Lewis & Clark College

The Pioneer Log: Lewis & Clark College’s Student-Run Newspaper

Volume 101, No. 6

Lewis & Clark College Student Newspaper

Pioneer Log Staff

2023-12-08

text/pdf

Text; Newspaper

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Lewis & Clark College: Pioneer Log / Mossy Log

Vol. 101 No. 6 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023 www.piolog.com
Goodbye for now!
The Mossy Log wishes to tell the
students of Lewis & Clark to have a
wonderful winter break! As always,
it has been an eventful and chaotic
semester for the paper. We will see
you in 2024!OPINION
To Bon or not to Bon
Two students dish out their thoughts on
Lewis & Clark staple Fields Dining Hall,
a divisive food option.
PAGE 4FEATURES
Club discusses difficult topics
The Harm Reduction club discusses
the opioid epidemic and common
misconceptions about their work.
PAGE 7ARTS
Faustus is queer as folk
The student produced play presented
historical language and adapted
structure with original songs.
PAGE 8SPORTS
Fun ways to fulfill credit
There are many ways to be active. Explore
yoga and contact improv to fulfill the PE
requirement in unique ways .
PAGE 11
Bon Appétit union settles
new contract, obtains raise
By ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN
ON FRIDAY, Nov. 17, Lewis & Clark’s
Bon Appétit unionized workers
negotiated their third contract
with national Bon Appetit management.
The negotiations had been ongoing since
July 2023 with two previous revisions
to this contract. At the end of the most
recent all-day bargaining session, the
two parties settled on a contract that
satisfied many union workers.
One of the key union members
involved in the negotiation was Leslie
Van, a sous chef who has been working
with Bon Appétit for 13 years and at LC
for seven. She has been a part of the
union during her entire time at LC.
“When I started working at Lewis &
Clark, it was a couple of days after they
had … voted to start the union there, so
I actually wasn’t there for the (initial)
organization,” Van said. “But I’ve been
there for everything since.”
Bon Appétit union employees are on
three-year union contracts. The second
iteration of a union contract expired
in April 2023, so it was time for the
union to begin negotiating the third
one, beginning in July. Van explained
how negotiations with company
management typically work.
“In the initial meeting the union
members come in with their opening
positions and then the company tries
to talk them out of (it), basically. Our
opening position back in July was high,
and you have to start higher than you’re
willing to settle for because you have to
leave room for negotiation,” Van said.
“You can’t walk in and say, ‘If you give us
a $2.75 raise, we’ll shut up and go away,’
because then they won’t go there. They
will try to get you even lower than that.”
Van spoke about recent economic
conditions that have necessitated a
higher raise.
“Our opening positions were a big
raise, because we have to contend with
just outrageous inflation that’s been
happening since COVID,” Van said.
“Since people started going back to
work, the opening wages, to get people
to actually start working, have gotten
higher and higher. The union contract
that expired was really lagging behind
those opening wages.”
The union’s opening statement called
for a $5 raise—a highballing strategy that
ended up being very successful.
“We really, really did start our
opening offer back in July with, ‘We
want a $5 raise to start out with.’ We
knew that we would have to come
down from there, but it gave us room
to negotiate, sending the message loud
and clear to management that wages
really needed to come up in order for
us to agree to a new contract,” Van said.
“What we ended up with was $2.75 as
the opening raise. It will be backdated
until October 1 (2023) so everybody
that works there will now make at least
$20 an hour.”
Backdating means that employees
will receive payments calculated for
an updated wage for work that has
already occurred, back to a specific
date prior. With the previous lowest
pay rate being $17.25, a $20 flat
minimum for everyone across the
board is an influential incentive for
new employees. “We had to send a message that
raises really need to come up in order
to make us competitive as a place for
people to start working. If they’re
offering low wages, even if we do have
great benefits, low wages will turn most
people off,” Van said.
With low hiring and retention
rates, LC’s dining hall suffers from
continual understaffing. This has led
to a high reliance on temp workers,
or temporary employees hired for a
need-based limited amount of time,
leaving experienced workers taking on
extra work to teach others.
“We’re always trying to recruit people,
we need more bodies. We need people
who aren’t temp,” Van said. “Which is
another thing that we addressed in this
contract, the use of temps and how often
you can use a temp, when what you
should be doing is trying to hire people.
So that’s other language that we got put
into this contract that will encourage
management to really try to hire people
rather than just rely on temps.”
According to Van, the starting
wage of $20 should hopefully increase
retention, lessening reliance on
temps—and the contract includes other
wins for Bon employees, too.
“A year into the contract, we get
another raise,” Van added. “And a year
after that we get another raise. We
backdated the opening raise for next
year from October 1 to August 15 so that
when we come back from getting laid
off for the summertime, we will come
back to a higher wage, which helps with
retention a lot.”
Van continued saying that in the
second year, the raise will be split
between Aug. 15 and Feb. 15 for a six-
month increase of 75 cents. Then, the
next half of the second year will have
a raise starting on Feb. 15 for 70 cents,
making a total of a $1.45 increase that
year. The third year will be the same
as the second, accruing an additional
$1.45 raise.
“I don’t think that we’d have gotten
that far if we didn’t have really great
mobilization within the ranks of our
union members,” Van said. “Everybody
showed up at one session or another,
taking their breaks or taking their lunch
half hour.”
Van pointed out the impact
of personal statements so that
management can understand what the
daily operations actually look like on a
ground level.
“Personal statements really, really
make a big difference because these are
folks who are above the management at
the local scene. They’re not management
here at Lewis and Clark, they’re
management at higher levels … so they’re
slightly removed,” said Van.
According to Van, the management
committee was composed of a district
manager, a regional vice president and
a negotiation specialist for all of Bon
Appétit’s accounts.
“They know us because we’ve
worked there, and they come in and
walk through and say, ‘hi,’ but we don’t
work with these people on a daily basis,”
Van said. “Having the chance to have
our union members make statements
to these higher-up managers, and tell
them … ‘This is how things work. This
is why it’s so difficult to retain people.’ A Taco Bell is hiring for over $20 an hour
so we need to offer better wages, and
sometimes it takes a bit for that to get
through to them.”
In addition to union members’
personal statements, Van elaborated
on the role of the union committee as
a whole.
“There is a negotiating committee,
and I’m on that—myself, Michelle,
Laura, who is a breakfast cook in the
morning (and) David, who makes pizzas
in the Trail Room. Just recently, we’ve
added Lisa, who is another cook, who
works daytime,” Van said. “What we
do to start off with is we format a little
survey, and we take that to each of our
co-workers, people who aren’t on the
committee, and we ask them, ‘What
do you want us to try to negotiate for?
What’s the most important thing to you?
Is it wages? Is it getting an even better
deal on your health care insurance?
Premiums? Is it getting more money
in your retirement? Is it workload? Is it
the fact that we can’t retain people, is it
staffing issues?’”
Van explained that they averaged
out the responses of all the workers’
priorities to figure out what factors to
push for most during negotiations.
“Not surprisingly, the most
important thing to most of our union
membership was wages, because of the
unprecedented inflation, and because
of retention. We manage to hire people,
we attract people based on our great
healthcare benefits, but they don’t stay
because the hourly wages just aren’t high
enough,” Van said. “So for our union
members, it wasn’t just about getting a
bigger paycheck for them. It was about
getting the starting wage to be attractive
enough that we can actually get people
to want to work there, because we have
been chronically understaffed since the
pandemic started.”
In addition to their success for
starting wages and raises, the union
made traction on other issues that were
rated high in importance for employees,
including higher health care premiums
and more money in their pensions.
To better contextualize the progress
that was achieved for healthcare and
pension, Van provided background
from the very first contract that the
union negotiated, seven years ago when
the union formed.
“[In] our first contract, going back
in the depths of history at this point, we
won major concessions. The first major
concession was we don’t have to pay
for parking anymore. We were paying
to park there so we could work there,
and it was prohibitive. It was like $350
a year,” Van said. “So the first thing that
we got is nobody has to pay for parking
anymore. If you don’t drive, you get a
free bus pass. So that was a huge step in
the right direction.”
Van then explained that the money
they no longer have to pay in parking
fees goes toward union dues.
“For what we used to pay for
parking, we just pay in union dues now,
so it’s a zero sum,” Van said. “For me,
I don’t have a problem with our union
dues, because I would rather pay union
dues than pay for parking. That’s just a
very basic thing.”
“STUDENT” continued on page 3.ASB fund allocation
process demystified
By J FRANK
EVERY SPRING, the Associated
Student Body (ASB) allocates a
pool of money from the mandatory
annual Student Fee of $360, which is
used to fund student organizations. Note
that the Student Fee excludes the Green
Energy Fee and Student Media Fee. Lewis
& Clark Administration provides ASB
with an estimate of the following year’s
allocation pool based on the number of
students they plan to admit. Then one
of the ASB committees, the Finance
Committee (FIN), reviews every student
organization’s budget request and decides
how much of each organization’s budget
to fund.
Every year, student organizations
request more money than exists in the
allocations pool, and every year FIN has
to decide how to allocate these limited
funds. FIN providing an organization
with anything under their requested
minimum operating cost is referred to as
a budget cut.
This semester seemed to bring a
wave of dissatisfaction from student
organizations regarding the amount
of money FIN had allocated to them.
While student organizations do see
budget cuts every year, there are several
reasons why these cuts were larger and
why organizations might have felt their
impacts more strongly this year than in
the past.
ASB Director of Allocations Sophia
Fileto-Villanueva ’25 specified that the
total minimum amount requested by all
clubs and student organizations for this
year was $300,000 over the amount in
the allocations pool.
“We had to at least cut $300,000
across from everybody somehow. It’s
always done with a heavy heart, because
we don’t want to take this money from
them, but we have no choice—we have to
fit within this constrictive pool of money,”
Fileto-Villanueva said.
Fileto-Villaueva explained that
while the past few years saw LC over
enrolling students, or welcoming more
new students in the fall than their target number, this year departed from the trend
with a class of only 550 new students
compared to the target 600.
In addition, Fileto-Villanueva said
during COVID years, organizations were
seeing less engagement and therefore
were not able to spend their full budgets.
Any unspent money from organizations’
budgets rolls over into an appeals fund at
the end of the year.
Fileto-Villanueva explained that
organizations were able to expand
financially in the last few years because of
this inflated appeals fund. This year, the
lack of funds due to under-enrollment hit
especially hard for organizations that had
grown used to larger budgets.
At small liberal arts colleges, the
impacts of even 50 fewer students are
felt across the board. According to Chair
of the Equity, Inclusion and Justice
Committee (EIJC) Eeshani Thomas ’24,
and administrative calculations shared
by last year’s Director of Allocations Josie
Stenzel ’24, the tuition of 50 students adds
up to around a million dollars. This lack of
money puts additional financial strain on
an administration which is already used to
operating on a tight budget.
The college’s strained financial
situation means that sources of funding
for student-run organizations and
programs such as the EIJC and the
Student Academic Affairs Board (SAAB),
which might receive institutional funding
at similar schools, fall to ASB and the
Student Fee instead.
Unlike many similar small liberal
arts colleges, LC’s Student Fee was set
in 2011 and has remained constant ever
since. While LC’s Student Fee remains
higher than that of most peer institutions,
inflation is rapidly catching up with it,
and that means that finances become
tighter every year. This, in addition to the
large number of organizations, means
that despite having one of the highest
Student Fees of regional peer institutions,
ASB still does not have enough money to
reliably fund all organizations’ requested
minimum operating costs.
“ASB” continued on page 2.
THE MOSSY LOG ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
NEWS /gid00484
Continued from page 1.
Before this year, the FIN Treasurer
worked with the administration to project
the next year’s allocations pool based on
expected enrollment, and then subtracted
a contingency margin to account for
possible over-projection. After that, FIN
allocated budgets to every organization at
the same time, including ASB operations
such as Senate and Cabinet honoraria,
the Campus Activities Board (CAB),
EIJC, College Outdoors (CO), the yearly
symposia and student clubs.
Last year, the former president, who
requested not to have their name printed
in this article, and Fileto-Villanueva, who
was vice president at the time, decided
to restructure the allocations timeline.
They altered the constitution so that three
new things are removed from the pool
before the rest of allocations, in addition
to the contingency cut: the amount of
money CAB is allocated every year, now
called the CAB cut, honoraria for affinity
group leaders and honoraria for ASB.
An honorarium is a stipend of money
gifted to a student organization leader in
recognition of their work. While honoraria
are not explicitly compensation, the two
are often equated.
The reason for establishing the CAB
cut was that CAB always appeals for more
funds until they reach $50,000, and
consistently use that much.
“During allocations, the first thing that
we look to cut from is ASB. How much
can we cut from ASB before we cannot
fulfill our constitutional obligations?
Those funds, the honoraria, the CAB cut,
the contingency cut, and the United Front
honoraria, which is for affinity groups,
[are] constitutionally written within the
ASB constitution and also within FIN
bylaws so we have to take that money out
because we have to be able to guarantee
that,” said Fileto-Villanueva.
In addition to these changes, ASB
Senate voted to approve a significant
increase in all ASB honoraria. Cabinet
positions saw a raise of anywhere between
30% and 60%. Senate members saw an
increase from their previous $100 a year
to $1000 each year. Current honoraria for
each position are listed on the LC website.
“We went to the Student Government
Conference and we’re like, ‘We pay
senators $50 a semester,’ and everyone
went, ‘You’re crazy, you should be giving
them more money,’ so that’s what we did
last year,” said Fileto-Villanueva.
In addition, Fileto-Villanueva and
last year’s president established a set of
honoraria guidelines last year, so any
organization can request money for
honoraria for its leaders as part of its
budget. One of the rules they implemented
to regulate this was that honoraria cannot
exceed 15% of an organization’s total
budget.
Because of the increased ASB
honoraria, as well as because honoraria
and the CAB cut are now taken out of the
pool before the rest of allocations, there was less money left in the allocations pool
to go around this year. This meant FIN had
to make even harder decisions and harsher
cuts than usual.
At the same time, removing the CAB
cut ahead of time means that CAB is
strongly discouraged from appealing for
more money like they have in years past.
Many organizations do not realize how
important a funding resource the appeals
pool is, and that the ability to appeal for
more money is essentially a trade-off for
lower initial allocations.
There is anywhere between
$900,000-$1,100,000 in the appeals
pool, though they aim to spend around
$150,000 a year, so there is much more
money available to be given out beyond
what is given in allocations.
Besides going to the Student
Government Conference and learning
that similar institutions give student
government higher honoraria, Fileto-
Villanueva and the former president
hoped the increased honoraria would
boost engagement and investment in
student government.
Both Fileto-Villanueva and Stenzel
said that they have noticed increased
participation in Senate this year. Senate
races have been more competitive both
last year, and even more so this year, and
Senate discussions have been more lively
and well-attended.
“Last year and this year, so many
more people are catching on to the fact
that Senate is open to everybody,” Fileto-
Villanueva said. ”We want people to be
more engaged and we recognize that with
the increase in honoraria, our senators
are going to be more inclined to engage
with the people around them, and more
and more people will be engaged with
ASB in general.”
Earlier this school year, a group of
students reached out to ASB members
asking them to buy COVID tests with
emergency funds. Fileto-Villanueva
cited this as an example of increased
engagement with ASB benefiting the
student body and community in general.
