Lewis & Clark College

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

Volume 102, No. 3

Lewis & Clark College Student Newspaper

Pioneer Log Staff

2024-03-01

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Lewis & Clark College: Pioneer Log / Mossy Log

By LILLIAN SMALL
THE LEWIS & CLARK Law School
hosted the Oregon Innocence
Project (OIP) on Feb 20, which
focuses on innocence and criminal
justice law. Kenneth Kreuscher, managing
attorney, and Kassidy Hetland, staff
attorney, served as OIP representatives
during the event.
OIP was founded in 2014, and
according to their website, “launched
with a mission to exonerate the
wrongfully convicted, train law students
and promote legal reforms aimed at
preventing wrongful convictions.”
OIP is overseen by the Oregon
Justice Resource Center, which houses a
variety of programs targeted at reducing
mass incarceration and promoting
overall criminal justice reform.
The definition of innocence work was
a major topic of the presentation, as it
differs greatly from the work of criminal
defense. For one, the cases accepted
by OIP are coming from people who
have already gone through conviction,
and are seeking their last chance for
exoneration. After the inquiry, an
incarcerated convict typically fills out
a questionnaire that details their case
and OIP then assesses whether there is
a possibility to prove innocence. The process usually entails months
of case research, and if OIP staff are able
to find substantial evidence, they will
accept the case. However, sometimes
the convicts will provide the evidence
themselves. Kreuscher underlined the
importance of reviewing an inquirer’s
case before accepting, as the implications
of accepting a case where the convict was
not innocent would be detrimental to the
organization’s ethics and optics.
Once a case has been accepted, there
are several avenues OIP may take towards
exoneration after the initial appeal.
The first step is filing a direct appeal in
appellate court, challenging the decision
based on the fairness of the judge and jury
or the adequacy of the defense attorney. If
the direct appeals are not successful, the
convict can file for federal habeas relief,
which claims that the felon’s conviction
was obtained in violation of their federal
constitutional rights.
Kreuscher explained that habeas
relief is incredibly difficult to achieve
due to the Supreme Court’s narrowing
of protection under the constitution.
Another route is to seek clemency
relief, in which a governor, president or
administrative board can grant release
of the convict upon proof of innocence.
Hetland and Kreuscher asked the
audience what they thought might be the top causes of wrongful convictions.
Among the answers were faulty forensics,
police and jailhouse misconduct, false
confessions and systemic racism. The
discussion then delved into each of these
causes, elaborating on the different
impacts and histories they have.
Faulty forensics — particularly DNA
testing — were the original catalysts of
innocence work. Before the advancement
of forensic analytics, defense attorneys
could not rely on DNA evidence to
prove innocence. Since then, successful
exoneration cases exclusively dealt with
DNA evidence, and it has only been in
recent years that innocence work has won
cases on non-DNA grounds.
An attendee brought up the role of
systemic racism in wrongful convictions,
and while this reason is not a unanimously
agreed upon attribute in innocence work,
Hetland and Kreuscher both emphasized
the reality of systemic racism, particularly
in innocence work. Kreuscher explained
that racism can infiltrate every aspect of
the conviction; bias is present with judges,
juries and prosecutors, as well as in official
misconduct, identification and even in the
forensic analysis. Hetland illustrated the
effects of such biases in OIP’s most recent
exoneration case, that of Danyale Gill.
“OIP” continued on page 3.By SUMMER DAE BINDER
LEWIS & CLARK hosted the
Northwest Narrative Medicine
Collaborative (NWNMC) on
Feb. 24. with support from the Mellon
Foundation. Narrative medicine is
an interdisciplinary field bringing the
humanities into clinical practice and
healthcare in an effort to humanize
medicine and promote inclusive,
empathetic care.
The NWNMC held an all-day
Narrative Scribe Training for those
studying or practicing health-related
professions, those living with health
conditions, caregivers or anyone interested
in pursuing narrative medicine. The
training curriculum helps attendees
develop deep listening skills for stories
of health, illness and healing. The
curriculum is founded on the principle
that reflecting on listening and witnessing
can contribute to social change.
“(Our mission) is to create a
community that learns, practices
and teaches what to do with health
narratives and stories,” literature
provided at the event stated.
NWNMC’s President Elizabeth Lahti
came to speak at LC. She opened the talk
with her inspiration to start NWNMC,
which began with a phone call from the
mother of a young cancer patient.“She wanted to learn more about
what narrative medicine was because, in
her words, she was having a really hard
time processing what was happening
with her son in a way that was more
meaningful to who he was: a human,
and less of just a patient or a child with
cancer,” Lahti said.
She then explained the intentions
behind starting NWNMC.
“We decided to start the collaborative
basically as a way for patients and
their family members alongside health
professionals, like doctors, nurses
and social workers, to learn from and
about each other through experiences,
through stories. We can all create a
better healthcare setting and experience
if we listen really deeply (to) everybody
that is involved in a patient’s care,”
Lahti said.
The workshop was free of charge to
LC students who are enrolled in Health
Studies courses 210: Public Health or
345: Narrative Medicine Practicum.
It was available at a low cost to other
students and a higher cost for general
community members.
One of the attendants, LC alum and
Emergency Room Physician David Toovy
’85, appreciated the unique approach the
training has offered to students.
“SCRIBE” continued on page 3.Vol. 102 No. 3 FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024 www.piolog.com
The Mossy Pod
The Mossy Pod has its first episode
for the Spring 2024 semester! Host
Isaac Babus interviews the co-chairs
of the Gender Studies Symposium.
Tune in wherever you listen to
podcasts.OPINION
Revive Events
Student discusses old LC events such
as the Renaissance Fair and food trucks
should be revived.
PAGE 4FEATURES
Black History Month Events
In honor of Black History Month,
BSU and IME put on a wide variety of
events.
PAGE 6ARTS
Visiting Authors Series
Autofiction author, Claire Vaye Watkins,
reads on campus from her collection on
love, loss and soul searching.
PAGE 8 SPORTS
Football Clinic
The Football Team hosts student clinic,
allowing student body to participate in
drills and learn more about the game.
PAGE 11
By OLIVIA FENDRICH
ON MONDAY, Feb.19, the Lewis &
Clark History Department hosted
the 60th Annual Throckmorton
Lecture. This event brings some of the
most distinguished historians in the
United States to LC’s campus.
This year’s lecture featured Dr.
Kelly Lytle Hernández, professor and
chair of the history department at
University of California Los Angeles
(UCLA). Lytle Hernández is also
the founder of the research project
Million Dollar Hoods, which tracks
incarceration rates by neighborhood in
Los Angeles County and is associated
with the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center
for African American Studies.
LC Professor of History Elliott
Young introduced Lytle Hernández.
“It’s a great honor, privilege, to
introduce someone who I count as a
colleague, a friend and a comrade,”
said Young. “ I don’t say that for too
many people.”
Young praised the historical
relevance of untold stories, noting the
comprehensive research that went into
this study.
“The ‘rebel archive,’ as (Lytle
Hernández) calls it, that she mined to
be able to tell this story reminds us that
we have to look beyond the traditional
stories held by official state archives
and begin to explore the ways in which
marginalized people, including those
in cages and detention centers, have
told their own stories and organized to
survive,” Young said.
