, utilizes SMS texts, e-mails and voice messages to broadcast information during an emergency. The first quarterly system test of the year will go out today to those set up through Banweb or MyPSU to receive them. “Basically [PSUAlert] is a system that will simultaneously send alerts to cell phones as a text and to
The Rant and Rage Perturbing Portland pooch PAGE 6
Photo illustration by Shannon Vincent/Portland State Vanguard
e-mails,” explained Sharon Blanton, chief information officer for the Office of Information Technologies. “We can also do voice—text-tospeech—and the message is also distributed to desktop phones.” The types of alerts sent out include weather or safety issues and any problems with facilities that warrant area evacuation. “We use the incident command structure, so that when there is an emergency, an emergency command team is formed…[which is] authorized to send out the information,” Blanton said. Lieutenant Tracey Miller recalls the use of the alert system during last winter’s snowstorm. “The notice was sent out, people called into dispatch—a lot of info goes through dispatch—wondering if classes are canceled,” Miller said. “Then we work with [the Center for Student Health and Counseling] and Facilities to get the info out and use whatever resources to spread that info.” According to Blanton, the alert system has a number of prewritten messages in the database that can be sent out as quickly as possible when needed. In the case of a water main break, for example, only the name of a building would have to be entered into the system before it’s sent, Blanton said. “In the heat of the moment, we have data ready and waiting so that someone doesn’t have to sit there and think of the best way to say something in 140 characters or less,” Blanton said. “The whole point is when there’s truly an emergency, we can get the information out there.”
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3: Expect a text, e-mail or voice mail today.
Although cell service is weak in some parts of campus, including basement classrooms and offices, the university hopes to reach as many people as possible by including e-mail and voicemail alerts to desk phones. “We’d like to hit as many people as possible so that the odds are in our favor,” Blanton said. “We try to blanket a group as much as possible—it pretty much guarantees the message gets to someone, somehow.” Even though these messages contain crucial information, the university is required to offer an option for students to discontinue receiving text messages from PSUAlert. “We hope that you will choose to continue receiving these text messages, however new telecommunications regulations require that we provide opt out information on our text messages,” said an e-mail from CPSO and OIT sent to Odin accounts.
Marni Cohen/Portland State Vanguard
CPSO and OIT test PSUAlert every quarter to make sure it is working properly. Blanton explained that the goal of today’s testing is to “make sure data is flowing correctly and the message arrives in an appropriate amount of time.” “We’d like to see everyone get the message within one hour,” Blanton said.
PSUAlert Test: Today, Wed, Oct. 21 Save 1-877-725-9111 to your phone’s address book Update information on Banweb or MyPSU www.pdx.edu/cpso/psu-alertnotification-system