“Going from $50 a semester to $500
a semester goes a long way in getting
people to get involved and remain
engaged,” Fileto-Villanueva said. “I did
a good amount of work when I was a
senator myself, but I definitely could see
myself being incentivized to do even more
with $500 as opposed to $50.”
Last year’s FIN also implemented
several changes to the allocations process
through a rewrite of the FIN bylaws.
This was in an effort to promote greater
transparency in the allocations process,
which was one of Stenzel’s main goals
with FIN.
“There were still some errors in
communication that we knew we could
fix within our bylaws,” Fileto-Villanueva
said.
One change was moving the
allocations weekend up in the year,
so that it now happens before Spring
Break, because this gives FIN more time to handle the administrative work that
comes after allocations weekend.
Another change is that the Senate
now has to approve the allocations pool
projection before allocations weekend so
that FIN is able to publicize that amount
to organizations before they receive their
allocations. This increases transparency
and open communication.
When allocations weekend rolls
around, FIN settles down in a room in
JR Howard for an entire weekend to
review applications of over a hundred
organizations that apply for funding.
They grade each application based on a
set of criteria, which give organizations
higher marks for the more students they
impact and the quality of their financial
record keeping from the previous year.
Organizations are given a lower score the
more money they have left over from the
past year that was allocated to them but
never spent.
Last year, Stenzel and another student
updated the grading criteria to better
reflect FIN’s values with the aim of better
analyzing each application and comparing
the impact of organizations.
FIN goes through their budget requests
and decides based on their grades how
much money they think each club should
be allocated, with the organizations with
the highest grades being reviewed first.
However, in their initial round,
FIN always ends up allocating a greater
amount than the projected allocations
pool, and so they do subsequent rounds
of the same process, each time discussing
and deciding what to cut from each
organization, until they are left with an
allocation recommendation that totals the
amount in the projected allocations pool.
FIN then brings this recommendation
to Senate, who vote to accept or reject it. If
they reject it, FIN goes through the same
process again, taking into account Senate’s
critiques and attempting to find an
allocation that will satisfy them. This past
spring, FIN’s recommendation passed the
Senate vote the first time.
College Outdoors (CO) received the
largest cut of any organization this year,
with FIN funding 57.2% of their minimum
request of $94,665.55. CO leadership
vocally expressed their dissatisfaction with
their budget allocation, causing a fraught
relationship this semester between CO
and ASB.
Stenzel explained that because of FIN
prioritizing organizations with smaller
budgets in the allocations process last
spring, CO saw larger cuts than in the past.
However, because a member of CO
was also on ASB, CO found out about the
cut prematurely. FIN had to scramble
to provide CO with reasoning. From
Stenzel’s perspective, CO’s outrage this
year was primarily caused by this lack of
communication.
While Stenzel said that FIN reached
out to CO prior to allocations weekend,
warning them of probable budget cuts, CO
representatives claim that they were not
given prior warning. “College Outdoors was not told of the
huge budget cuts (40% of our budget)
until after allocations were made. If we
had known earlier that they were thinking
about cutting so much from College
Outdoors, we could have made it clear
what the impact of cuts would be, and/
or better prepared for a semester with
reduced funding,” CO Roundtable said via
email.
According to the intentions of the new
allocations system, the reduced funds CO
received in the allocations process would
have been offset by their ability to appeal
for extra funds. However, because of the
animosity that grew between CO and
ASB due to the strained communication,
several ASB members felt that they could
not be impartial on the issue, and removed
themselves from Senate discussions
around CO. This meant that Senate is
below quorum (the minimum number of
members needed to hold a vote) every time
they meet to discuss CO, and therefore
cannot vote on allocating additional
money for CO from appeals.
CO and ASB are currently still in
discussion with the administration,
attempting to resolve this problem so
that CO can get more money to fund its
programs, which are an important part of
the college experience for many students.
“The 40% cut in our scholarship budget
meant that instead of every student with
financial need receiving a scholarship for
every trip, only students who have at least
75% need qualify. This has led to lower
overall participation on trips this semester.
Since not as many people are signing up
for trips, we’ve had to cancel some trips
that don’t get enough participants to
run. Fewer trips limits opportunities for
training rising leaders in our program.
A worry for College Outdoors if the
decreased scholarship budget continues, is
not having enough trained leaders to lead
the amount of trips students are interested
in, especially New Student Trips,” said the
CO Roundtable.
When CO voiced their frustrations
to ASB, EIJC stepped in, and decided to
enact an equity audit on ASB to examine
their allocations process and provide
suggestions as to how it could be improved
to address equity concerns.
Equity audits are one part of EIJC’s
three-pronged mission, along with the
newly-created food pantry and their grant
program. Thomas described the process as
collaborative, with EIJC working with ASB
to provide recommendations, rather than
condemning any aspect of the system.
EIJC was the only organization to
receive 100% of its requested minimum
operating cost. One reason for this is that
in 2019, the EIJC absorbed the Student
Resource Committee (SRC). Comparing
the two organizations’ previous combined
budget, they effectively received a cut as
well. In addition, FIN allocated EIJC one
of the largest amounts of money because
of the importace of their grant program,
which provides aid to address vaious equity
issues which the administration is unable to provide due to monetary constraints.
SAAB is another organization that
might have received institutional funding,
but instead has to rely on ASB money for
its operations, and which also saw heavy
budget cuts this year.
In 2021, the SAAB chair quit in the
middle of the year, citing dissatisfaction
with their honorarium, which they felt
was disproportionate to the amount of
work they were expected to do. According
to Stenzel, the replacement SAAB chair in
2021 inherited a mess because of this, and
additionally did not receive the usual level
of training and onboarding.
At that time, the SAAB chair was
expected to both oversee all organization
operations and manage the budget.
Simultaneously, SAAB’s administrative
assistant was unaware that SAAB’s budget
fluctuated year to year and had been
spending the organization’s funding under
the impression that the budget would the
same as the year before, without checking
in with the chair, which led to an overdraft,
or spending more money than was in their
budget. ASB had to use their emergency
fund to pay the difference.
Two things happened as a result of this
error; FIN urged SAAB to create a treasurer
position, which has been implemented
this year, and FIN allocated less money to
SAAB for this year, so that FIN can more
closely monitor SAAB’s spending until
they demonstrate that they can spend
and track the budget responsibly. This is
in line with their strategy of holistically
evaluating funding applications based on
past financial tracking.
“The (treasurer) position has been
incredibly helpful,” current SAAB Chair
Lucien Petit ’25 said. “The issues from last
year emerged as a result of not tracking
money properly, and now that we have
someone whose job is to do that, everything
is running very well.”
ASB acknowledges that SAAB is an
essential program, and this budget cut
does not mean that SAAB will be denied
the money it needs to operate. Rather, as
Stenzel said, SAAB is encouraged to appeal
for additional money to fund its programs
when it becomes necessary.
“SAAB appealed for more funding for
the tutoring side of the program. We were
unable to appeal for grants funding this
past semester due to last year’s issues …
but we plan on doing that next semester
to ensure that as many student academic
projects can be funded as possible,” Petit
said.
LC’s ASB and FIN are in a difficult
situation as costs rise and budgets narrow
every year, with Student Fee money
being expected to stretch to support a
large array of programs and resources
offered at LC. Overall, members of ASB
and FIN sympathize with organizations
who are frustrated at the allocations they
received for this year, and acknowledge
that there is no perfect solution. However,
they do encourage all organizations to
supplement their allocations by appealing
for additional funds.ASB budget cuts incite student dissatisfaction
Law school faculty establish new licensing procedure
By AMELIA DOYLE
OREGON HAS announced a new
exam-free way to obtain a law
license: the Oregon Supervised
Practice Portfolio Examination (SPPE).
This new pathway requires a person
who has graduated from an American
Bar Association-accredited law school
to complete 675 hours of law practice
under the supervision of a licensed
lawyer. The applicant will then submit
a portfolio to the Oregon Board of Bar
Examiners, which will then assess
whether the person should be granted
a license.
Many Lewis & Clark Law School
faculty are key leaders of the
movement to push for the SPPE, one of
them being Professor of Practice and
Director of the Center for Advocacy
Joanna Perini-Abbott.
“People in the community have
been talking about more authentic ways
to measure attorney competence for decades but things really came to a head
in Oregon in 2020,” Perini-Abbott said
via email. “COVID-19 made everyone
pick their head up and think outside
the box on new and different ways
to do things. In September of 2020
the Oregon Supreme Court ordered a
task force to study whether there were
ways to license attorneys other than
the bar exam that would provide equal
assurances of consumer protection.”
The idea for the SPPE came about
when The Oregon Supreme Court and
Oregon State Bar Board of Bar Examiners
(BBX) put together a task force of people
within the legal community.
“We studied what is being done
already: diploma privilege from
Wisconsin, ‘articling’ from Canada,
which is where Supervised Practice
came from, and a curriculum-based
pathway as is happening in New
Hampshire,” Perini-Abbott said.
Ultimately, the Task Force
recommended a combination of supervised practice and the curriculum
pathway. The Oregon Supreme Court
and BBX approved the idea.
“Drafting rules for the SPPE moved
faster than the curriculum pathway
so that is what we focused on getting
done first,” Perini-Abbott said. “The
program for supervised practice is
similar to traditional ‘articling’ from
Canada (where a law graduate works
under the supervision of a practicing
lawyer) but it has an examination
component because the BBX will
review work done by the apprenticing
lawyer to determine if the apprenticing
lawyer is competent to practice law.”
Unlike the traditional bar exam,
this new pathway offers insight into the
actual work that attorneys do and works
to prove and determine competence in
a hands-on way, versus a two day test,
half of which is multiple choice.
“From the point of view of the
applicant, this pathway lets them start
working right after graduation and avoid the cost of taking 2-3 months
off to study for the exam, paying for a
bar prep course, and waiting two more
months for results before they can
practice law,” Perini-Abbott said.
Many students have to take out
additional loans in order to study for
the bar, which compounds student
debt issues. This new pathway would
alleviate some of the financial strain
graduates face.
“From the practitioner/supervisor’s
point of view, they get an associate work,
can do legal work months earlier than
they would have and can really train the
associate in the practical aspects of the
practice of law,” Perini-Abbott said.
Other states, such as California,
Utah and Washington, are also
considering similar experience-based
options as alternatives to the traditional
bar exam.
“The stakeholders involved
in drafting this new pathway put
consumer protection at the forefront. This pathway is rigorous in how it
assesses attorney competence and
should give the public greater comfort
that attorneys licensed this way are
truly competent to practice law,”
Perini-Abbott said.Oregon pathway uses hands-on practice experience, portfolio as substitute for standard bar exam processCollege Outdoors among organizations financially impacted by under-enrollment, appeals process
HALCYON ORVENDAL/THE MOSSY LOGNEWS 3FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
Student support plays factor in negotiations
Agreement reached covers pensions, starting wage increases, hiring permanent staff, long term goals
Continued from Page 1.
The next big win was for healthcare
coverage, which has remained, one of
the main attractions of working with
Bon Appétit.
“We also won the right to union
health care coverage. Obviously, Bon
Appétit is a big company, and Compass
Group, its parent company, is even
bigger, so they obviously offer health
care benefits. But they were, again,
prohibitively expensive and to cover
yourself was hundreds of dollars a
month in what you were paying in
premiums,” Van said.
She noted that employees
supporting spouses or children had
even more financially burdensome
healthcare costs.
“With the union health care
coverage, those premiums were just
immeasurably (improved). I used
to pay $300 a month and now I pay
$100,” Van said.
These were big wins for the young
union, but the fight was not over. As
the first contract and then the second
expired, progress towards pension
was made.
“We got rights to a pension in our
second contract and the whole idea
was to just get the pension. We didn’t
care how (good) it was; we just wanted
to get in on a pension plan,” Van said.
“So when we started with the pension,
it was 11 cents an hour. The second
year, it was 12 cents an hour. The third
year, it was 13 cents an hour, which is
where we are now.”
The union had acquired a
pension—a big step—and they were
willing to accept low payments in it as
a sacrifice. But in this third contract,
as part of their long-term negotiation
efforts, the union aimed to start
getting a practical and substantial
amount put toward it.
“Now, as far as sustainability goes,
that’s ridiculous. We need much more
in the pension. But again, we’ve got
to play the long game,” Van said. “So
you’ve got your foot in the door, you’ve
got a pension, and yes, it’s really low.
But we know that in the next contract
negotiation, we can add to that.”Van described the offer showcasing
the progress the union made toward a
livable pension.
“We accepted the offer because the
first year will go from 13 cents an hour
to 33 cents an hour, which is a 20 cent
raise, which is a lot. Then in the second
year, we’re going to go to 38 cents an
hour, so it’s only five cents in the second
year, but the third year will go to 50
cents,” Van said.
She commented on the importance
of attaining negotiating leverage for the
next contract, three years from now.
“They’re incremental raises, but
they’re there. What we wanted to do
was get moving up from out of the
teens. By the end of this contract we will
be up to 50 cents an hour, which leaves
us in an excellent position for the next
contract. To say, ‘Great, we got up to
50 cents an hour. Let’s double that,’”
Van said. “We’ll actually have a hope
of getting there. It is always playing the
long game.”
Van shared her own position and
how it affects her motivation.
“For me, I’m an hourly sous chef so
I’m at the top of the pay scale for our
unionized employees. I feel like I’m
in a good position, I’m not as worried
about my wages as I am about the
wages of the lowest paid people that
I work with, because they deserve to
have a life. They deserve to be able
to have one job—one job should be
enough. You shouldn’t have to work
two jobs, and you should have good
healthcare, and you should have a
reasonable expectation of retirement
at some point,” Van said.
She pointed out that the
problematic nature of raises is that
people who had been working at the
company for decades were not making
any more than a brand-new hire in the
same position.
“When we started, we had people
who had worked there for 25 years who
were still at minimum wage,” Van said.
“But the point of being in the union is
that nobody should expect after that
many years working for a company to
still be at minimum wage. You need for
every year, you should get a little bit
above minimum wage, a little farther away from minimum wage. We’re
finally there.”
Van expanded on the benefits of
working in a union.
“The Portland minimum wage is at
$15,” Van said. “Our workers are going
to be $5 an hour above that. That’s the
whole point of being in a union; you put
your voices together, and collectively,
you make life better for everybody.”
Although major progress was made
for raises, healthcare and pensions,
one area had to be compromised.
“The one thing we did not manage
to get the same is lowering the
threshold for health care benefits to
20 hours a week. Right now it’s 30
hours a week, and we wanted to get it
down to 20 hours a week,” Van said.
“We want to offer full-time jobs, but
there are a lot of people who can only
work part-time. If you’re going to
hire part-time people, we, the union
membership, feel it is (Bon Appétit’s)
moral obligation to give them health
benefits at part-time.”
Unfortunately, the company
did not agree, but part-time health
coverage is still a long-term goal for
the union.
“We can work on that in our next
contract. Contracts are only three
years long, so if we don’t get what
you want in this contract, we try
again in the next and that’s what
we’ll do. We want to be able to have
health care benefits for part-time
workers. If you’re going to hire part-
time workers, cover them. That’s our
position.” Van said.