In a candid moment, Young bypassed the customary enumeration
of accolades, opting instead to
delve straight into the remarkable
achievements of Dr. Lytle Hernández.
“This is the point in the introduction
when I list 1,000 prizes most of you have
never heard of, so I’m going to skip that
part and just tell you that she won a lot
of awards including the Bancroft Prize
in American History. She was on the
longlist for the National Book Award
for Nonfiction for ‘Bad Mexicans,’
and as many of you might also know,
she was the winner of a MacArthur
Genius Award,” said Young. “I don’t
like the term ‘genius’ because it invokes a whole bunch of bad things from the
eugenics period, but Dr. Lytle Hernández’s
creativity, her thoughtfulness, and deep
research makes her a deserving recipient
of that prestigious honor.”
Young then invited Lytle Hernández
to begin her presentation. She started
by introducing her organization, Million
Dollar Hoods.
“We think about Million Dollar
Hoods as a people’s research project.
It’s a university-based but community-
driven academic initiative. Our goal
really is to abolish mass incarceration,
to end the era of mass incarceration,”
Lytle Hernández said.Lytle Hernández highlighted why
she chose to focus specifically on mass
incarceration in Los Angeles.
“Los Angeles has the largest jail
system on Earth. Why is that? I would
say it’s that LA is home to some of
the largest populations that are most
impacted by mass incarceration. The
largest Mexican population north of
the US-Mexico border, the largest
urban Indian population in the
US, the largest African American
population west of the Mississippi,
and the largest homeless/houseless
population anywhere in the country,”
Lytle Hernández said.
She said she felt she had a duty as
a historian to investigate this subject.
“I wanted to write a history from
the very, very beginning of human
caging, of incarceration in Los
Angeles, right up to the contemporary
moment,” she said.
Lytle Hernández launched into the
city’s history of incarceration.
“The very first people to experience
incarceration in LA were the indigenous
population. That’s where the story
begins in LA, and I would open up that it
probably begins very similarly across the
country, that mass incarceration begins
with targeted criminalization and caging
of indigenous peoples,” she said.
But she says that as she progressed
her research, she discovered something
that contradicted her worldview.
“The second story that I found really
shocked me,” she said. “So, the second
population after indigenous peoples to
be targeted for mass incarceration alike
were white men. At the turn of the 20th century, about 100% of LA County jail
was white men.”
Lytle Hernández went on to
explain that most of the white men
who were locked up represented the
unhoused population in LA who were
sequestered to separate the general
population from those they perceived
as genetically disadvantaged.
Lytle Hernández’s research continued
to dig into the systemic targeting of
specific demographics, like Chinese
immigrants who came to the U.S. in the
late 19th century.
“Then I found all these news stories
about Chinese immigrants being
targeted en route to deportation and
being detained in the local jail system.
You can go to jails all across the US
today and find immigrants who are
being detained en route to deportation,”
she said.
Lytle Hernández said that Mexican
radicals were then targeted and Mexicans
were incarcerated en masse.
However, after the 1920s, the story
shifted and became much more oriented
toward controlling the Black population
in Los Angeles.
“(There was) an incredible surge
of criminalization, policing of Black
populations in LA. There was a high
rate of lethality … The kind of violence
that people were experiencing in terms
of anti-Black policing in Los Angeles
was extraordinary.” she said.
Lytle Hernández explained the
established approaches to thinking
about mass incarceration.
“LYTLE” continued on page 3.UCLA professor presents on founding company, tracking rates of historic jail time for people of color
STELLA MORAN/THE MOSSY LOGEMMA FORD/THE MOSSY LOG
Kelly Lytle Hernández works on research with her self-started Million Dollar Hood.Throckmorton lecture addresses incarceration
Lawyers from Oregon Innocence
Project speaks to law studentsWorkshop on narrative
medicine centers caring
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
NEWS 2
By CAROLINE DREW
THE MCMENAMINS are no
strangers to the spotlight, nor to
interrogation. A year after their
40th anniversary and a ransomware
attack, the family-owned chain of
historically-renovated dining and
entertainment establishments is once
again at the center of controversy.
The U.S. Department of Labor
(DOL) has accused the company of
mismanaging $800,000 of tip money.
In a public statement quoted in Eater,
McMenamins did not deny the charge,
expressing a belief that they complied
with Oregon law when creating tip
pool structures.
“We’ve always complied with
Oregon law and fully distributed
the tip pool to eligible employees,”
their statement said. “This includes
our assistant and assistant-assistant
managers, who work alongside other
front-of-house employees to ensure
our guests have a great experience.
As hourly, entry-level, non-exempt
positions, they’re entitled to overtime
and a portion of the tip pool; it’s both
legal and appropriate.”
Tip money, and tip pools in
particular, have a long legal history in
Oregon. Several civil action lawsuits
have shaped Oregon’s approach to
tip delegation and sparked larger
national conversations about how tips
are collected and distributed. As such,
McMenamins may find themselves
becoming a site of further litigation,
as the DOL cannot demand that the
company reimburse their employees
for the misdirected funds.
In cafes and restaurants across the
country, tip pooling is not uncommon.
In fact, as a response to inflation,
increased concern over low-wage
worker’s rights and outdated wages and
benefits practices for service workers,
tip pooling has increased in popularity.
The practice typically entails gathering
all the tips given to an establishment
and dividing them among employees
according to hours worked.
Some businesses may employ
a more complex system of
reimbursement that considers labor
intensity and varying wages. This
system typically benefits cooks,
dishwashers and other back-of-house
staff. However, it puts the classic
philosophy of tipping in response to a
particular employee’s good service in
question. This philosophy continues
to impact serving culture across
America, especially as more of the
public becomes aware of tip pooling.
For Oregonian business owners,
the practice of tip pooling is
particularly enticing because tips
do not count toward the minimum
wage statewide. Restaurants, then,
are not legally required to use tips
to pay their waitstaff and can use
them, instead, to avoid giving raises,
salaries or benefits while continuing
to compensate employees.
Server Misty Cumbie sued a
Northeast Portland cafe in 2008 for
their practice of pooling tips which
increased pay for back-of-house
employees while leaving servers
under-compensated, according to an
interview with Wiser Waitress. Her
case made its way to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, where it lost
but still sparked policy action.
The resulting legislation declared
that businesses can pool tips as
long as everyone is paid at least
the minimum wage, and managers
cannot be included. Anyone who has
worked in the restaurant industry
might recognize an immediate
gray area here: Who is given the
title of manager and what their
work entails varies drastically from
business to business and, in the
case of McMenamins, from location
to location. Furthermore, many
employees work in more than one
capacity and may make a certain
amount for a shift served on the line
and a different amount for a shift in
their role as manager.
In 2020, the DOL specified that
the term “manager” refers to anyone
whose primary duty is managing the enterprise, directing other employees
and contributing substantially to hiring
or firing decisions. This definition
highlights the initial concern behind
excluding managers from tip pools: that
their supervisory power may lead them
to allocate tip money unfairly. Still,
managers’ duties are not universally
attributed and accountability practices
that may address these fears differ
across enterprises.
Current and past employees
of the Cedar Hills and Edgefield
McMenamins locations received a
letter from the DOL informing them of
their investigation and its findings. A
Reddit user posted a copy of the letter
the DOL has since confirmed. It claims
that $800,000 of tip money generated
at these locations thus ended up in the
pockets of assistant managers and
assistant-assistant managers instead
of lower-level employees.