Now that the contract has been
settled, the union must ratify it,
but it is looking likely that it will be
approved.
“Our membership at large still
needs to vote, and we’re going to
do that next week,” Van said. “Our
feedback from our membership has
been entirely positive.”
Van highlighted the huge wave of
student support as a critical factor in
their success to getting management
to concede to so many of their needs.
“In the end, I think what really
caused them to say we need to offer
better numbers was the just massive amount of student support we had
on that final bargaining day. It was
phenomenal,” Van said.
The Nov. 17 negotiations occurred
in a conference room in Fowler Student
Center and starting at the beginning of
the day, students flocked to the room.
There were so many students spectating
in the room that it broke the Fire Code,
and a limit had to be set so that there
was a maximum of three students in the
room at all times.
Yet, this did not deter them. A
large gathering formed outside the
room’s windows in front of Fowler.
Students made signs emblazoned with
statements such as, “Support our back
Bon or break the student body” and “We
have a Bon to pick,” that they held up to
the windows and to passersby.
“A lot of people, a lot of the students
themselves, really didn’t get to see the
look on the faces of those managers,”
Van said. “But when there was a crowd
outside chanting and holding signs,
they looked nervous. There’s just no
other way to say it. They were like, ‘Oh,
crap, that’s a lot of people.’”
During the periods throughout
the day when the union was waiting
for management to return with a
revised offer, Bon Appétit employees
went outside to high-five the student
protesters and express their gratitude.
“The pressure (on management)
is having a group of students who go
there, who pay their bills, who pay Bon
Appétit through their meal plans. To
know that they are feeling that pressure
and recognizing that the students
really do support us and want to see
us succeed, to have a job with a living
wage and someday retire and have great
health benefits,” Van said.“That student
support really made a difference to how
much the managers were willing to put
on the table. There’s just no way we can
ever properly thank those people.”
Lola Ecker ’25 was one of the
students who protested. She explained
how she became involved with the cause.
“I love unions, I’m so passionate
about labor rights. Philosophy Club,
which I’m a member of, did a week on
organized labor in preparation for the
union protest. So I heard about it there and I said, ‘I would love to go. I care very
deeply about this topic,’” Ecker said.
She discussed the unexpected
duration of the protest that ensued.
“I thought it was fun and exciting.
We made it way longer than I thought we
were going to. I was there for eight hours
in total,” Ecker said. “I thought we were
going to dissipate in the afternoon so I
was really excited when we didn’t.”
Seeing the positive results that came
after the protest was highly gratifying for
Ecker.
“That was one of the most affirmative
movements I’ve been in, because
usually when you protest you show up
and nothing really happens or nothing
happens for a couple of months. It’s really
rare that you show up and you get results
via direct action in one day.” Ecker said.
Now looking back on the experience
of this past contract negotiation and the
role that her work in the union played,
Van reflected on what it means to be a
parent.
“I have three kids. My whole point of
being a parent is to teach my kids how
to have a good life. That doesn’t mean
being the most educated, and it doesn’t
mean being the most rich or the most
powerful. What it means is that you work
for yourself to get ahead, and you work
for those around you to get ahead at the
same time,” she said.
Van shared how deeply she cares
about her co-workers and the work
that the union does. In fact, she noted
that one of her children is now part of
his workplace’s union, following in her
footsteps.
“I get a great deal of enjoyment from
the work that I do, but I also get a great
deal of enjoyment and pride from being
involved with my union and making
sure that I’m not just feeding people, I’m
helping my co-workers to have a better
life,” Van said. “That’s why all of us do
this. That’s why all of us got involved
with the union. It’s not just that I want
to make more money, or that I want to
have better health care benefits, or that
I want to have a pension, although all
those things are true. The bottom line
is it’s not just about me and me getting
ahead doesn’t mean anything if I’m
pushing people down to get ahead.”
Ben Westervelt gives lecture on origins of Spanish power
Talking points cover ancient history of Iberia, spanning Phoenicians, Roman Empire to 16th century
By OLIVIA FENDRICH
ON NOV. 16, Associate Professor
of History at Lewis & Clark Ben
Westervelt gave a lecture over
Zoom entitled “A Way Through Spanish
History: What is Spain … and Where Is
It Exactly?”
Westervelt began by introducing the
concept of Spain, a seemingly innocuous
country by most standards that does
not seem geographically challenging to
define.
However, his lecture explained
that there are, in fact, numerous
geographical oddities that comprise
the area surrounding and containing
Spain and its territories: Gibraltar,
Portugal, the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta
and Melilla in Morocco, the Balearic
Islands, Andorra, the Canaries, the
Basque Country (whose Basque name
Euskul Herria comes from the ancient
language spoken in Iberia before the
Celts arrived), Catalonia and Navarre.
Westervelt then discussed the
Camino de Santiago, a network of
pilgrimage routes, one of which
Westervelt will lead a group along in
May 2024 as a part of the LC Travel
program, which unlike Study Abroad
is for parents, friends and alumni. The
routes lead to the shrine of the Apostle
James in the Cathedral of Santiago de
Compostela in Northwestern Spain.
“The path itself has always been an
artery between France and Spain,” he
said.
The Camino de Santiago Westervelt
is the most popular, also known as the
French Way. He explained that the
various groups occupying Spain were
largely isolated from the rest of Europe, such that even with a long history of
trade, Spain was still largely rural.
“As far as we can tell, it looked a
lot like what Gaul looked like, say,
when Julius Caesar showed up there:
ethnic tribal groups living side by side,
quarreling sometimes, cooperating at
other times,” Westervelt said.
The history of Spanish trade began
when the Phoenicians strategically
incorporated Spain into their
commercial trading routes.
“They certainly were interested
in exploiting the resources in, say, up
the farther end of the Mediterranean,”
Westervelt said.
Then, Westervelt added, the
Phoenicians established the settlement
of Carthage in North Africa.
“The Carthaginians, as I’m sure you
know, settled down and stayed, and
they had an imperial interest in Iberia,”
Westervelt said.
The Carthaginians then systematically
conquered and integrated Iberia into
their empire. Westervelt likened Iberia to
the Wild West for the Carthaginians.
“Iberia was where they thought the
action was going to be,” Westervelt said.
Westervelt then described the Punic
Wars, a series of conflicts between
the Roman Republic and the Empire
of Carthage, after which the Romans
built aqueducts, bridges and roads
throughout Iberia.
Once the Roman Empire fell,
Iberia became the Kingdom of the
Visigoths. When their kingdom was
defeated, Iberia was united by Islam,
which had emerged from Saudi Arabia
as the Al-Andalus.
Westervelt said that the
Christianization of Iberia was crucial to establishing Spain as the country we
know today.
“The Reconquista, the effort
by Christians in España, or Iberian
Christians, and the Christians from the
North as well, to reconquer, is the fuel
to refire the crucible in which Spain gets
made,” he said.
The discovery of St. James in the
northwest tip of Galicia created lasting
historical consequences, two of which
Westervelt focused on.
“It catalyzed a movement of
crusaders who came down from France
(before the Crusades) to assist in the
reconquest,” Westervelt said of the first
consequence. “The second consequence
is the army of pilgrims who also began
to come to Santiago.”
Westervelt continued, saying that
1492 was a pivotal year because it
marked the fall of the kingdom of
Granada and the year of the Alhambra
Decree, which expelled Jews from
Spain, an act that would play a crucial
role in how the Spanish defined
themselves.
Westervelt touched on influential
marriages, such as between Petronilla
of Aragon and the Count of Barcelona
Raymond Berenguer IV in 1137 and
between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella
of Castile in 1469, ultimately concluding
that dynastic marriages gave Spain
connections across the globe to every
significant global power except France.
Westervelt concluded his lecture by
discussing the establishment of Spain as
a linguistic-cultural touchstone within
international culture. By the time
Charles V abdicated the throne in 1556,
the country had begun to be known as
Spain in the English-speaking world.
COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK
In his presentation, the associate professor of history discusses pilgrimmage routes.FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
OPINION /gid00486
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed in the Opinion section are NOT those of The Mossy Log and are held by the authors.Monotonous menu
incites grievancesStudents too critical of Bon, lack
sensitivity towards employees
COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK
The salad bar is a popular choice for students to get a healthy dish if they want.
“Overall, Bon food
lacks variety beyond the
variation of each meal
between being delicious
and disgusting.”By JESSIE SHAW
ANOTHER evening is spent at
Fields Dining Hall (the Bon) for
dinner. As you line up to get your
card swiped, you hope for something
different and appetizing. For the last
three days, dinner consisted of the
Bon’s special: bland chicken and rice.
As it has been two weeks since you
last had any other form of protein,
you are craving for anything with beef,
whether it is stew, burgers or tacos,
as you could never expect the Bon to
serve a nice strip
of Ribeye steak.
After tapping your
card, you realize
that dinner is not
entirely different
from the previous
nights, as chicken
remains the only
meat option for
this evening.
In general,
Bon food lacks
variety beyond the
variation of each
meal between delicious and disgusting.
This is perhaps the greatest problem
with the food on campus. While the Bon
has four main courses to choose from
at every meal, it is common for every
choice to consist of chicken, except for
the deli bar, which has either turkey or
ham to add to a sandwich.
Unsurprisingly, there is no lunch
or dinner without chicken or rice,
though it is occasionally supplemented
by other protein choices. I am aware
that chicken is generally cheaper than
other meats, but having too little
variety makes dining at Lewis & Clark
unsatisfactory.
Perhaps another solution to provide
more choices is to expand the Bon. On
Tuesday through Saturday, if you are
not satisfied with the choices at the Bon,
you can go to the Troom and get chicken
nuggets, a pizza or pasta. However, the Troom is not open
on Sunday or Monday nights, so the
Bon gets jam packed with students
as it becomes the only dining spot on
campus. As a result, the Bon runs low
on cups, silverware and dishes. If the
Bon’s operation were expanded, not
only would it ensure all students get the
utensils they need to eat, but it could
give the Bon the opportunity to serve
more food options, as there would be
more room to make and serve food.
Another one of the drawbacks of Bon
food is the quality. Picture it like grabbing
a Bean-Boozled
Jelly Belly bean
that will either
be fruity or
stinky socks
flavored. In
our case, the
food at the Bon
will either be
tolerable, yet
lacking flavor,
or downright
inedible.
On a few
occasions, such
as during New Student Orientation,
International Week, Chinese New Year
or the Luau, the food will generally
be delicious to impress guests such as
faculty or parents. If cooks are able
to prepare food this well for special
days, I expect them to do the same for
regular school days.
What would be most effective is if the
recipes for dishes get revised to ensure
the food is at least somewhat satisfying
to most students.
Eating Bon food nearly every day
is certainly tiresome, and having
a variety of good-quality food may
prevent campus food-fatigue from
worsening. While I am aware that
colleges in general do not get the best
rap when it comes to food, the quality
and the variety of our dining hall food
especially leaves students begging for
better. By ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN
ONE OF THE m o s t f r e q u e n t
and ubiquitous complaints
dropped around campus is the
reliable trash talking of Bon food. We
hear it between classes; we hear it in
the cafeteria line; we hear it spouted
to new students on the very first day
of orientation.
Students unabashedly walk to the
front of a line right in view of dining
hall workers only to glance at the food
chefs have spent hours preparing to
grimace and remark to their friends,
“Gross.” It has become such an
embedded social norm that to mention
something served at Field’s Dining
Hall (the Bon) might not be so terrible
is to elicit eyebrow raises and sneers.
But I will risk the judgment because
I have had enough of listening to my
peers rag on the food, and even of
jumping on the bandwagon myself. In
the same newspaper issue as coverage
of the Bon union negotiations, I feel it
is imperative to bring awareness to the
connection between the food and the
people who make it.
Often, students treat the food as
though it has magically appeared in
front of them, but perhaps they would
be more sensitive if they remembered
the many employees who devote their
days to providing the very same food
they insult.
As the writer of the negotiations
article, I am aware that I have gotten
a closer perspective into the lives of
Bon employees than many, and this
may have influenced my view. Still, I
believe it is shortsighted to critique
the food and demand improvements
without recognizing the economic
circumstances that make such
improvements difficult.
The dining hall is chronically
understaffed and the workers there
are already putting in as much work
as they can. Additionally, the union
has worked to make the dining hall a
more enticing place to work, hopefully
mitigating future staffing issues. I have worked as a student worker
at the Bon and seen (and participated
in) the prep work that goes into each
and every meal. Talking with people
who have worked there for years and
even decades, I learned the deep care
that many of them take in nourishing
others. I also realized how much
coordination and planning goes into
preparing meals for hundreds or
thousands of people.
There is only so much refined
quality that can go into a meal when
it must be whipped up in a matter of
hours in massive quantities, and to
expect gourmet food is unrealistic
and privileged. Yet, even before
these experiences, I was a defender
of Bon food. I recognize that variety
could be improved and many meals
tend to be repeated.
As someone who has been
vegetarian for a portion of my time
at Lewis & Clark, I also empathize
with complaints of limited vegetarian
options. Yet, there is still almost
always tofu, tempeh, beans and/or the
consistently dreaded soy curls available
at every meal, which is far more than
can be said for most colleges.
One of the main aspects of Bon
food that I appreciate are reliable
healthy options. Many schools only
serve dishes like pasta, pizza, burgers
and sandwiches, but LC’s dining hall
is seldom found without a whole grain
and various vegetable choices in sight.
It may be boring to the palates of
some, but I appreciate a plate of rice,
chicken and broccoli, or quinoa, tofu
and salad. My dad calls this balance of
protein, grain and vegetable “the Holy
Trinity”, and I inherited this mindset.
While there may be a lack of variety
in more exciting foods, I acknowledge
the effort put in to prepare some of the repeated ingredients, like chicken, in
new ways. The Bon often offers chicken
in differently flavored marinades,
cooked in different styles, spiced up
with vegetables mixed in and so on.
Under limitations of not being
able to splurge on pricier meats as
frequently, they do the most they
can with the budget and ingredients
they have.
The dedication to limiting food
waste is another important factor.
Often, a curry served one day will
resurface as a soup option the next.
While it may not be very thrilling to see
options similar to what has recently
been served, I would rather eat a dish
reminiscent of yesterday’s than have
all the leftovers be thrown out.
Far too much of dining critique
centers around personal excitement
and desire, ignoring practicality and
conservation.
I understand that some people
have more specialized diets or
health situations which make the
Bon a more difficult place to get the
nourishment they need, and I cannot
speak for them.
People should be allowed and
encouraged to advocate for their needs
and express preferences, but I believe
there is a line of what feedback is
constructive.
I aim to bring to light some of the
positive aspects of the Bon amidst
the ocean of negative comments and
urge students to reevaluate their
privilege before complaining about not
receiving first-rate food.
Please remember that “the Bon”
is not some dehumanized entity
upon which you can pile all of your
gripes; there are real people keeping it
running, and they deserve respect and
recognition for their hard work. COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK
THE MOSSY LOG IS HIRING!
Want to join The Mossy Log team? Editor applications will be sent out soon and due after winter
break. Is being an editor too much of a time commitment? Apply for our new position of staff
writer and receive a stipend for writing a set number of articles for a semester.
Consider writing as a contributor as well, a much lower commitment signed up for on an
article-by-article basis with no application. All positions, articles and visuals are compensated for.
Email to mossylog@lclark.edu to be added to The Mossy Log’s mailing list. Staff meetings occur
every Monday at 5 p.m. in J. R. Howard 135 and are open to all members of the Lewis & Clark
community. Come with ideas of your own or listen to the editor’s pitches.
Interested in contributing visuals?
The Mossy Log is looking for photographers and artists to submit their work.
Email mossylogvisuals@lclark.edu to learn more.COURTESY OF ASB
Field’s Dining Hall, the Bon, is one of two options for getting a meal on campus.
ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN/THE MOSSY LOGBy AVA FRISON
WE NEED TO talk about the
schedule for this semester
because, frankly speaking, it is
terrible. I was surprised over the summer
when I saw that this school year would not
start until September, when traditionally,
we have always started in late August. I
was further surprised when I saw that the
official end of the fall semester was not
until Dec. 20, which is incredibly late and
leaves little time for students to get home
before Christmas begins, while students
who celebrate Hanukkah do not get to
celebrate at home at all.Further, now that finals are
approaching, I looked at the finals
schedule more closely, and it is very
odd. Classes end on a Tuesday, our two
reading days are on Wednesday and
Thursday and finals occur on Friday,
Saturday, Monday and Tuesday,
with the end of the semester on a
Wednesday. To me, this is a completely
ludicrous schedule and makes
absolutely no sense.
The more I started to think about
this semester as a whole, the more I
think this is one of the most bizarre
schedule configurations Lewis &
Clark has ever had. Some of my biggest problems with this schedule are that we
started the Tuesday after Labor Day,
thus pushing our semester later into
the year, and the fact that our “Fall
Break” was only a Friday, making it
not a break but a long weekend. My
final complaint is that we have finals
on a weekend.
I am aware that LC has long had a
history of unconventional scheduling
and that complaints about finals and
Fall Break are nothing new. However,
these complaints point to a larger
systemic issue. Why is LC’s schedule
always so problematic? I’m unsure of who makes the finalized schedule, but
whoever it is should be more strategic.
I have two simple tips that would make
the semester schedule so much better
for everybody.
Make an official dead week
I have long been a proponent
of the fact that students need more
than two “reading days” to study for
finals. There are so many things that
students need to do in the time before
finals other than just reviewing class
notes, that I do not know how two
days are supposed to be enough. We
have to finalize projects, talk with our professors about grades, write papers,
make study guides and actually study.
All that cannot be done in two days.
Stop being cowards and make it a
whole week already.
Stop having finals on Saturdays
This is my first time having a final
on a Saturday and it seems supremely
silly that the administration feels
completely comfortable asking not only
students but also professors to come in
on their weekends to do class work.
That is not right because weekends are
for people to relax and not have to think
about their work. Further, because it is
a Saturday in the middle of December,
people might celebrate the holidays
with friends and family. For example,
my dad’s extended family is getting
together in the Portland area for the
first time since 2019, which would be
perfect for me to attend, except that
my final, from 1-4 p.m., is directly in
the middle of the event. Make finals
Monday through Thursday.
Maybe I am just ignorant of
administrative struggles and making
a perfect semester schedule is more
complicated than I can imagine.
However, I cannot see how the tips
above would not be easy to implement.
In any case, something needs to
change because I do not want to go
home five days before Christmas. That
is simply not enough time. If anything,
just fix that. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
OPINION /gid00487
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed in the Opinion section are NOT those of The Mossy Log and are held by the authors.Washing clothes brings
out worst in residentsFall final testing schedule sparks frustrations
By LILLIAN SMALL
SEASONAL depression, seasonal
affective disorder, wintertime
blues or whatever such
epithet you prefer runs abundant
in the gloomy region we call home.
Regardless of the severity, most
people experience a lowering of
energy and mood when the days
grow shorter and colder. For those
who have never lived in climates
that experience such a drastic loss of
daylight in the winter months, this
can come as an unpleasant shock.
In my years of experience with
depression, both the yearlong and
the seasonal variety, I have found
that one of the best ways to cope is to
lean in to the natural cycle of slowing
down. Many mammals hibernate and
hunker down during the wintertime,
yet humans are expected to go about
our lives in the same manner as we
would in the other seasons.
Note that this article is not a
professional advice column, and
particularly with mental health, it
is important to acknowledge that
everyone has a different experience.
Rather, I intend to offer a critique of
the capitalist mindset that we must
always be productive workhorses
despite the natural deficits in energy
that occur in many people.A key part of my wintertime
survival kit is establishing “cozy time.”
If you do not already have an activity
that requires minimal energy, yet is
still mentally stimulating, there is an
entire world of hobbies to explore.
My favorites are knitting, listening
to audiobooks and baking. Crafting
is a popular winter pastime, but if
that is not your thing, you could also
try puzzles or board games. These
activities can be done in solitude or in
company, and depending on your social
needs, you can tailor them accordingly.
The setting of the activity is equally
important. It can be difficult to find
spaces on campus that have a cozy
atmosphere, but there are plenty of
nooks to be found if you know where to
look. I won’t give away my hideaways,
but you’d be surprised how many
lounges and spaces go unused. Wear
comfortable clothes, bundle under
blankets and make yourself a mug of tea
or hot chocolate.
Another element to getting
through winter is leaning into the
holiday spirit. This is not limited
to Christmas, as personally I find
the garish decorations and constant
replaying of Mariah Carey quite
obnoxious, but really any traditions
or events you or your family celebrate. There is a reason why many
cultures around the world have some
type of holiday in the winter. It is
an excuse to make comforting food,
gather with your community and find
some meaning and joy in the desolate
months. Creating your own traditions
can be meaningful as well, especially
when living away from home.
It might seem frivolous to
intentionally make time for yourself
in this way, especially if you are
accustomed to getting through
class, studying and responsibilities
by unwinding with a scroll through
TikTok (or Instagram Reels if you are
an old soul). Many of us balance being
a full time student with responsibilities
of jobs, sports, clubs and other
extracurriculars, leaving us with little
time to “do nothing.”
External pressures expect us
to function at the same level no
matter what emotional or physical
bandwidth we have, but we still have
control over the expectations we place
on ourselves. Drinking tea or picking
up a puzzle is not going to fix your
problems, but it can make getting
through life a bit more manageable.
Embrace winter’s chill instead of
giving it the cold shoulder. Student gripes over past, current administrative decisions regarding delayed start to academic year
HALCYON ORVENDAL/THE MOSSY LOG
ROSE BIALK/THE MOSSY LOGMake wintertime less draining by
embracing cozy, restful activities
By TANVI SHUKLA
THE SWEET scent of detergent
and fabric softener mixed with a
hint of desperation: Welcome to
the thrilling world of laundry at Lewis
& Clark, where socks mysteriously
vanish, and the room becomes more
of a battleground than a place of
cleanliness.
Picture this: You have just finished
a devastating week of midterms and
all you want is to drown your sorrows
in a pile of freshly laundered clothes.
Little do you know the laundry room
resembles a scene from a horror movie,
complete with suspenseful music in the
background (provided by that person
blasting their playlist from the corner).
First off, let us address the number
of machines. There are exactly two
washers and two dryers present in
Akin Residence Hall. It is like playing
a high-stakes game of laundry roulette,
hoping against hope that you will secure
a coveted spot in the washing machine
lineup. Checking the CSC Pay Mobile
app every 15 minutes becomes a less
than pleasurable routine, only to return
to daily life laden with disappointment
and a laundry pile waiting for its turn.
Efficiency is a word that seems to be
lost in translation when it comes to the
laundry process. If you are lucky enough
to snag a machine, you had better be
prepared to defend your territory. The
unspoken rule is that if you leave your
clothes unattended for more than two
minutes, they become fair game for the
laundry vultures lurking nearby. You never know if your clothes are going to
be safe in the washer or thrown off to the
side with brutality.
The CSC app, a marvel of modern
technology designed to make our lives
easier, has become the bane of our
existence. In the good old days, LC
students did not have to pay a cent to
get their clothes cleaned. Now, thanks to
the app, we find ourselves fumbling with
our phones, desperately trying to load
funds onto our laundry accounts. Even
though we do get some already loaded
money in the account, there have been
several incidents where individuals had
to put in their own money because of the
malfunction of the app.
If these woes were not enough, the
popular stories of dryers developing a
knack for shrinking clothes has made
this laundry experience worse. Forget
about that favorite sweater you have
had since high school—it is now a trendy
crop top, courtesy of the LC dryers.
In a nutshell, the laundry situation
at LC is a tragicomedy of epic
proportions. It is a rollercoaster of
emotions, from the thrill of finding
an available washer to the heartbreak
of discovering your favorite shirt has
been sacrificed to the dryer gods. The
laundry room has become the great
equalizer, where students from all
walks of life come together to endure
the trials and tribulations of getting
their clothes clean. May the laundry
odds be ever in your favor, dear
student, as you embark on this perilous
journey through the dirt-stained halls
of academic cleanliness.
During frigid winter months, students nestle into residence halls for peaceful rest. Footprints adorn snow-covered path.
CORRINA CHAN/THE MOSSY LOG
CORRINA CHAN/THE MOSSY LOGFRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
FEATURES 6
Budget friendly cheer: learn
art of affordable gift-givingPseudo-professional
shares piercing hacks
By MAYA MAZOR-HOOFIEN
THE AIR IS g e t t i n g c o l d e r a n d
the lattes are getting mintier, so
you know what that means: ‘Tis
the season of good tidings and cheer.
To many of us, that means gifts. You
love your friends and family, and want
to show them you care, but picking
the right thing can be difficult.
With all the late night paper
writing and exam-cramming finals
the season has in store, allow me to
try and ease this stressor. Here is
The Mossy Log’s guide to holiday
gift giving on your college
budget.
Gifts for your LC
friends
With just
a week and
change left in
the semester,
time is ticking to
get gifts to your
friends before
going home from
break.
A new playlist
is a great option
for a meaningful
gift that is free to
make. Step it up a notch by
handwriting the tracklist with
notes connecting songs to memories
from your friendship.
You could also give them the gift
of future plans. Make an itinerary
for a fun day they can cash in next
semester. Plan out some fun places
around Portland to visit, complete
with all the details to get the most out
of the day. Get creative combining
the Pio schedule and TriMet routes;
it takes a while to get the hang of,
but you can get almost anywhere
in the city once you do. As an act of
service gal myself, these kinds of
gestures are extremely thoughtful and
sweet, and a little creativity can go a
long way toward making a gift extra
meaningful.
For those gifters who are
artistically inclined, a small craft can
be quick and cheap, while still making
for a thoughtful gift. Try searching for
a YouTube tutorial for “crochet lighter
holder.” Little projects like these are
a great way to use up the end of a
skein of yarn you have left over from
a bigger project, and you can find
lots of variations. Choose between
a keychain, necklace or crossbody
version, and get fancy with design
choices like mushrooms and animals.Gifts for your friends from home
Though you might not call as
much as you would like, your friends
back home are still some of your very
best, and they deserve a gift to match.
Put together a photo album of your
favorite memories together. Deep
cuts are encouraged; the further back
you go, the better. You can put these
together into a handmade book with
some construction paper and ribbon,
or use them to cover a cardboard box
and fill it with some smaller goodies.
The IT department’s Resource
Lab is a great place
to get high-quality
prints,
as
well as
use up all those
print credits you have
left over.
Matching friendship bracelets,
whether woven or beaded, are easy to
make and are a cute way to maintain
your connection from afar. If you have
a larger group of friends, this can be
especially fun (and will make for a
great photo that your moms will love).
Gifts for your situationship .
Dude, I have no idea either.
Maybe gum? That might send the
wrong message. Boxed cake mix. Did
they say something about needing
new shoelaces? Cash is probably the
move.
Gifts for your family
If you have siblings, the younger/
older distinction is important here.
Any younger siblings that still live at
home would probably love to spend
the day with you, so make some time
for them when you get home and
go to some of your favorite spots,
just you guys. If they have turned
18 since you left home, you are
obligated to take them to get their
first tattoo. Those are the rules. I
don’t make them, sorry.Your older siblings are basically
full adults, so a popsicle stick picture
frame should be more than enough.
For me, parents are the trickiest.
Your parents probably have one
hobby you know about, likely
World War II history or gardening
or something like that. A book is
always great, especially if you have
time to get it at Powell’s and leave
the bookmark in—give them a little
bit of Portland so they feel a part of
your life.
If there is something around
the house that has been bothering
them for a while,
see if you
can figure
out how
to fix it.
That kind
of thing
can end up
being really
simple, and
surprising them with a fix or even just
the research stage is a considerate
and free way to show them you care.
Replacing a lightbulb, taking their
car for an oil change or helping set
up holiday decorations can ease
their stress and mean more than just
bubble bath or dark chocolate.
Gifts for me
For the spunky Jewish girl
journalist in your life, finding the
right thing can be difficult. She
might seem tough to please, but she
really does appreciate the gesture.
Here are some ideas to get you
started:
CDs are always good. She
probably would really enjoy some
press-on nails, and if you buy her
yarn she will definitely make you
something with it. She also really
needs a new wallet for her keychain,
and she can never have enough
earrings.
Oh, did I say me? I must have
mistyped that.
Wrapping your gifts
Once you have finished skimming
through this week’s issue, go ahead
and wrap your gifts in The Mossy
Log, no offense taken. You do it, I do
it, it is recyclable-chic and it is better
than leaving the paper to dissolve in
the rain in front of JR Howard until
January. Remember: If you use more
than three pieces of tape to wrap a
present, you are doing it wrong.
Good luck, and happy holidays
from all of us at The Mossy Log.By PAIGE A. ANDERSON
AS A SELF proclaimed professional
in the art of healing piercings,
I have had quite the learning
curve while caring for my beloved
new jewelry. Firstly: my credentials. I
got my ear lobes pierced in first grade
after begging and begging my parents
for months. From freshman year of high
school to my fifth semester of college,
I got an additional piercing each year.
Currently, my tally is 15: 11 ear piercings,
two nose piercings, and two additional,
very finicky piercings. You can guess.
When it comes to getting a good
piercing, finding a reputable parlor is
very important. Yes, like many of you, I
absolutely love my $15 piercings from
Paramount Piercing in Northeast, but
alongside that, there are many queer-
owned and fabulous parlors all around
Portland. Ritual Arts in Hollywood is
wonderful; I have heard many great
things and all of their artists are members
of the Association of Professional
Piercers. Adorn Body Art, with locations
in both Portland and Beaverton is highly
reputable and they pride themselves on
their piercing staff being continually kept
up to date with the most advanced and
safest techniques in body modification.
They also “take annual continuing
education classes on everything from
Bedside Manner to Advanced Ear
Curations and Human Anatomy,”
according to their website. In addition
to piercings, Adorn offers tattoos, tooth
gems and permanent cosmetic art.
Now to get down to business. Three
of my ear piercings I did myself, and two
more I got in my first semester at Lewis
& Clark in a crowded Copeland dorm
room. Fueled by the disappointment of
my mother each time I add something
new to my face and emboldened by years
of piercing experience, I have discovered
the optimal way to heal each new favorite
wound.