The Oregon Restaurant and
Lodging Association (ORLA) provides
proprietors and the public with
updates on legislation changes and
court rulings surrounding tip pooling.
Many of their entries underline how
difficult deciphering these rules can
be. Jason Brant, president of ORLA,
spoke to Willamette Week about this
difficulty.
“In many of these operations,
especially counter-service models,
the people that are serving the guests
are interchangeable,” Brandt said.
ORLA recommends that businesses
should withhold tips from managers
and supervisors in all tip pools.
McMenamins is not the only
proprietor that stands accused of
mismanaging tips. The Oregon-based
pizza chain Pizzicato was similarly
charged last month, according to
Willamette Week. Willamette Week
also covered the story of a small
cafe owner who was confronted by
employees about the legality of her
tip pool. The owners of all three
establishments responded with
surprise and their respective logic
surrounding their tip system. While
McMenamins and Pizzicato have the
infrastructure to withstand the fines
and legal fees that may be incurred,
such an indictment likely spells closure
and debt for small restaurant owners.
McMenamins continues to refuse
to pay out the $800,000, but they
have changed their tip pool procedure,
according to an anonymous employee.
Though this employee does not work
at one of the locations targeted by
the DOL’s investigation and is not a
manager, they are now required to sign
off on tip distribution at the end of each
shift. When working as front-of-house
staff, employees now state the amount
they are willing to tip out to the kitchen
and other support staff and then record
the exact amount they are personally
owed. While it does not address the issue
of tipping management, this attempt at
collective and transparent payouts may
be the start of a new tipping trend.
The McMenamins name has
brought this issue to the attention
of business owners across Oregon if
they were not already aware. Many
restaurants, bars and cafes will
likely make similar changes to their
tip pooling policies in the coming
months in an attempt to stay ahead
of legal action. The consequences
of these rules for McMenamins,
Oregon’s restaurant industry and its
employees remain to be seen.McMenamins tip
pool spurs scandalHarm Reduction Club addresses
Portland’s growing fentanyl crisis
By EMMA AMBROZIAK
THE UNITED States has long
struggled with the opioid
epidemic. Fentanyl, a synthetic
opioid, has historically served as
an important drug in the medical
industry to treat severe pain, typically
in patients with advanced cancer.
The drug is 50 to 100 times more
potent than morphine. Over the past
ten years, the production of illicit
fentanyl has skyrocketed, infiltrating
communities across the nation and
exacerbating the opioid epidemic.
On Jan. 30, Governor Tina Kotek,
Multnomah County Chair Jessica
Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor
Ted Wheeler declared a 90 day state
of emergency to address downtown
Portland’s fentanyl crisis. The tri-
government emergency declarations
instruct state, county and city
officials to direct available resources
towards Portland’s drug crisis. As
cities across the country grapple
with approaches to the worsening
opioid epidemic, which is coming to
be known as the fentanyl crisis due to
the sheer number of fentanyl-related
overdoses, they are implementing
and experimenting with a number of
strategies — from decriminalization
efforts to drug restriction and
regulation to harm reduction.
A number of advocacy groups in
Portland focus on harm reduction as
a method of encouraging safer use
among communities where drug use
and abuse is more prevalent. Harm
reduction strategies can range from
safe syringe and injection practices,
to drug testing, to Naloxone (Narcan)
distribution to ensuring immunity from
criminal prosecution for administering
or distributing harm reduction
supplies. Among these groups is
Lewis & Clark’s Harm Reduction &
Community Outreach Club, which
serves two vital functions: the first
being the dispensation of educational
materials, harm reduction resources
and informational trainings on campus,
and the second being the social justice
or community outreach aspect which
connects Lewis & Clark students to
volunteer or advocacy opportunities in
the greater Portland area.
The Harm Reduction &
Community Outreach Club which
only established its footing last
semester, has grown significantly
over the course of four months.
With eight board members and
10 to 20 attendees showing up to
weekly club meetings, the club has
garnered enough support to begin
hosting more events, workshops and
trainings. Sarah Smith ’25, who co-
founded the club back in October,
spoke to the relevance of harm
reduction practices and education
within the LC community, noting the
club’s rapid expansion.
“We’ve started building a little bit of
a harm reduction community, which is
really great to see,” said Smith. “When
I started the club last semester, I didn’t
know what to expect, but I think that
people on campus really seem to
care about harm reduction and want
to get involved.”
An important part of ensuring
that club events and resources are
accessible has to do with the timing
of events and meetings. Earlier in the
year, the club considered organizing
a symposium, but ultimately decided
against it. Virginia Gray ’24, the
events coordinator, described
the reasoning behind the club’s
intermittent event model and how its
emphasis on accessibility aligns with
the club’s goals.
“We met with Kim Brodkin, who
runs the Ray Warren Symposium, and
she basically just made a really great
pros and cons list of the symposium
model vs. the intermittent event
model,” said Gray. “After that, we
decided that doing an event every
month would be more realistically
accessible for students to attend.”
Smith elaborated on the
importance of the intermittent
model in using limited resources to
prioritize accessibility throughout
the semester.“I think resources are limited
throughout campus, but especially in
our case, when we’re providing life
saving resources like Narcan, fentanyl
test strips, that should probably take
priority over a symposium,” Smith
said. “That was a lot of the draw for us,
wanting to make sure it was accessible.
We also wanted to leave space for these
other really great symposiums that are
happening this semester.”
The Harm Reduction & Community
Outreach Club has already hosted
a number of events this semester,
including a Harm Reduction and
Alcohol Safety Night in Stewart
Hall, an informal CPR training and a
screening of virtual volunteer training
for the Portland People’s Outreach
Program (PPOP). On Feb. 29, the
club hosted a screening of “Love in
the Time of Fentanyl,” followed by a
discussion about overdose prevention
centers. The intimate documentary
explores the scene of Vancouver,
Canada, in which the Overdose
Prevention Society responds to
the city’s overdose crisis and looks
beyond the widespread stigma that
poses barriers to recovery for those
experiencing active addiction.
Students can look forward to
the many events the club will be
offering this spring semester, some of
which will train students to respond
confidently to emergency situations
and educate the community about
the principles and practices of harm
reduction. In addition to intramuscular
and intranasal Naloxone training,
drug testing training and volunteer
certification training, the club will
begin hosting CPR training for all
those who are interested.
“We’re going to host official
certifications and pay for people to get
certified,” said Smith. “We’re doing it
with the head athletic trainer who is able
to certify people. We’re using part of our
budget — and then the Paddle Club and
the Center for Social Change are also
going to be involved in that — so it’s kind
of a big collaboration.”
Molly Atkinson, ’24, a board
member, noted that a CPR
certification typically costs around
$55 per person, and that they are
hoping the Associated Student Body’s
Finance Committee will honor their
appeal for more funding to cover
these costs completely.
“Ideally, we would want to be able
to pay for almost all of that for any
student that wants to attend, or at
least half,” Atkinson said. “We have
appealed and we’re waiting to hear
back about budgets so we can pay for
the CPR certifications of our students,
so it’s a completely free resource,
which is what our goal is as a club.
That’s also why we are planning to
partner with Paddle Club and Center
for Social Change, to really try and
make sure that this is completely
accessible and free to anyone who
wants to do it.”
Another potential event to look
forward to could be a multi-department
faculty panel.
“Relying on faculty instead of
outsourcing several thousand-dollar
speakers is something we’re interested
in,” said Gray.
Gray shared that they have been
collaborating with other groups, such
as Resident Advisors, Campus Safety,
athletic programs and the Feminist
Student Union (FSU), to distribute
resources across campus.
The board members also spoke
about their goal of connecting students
to off-campus volunteer opportunities.
“We’re the Harm Reduction &
Community Outreach Club, so there
is a community outreach aspect of
it,” said Smith. “Volunteering out in
Portland, getting involved, that is
really important.”
Smith noted that several
organizations offer both outreach and
in-reach opportunities for volunteers,
which allows those who are more
hesitant about working with people
who use drugs in Portland to help in
other ways.
“Some great organizations in
Portland are Central City Concern,
Outside In and PPOP,” said Smith.Harm reduction is an increasingly
important yet controversial topic
in the context of the United States’
overdose epidemic. Overdose
prevention strategies face widespread
stigma and are still relatively
unfamiliar to many communities.
“We have a lot of Narcan and
fentanyl test strips and other harm
reduction supplies in our locker,” said
Gray. “We offer them to people, and I
think sometimes that people will say
no because they think that somebody
else should have it instead of them,
because they don’t view themselves as
being at risk to be in a situation where
somebody that they know is in crisis,
but everybody does need it.”
The innocent bystander effect plays
a role in the prevention of overdose
deaths, even before individuals find
themselves in an emergency situation.
The assumption that other people will
have Narcan on hand, be CPR certified
or have the knowledge necessary
to intervene in a crisis discourages
individuals from seeking out and
keeping life-saving resources on hand.
“Whether or not you think that
you’ll be in that situation or not, you
probably will be. We have been. We
used Narcan from Harm Reduction
Club to reduce an overdose like five
days ago. It was somebody we didn’t
know, at 10 p.m., in a place where you
wouldn’t think,” said Gray. “It’s okay to
accept what we’re offering. It’s free and
it’s for you. It’s not for somebody else.”
Atkinson related the club’s work to
the greater surrounding community.
“Oregon has been declared a state
of emergency by the mayor as of Jan.
30, because of the Fentanyl crisis,” they
said. “So yeah, we are bigger than just
students at our school. We are active
community members … At this point,
I think it’s applicable to everyone just
because of where we live.”
Those on campus may have seen
club members handing out harm
reduction pamphlets, fentanyl testing
strips and Narcan over the past few
weeks or may have walked by the FSU
office, where supplies are perpetually
in stock.
“The Narcan in our locker is not
saving anyone’s life,” stated Gray.
“And it totally could be.”
Being an active community
member during the opioid epidemic
means taking preemptive action and
learning basic life-saving skills. Think
of carrying Narcan around as carrying
around pepper spray, an inhaler, an
Epipen or tampons. You may not
need it and may not expect to use
it, but it may help someone else. In
some situations, it may even mean the
difference between life and death.
“It’s a little frightening, to
take Narcan and think that you’re
assuming responsibility for yourself
like, ‘It is now my responsibility to
give this to someone,’” said Atkinson.
“At least having it, you can give it to
someone else to give to someone else
to prevent an overdose … Our club
can tell you things that you’ll want
to know about harm reduction. How
to reverse an overdose outside of just
using Narcan. How to talk to 911. If
you come to our CPR certification,
how to know if someone’s breathing
is regular or not. (These things)
aren’t super necessary to our lives,
until they really are.”
Harm reduction is an overdose
prevention strategy that requires
commitment, accountability and
open-mindedness.
“At the end of the day, we’re at a
higher education institution, and we
all know that education is power, and
we’re just trying to empower students
with education,” said Gray.
The board members provided
valuable insight into the work that
they are doing alongside other
Portland programs. The club’s
emphasis on both the educational
and the community outreach aspects
of harm reduction approaches a
relevant issue from multiple angles.
Their intentional use of limited
resources and their commitment
to teaching life-saving skills has
already saved lives, and will continue
to do so. ANDREW OLMSTED/THE MOSSY LOGNEWS 3FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
Continued from page 1.
“Typically, there are two ways to
think about mass incarceration and its
origins. One, there’s all this urbanization
that happens in the 19th century, people
move into cities and all these unemployed
people become these wandering masses
and they’re a problem, right? So in a
Marxist analysis of mass incarceration,
you start to criminalize and lock up all
those unemployed and underemployed
folks,” Lytle Hernández said. “Ok, fair
enough, a lot of books have been written
about mass incarceration as far as that
perspective but that wasn’t what I was
seeing in my archive.”
Lytle Hernández explained that
there was another, more popular way of
thinking about mass incarceration that
she saw used to analyze the trends that
drove American incarceration.
“The second way of thinking about
mass incarceration is the origins
around what we call racial capitalism.
In particular, the plantation-to-prison
pipeline,” she said. “That, first, you have
the emancipation of African Americans,
the enslaved, and then you have the rise
of mass incarceration to create slavery
by another name: to effectively recreate
the conditions of enslavement of Black
folks, namely in the U.S. South and
across the country as well, through the
prison regime.”
She then described how these
approaches did not fully explain the
phenomena that she was uncovering.
“I don’t disagree with either of
those, the Marxist approach or the
racial capitalist approach … But what
I was seeing was something a little bit
more,” she said.
Lytle Hernández then proposed
another explanation for the patterns of
incarceration in the U.S.
“There’s all these conversations going
on in the academy now and in the last
20 to 30 years about settler colonialism,
and of a forced colonization that’s unique
because settlers would come in and they’re
not looking to just dominate labor, right,
or to extract resources. That’s two major
prompts to colonization. But another
major prompt is just to take land and to
replace the indigenous population with
a new settler community that is racially
homogeneous and sexually reproductive,
that doesn’t need any external folks to
come in,” she said.
This line of inquiry was intriguing to
Lytle Hernández.
“I started thinking, well what if mass
incarceration is actually forced mass
elimination? A way of, first, targeting
and removing the indigenous population,
which then gets replaced by a white
settler community, and as additional
communities start to come in, or try to
come in, you criminalize (them), you lock
them up, to move them off the streets.
So that could be the tramps and the
hobos, that could be Chinese immigrants
and Mexican immigrants and certainly
African Americans who migrate free into
the West, right?” she asked.
Upon realizing this, Lytle Hernández
started considering what actions she
could take next.
“So what’s my responsibility? What
am I going to do as a scholar? If I now
think about mass incarceration and mass
elimination which unsettles me so, am
I just going to keep teaching my little
classes at the university? Or am I going to
join the movement on the frontlines and
try to do something about this regime?
And to be honest, I had to get organized,”
she said. “I had to join the organizers
and the activists, the people who are
embedded in the movement to end mass
incarceration as mass elimination.”
She says that the abolitionist
organizers in LA knew who was getting
arrested, but they had little access to
information regarding why the charges
were against so many people from
marginalized communities. That’s when
Lytle Hernández realized it was her job
as a scholar to step up and acquire that
crucial data.