Cleaning
Of course, they will give you a cleaning
routine at the parlor–often consisting of
spraying with saline and not touching
the piercing. In addition to the saline
wash, my holy grail has been Bactine
antibacterial spray with 4% lidocaine.
The numbing and cleansing dual action
has been a savior for delicate cartilage
piercings.
I know all of you piercing addicts also
possess a shot glass somewhere in your
dorm and if you don’t, rationalize the
purchase as multi-functional. A shot glass
works perfectly to fill with saline and
place over your body piercing, and it’s perfect to submerge either nipple or belly
button piercings. Using a Bactine soaked
q-tip to gently swab your septum ensures
that you will adequately clean the hard-to-
reach areas. My soap of choice has always
been Dr. Bronners, and the unscented or
baby soap versions are much more gentle
than some of the strongly scented ones.
Remember to wash gently and not to twist
or fidget with your new piercings, as it can
damage the skin and cause scarring or
keloids.
Sleeping
My most painful ear piercing to heal
was by far my forward helix, constantly
caught in my hair, on the side I prefer
to fall asleep on and impossible to wear
over-the-ear headphones with. Airplane
pillows have helped me avoid many nights
of sleeplessness, so if you are a side sleeper
like me, placing your ear in the empty
space of the airplane pillow can give you
some relief from the healing pains.
Healing
Neosporin is my go-to for everything
from chapped lips to stubborn acne to
irritated piercings. Let’s face it, piercings
can get gross sometimes and especially
those of us who have body piercings know
that they can get a little crusty and very
easily irritated. One of my piercings is very
stubborn and still gives me issues after
a year and a half, and I always return to
Neosporin to aid the long healing process
and make sure it stays clean and protected.
Tattoos and piercings are often
hallmarks of one’s queerness—serving
as an important part of being confident
in your own skin. As you show the world
how you choose to artistically decorate
your body, make sure to do your research
so you can be comfortable, proud and
happy with your new art. Happy body-
moding!
PAIGE A. ANDERSON/ THE MOSSY LOG
Students decorate themselves in gems.
By JESSIE SHAW
IN THE 2022-23 school year,
Lewis & Clark implemented the
requirement for all students living
on campus to download the CSC Pay
Mobile app to do laundry. However,
the laundry app has presented many
problems for some students. Director
of Campus Living Ben Meoz explained
why the app system was instituted.
“At the end of the 2021-22 school
year, we were reviewing feedback from
students about the laundry facilities
and there were a lot of complaints
related to the number of machines
available per student in each of the
buildings and … that when people
would go to do laundry, machines
were always in use,” Meoz said. “The
funds required to add machines in the
buildings require additional plumbing,
additional electrical (maintenance).
Those are funds that are simply not
available to try and increase the
amount of machines that each room
can support.”
Meoz further elaborated on the
decision to implement the laundry app,
explaining that it was a way for students
to view accessible machines.
“What we focused on was how we
can make laundry more navigable for students so they can see a neighboring
building, for instance, if they have
access to a residential area,” Meoz said.
“If a student in Hartzfeld, we got a lot of
complaints from students in Hartzfeld
because they have small laundry rooms,
could see another building in Hartzfeld
or could see Holmes on an app, (they
would) know that they could walk over
and do laundry because Holmes has a
very large laundry room. We wanted
to focus on how people could see the
system and make laundry decisions
based on that because it wasn’t feasible
to add additional machines.”
Meoz explained the reasoning
behind why LC then implemented the
laundry app requirement.
“We talked with our laundry vendor.
They had an app that they could offer
and that would add no additional costs
to the contract that we have to pay for
laundry, so we weren’t going to have
to change anything about the cost of
laundry,” Meoz said. “But there was
definitely information that wasn’t
provided at the time we agreed to that
about how it would work in terms of
needing to load funds (fake money)
onto students’ accounts in order for
them to do laundry. It was supposed
to just start a load and be very simple.
I think the roll-out of the app ended up being a lot rockier here than what
the concept is. And we continue to get
feedback from people about whether
the availability of the machines the app
shows is accurate at times.”
Jayden Haight ’26 shared that in
her experience, the laundry app worked
relatively well. “Personally, it works pretty well.
Sometimes it will lie to me and say that
one of the washing machines is open
when it’s not. But I like it and I don’t
have a problem with it,” Haight said.
Belle Tucker ’26 on the other hand,
had more issues than Haight and
expressed a negative view of the app. “Personally, I feel like there could
be a better way of having free laundry
services because I think having laundry
be free is good but through an app, I
don’t know,” Tucker said. “Sometimes
on mine, it will reset and it will log
me out and then I lose all the money
balance I have, and then you have to
email Campus Living, and then it’s like
‘OK I can’t do my laundry right now.’ So
it’s kind of inconvenient,” Tucker said.
“The app isn’t accurate about which
washers and dryers are open.”
When asked about which kind of
improvements she had in mind, Tucker
said that she would rather do away with
the app altogether, partially because
the college does not have control over
how well the app runs and especially
because she does not consider the app
necessary to do laundry.
“I definitely think there could be
improvements: either just having
washing machines that you don’t need
to connect to an app or pay for or just
make the app better. I know that the
school doesn’t own the app, but there
definitely could be improvements
made,” Tucker said. “If they could find
a way so that the washers and dryers
run without having you to do anything,
I think that would be the best option
for students.” Campus Living explains CSC Pay laundry app requirement
THE MOSSY LOG ARCHIVESComplaints over controversial mobile system in dorms spark conversations between students, staffHALCYON ORVENDAL/THE\ MOSSY LOGBy J FRANK
MICHELLE Burger ’26 and
Sarah Smith ’25 met this
semester at a Feminist
Student Union meeting and bonded
over their shared passion for harm
reduction. After noticing a lack of
education and resources, the two
decided to form the Harm Reduction
Community Outreach Club. Their main
goals include spreading awareness and
education around drug safety, and
making harm reduction resources such
as Narcan and ketamine test strips
more accessible for students.
The rate of unintentional opioid
overdose deaths has been rapidly
increasing in Portland and across
Oregon in recent years, with 955 deaths
in Oregon in 2022, a significant jump
from the 280 deaths in 2019. This year
has also seen an increase in the number
of opioid overdose visits to emergency
departments and urgent care centers.“We saw that there just weren’t a
lot of resources for students on campus
because of our alcohol and drug policy,”
Smith said. “It’s important that we have
the drug and alcohol policy, but (also)
to support students where they’re at,
and that they are using substances … it’s
important for them to have resources.”
The principles of harm reduction are
recognizing that drug use is occurring
despite its illegality and trying to mitigate
the harm when people do decide to do
drugs by providing life-saving training
and resources like fentanyl test strips
and Narcan.
In line with these principles, the
club’s aim is to increase awareness
about drug safety and give students
the tools and confidence to react
responsibly in an emergency.
“If you see someone overdosing,
it’s sometimes a little scary and hard
to know how to act. Giving people the
training to feel like they know what to do
in case that happens is something we feel is important, and also understanding
medical amnesty policies and Good
Samaritan laws,” Smith said.
Good Samaritan laws in Oregon
guarantee that a person calling the
police or 911 to report an overdose
cannot face legal repercussions for drug
possession or for being present while
drugs are used.
Before this year, organizations were
not technically allowed to distribute or
use club budgets to purchase fentanyl
test strips and Narcan on campus,
because of their classification as drug
paraphernalia. But over the summer,
a new Oregon House bill passed
which declassified drug test strips as
drug paraphernalia, and ruled that it
is now legal for any organization to
distribute Narcan. This made the club’s
mission easier to implement. The main
project the club has been working on
this semester is sourcing Narcan and
distributing it to students who request
it, as well as educating Lewis & Clark’s
student body on how to administer
Narcan if they witness an overdose.
Narcan is an opioid antagonist which
can reverse an opioid overdose. It is
commonly administered intramuscularly,
but the club has been working to source
intranasal Narcan, applied by spraying
liquid from a small bottle into the nose, as
it is easier and can be less intimidating for
students to administer.
Unfortunately, intranasal Narcan
is currently less common and therefore
more expensive and harder to source.
The club has been coordinating with
local harm reduction and community
outreach groups to ask for donations of
Narcan. So far they have sourced over 50
boxes, each containing two doses priced
for consumer sale at around $50 a box.Fentanyl test strips are also an
essential resource, because drugs
laced with fentanyl can be deadly.
Since there is no safe source of illegally
bought drugs, they always have the
potential to be laced with fentanyl,
so it is vital to test these drugs before
taking them.
“All over the country, but especially
in Portland right now, there’s fentanyl
everywhere and the drug supply is super
unsafe,” Smith said.
The more people that use fentanyl
test strips, the more overdoses can
hopefully be prevented and Narcan
won’t need to be used as often.
“Right now fentanyl test strips are
pretty accessible to us, it’s just getting
them to the student body,” Smith said.
The club is also talking with campus
living about possibly making fentanyl
test strips available to students in
dorms and distributing them through
Resident Advisors.
Students can reach out to the club
via their Instagram or email to ask for
Narcan and fentanyl test strips. Smith
said that the club also has a budget which
they will use to purchase additional
Narcan if donation supplies run out, but
they hope to continue collaborating with
local organizations.
Additionally, the club hopes to
organize CPR training in collaboration
with Campus Safety to give students
additional rescue skills and knowledge
about what to do in an emergency.
“We’re also working with Campus
Safety to talk about how we can
work on the relationship between
students and Campo in order to
make sure students feel like they
can call Campus Safety if something
happens,” Smith added.Smith emphasized that the club’s
work does not promote or encourage
drug use, despite this being a common
misconception they run into.
“We really want to put out the
message that we are not trying to
encourage drug use, that we want
people to just use safely,” Smith said.
“What we really want to show people
is that we care about the student body
and we want people to be safe. But I
think it starts with making those
relationships and making sure people
understand what our intents are.”
Anyone who wants to get involved in
the club or come by for resources or advice
can come to club meetings, currently on
Wednesdays from 5-6 p.m. in Fowler
237, or board meetings on Mondays
from 12:30–1:30 p.m. in the library.
Next semester’s meeting times have not
yet been solidified, but will be posted
on Instagram @lc_harmreductioncoc.
Students can also always reach out by
emailing harmreductioncoc@lclark.edu.
By CAROLINE DREW
MOUNT HOOD’S ever watchful
form looms over Portland
with special grandeur in
the winter months. If you have been
watching the snow slowly accumulate
on Hood’s peaks and ridges from afar,
you may be wondering what it’s like
to get up close and personal and ski
those picturesque slopes.
I sat down with Mille Minerath ’24
to get the lowdown on tackling skiing
or snowboarding on Mount Hood.
Mount Hood’s proximity to
Portland makes it an accessible
destination for a day or weekend of
skiing and the perfect experience
for beginners—and, if you catch the
skiing bug, returning to the slopes is
easily within your reach.
Mount Hood boasts two lodges:
Timberline and Mount Hood Meadows. Both sites offer day tickets,
season-long passes and a range of
lessons. Timberline is home to a
terrain park and freestyle training
center. Both lodges feature snowshoe
and sledding areas for non-ski
adventures. Once two feet of snow
have accumulated, the lifts start
running and the slopes begin calling.
What do you need to know to get
started? Let us help you out.
Don’t have a car? Don’t worry!
“Don’t be afraid to carpool,”
Minerath said. “The ski community is
so willing to help everyone get to the
mountain. I guarantee if you walked
into Next Adventure, you would find
a carpooling list.”
Next Adventure is an outdoor
gear store, located on SE Grand
Avenue, that offers discounted gear
and rental opportunities. They are also dedicated to informing and
connecting the outdoor community,
making them a great first stop for
anyone interested in exploring new
outdoor activities.
Skiers on campus also often form
carpool groups, so befriending a
couple Lewis & Clark skiers is a sure
fire way to get to the slopes.
If the car you are taking does not
have four-wheel drive, fear not.
“There’s a bus from Hood River
and from Government Camp. You can
park your car there and take the bus
up the snowy roads,” Minerath said.
Short on snow gear? Suit up for
cheap.
“College Outdoors will let you rent
gear during the week,” Minerath said.
“Next Adventure also has a rental
program and sometimes they offer
student discounts.” Better yet, find a skier friend with
gear and borrow for free.
Wondering what to pack? Start
with basic gear and warm layers.
After your downhill essentials—skis
or a snowboard, boots, helmet, goggles
and poles—you will need a warm
baselayer. Minerath recommends
a wool base layer for extra water
resistance and coziness.
“Don’t layer your pants,” she said.
“You just want nice, insulated snow
pants. Bibs, I would say, are better
than pants because snow doesn’t get
in your butt. And some of them have
spots to put hand warmers.”
Don’t forget other snow must-
haves—a hat, gloves or mittens and a
cozy gater to keep your neck warm.
Want to look like a pro? Follow
these insider tips.“Cool skiers wear mittens,”
Minerath said. “They just look better.”
Another tip is to size up on your
water-resistant jacket.
“You get really sweaty and hot and
you don’t want to feel constrained—
you need to be able to move around,”
Minerath said.
Now that you are itching to hit the
slopes, visit Timberline Lodge and
Mount Hood Meadow’s websites for
up-to-date snow conditions reports,
pass information, detailed pricing
and operations schedules. For skiers
over the age of 18, a day of skiing at
Timberline Lodge starts at $114. You
can ski there for the afternoon, 12 p.m.
to close, for $88. Young adults, aged
18-24, receive discounted prices at
Mount Hood Meadows. A day of skiing
there begins at $12, but prices and
availability vary so be sure to check
their calendar in advance. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
FEATURES 7
Harm Reduction Club destigmatizes drug safety
Peer offers advice on inexpensive Mount Hood skiing
ROSE BIALK/THE MOSSY LOGLeaders address opioid epidemic, Oregon policy changes, clarify misconceptions, offer Narcan training
EMMA AMBROZIAK/THE MOSSY LOG
On a clear winter day, the snow-capped peak of Oregon’s tallest mountain towers behind Portland, the city of bridges.
Group presents on medical amnesty laws, local outreach, available resources in Fowler.J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOG
J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOGStudents discuss the Good Samaritan Law.
Interview provides tips for engaging with ski community, finding affordable shops, managing transportationFRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
ARTS /gid00490
Mossy
Music
wintertime
songs
“I'll Be Seeing You”
By Billie Holiday
“Walking down campus, a chill is
in the air as you are serenaded by
Holiday’s rich voice accompanied
with yearning brass tones. Listening
to this in all the familiar places is
how you know winter is here.”
—Lillian Small ’27
“Quiet, the Winter Harbor ”
By Mazzy Star
“This is the perfect winter song
because to me it sounds like how
December feels. Chilling and dark
and beautiful, days that are too
short, the end of things. Hope
Sandoval's haunting vocals are my
favorite soundtrack for walking
home in the freezing cold. You
should listen to this song while you
are walking alone at night, riding a
train or trying to fall asleep. Sweet
dreams! I hope the end of the year
treats you well.”
—Julia Einaudi ’25
“Heaven Knows I'm Miserable
Now ”
By The Smiths
“Winter is depressing as fuck and
you can quote me on that. I do be
miserable in winter. It’s a very literal
interpretation, but a no less true one.”