“That’s what we do, right, as scholars,
because we get evidence, we get data,
we use the letterhead of our institutions
to go to these other institutions and
say ‘I’m here with a research project,
I wanna submit a FOIA request or
California Public Records Act request,
I want you to give me the data because
you’re legally bound to do that,’” Lytle
Hernández said.
She discussed the ensuing settlement’s
yield and the details of the data.
“All we got was about more than 54
million data points at this point,” she said humorously. “But it’s about really 27
categories of data. We get the name, the
address, the height, the weight, eye color,
the charges and more of every person that
has been arrested in Los Angeles by the
Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) or
the LA Sheriff’s Department since 2010.”
That was when Lytle Hernández
decided to start Million Dollar Hoods
in order to map incarceration across
Los Angeles.
“We started to map who was getting
incarcerated and where, and we found
over 30 neighborhoods in Los Angeles
where local authorities were spending
more than a million dollars per year
locking folks up in the jail system.
Those are the Million Dollar Hoods.
They’re disproportionately black,
they’re disproportionately brown and
disproportionately impoverished. No
surprise there,” she acknowledged. “But
we also provided, for the very first
time, a public list of the charges of
sending people to jail.”
These charges showed a concerning
pattern within the system.
“We found in every single one but one
neighborhood that there were two charges
sending people into the jail system;
possession of narcotics and driving under
the influence — both substance-related
issues,” Lytle Hernández stated.
Lytle Hernández’s team examined
the total cost of incarceration as it affects
specific Los Angeles neighborhoods.
“So we made the argument that if
you’re spending $80 million per year
up in the Lancaster neighborhood to
lock people in those jails, how about
taking that money and putting it
into counseling services to support
services that families need to get
stronger?” she said.
She started to gather her findings to
present them to people who could use
their insights.
“We started to develop two-page
reports to be able to give to politicians
who make decisions about these city jails
and county jails,” Lytle Hernández said.
One such report examined the total
cost of bail being paid to LAPD.
“We found that African Americans
paid $10 million in bail in the city of LA,
not the county of LA, in just one year. We
disproportionately found that money was
being paid out of the most impoverished
neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” she said.
That money, Lytle Hernández
continued, is primarily paid by women
and mothers.
“Women pay bail. To get sons out,
to get partners out and other folks out.
The money that moms in the most
impoverished neighborhoods in Los
Angeles are taking to pay for bail, for
someone’s right to freedom, won’t be
going to rent. Or transportation. Food.
God-forbid music lessons for their
children,” she said.
Lytle Hernández’s reports were aided
by an abolition campaign in LA which
resulted in the Los Angeles School Police
Department’s budget being cut by 30%
and the funds reallocated to a Black
student achievement plan.
“We created a dashboard so people
can create their own reports. So now
you will go to the Million Dollar Hoods
website and you want to create your own
report that is created by or authored by
your name or your organization. Then
people take these reports, they take it
to their local representative and they
argue for what they actually need,” Lytle
Hernández said.
Then, she played a clip from several
of Million Dollar Hoods’ oral histories
of residents’ experiences with abuse and
mistreatment at the hands of the LAPD
and Los Angeles jail system.
“We’ve collected almost 300 oral
histories from community members in
terms of their experiences with mass
incarceration, either by growing up in
a Million Dollar Hood, having a parent
who has been arrested or killed by the
police themselves, experiencing state
violence,” she said.
In 2020, amidst a pandemic and mass
criticism of the police in conjunction
with the Black Lives Matter movement,
Million Dollar Hoods decided to change
their strategy.
“We decided it was time to move
away from the data visualizations and the
data analytics. No one needed any more
data about the disparities, it was clear,
we didn’t need to argue that point. We’d
like to move toward archiving the age of
mass incarceration,” she said. “We’re at
this hinge point in history, it’s time to
slow down and make sure that we have
all people’s stories, all the information, so that 100 years from now, when
people come to tell a story about who
dismantled mass incarceration and
how, we will have created our own
archive. It won’t be the state saying
what happened, we will create our own
narrative and leave it to our descendants
to tell that story.”
Lytle Hernández then introduced the
project that Million Dollar Hoods has
more recently taken on.
“So, a couple years ago, I sued the
LAPD and won,” she said.
Lytle Hernández explained that she
sued the department for violating the
California Public Records Act.
“LAPD settled the lawsuit and in that
settlement, they gave us about 176 boxes
of LAPD historical files that they had
refused to make public,” she said.
Lytle Hernández said that sorting
through the records in these files became a
part of Million Dollar Hoods’ new mission.
“Our focus is on abolition and
abolitionists, for the most part, but
sometimes you have to understand the
machine that you’re fighting, right?”
she said.
But studying these records does not
just yield knowledge about the police.
“We do it to study policing, but also
to study the tactics of abolition that have
worked in the past and we want to carry
forward. We do this work to rebel, to
make claims and make public the harms
committed against our communities.
We do this work to collectively grieve
together people who have been stolen
from us,” she said.
Amidst the turbulent geopolitics
of today, Lytle Hernández argues that
her organization is working to create
something out of this suffering.
“We are builders in an era of collapse,”
she said.
Lytle Hernández then discussed the
categories that her organization sorted
these files into. She focused on one
category in particular, labeled “Police
Equals Violence.”
“‘Police Equals Violence’ is a bunch
of records that have to do with all kinds
of violence perpetrated by the LAPD
against community members. It is an
extraordinarily difficult collection for us
to go through,” she said. “We work very,
very slowly and we’re collectively able to
move through this.”
Lytle Hernández detailed several
cases of police brutality exercised
against Los Angeles residents, and in
particular, people of color. The details
of these cases were contained in the
files Million Dollar Hoods possesses,
describing the immense violence and
death that people of color experienced
at the hands of the LAPD.
She said that the uncovered records
revealed that the LAPD asked a scientist
to examine a chokehold which the LAPD
was banned from using after several
deaths occurred to assess if the deaths
were due to the chokehold.
When the scientist deduced that
the deaths in question were caused by
this chokehold, the LAPD countered
that the deaths were actually due to
substance use or sickle cell anemia and
barred the scientist from coming forth
about his findings.
“The LAPD suppressed findings that
they were killing Black men with this
tactic and then proceeded for the next
20 years to fight to get the moratorium
lifted,” she said.
As for the next steps for Million Dollar
Hoods, Lytle Hernández is not certain of
what the future may hold.
“Okay, so what are we doing with all
this? We’ve got the data. We’ve got maps,
we’ve got the oral histories, we’ve got
the artifacts, we’ve got LAPD files. We’re
not entirely sure yet; this is an organic,
iterative process. We’re figuring it out,”
she said.
Regardless, the organization’s findings
have initiated crucial conversations about
how to collectively heal from the trauma
instilled by mass incarceration.
“We’ve had conversations about
having tribunals and talking about
reparations for items and wealth and
people who’ve been stolen from us,” Lytle
Hernández said.
As discussions around mass
incarceration reach a crescendo, it
becomes increasingly evident that
the archive’s impact will extend far
beyond scholarly inquiry.
“Once the archive drops in June, we
will move toward the implementation
phase of what we’ve learned from this
archive and how we can help to build
this age of abolition from this archive of
mass incarceration,” she said.Continued from page 1.

In March of 1994, Gill, a Black
high school student, was visiting his
Uncle in Northeast Portland when
an armed robbery occurred. Gill was
wrongly identified onsite by police as the
perpetrator and convicted for attempted
murder, assault and unlawful firearm use.
During his trial, the prosecutor incited
reductive and blatantly racist narratives
targeted at the majority-white jury,
referring to Gill and others as “young thugs
shooting bullets at one another.” He also
used fear mongering statements asserting
that gun crime is something that white
and affluent neighborhoods need to worry
about, saying, “It happens everywhere and
it’s coming to your community.”
The victim of the robbery was not
present at the trial and later would testify
that Gill was not the shooter. There were
several other witnesses who confirmed
Gill’s innocence, and it was widely
known in the Black community who had
committed the crime.
Despite the evidence of his innocence,
Gill was sentenced to three years of
prison and upon release, had to deal with
the harsh realities of being a Black man
with a criminal record. Struggling with
finances, housing and substance abuse,
Gill was arrested again in 1998, and this
time received a sentence that was set
through 2042.
In 2007, Gill filed for a new trial after
acquiring an affidavit from the actual
shooter admitting to the original crime
and a witness who was with the shooter at
the time of the crime. The court denied the
filing due to untimeliness.
It was in 2018 that OIP took on Gill’s
case, extensively interviewing his family
and community members to confirm his
innocence. They also worked with a DNA
analyst to re-examine a strand of hair
that had been used as evidence in the
initial trial. At the time, DNA technology
matched the hair to Gill’s blood, but newer
developments in the field of forensics
found that the hair would have matched
up to 15% of African Americans.
OIP argued in post-conviction court
for the dismissal of the sentencing for the
1994 crime and subsequent adjustment
for the later 1998 sentencing. The court
remanded the sentence, and in September
2023 Gill was finally released from prison.
Racial bias was evident in the
prosecution of the initial trial and the
misidentification of Gill as the shooter. It
can be similarly attributed to the treatment Gill faced after being released for the first
time, from housing and employment
discrimination to over-policing in his
neighborhood. Even at the microscopic
level, the lack of research surrounding
African American DNA led to a wrongful
generalization that was used as evidence
presented to a jury.
With many current law students in
attendance at their presentation, Hetland
and Kreuscher spoke to the day-to-day
work of being an innocence lawyer, as
well as coping with the mental and ethical
dilemmas specific to the field.
Lawyers for OIP “provide 24 hour,
wraparound services” to their clients,
said Kreuschner, which can be taxing.
Due to the nature of the client seeking
post-conviction relief, conversations with
clients can be intense.
“When these folks call me, they are
often going through the worst moments of
their lives,” said Kreuscher.
Kreusher also spoke about what it
takes to be an innocence lawyer.
“In order to be effective, most
people have to engage in functional
compartmentalization. I know people who
for one reason or another struggled with
separating themselves from their work,
and many of these people are not lawyers
anymore,” Kreuscher said.
Hetland emphasized the complex
emotions involved with cases.
“Even when you win a case in
innocence work, it’s still terrible,” said
Hetland. “Someone still was locked up
for a crime that they didn’t commit. It’s
bittersweet.”
Kreuscher focused on the potential
to influence future cases with each
exoneration. In accordance with the
historical trend, as more cases are added
to the National Registry of Exonerations,
prosecutors and District Attorneys are
becoming more willing to review cases.
OIP has several internship
opportunities for law students, as well as
volunteer opportunities for a myriad of
skill levels. You can learn more about the
work of OIP on their website, as well as
OJRC on theirs.
Continued from page 1.
“It is just enjoyable for me. It is (a)
time to reflect and have fun and connect
with a younger cohort of people interested
in social justice with some kind of focus in
health, whether that is community health,
population health, or specific provider-
patient health,” said Toovy.
Among the tables spread out in Smith
Hall, attendants were able to talk to
seven different facilitators who worked
in various professions, from substance
use treatment to clinical instruction.
They asked facilitators how they use
narrative medicine in their practices.
The collaborative also had speakers
come and talk about their experiences
with narrative medicine.
“The speakers have been dedicated
to this for a long time and have been
very passionate about this. They are
presenting with zeal and they are
engaging and they are interesting,”
said Toovy. “There is not just one
person, which is nice. It is different
personalities, each one trying to hone in
on one perspective of this concept.”
Many students who attended the
training understood narrative medicine
through not only their intended
professional careers, but also as patients
on the receiving end. Ezra Atha ’25
explained what drew them to the training.
“Narrative medicine is something
that I hope to potentially apply if I end
up being a therapist, but also from a
patient standpoint. Unfortunately,
I have experienced this side of the
medical world where I feel very ignored. My body feels ignored,” said Atha.
“Narrative medicine can change patient
and provider interaction (and) can
improve … how people can feel seen in
any sense of the word ... bringing that so
people do not have to experience what I
have experienced.”
Throughout the training, participants
took part in modules on equal positioning
and repeating what they hear to practice
facilitation as a listener in the healthcare
setting. The positionality module focused
on how power, privilege and identity can
impact a sense of community within the
medical system.
Narrative Scribe Training intends to
bring a shared experience and humanity
to individuals who are managing illness
while simultaneously bringing their loved
ones into the dialogue. By exploring
interdisciplinary approaches to medical
care, the practice embraces differences,
bettering the future of medicine for
patients and healthcare practitioners alike. Lytle Hern ández highlights
achievement in suing LAPD OIP details case with
faulty DNA evidence
Scribe training teaches
empathy, patient storiesCOURTESY OF OIP
Danyale Gill is free after 25 years in jail.
COURTESY OF NWNMCSave
Student
Media!
Sign this petition to show your
support in raising the Student
Media Fee so our organizations
can keep functioning!By EMMA FORD
IT IS NOT A secret that technology
can be scary. Is this reductive?
Perhaps. But it truly can be an
unsettling prospect to consider
how far and fast we have advanced
technologically. To see how removed
we can make ourselves from the
discomfort and inconvenience of
living can be to see how far we remove
ourselves from the discomforts and
inconveniences of living.
Artificial intelligence (AI) sparks
this fear in us like little else. To imagine
a computer thinking like we might
rankles our sensibilities, and it frightens
us to think what that computer could be
capable of in our stead.
The Luddites understood the risks of
technology. Arising out of the working
class of garment manufacturers in the
Industrial Revolution, this movement
of anti-technology was in many ways a
recognition of the capacity for technology
to be used to replace the working man.
By smashing manufacturing machines
and destroying symbols of progress,
the Luddites cemented their commonly
understood place in history as those
who feared technology.
I make no claim that our professors
fear something like ChatGPT. I doubt
that, at least in the forefront of their
minds, it is little more than a frustration
that their students may decide doing
one’s own work is no longer worth
it, with a far easier option at their
fingertips. But why have we assumed
that AI is only a tool for cheating?
What about it made us overlook its
potential as a tool to improve us in
academia, outside of the classrooms of
computer science?
I would argue that a greater
comparison could be drawn between The
Luddites resentment of our interaction
with technology with their potential
capabilities and our professors. After all, an individual with a unique and carefully
honed skill set attempting to pass it on to
the next generation would rightfully see
the incursion on that process as insulting
and denigrating to their work.