—Destiny Ryan ’24
By ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN
FIR ACRES Theater presented
“The Tragical History of Doctor
Faustus,” a queer folk twist on
the 16th century play by Christopher
Marlowe, in the blackbox on the
evenings of Nov. 16, 17 and 18. Director
Paige Rose Cabral ’24 and lead artist
Percival Walter '25 collaborated on
this semester’s student produced
work, a brilliant adaptation of a classic,
in line with last fall’s production of
“Hamlet” involving many from the
same creative team.
The play follows Doctor Faustus,
a scholar who has exhausted all
academic subjects and turns to magic
as his next educational pursuit. He
summons a demon, Mephistopheles,
and exchanges his soul for 24 years of
control over Mephistopheles in order
to be taught magic. The audience
follows this timeline until the end of
the 24 year period when Faustus must
descend into hell.
In the program, Cabral notes the
queer messages of the play that this
production spotlighted.
“We know historically speaking
that Christopher Marlowe was queer
… Now, some four hundred years later,
a nonbinary lesbian with the help of
extraordinarily queer companions
are bringing to life a trans story of
discovery,” Cabral wrote.
Cleo Lockhart ’25 played the
titular Doctor Faustus, which was a
culmination of their long history with
the play.
“I first read this play in my
freshman Words class. I loved it
the second I read it,” Lockhart said.
“Then obviously, last year, ‘Hamlet’
happened and it was the best theater
experience I'd ever had up until that
point, in terms of building community
and building a piece of art together. So
after it was done, I was really curious
whether that same group of people
would be doing a similar thing.”
Lockhart explained that it all began
one day when they and a few other
friends, including Ash Prodromou ’25
and Walter, who had been in “Hamlet,”
started discussing the possibility of
making another show.
“Instantly, we’re making the Spotify
playlist, making the Pinterest board,
throwing it all out there. Initially, I
was like, ‘Yeah, I would love to be like
a part of this show in any capacity.
I'd love to be on the production
team or something,’” Lockhart said.
“Months later, of course, (Percy) is
talking to me like, ‘I can't wait to
see what you do as Faustus’ and I
said ‘what?!’”
Lockhart didn’t expect to play
the lead role, but soon enough the
show planning was in motion and the
organizers knew they would be perfect
for it.
“Suddenly I had this role that
sounded so incredibly fun in a play
that I had deeply cared about from the
moment I first read the text. I'd
already written several essays
about it, and had already
deeply analyzed this. You want
me to play the lead in this? That
means the world to me,”
Lockhart said.
Prodromou, the costume
designer and Lucifer (in
the show), also recalled
the show’s conception.
“We first started
talking about
it right after
Hamlet. Cleo,
Percy and I were
like, ‘We want
to do another.
What can we do?’”
Prodromou said.
“Initially, the idea
that we came up
with was that in
the same way that
Hamlet was a pop
punk version, it was
like an indie folk version of Doctor Faustus. Obviously,
we shifted away from that a little
bit. But initially, that was where my
input came in. I know these bands,
and I know this sound, and I can
help with that.”
Prodromou also explained the
intentionality behind costume choices,
and the immense work that went into
planning, organizing and creating
costumes alongside the tailor, Lola
Ecker ’25.
“For costuming, I've done a lot
of work, over the summer building
Pinterest boards with Lola and then
building Faustus and Meph costumes,
because those were all custom made
pieces for the show,” Prodromou said.
“Lucifer is the only one in mostly
black, which is traditionally how you
do demons. We put everybody else
in pastel colors, and we were talking,
‘Why is this? What's the reason
behind it?’ And the reason is that
they're mourning hell or the loss of
heavenly power.”
During the rehearsal process that
began early this semester, many actors
were struck by the devised approach.
Devised theatre is where an ensemble
makes creative choices based on
collaborative, often improvisational
methods. Many actors in Faustus
had taken the devised theatre class
at Lewis & Clark and found that what
they had learned informed the creation
of Faustus.
Walter played Mephistopheles
while also taking a role as the
lead artist and dramaturg.
“I feel like since taking
Devised, a lot of my
perspective about theater
time management changed,”
Walter said. “I feel
like I had a better
handle on (things
like) how long
does this take to
block? I'm always
constantly learning
more and more
how collaborative
theater is, and
how it very much
takes everyone
in it to create
anything at all.”
Prodromou echoed this
sentiment, specifically around the
movement sequences that were
incorporated into the show.
“There was a lot more movement
than we were expecting. We had
blocked out like moments where
compositions would be helpful and
a lot of transitions are going to
involve movement, and in between
acts are going to need movement,”
Prodromou said. “And it became
this almost devised piece, which was
really fun.”
The choreography made for an
extremely visually captivating show,
especially since every character had
their own unique physicality.
Transporting fantastical
elements to
the stage can be difficult,
but moments of demonic
possession, for example,
were staged brilliantly, nearly
a dance. This effect
harkened back to the
original inspiration of a
musical adaptation.
“A huge part of it was
the framing device that
we had on the piece of
exploring queerness and
folk music, and all of the
specific movement work
we were doing framed
the show immediately,”
Lockhart said. “While
it was the original text,
the play immediately
put it in a different
context.”
This idea of
taking an old text and
recontextualizing it is
central to understanding the beauty of this version of
Doctor Faustus.
“I'm always learning more about
those old words. Are they worth hearing
again? And every time it's yes,” Walter
said. “They’re such gifts, these old
plays, because they're so overfull. So
you choose the story (you) want,
like Faustus has a whole other
world of plot in it that we just
didn't use, like this emperor
of Germany and all of this
political stuff that served the
story, but we didn't need
it. We needed a shorter
show, and we knew the
themes that we wanted
to highlight.”
Since the
production team had
to edit down the lengthy
original text into a shorter
script, they got very
familiar with the original
authorial context.
“My approach to that
old text is a historical
one, to boil it down to one
word. The way that those old texts
were written was for a specific style of
theater that was supposed to be the
most accessible thing. It was written
to be consumed by common masses,”
Walter said. “So if you try and stage it in
a way that is staged for the wealthy elite,
then you do a disservice to the text and
it's not understandable.”
Some of the historically-rooted
methods that Walter mentioned were
universal lighting, where the audience
is lit the same as the stage, performer
directed address, where characters
directly to each other instead of to a
distant point, thrust staging, where the
audience sits around three or all sides
of the stage, and limited set and props.
Carrying hundreds of years old text
into the modern age requires striking
a balance between honoring tradition
and bringing in new creativity—
which is exactly what this Faustus
production does.
“All of the themes and all of the
things that I care about, the deep hearts
of all of these stories, we are bringing
our new souls to them, new bodies and
our performance, which are things
that they never had. [But] it's still their
story. It's their story and our story,”
Walter said.
Lockhart elaborated on the aspects
of the original text that were highlighted
in the adaptation.
“A lot of words and sections took
on double meanings in our context of
the show. There was a lot more gender
dialogue and descriptions of Hell. One
thing we were focusing a lot on was
nature; this text talks about nature and
the stars so much,” Lockhart said.
They also spoke to the creative
intersection of devising and working
with historical texts.“There would be a question from
the text that we would pose (or) that
our director would pose, and we would
create something based on that,”
Lockhart said. “A lot of our version of
the play came from our responses to
those questions.”
In contrast to Lockhart, Prodromou
and Walter, Jamie Kushnick ’26, who
played the Pope and all seven of the
Deadly Sins, had no connection to the
play prior to being cast in it.
“I knew it was like a really famous
play, the whole devil and angel on
your shoulder thing that comes from
Faustus. I knew the basic plot, but I
had no inkling of like, ‘I want to play
this.’ I was just excited to see where I
would fit in,” Kushnick said.
Kushnick commented on the
unexpected amalgamation of roles
that he was tasked with playing.
“I knew the Pope was there for
comedic relief and that's it, so I just
knew, ‘Okay, I'm going to be a funny
old man,’” Kushnick said. “But when
I was handed the Seven Deadly Sins,
I think I saw somewhere beforehand
that there was a section of lines for
each sin in the script. I was like,
‘Oh, that's cool. They're gonna cast
somebody as lust and they're gonna
cast somebody as wrath and they're
gonna cast somebody as pride.’ And
then I got the email and it said, ‘Hello
Jamie. Here's seven guys.’”
Indeed, Kushnick lived up to all
seven of the “guys,” as well as the
Pope.
“The Seven Deadly Sins, we must
have run like 50 times. And it looks
right. The work paid off, for sure,”
Prodromou said.
Looking back on the experience,
Kushnick recognizes how valuable it
was.
All these actors recalled profound
growth in different ways throughout
their journey into discovering their
characters, but they also repeatedly
emphasized the role of teamwork
and collaboration.
“I'm really happy about everything
about it. The cast was delightful. The
narrative was something that I hold
really close to my heart and the way
that we built it made it even closer.
And I think that's gorgeous,” Lockhart
said.
As likely his last student produced
work put on at LC, Walter gave a
final reflection on the meaningful
core of the show.
“The show is about hope,” Walter
said. “No matter how dark it is,
because it is so dark right now, there
is a light somewhere. That's what
hope is. It's not that it's brighter than
other things or that everything will be
alright, it's just that there is a light in
at least one place. That was the heart
of the show to me, and that is what I
wanted to give people."“Demolition Lovers ”
By My Chemical Romance
“Have you ever walked around in a
graveyard at night while it’s snowing
and you’re listening to a mixtape from
your shitty portable CD player with
your lover? That’s how you’ll feel
listening to this song when it’s
cold and dark. ”
—Leila Diaz ’25
Student-produced Faustus play uplifts
queer themes, honors historical text
COURTESY OF JUBEE MCCORVIE
The Seven Deadly Sins introduce themselves to Dr. Faustus in a devised movement scene.
emma ford/the mossy logFRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
ARTS 9
KPH Radio, CAB, host Co-op show with
headliners Jeffrey Lewis, Mo TroperTry movie
marathons
over break
GALLERY OFFERINGS
Hoffman Art Gallery:
Broken Spectre
Open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Exhibit closes Dec. 15
Portland Art Museum:
Africa Fashion
Nov. 18 - Feb. 18
Open Wed. - Sun., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.THIS WEEKEND
8 - Music: Chamber Music Salon
7:30 p.m. @ Seitz Lounge
8 & 9 - Dance: Dance X
7:30 & 10 p.m. @ Fir Acres
8 - Comedy: Comedy Night
10 p.m. @ McMenamins Al’s
Den
9 - Comedy: Serious Club Improv Show
6 p.m. @ The Co-op9 - Music: KPH Suntan
7:15 p.m. @ The Co-op
10 - Theatre: The Speakeasies
7 p.m. @ Fir Acres
10 - Music: Orchestra Performance
7:30 p.m. @ Flanagan ChapelAND BEYOND
12 - Art: Visiting Artist: Sam Hamilton
7:30 p.m. @ Miller 105
12 - Music: Karly Hartzman & MJ
Lenderman
8 p.m. @ Mississippi Studios
12 - Music: The Moss & The Walters
8 p.m. @ Crystal Ballroom12 - Culture: The Moth Mainstage
7:30 p.m. @ Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall
15 - Comedy: Fred Armisen’s Comedy
for Musicians but Everyone is
Welcome
8 p.m. @ Crystal Ballroom
16 - Music: Tuba Christmas Concert
1:30 p.m. @ Pioneer Square Upcoming Events - December
EMMA FORD/THE MOSSY LOGBy MAYA MAZOR-HOOFIEN
THOUGH IT MAY n o t f e e l l i k e
it quite yet, winter break is just
around the corner. The official first
day of winter is Dec. 21, by which time
your finals will be over and you will have
almost a month free of your studently
responsibilities.
One great way to fill that time? Holiday
movies. Here is a list of some great ones to
check out over break, from the classically
cozy to the unconventionally kitsch.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
This is a quintessential Christmas
classic, with theaters and cable channels
across the country showing the film every
year. The film begins on a somewhat
dark note, but holds a warm message
that good deeds and good friends are
what makes life so wonderful. It has also
aged remarkably well considering its
release was nearly eighty years ago, and
continues to be arguably the most iconic
Christmas film of all time.
Hanukkah (2019)
Though Christmas movies dominate
the holiday season, other cultural holidays
have plenty of films of their own. Most
Hanukkah movies fall into two categories:
a Jewish spin on a Hallmark Christmas,
or a harrowing tale of immigration from
Eastern Europe.
Enter: Hanukkah, where a group of
Jewish young adults find out they are
being targeted by a serial killer, hunting
them down for breaking Judaic law.
Religiously driven slashers are a dime
a dozen, but a non-Christian take is a
refreshing spin on a played-out trope.
To be clear, this movie is not very good.
It drags through the first half and portrays
gratuitous violence against mostly naked
women in the second. It features some
big name horror stars like Sid Haig
(House of 1000 Corpses) and Caroline
Williams (Texas Chainsaw Massacre),
but they are underutilized and fail to give
the film any real legitimacy in the genre.
But I believe true equality comes when
marginalized story tellers are also given
the opportunity to make bad movies.
Only when we can all make bland, grubby
horror movies will we truly have equality.
Also, the film’s “Torah-fying tale” of the
“Hanukiller” are good enough puns to
earn its place on my list.
Die Hard (1988)
Die Hard’s status as a Christmas
movie is contentious, but it makes for
a great choice if you are not one for
sentimentality (or really enjoy arguing
that it is, in fact, a Christmas movie).
The high stakes hostage situation,
character development, action and
drama keep you on your toes throughout,
making this among the best action films
of its kind.
Nightmare Before Christmas
(1993)
Another movie with debatable
Christmas status is Nightmare Before
Christmas. This delightful musical
includes a peek into both the fictional
Halloween Town and Christmas
Town, making it fit for a viewing
during either season.
Some people feel very passionately
one way or the other about the
appropriate holiday for watching, but I
think the perfect solution is to enjoy it in
both October and December.
There you have it. Merry watching
and happy holidays!By J FRANK
LAST THURSDAY, t h e C o n t a c t
Improvisation class hosted a
Contact Dance Workshop. Zoe
Chin ’26 and other students from
the class opened the workshop by
introducing what contact improv is.
“We’re excited to share our journey
that we’ve been exploring, and now we
get to show the super awesome cool
stuff that Eric Nordstrom has taught us
throughout the semester,” Chin said.
Contact improv is a dance form
which was created in 1972 by Steve
Paxton while he was a visiting artist in
residence at Oberlin College.
“(Contact improv) has been built on
and explored by many different dancers across the world and has kind of become
a global movement. It’s still a newer dance
practice, but we’re here exploring it and
shaping it into what it is,” Chin said.
This workshop was part of that
exploration, welcoming students curious
about contact improv to experience it
and bring their unique movements to the
dance floor.
Sequoia Snogren-Mcginnis ’26 told
us to listen to our bodies and how they
wanted to move. She emphasized that any
way participants showed up to the class
was valid and important.
After a quick warmup stretch circle,
the dancing began. The accompanist,
Dylan Rieck, struck a few notes on his
cello. Throughout the workshop, Rieck
provided solo cello music which flowed between different moods and levels of
tension and energy.
Participants moved around the room,
weaving around one another and flailing
their limbs, sometimes in rhythm with the
music and sometimes not. Many people
moved spontaneously in ways which
flowed together in a seamless undulation.
This natural control of their bodies
impressed me as I awkwardly began to try
to imitate movements that I saw.
At intervals, members of the class
would give verbal guidance or instructions
while continuing to move through the
room with us. One person told us that
stillness is also dance, and that it was
okay to find moments of stillness within
the movement.
Another student prompted us to
explore how close we could get to other
people’s bodies without actually making
contact. Then, they had us explore how
far away we could get from other bodies
in the room. The students encouraged
us to mirror others’ movements and
join together in dual movement with
those we noticed mirroring us.
From here, the workshop moved into
exploring the contact aspect of contact
improv. We were encouraged to sit, lie or
kneel on the ground and find a partner to
lean against. They encouraged us to feel
our breaths interacting, and to begin to
allow an interplay of our weights against
each other.
The class’s teacher, Visiting Instructor
Eric Nordstrom, invited me to be his
partner since I was a newcomer. We sat with our backs against each other and
moved without talking, forcing us to
communicate movement nonverbally,
by shifting our weights and moving our
limbs around. Gradually, we began to
roll around on the floor and rest our
weights on top of each other.
After a while of exploring this partner
movement, the facilitators prompted the
pairs to reach out to other pairs and begin
making connections with more people.
Tangles of bodies swelled together and
morphed; connections formed, broke
and reformed within the groups spread
across the floor.
The class culminated in all
participants joining together to
form one giant body sculpture, with
everyone draped over each other and
supporting one another’s weight in
many different creative ways. The
cluster of bodies was organic and
dynamic. Chin added the finishing
touch by jumping on another student’s
shoulders and striking a pose.
The workshop was a unique
experience and one that could only be
had at an experiential liberal arts college
such as Lewis & Clark. The energy
between participants was palpable
as we broke through the intangible
boundaries of personal space. Though I
have had similar experiences of energy
and contact in mosh pits and at shows,
I can truly say that I had never made
contact with strangers with the kind
of intentionality and awareness that
contact improv demands.Contact Improvisation students host workshop,
invite participants to explore interactive movementBy OLIVIA FENDRICH
ON SUNDAY, D e c . 3 , t h e R u s t y
Nail Co-op, colloquially referred
to as the Coop, hosted a concert
with KPH Radio and Campus Activities
Board (CAB).
The Coop was festooned with
streamers, balloons and string lights,
a colorful and eclectic sanctuary for
students to gather in. At the back of the
room, coordinators sold Coop merch,
silk-printed that morning, and merch
from the artists.
The opening act was the student band
What’s Her Face, who won the Coop’s
Battle of the Bands on Nov. 16. Their
indie rock style and tasteful harmonica
created a lively atmosphere, with
students bopping along contentedly.
The band’s songs were tonally rich,
incorporating elements of shoegaze to
build a unique and exciting sound.
The band also brought a high degree
of charisma to their performance,
clearly comfortable in the presence of
their peers. Their stage presence flowed
into the room, and they maintained a
magnetic connection with the audience
even during slower songs. Even for
a new listener such as myself, the
band established a familiarity only
achievable among fellow college
students who know our unspoken
language of shared experiences.
The next act was Mo Troper, a Portland
power pop singer-songwriter. Although he
followed the sonically robust ensemble
What’s Her Face, the solo artist proved
capable of capturing the audience equally.Troper’s songs drew from heartbreak
and alienation but were miraculously
balanced; just when a song threatened
to become morose, Troper would dip
into a high-pitched warble.
“Now I’m not afraid to die / Now I
wanna stay alive / I’m so happy, I could
cry / When I fall into her arms,” he sang
in “I Fall Into Her Arms.”
The crowd swayed along, with one
student quipping to Troper, “It’s a big
night for secular Jewish musicians!”
Though Troper’s music draws from
artists like beloved Portland musician
Elliott Smith, his character shines
through in his equally earnest and
endearing performance.
“Sorry, I just can’t banter,” he
remarked at one point between songs.
Troper’s endearing personality
and evident love for music made for a
charming introduction to Portland’s
local music scene. I am excited to call myself a new fan and look forward to the
next time I see him live.
The show’s headliner, Jeffrey Lewis,
was the only artist of the night with whom
I was familiar. Although I had never met
anyone who had heard of him, his role as a
facet of the New York ’90s anti-folk scene
had always impressed me.
Anti-folk emerged in the 1980s in
response to the perceived self-importance
of the 1960s folk scene. Lewis was
an early proponent of the musical
movement alongside artists such as
Kimya Dawson and Beck.
Lewis immediately proved at home
in the presence of an audience. His
relaxed posture and banter suggested
that he had done this many times before.
Lewis’s lyrics are the highlight
of his music. Driven by humor and
thoughtfulness, his songs approach life
from a refreshingly equable perspective.
His witty lyrics and incisive storytelling struck a chord with the audience, who
laughed after each brilliant verse.
Lewis also showed three self-produced
comic book “low-budget films” dispersed
throughout the set. These featured
hand-drawn illustrations while Lewis
sang a humorous song to tell the story.
The first of these films, “As I
Wandered Across the Land (The Red
Hand)” followed a man who discovers
a red hand and is thrown into a wild
adventure to decide what to do with it.
The second film discussed the fall of
the Soviet Union and the reforms former
President Mikhail Gorbachev instituted
as a means of democratization.
The third film covered the history of
Chile. The mention of recently deceased
former United States Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger incited cheers of
disapproval at the politician’s complicity
in international human rights abuses.
When not presenting on the
fascinating history of Latin America
or Eurasia, Lewis sang candidly about
all the beauty and pain that life has to
offer. His lyrical craft drew the audience
in and held them close. Though all his
songs offered insight, “Back When I Was
4” stood out as a poignant life lesson,
weaving nostalgia and introspection into
a piece that resonated with listeners,
inviting them to consider who and how
they loved at each stage of their lives.
“And back when I was 22, I left the
best thing that I knew / And I gave it up
for fortune and for fame,” he sang. “I
played like I didn’t know how / I shocked
the world, I wowed the crowd / But I
deserved more than what they gave.”
Battle of the Bands winners take the stage playing original son gs on harmonica and guitar.OLIVIA FENDRICH/THE MOSSY LOG
Dancers in the 1990s experiment with contact improv at its birth place, Oberlin College.COURTESY OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
By J FRANK
NIA PILE ’26 i s f i n i s h i n g
up her third semester as a
student athlete who plays
multiple sports at Lewis & Clark.
With her packed schedule of practices,
tournaments and academics, she has
experienced the joys and challenges of
college athletics.
On a typical Tuesday, Pile’s busiest
day, she has lift from 7:30-8:30 a.m.,
and then takes a nap before going to
class at 1:50 p.m. She then has Track
and Field practice from 4-6 p.m, takes
a break for dinner, and then has Cheer
and Step practice from 7-9 p.m. After
that, she goes back to her dorm to do
her homework.
Pile’s love of sports began at
a young age, when she joined the
football team because she wanted to
be like her athlete older brother.
She was on the football team
throughout middle school and high
school, where she added track and
discovered a talent for the sport.
“I started doing track because that
was the only spring
sport that I thought I
could do, and then I
ended up being good
at it, which made me
really love it because
everyone wants to be
important in their
own way,” Pile said.
Pile is from the
East Coast, but she
came to LC after she
got a phone call from
an LC Track coach
who told her that he
had seen her stats
and that she was
really good. From
there, LC coaches
consistently expressed the most
interest in recruiting her, which led to
her decision to come to LC.
When she got to LC, she saw that
there was a Cheer and Step team.
Pile had wanted to be a cheerleader
since middle school, but never got the
opportunity to do so.
“I always wanted to do
cheerleading, but we didn’t have
cheerleading in high school, so when
I came here, I immediately wanted
to do it,” Pile said. “But I didn’t do
it until this year because I was still a
little nervous and I wasn’t ready for
all that my freshman year.”
Instead, she joined Artemis
Frisbee her freshman year, but
found the combined schedule of
games, practices and tournaments
between Artemis and Track difficult to handle, so she stepped down from
taking as active a role in Artemis in
the spring season.
This year, however, she decided
to join Cheer and Step to fulfill her
lifelong dream, as well as because
several friends were on the team. She
has found the team a very positive
and supportive environment. Despite
two sports at once being difficult to
handle, Pile loves both and hopes to
continue them during her time at LC,
though she acknowledges that she
may have to step down from Cheer
and Step in the spring like she did
with Artemis if it becomes too much
to handle.
Pile spoke positively of her
experience with both teams. While it is
a struggle to make time to see friends,
she gets to spend time with her friends
on both teams during practices, which
makes being social easier.
“[T]he community is really chill and
friendly, which isn’t the case
for all sports. It is competitive, but
not in a toxic, aggressive way, which
is really nice to be a part of,” Pile said.
One of the hardest
things about being
a student athlete,
according to Pile, is not
letting her performance
in her sports affect the
rest of her life and her
academic performance
throughout the week.
Nonetheless, Pile
credits her teammates
as her biggest support.
“It is hard to balance
athletics and school
but I think if you have
a good support system,
you can make it work,
and I feel like I have
that,” Pile said.
Her team members lift her spirits
when she is feeling low and hype her
up when she is doing well.
Additionally, the teams host
study sessions, where she can go to
be motivated by seeing other people
doing work. Pile also loves a good nap,
and makes time for that relaxation
whenever she can.
“If I can get in one or maybe two
naps a day, it really calms me down and
I don’t get as overwhelmed,” Pile said.
Beyond her sports career at LC,
Pile plans to say active for the rest
of her life. This summer, she has
found enjoyment in regularly going
to the gym and staying active beyond
playing sports. Doing mandatory lifts
as part of her sports schedule at LC
has given Pile a new appreciation for
working out at the gym.“After LC, I want to say active … Track
you can keep doing until you’re old, so
track is something that I could do my
whole life if I wanted to, but I don’t know
if I want to do that,” Pile said. Pile encourages people to attend
upcoming Track meets to show
their support, adding that if you pay
attention, the team makes it fun and
engaging to observe.In addition, the Cheer and Step team
will announce a performance at one of
LC’s home games in the spring, which Pile
also hopes people will come watch and
support the hard working student athletes.
By AMELIA DOYLE
THE LEWIS & C l a r k W o m e n ’ s
Volleyball team’s season came
to an end on Nov. 4. Izzy Willis
’24 had a climactic final game, getting
nine kills. During the second she
knocked a cross court shot down, the
733 kill of her career, giving her the
number eight spot in LC’s program
for career kills.
Katie Shimaura ’24, another
influential player, is a left defensive
specialist on the Women’s Volleyball
team. During Shimaura’s time at LC,
she was a 2022 Awards Northwest
Conference Honorable Mention,
played 69 sets, 335 digs during her
junior season and finished fourth in
the Northwest Conference with 4.86
digs per set. She reflected on her
favorite moments of the season.
“Although it is hard to pick a
favorite moment, I loved winning our
first conference game. It was a full
team effort and really showed how
much we all have worked throughout
the season,” Shimaura said via email.
Shimaura said that she has
grown immensely with having a positive mindset that has helped her
throughout the season.
“One of the challenges that I
overcame this season was having to
push away the fact that this season
was the end of my career. It was a
hard pill to swallow but I would not
change a thing,” Shimaura said.
Shimaura wants to encourage
anyone that wants to play Volleyball
at LC to try to.
“Deciding to play volleyball 10
years ago was the best decision of
my life. Volleyball has given me
some of the greatest memories of
my life, some of my best friends
and the greatest coaches that not
only coached me on the court but
taught me so many lessons outside
of the sport. Playing volleyball is an
amazing opportunity to be able to
meet new people who share the same
love for the sport!” Shimaura said.
Heather Ruam ’25 is a Team
Manager for the Volleyball team.
She attends the teams’s practices,
games and helps out whereever she
can. Ruam wanted to play volleyball
in college, and ended up being one of
the Team Managers. “I really like how much they work
to have good mindsets and work
so much off the court ... through
personal well being and making sure
that they come to practice the best
that they can,” Ruam said.
Ruam explained that the game
play this year has been an incredible
improvement from the previous two
years and they keep getting better
and better.
Shimaura is majoring in Computer
Science and Mathematics, and
minoring in Data Science. She is from
Mililani, Hawaii. She is very grateful
for the opportunity to be a part of this
year’s volleyball program.
“I am so grateful to Lewis & Clark as
well as the volleyball program for giving
me the opportunity to play volleyball at
the collegiate level and for giving me the
best four years of my life!” Shimaura said.
Ruam encourages everyone to
come to the Volleyball club if they
are interested in playing volleyball.
Practices are Sundays 2-4, and
Monday nights from 7:15-9. The
Women’s Volleyball season will start
in the summer 2024, and will end
next November. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
SPORTS /gid00483/gid00482
Nia Pile shares daily life as multi-sport athlete
Women’s volleyball wraps up notable, rewarding season
Players reach career milestones, reflect on their season, encourage others to play volleyball, get involvedStudent contemplates journey into track, Cheer and Step, frisbee, speaks to challenges, triumphs
Both school and sports are important to Pile, thus she relies on her teammates and attends study sessions to keep on top of wor k.
Pile gears up to run Track, a sport she has competed in for many years that contributed to her decision to attend to LC.
COURTESY OF LC ATHLETICS
Katie Shimaura is a left defensive specialist earning several accolades with her skills.
COURTESY OF NIA PILE
COURTESY OF NIA PILE
“It is hard to
balance athletics
and school but I
think if you have a
good support system,
you can make it
work, and I feel
like I have that.”

-Nia Pile ’26The Cheer and Step Team practices on Wilson Field, one of many athletic commitments Pile incorporates into her schedule.FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
SPORTS /gid00483/gid00483
Explore mindful physical education classes
News Editors
Ava Frison
Olivia FendrichArts Editors
Maya Mazor-Hoofien
Caroline Drew
Sports Editors
Tanvi ShuklaOpinion Editors
Corrina Chan
Lillian SmallFeatures Editors
Paige A. Anderson
Emma Ambroziak
The Backdoor Editor
Emma Ford
Faculty Advisor
Molly RobinsonCopy Chief
J FrankHeads of Broadcasting
Isaac Babus
Joseph ChukuVisuals Editor
Halcyon OrvendalEditor-in-Chief
Amelia DoyleManaging Editor
Rosalie Zuckermann
Business Manager
Irene Hilman
Social Media Manager
Zoe SmithWeb Manager
Iman Agic
Photographers & Illustrators Staff Writers
Jessie Shaw
Kai Mermis-Cava
Will Trunzo
Kaia EikenberryRose BialkBy PAIGE A. ANDERSON
THERE ARE many options to
fulfill the physical education
(PE) general education
requirements—whether you are an
athlete who enjoys a weight lifting
program for credit or a dancer who
takes advantage of the fundamentals of
movement classes, there are multiple
ways to receive these credits. I am
here to inspire you by speaking with
appreciation about my experience in
two PE classes—Yoga & Meditation
and Contact Improvisation.
As a dance minor, I have oriented
some of my schedule around classes
that I think will complement
my participation in the Dance
Extravaganza (performances are on
December 8th and 9th, be there or
else!) and overall classes that improve
the connection between my body and
mind.
Yoga & Meditation has been one of
the best classes I have taken at Lewis
& Clark in my five semesters so far.