My argument is not that professors
should allow students to turn in
plagiarized work so that they can avoid
accusations of Luddism. Consigning
ChatGPT to be a cheating tool and
nothing more allows resentment to cloud
creativity. And creativity, at its finest,
brings out the potential in all things.
But what if technology destroys
writing? I would argue that if used
creatively, it could enhance our
abilities. This would not be the first
art form to fear advancement as being
potential destruction. Art has survived
technology before — take this example.“Giant Steps,” by John Coltrane,
features Art Taylor playing drums as
part of what has been described as one
of the most feared compositions in jazz.
Its tempo and variety are incredibly
difficult for a musician to master, and
yet in spite of its mastery it sounds
distinctly human.
In contrast, the sounds of New
Order’s “Blue Monday” come not from
an individual playing drums but from
a drum machine. The track has none of
the room for human imperfection that
“Giant Steps” does. Instead, it creates
a wholly unique product that has been
lauded as one of the greatest club tracks
of all time.
“Giant Steps” could, theoretically,
be programmed into a drum machine.
Art Taylor could be taught the repetitive rhythms of Blue Monday.
But why would one do that? Each
artist used their own unique tools and
techniques to create the art that they
felt compelled to create. They were
given access to tools, and with those
tools they made enduring classics that
sound completely different from each
other that were both allowed to occupy
places of honor in the canon of modern
music. That is a good thing.
The average student may never
produce the academic paper equivalent
of a song ranked among Rolling Stone’s
“Greatest Of All Time.” That does not
mean they should not be given a choice
of tools in pursuit of the papers they
will write. Whether they want their
“drumsticks” or their “drum machine,”
they are going to need something. Teach them how best to use it. There must be
positive uses for AI in academic writing.
How are we to find them if we do not
begin to look? We can be better than our
fears and our disdain, and incorporate
all tools available to better suit the
unique students that populate our halls.
I urge my professors — the more you
keep hammering into our heads that
ChatGPT is only good to cheat with, the
stronger the association will grow. It is
not too late to start using AI as a tool
for learning.
Unlike the music industry, which is
famously resistant to new technology
until it is overwhelmed by it, we in
academia could do what we are here to
do and learn from this. When we begin
to be creative, we make the tools of the
future our own.
By JESSIE SHAW
REED COLLEGE is notorious for
its wild Renaissance Fair known
as “Renn Fayre” which features
burning senior thesis notes to having
relay races with students running
naked and covered in blue paint. Yet
many do not know that Lewis & Clark
also used to have a Renaissance Fair,
albeit less over-the-top than Reed’s,
which was unfortunately discontinued
in the ’80s.
While the Renaissance
Fair may be a
costly event, the
administration
should consider
bringing it back,
along with other
past events such
as the Food
Truck nights.
Although
LC hosts other
events like the
International Fair
and a myriad of
symposiums,
they are mostly
academic-focused
with the purpose of
educating students
on topics like
race, gender and
politics. Besides
these events,
LC’s offerings
include the
Fall Ball and
Spring Fling, as well as more minor
activities like game nights, parties
and activity or craft nights, often put
on by student organizations.
Despite these efforts, Fall Ball and
Spring Fling are the most well-known
events for student amusement,
while club-level activities are often overlooked. Other major events are
usually exclusive to staff, alumni,
donors, student unions or for incoming
new students like New Student
Orientation (NSO).
While I usually enjoy both Fall Ball
and Spring Fling, they are not entirely
different from the fun events I went to
at my elementary, middle
and high schools. Fall
Ball acts more like
a traditional high
school prom,
while Spring Fling
varies from a
carnival to a
dance.
B y
contrast,
Renaissance
fairs are a
more unique
experience. They
will usually have
food and drink
stands, fashion
shows and Live
Action Role
Playing. Most
participants
would wear
costumes,
from just a
simple
cloak
to cosplaying mythical creatures like
elves or fairies. If LC were to bring back
the Renaissance Fair, it may require
budget cuts to other events or even
eliminating them entirely to reallocate
their limited budget. I would not support eliminating the
Fall Ball, Spring Fling, International
Week or the academic symposiums
just to bring back the Renaissance Fair,
as they are too iconic or important to
our school. However, I will support
eliminating or making cuts to more
minor events to fund the Fair.
Although having the Renaissance
Fair would be fun, it should not be the
only activity LC should bring back.
I remember during the fall semester
of last year when the ASB ordered a
food truck to come on campus every
other Friday evening as an alternative
to the Trail Room, which was closed
multiple nights a week as construction
on Fowler Student Center was
wrapping up.
Each of these nights had a different
food truck, serving various cuisines from
Mediterranean to Polynesian dishes.
Since I am not the biggest fan of Bon
food, I was delighted to have something
different for the Friday evenings. The
only negative was that the lines to the
food trucks were very long. Still, trying
new cuisines from some of Portland’s
best food trucks made the wait well
worth it.
Unfortunately, ASB discontinued
ordering the food trucks the following
spring semester when the Troom became
fully operational. While it may have been
costly to order a food truck every Friday
evening, I would be delighted if ASB
brought them back, even just once every
two weeks or every month.
Overall, I think LC should bring
back the Renaissance Fair, even if it
may be expensive and require scaling
back other events. Furthermore, I
also think the Friday night food trucks
should come back. Both events could
bring students and staff together to
enjoy a day or evening where they can
dress up, do fun activities and try out
exciting new cuisines.FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
OPINION 4
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed in the Opinion section are NOT those of The Mossy Log and are held by the authors.J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOG
ROSE BIALK/THE MOSSY LOGChatGPT offers learning tools beyond cheating
LC should reallocate funding,
revive decommissioned eventsProfessors must not write off use of online resources as plagiarism, instead teach ways to utilize creatively
ANDREW OLMSTED/THE MOSSY LOG
By ROBERT MANGER
AS WE TRANSITION out of the
public health emergency that
was the COVID-19 pandemic,
the endemic persists, and with it the
typical maladies that have plagued
the globe for millennia. Yet, just as
we overcame the hurdles that living
within a contemporary pandemic
placed before us, it is imperative
that we remain cognizant of the
health consequences that all too lax
behaviors present.
I am in no way advocating for
a return to the national policies
put in place to prevent the spread
of coronavirus. However, with flu
season affecting a large proportion
of faculty and students as of late,
and midterms in full swing, we ought to ensure the implementation
of a few standard practices within
our community if we wish to
maintain the health or our peers and
immunocompromised friends.
Let us say you wound up sick.
Perhaps long nights burning the
midnight oil made you more
susceptible to the inevitable bug,
or your eyes were particularly itchy
recently. Whatever the case, here are
some things we can all do to ensure
renewed health and the continuation
of such for our broader community.
I will start by beating the dead horse:
Please cover your mouth when coughing
or sneezing as, according to the CDC, this
is the easiest mitigation to implement.
With the scientific advancements of the
past centuries, we are all familiar with
the general etiology of bacterial and viral diseases and this one truly should go
without saying.
As elementary as it is, the National
Library of Medicine reminds us
that a solid soapy scrub between
the fingers and nails is one of the
most effective ways of mitigating the
risk of bacterial and viral infection
which can commonly be cut short or
overlooked entirely in our efforts to
return to books or exams. This can be
particularly important, as touching
the face is one of the most ordinary
ways of catching the common cold.