On Thursday nights, I trek down to
Pamplin with two of my best friends
and participate in two hours of yoga
and meditation. Though I was worried
that the 8:10-10:10 p.m. class would
be one I may skip quite often given the
fact that I’m a sleepy college student,
on the contrary, I would love to have
yoga more often than once a week.
We begin with 15 minutes of
journaling, which is something I wish
I did more of in my free time and
having a specific time allocated for it is wonderful. If I’m not feeling inspired
to write about anything in particular,
the instructor Haley Endres provides
prompts written on the whiteboard to
get the creative juices flowing. After
the journaling time comes to an end,
the instructor goes over the plan for
the class—explaining which chakra
we are focusing our attention and
movements on. Sometimes she will
tell us which pose we are building
up toward– whether that is a more
difficult pose such as a crow or a
headstand, or if we will be focusing
on our core or legs that day.
Something I should have
anticipated is that yoga is not as
easy as it looks. Instructors often
seamlessly flow through poses,
twisting and stretching their bodies
in precarious and beautiful patterns.
Yet the reality of moving through a
yoga flow is hard. Balance, strength,
commitment and an understanding
that sometimes you will fail are all
important aspects of yoga.
At the end of the physical yoga time,
we move into the meditation portion
of the class. In the beginning of the
semester, the instructor provided very
structured meditations with imagery
and suggestions on how to center
yourself and integrate the movements
into your body, reflecting on the past
hour and a half. As the course has
progressed, she has offered fewer
suggestions, allowing us 30 minutes of
uninterrupted meditation time using
either the imagery she provided earlier
in the semester or our own methods. Each time I leave the class, I feel
fully centered in my body, rejuvenated
and ready for the best sleep of the
week. Additionally, Haley does not
take attendance so if something
came up in the middle of the week
and attending the class was simply
not in the cards, I have never had to
stress about making it to class. But
I believe my weeks are made vastly
better by attending. Yoga is offered
most semesters as a once-a-week,
1-credit course. It has been such a
neat experience that I will likely sign
up to take it for all of my remaining
semesters at LC.
In a different vein, Contact
Improv is much less individual and
pushes me in many different ways.
Contact Improvisation (CI) is a
type of movement that explores the
relationship between bodies using
weight sharing, pushing, pulling,
pressing and shifting your body in
tandem with another. I knew very
little about CI when I joined the
class—it just happened to work
perfectly in my schedule and fulfill
requirements both for my minor and
PE requirement.
In the Black Box on Tuesday
and Thursday mornings, a group of
students gathered in anticipation for
what this strange class would hold.
Visiting Instructor of Dance Eric
Nordstrom began by explaining what
we could expect from the course. He told us to prepare to interact with the
students around us very intimately.
From simple weight sharing exercises
and a type of touch called ‘grazing’
where you briefly come into contact
with various other students while you
explore your own solo movements,
to eventually learning how to put
your full body weight on one of your
peers, CI has helped me explore my
boundaries and more deeply consider
how I move. We did exercises where
we would perch on one another, drape
ourselves, roll over each other and
create sculptures with our bodies.
The improvisational aspect of the
class has been freeing. I’m able to move
in ways that feel the best and share those
moments with others—it’s incredible
seeing how intuitively you can create
a dance with someone you’ve never
spoken to outside of class. Sometimes, if
I feel stuck, awkward or uncomfortable,
I will close my eyes and allow my body
to take me where it wants, without
judgment or unkindness.
Something incredibly important
about Contact is understanding
what is a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in your body.
Nordstrom continually speaks about
arriving in the space exactly how you
are– perhaps tired, stressed, anxious
or energetic and excited to participate,
any way that you show up to class is
valid. Sometimes, what feels best in
my body is to avoid contact with other
students for the majority of the class. As it is a 9:40a.m. course and the
first of my day, centering myself in
my body and understanding how and
where I am comfortable moving that
day is of the utmost importance.
There have been many moments
in the class where I feel I’ve had a
breakthrough in being connected
with my body, something that I
attribute to working physically so
closely with others. For most of my
dance experience, I have been moving
solo or if there was contact, it was
very brief. I only really knew two
people personally in the class and
pushing myself to be in close contact
with virtual strangers was anxiety
provoking. I found it was the same
for many of my classmates, but as the
semester continued, we learned to
trust each other.
Beginning my mornings with
movement has been revolutionary for
my mental health this semester. Yes,
there are many times where my bed is so
cozy and warm that I’d rather stay there
all day, but getting my blood flowing and
trying something so new and unique has
been a wonderful experience.
I highly encourage anyone who thinks
it seems cool to try out Contact Improv,
which is offered every fall—Nordstrom
provides a safe, consent-oriented space
where I’ve been able to explore my
limits and grow to better understand
my body in relation to others and the
spaces I occupy. COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK
THE MOSSY LOG ARCHIVESYoga, contact improv offer ways to move body, get required credit while not participating in traditional sports
Take The Mossy Log sports quiz!
A group of students practice meditation as part of a Spiritual Life student group, an example of yoga practice outside of PE.
ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN/THE MOSSY LOG/gid00483/gid00484FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023
Oh God, please just f*cking kill me, I have
a twenty page paper due.
By KAI MERMIS-CAVA
THOUGH I FEAR t h i s m a y
be an unpopular opinion, I
feel I am obligated to speak
my truth. There is no reason to
be silent any longer, especially as
humanity is already well on its way
to accomplishing my goal. I see no
complicated way to say it, nor any
way to sugarcoat it. We must melt the
polar ice caps.
Rest assured, I can already hear
your reactions. “What? How could you
say such a thing?!” But, dear reader,
I assert that melting the glaciers is
in the best interest of everyone on
this planet. To be human is to seek
knowledge, and it is fruitless to fight
our nature.
Consider everything we might be
able to find: diseases from a long-
lost time trapped in the permafrost,
all that stuff that keeps getting lost
in the Bermuda Triangle, all sorts of
historical creatures, the socks that
keep disappearing from your dryer
load. I believe so much knowledge
hides within the ice, and it is up to
the current generation of humanity to
release it.
Yes, there is an entire genre of
horror media dedicated to what might
happen if the ice caps melt. Everyone
has seen zombie movies where a
disease is released from the ice and
escapes a lab. And should you accept
a deviation from the source material,
we may have much to learn from the
infamous Jurassic Park films.
(Writer’s Note: Have no fear,
for I have no plans of opening an
amusement park with genetically
recreated dinosaurs. I simply
wish to study them. Surely rich
corporations would respect the
pursuit of knowledge.)
To address such risks, I want to
be clear that I am completely sure
everything will be alright. Cite your
sources, you say? Vibes. As these
past few years in a pandemic have
demonstrated, sensible people are
perfectly capable of wearing masks
and taking precautions to not kill
people. In this modern world, there
should be no doubt that humanity has
the ability to handle such an issue. Also, everyone knows zombies are
not real.
(Writer’s Note: I am not saying
there will be another pandemic. Of
course, we wish to avoid causing
unnecessary damage to the human
race. However, a certain number
of casualties is understandable,
while hunting such great scientific
discoveries.)
Clearly, this is not a wholly popular
idea. I have already begun receiving
anonymous emails threatening me,
and pleading with me to give up the
idea of melting the ice caps, for fear
of releasing ‘Him.’ The emails refuse
to specify whatever this mysterious
creature may be, and as such there is
nothing hidden within those ice caps
that I fear. Whoever ‘He’ may be, ‘He’
is of no concern to me, and neither
are these cultish stalkers. The call
I feel towards the melting of these
glacial behemoths is only growing, a
siren song of destruction.
It may be possible that there
are things trapped within the ice
that humanity has no method of
comprehending. Have all seven Ice Age movies taught us nothing?
Perhaps there will be things from
before the dawn of time itself.
Perhaps the secret to life, or the
secret of the universe. Or perhaps
it will be something fundamentally
useless that will only be studied by
senior college students and never
addressed again.
No matter the outcome, melting
the ice caps would be worth the
discoveries humanity could make.
Yes, there would be consequences,
but our planet already has one foot
in the grave. We might as well finish
it off while quenching our thirst for
knowledge. Really, the only ones
losing are future generations, and we
will have handed them libraries full
of new information. In my opinion,
that is a fair trade.
Everything I do is in the name of
science and discovery, and there is
a world of new information hidden
away in those icebergs. This is not
insanity, nor foolishness—I know
there are secrets hidden inside the
ice, and I will go to the ends of the
earth to find them.By WILL TRUNZO
THERE HAS BEEN m u c h
discussion recently at Lewis
& Clark over on-campus
parking and transportation. In light
of the transportation survey and the
suggestion to move to a daily permit
system, many students have voiced
their concerns and suggestions
regarding parking and transportation.
Most of these opinions rely on
increasing the use of public transit,
increasing the number of spaces on
campus or limiting passes to the
number of spaces available. They
are reasonable, with minds towards
effective use of public space and cost-
effectiveness.
I, however, would like to present
a different approach to solving this
issue. I believe the only way to solve
parking on campus once and for all is
to completely eliminate all on-campus
parking for students, faculty and staff
alike. This would allow us to eliminate
the issue of people parking on campus
without permits. If there are no spaces,
where would they park?
Additionally, many students have
had negative interactions with Campus
Safety in the past. If they have nowhere
to park, we could significantly cut their
ability to police campus. The dorm
denizens and patrol-fearing potheads
would be free from the crushing weight
of a few easily-avoided Campo mobiles.
Furthermore, it would allow for
greater revenue generation for the
school, as the housing prices could
be increased almost infinitely with no
fear of students deciding to live off
campus. If they cannot get here from
off campus, they have to pay!
The beauty of this plan lies in its
simplicity and low cost. It costs only
$1,190 per week to rent an excavator
that could very easily rip up all existing
concrete and asphalt on campus with
labor costs that can be significantly
reduced by giving students work-
study jobs to complete the removal.
This would have the extra added
incentive of more on-campus jobs for
students who would rather die than
work in the Bon.
Our campus already ranks highly
for most beautiful college campuses; just imagine what we could do with all
those ugly parking lots gone!
Now, some may argue that this
would place additional strain on
an already struggling public transit
system. To this, there is another simple
solution: We must also eliminate all
methods of public transit to campus,
including the Pio shuttle. If we are
to truly commit to eliminating the
transportation issue from this campus,
the only way to do so is to make it
utterly impossible to reach campus by
any motorized means.
This has the added benefit of further
reducing carbon emissions produced
by the school, and also assists the city
of Portland’s public transportation
system by simplifying routes and
reducing fuel costs.
Currently, some students are also
able to bike to campus. If we are to
ensure that the school can increase
costs of living, this must no longer be
an option. It may not necessarily be
essential to remove all bike storage and
lockup locations from campus, so long
as we put up a sufficient amount of red
tape to be able to use them.
We should also adopt a pay-per-use
system with bike racks, where students
must pay a fee to the school in order
to lock up their bikes. If not, bikes
could be ticketed and even confiscated
by campus security, leading to further
revenue generation opportunities.
Alternatively, we might adopt a permit
system for bikes, allowing students to
park their bikes on the basis of a per-
semester pass.
This option, however, could lead
to similar issues as we currently have
with cars. Thus we may be forced to
accept that the only solution here, as
for all previously mentioned methods
of transportation, is to eliminate all
bike racks from campus.
With no parking spaces, no public
transit and no bike racks, the school will
have solved the transportation issue by
making it impossible for students to
live off campus or even leave campus
by any other means than walking. In
doing so, we can completely solve the
problems associated with transit by
removing the ability to do so at all, and
further isolate ourselves from the rest
of the world.By KAIA EIKENBERRY
THIS PAST M onday , Lewis &
Clark faculty members voted
unanimously to ban students’
use of the phrase “I feel like” in class
discussions. As any conscientious
student knows, the issue had been
growing increasingly problematic
campus-wide. Monday’s vote came
following several reports by students
and professors of permanent brain
damage, hearing loss and debilitating
nightmares from repeated exposure to
the phrase.
“It is a struggle every day to go to
class,” said Indy LeGent ’25 before the
faculty vote. “I can feel those words
following me everywhere. ‘I feel like the
author meant this’ and ‘well, I feel like
this’ and ‘I disagree, I feel like—.’”
At this point in the interview, Gent
broke down. “Oh please make it stop, I’m
begging you.”
Professor Jean Eous shared with us
how students’ use of the phrase had even
affected his home life.
“It started to bleed over into my
children's’ vocabulary. Their principal
called me one day and told me I had
to come in for an emergency meeting.
Apparently, their constant use of ‘I
feel like’ in essays made their English
teacher cry … I cannot have that.
Monday’s vote was a deeply personal
matter,” Eous said.
So what exactly does the ban entail?
Simply put, students are allowed to use any phrase (please God, any phrase)
besides those dreaded words.
But it can take time to adjust to
new rules, which faculty understand.
Because of this, they graciously and
generously set up a tiered system for
enforcing the ban.
First offenders are simply given a
kind reminder after class. This gentle
approach is especially important given
that many students might not know
about the new ban, or might use the
phrase unconsciously or unthinkingly.
According to one professor, their go-to
strategy is to take students aside and
remind them that “you are smart and
capable and need to find better ways of
expressing yourself.”
Second offenders receive a slightly
harsher penalty, although it is still
very reasonable. Students can choose
whether to receive a failed grade on
their final paper/exam or will have to
stop wearing crocheted bucket hats,
completely 100% up to them. This
method was chosen, according to
professors, to mirror the permanent and
lasting effects that students’ words were
having on their peers and faculty.
Finally, in the unlikely event that a
student uses the dreaded phrase a third
time, their punishment will be handed
over to Mr. Consa Kwuences from
Facilities. He removes the offending
student from class, walks them to the JR
Howard elevator and sends them down
to the building’s Lower Level 9. There,
they emerge from the elevator into total darkness and are consumed by The
Great Beast, Destroyer of Souls, Red
Guardian of the Everlasting Pit.
Some people have affectionately
nicknamed the beast “Clifford,” due to
its vast size and vivid scarlet fur, but the
campus rumor mill has it the real name
is Seaman.
So, has the ban been successful?
It would appear so! The campus
community is already seeing fantastic
results. In the four days since Monday’s
vote, professors have reported a 90%
decrease in the use of “I feel like.” The
remaining 10% is expected to change
phrasing or shut up altogether.
It is not only the professors that are
pleased, though. Students say that they
feel “relieved” and “at peace with the
world once again.”
“You know, I had not realized how
much this issue was affecting me until
it was dealt with,” said Inna P. Ickle '27,
accompanying a student writer down to
Lower Level 9 so that they could take
notes on the Beast. “This is a seriously
impactful issue.”
The elevator doors opened onto the
gaping void occupied by the gargantuan
Good Boy.
“I don’t know, just, I feel like—” A
little stumble, a shriek, some slurping
noises. Blissful silence as the offending
student was ensnared in the Beast’s
tongue and consumed for the sin of
their speech.
In addition to everyone else, it would
seem that Clifford is pretty happy too. Unanimous faculty vote bans student's words
Parking pandemonium
particularly preventableGlacial proposal heats up future
human explorations into icebergs I feel like you do not understand how infuriating classroom discussion can be to listen to sometimes
HALCYON ORVENDAL/THE MOSSY LOG
ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN/THE MOSSY LOG