Secondly, call out sick. I know,
missing class or work can be far from
ideal, but the truth of the matter is that
your professors, peers and employers
will all appreciate your proactive steps
in increasing their comfort and reducing
the spread of illness. I am sure that the
community we all hold dear would be
pleased to accommodate you by sharing
lecture notes and assignment due dates
until you recover. An obvious bonus is
that you can remain in bed watching
“The Tourist,” drinking tea all the while.
When calling out sick proves
particularly difficult due to financial
stress or other reasons and though
all attendance policies should be
understanding of such, if you must
show up then strap on the mask. Despite
naysayers, most contagions such as
the coronavirus are spread through
droplets which are unlikely to penetrate
even a surgical-grade mask according to
the National Library of Medicine.
Other students also have things to
say when it comes to preventing the
spread of disease.
“Drink some fluids, dude. Get some
Pedialyte. Being sick is your body’s
way of telling you to slow down,” said
Miri Mason ’25.
At the end of the day, the occasional
sneeze, sniffle or cough in front of others
is inevitable, but certain measures
can ensure the likelihood of others’
well-being and eschew the dreaded
lockdowns of yesteryear.
By ROBERT MANGER
TO SAY THE world is changing
rapidly these days is an
understatement. With far more
than the necessary computational
power for space flight in our pockets
and the inception of ChatGPT, the
global spread of information has never
been more fast-paced. We have all heard about how technological change
may affect jobs in the future, but have
probably not stopped to think long
about the sheer number of occupations
that will be altered.
Naturally, this thinking led me
to the brink of an existential crisis.
More importantly, this got me to
determine what careers are least
likely to be affected and which fields an undeclared major may steer away
from. Here are my recommendations
for a few occupations that are
probably not going anywhere yet, and
some professions that may disappear
within our lifetimes.
Equip your anti-blue light lenses and
consider becoming a computer scientist
or researcher for once. It seems as
though continued demand for scientific professions will remain, as the STEM
field is projected to grow as much as
10% in the coming decade, according to
the U.S. Department of Labor.
But what if you are not into
crunching numbers, designing
experiments or writing code? I admit
that I come from bias here as a psych
major, but clinical psychology appears
to be a professional field that will
continue to be around for a long time.
For one thing, the population is
bound to be under much distress for
the foreseeable future and the care of
humans by humans is unlikely to be
secondary to chatbots anytime soon.
Therapy is something that is
intrinsically done between people,
and even the most remarkable robot
would likely propagate an unhealthy
attachment between humans and
artificial support systems.
In addition to psychologists,
dentists, nurses and doctors are
generally safe from layoffs, according
to Business Insider. Artists, as well as
judges and lawyers, can likewise rest
assured of continued job security.
As the World Economic Forum
indicates, companies are generally
looking for analytical thinking,
creativity, resilience and curiosity,
all of which a liberal arts education
can provide.
Despite the speculated reliability
of these fields, the future of many
other professions is anyone’s guess.
Some statistics indicate that drivers,
commercial or business, are expected
to decrease with self-driving cars
becoming omnipresent, according to
Forbes. From accountants and data
entry clerks to fast food and factory
workers, the more I looked, the more
I realized just how many different
professions will be vulnerable to replacement by artificial intelligence
and automation. Essentially anything
that involves repetition is subject
to the chopping block, which can
be unsettling news for much of our
current workforce.
There truly is not a place where
I would rather see a machine than
someone happily employed. Artificial
intelligence simply cannot replace
human emotional intelligence,
creativity, curiosity and imagination
— at least in a poetic sense. Moreover,
human discourse is a fundamental
aspect of economic growth and politics
that I dare say should not be automated
for a multitude of reasons out of the
scope of this article.
It is my conviction that aside from
the pragmatics and the potential
adversity for many, it truly is better
to have humans running the show
in some arenas. I do not find much
appeal in having a robot asking me if
I would like a refill on my half-drunk
glass of water, and when I go to a
concert, I do not wish to hear robot
Taylor Swift.
Yet the future remains unwritten;
not even economists are certain of the
outcomes. There is always potential
for the creation of new jobs and
retraining of the workforce for future
needs. Many jobs may remain by
choice or custom and opportunities
generally lie on the other side of the
fence in times of hardship.
For instance, Gitnux speculates
that as high as 85% of the jobs in 2030
are yet to be invented! Ultimately, we
should all aspire towards an optimistic
and resilient attitude knowing that
there very well may be a way to make
a fulfilling living and lead a symbiotic
relationship with the advanced
technology of tomorrow.By TANVI SHUKLA
CAN YOU HEAR the sweet melody
of payday? That day you eagerly
await, especially when you have
got thousands of unpaid bills. As the
digital paycheck notification pings into
your inbox, you can not help but feel
a burst of joy and a fleeting sense of
financial freedom.
But a closer look at your hard
earned dollars reveals a grim reality:
taxes, the uninvited guest at every
payday party. If you have ever found
yourself muttering, “Is this a legal
daylight robbery?” while perusing
your pay stub, you are not alone.
As one enters the realm of
adulting, taxes are those unwanted
gifts in your life that come to you just
by the virtue of a human being. But
I am not here to gripe about income
taxes in general. Instead, I am diving
headfirst into the rabbit hole of taxing
the student income that has already
been limited to a handful of pennies.
Picture this: a broke student,
surviving on a diet of ramen noodles
and instant coffee, finds Uncle Sam
rummaging through their pocket for
loose change. Is it a necessary evil, or
is it time to rethink the taxman’s grip
on students’ wallets?
As much as we hate getting a pay
cut, some argue that it is a lesson
in fiscal responsibility. This is seen
as an initiation into the world of
financial wisdom, so once you start
having a stable income, you know
how to wisely deal with your money.
However, is it not a tad unreasonable
to tax students who are already
drowning in student loans and
grappling with the existential crisis of
choosing a major?
Taxes on students feel like
charging a fee for a survival course :
“Congratulations on surviving your first
semester! Now pay up.” It is an effort by
the government to make an individual
realize the seriousness of trying to be an adult by having these not-so-minor cuts
every month.
Now, do not get me wrong — I am
all for contributing to society and
funding the greater good. But is taxing
student income the most efficient way
to achieve that? Students are already
investing in their education which
has its own positive externalities and
a huge impact on a country’s future
innovation and labor needs. Taxing
these meager earnings adds insult
to injury rather than achieves the
“Good job. You are contributing to
the economy!” sticker.
In a world where every dollar
counts, the debate over taxing
student income is more relevant than
ever. It is not just about the money,
it is about the principles behind the
deductions on that precious pay stub.
While, for a financially stable student,
these pay cuts might not be too much
of a burden, for a huge population of
new adults who are trying to settle
themselves in this already harsh
world, this burden can be a major
barrier. Especially, for the full time
students who are only allowed to
work 20 hours per week, these taxes
do not help in making a living with no
financial crisis.
Besides, all the educational
intentions only seem to be ripping
pockets and increasing the stress
amongst youth. Instead of offering
classes and opportunities on cracking
the world of financial stability, the
world chooses to throw college
students into the war zone of finances
with no prior alerts and knowledge.
In a nutshell, income taxes on
students are not a good system to
introduce individuals with real world
finances. Either these should be
applied on a need based policy system
in order to reduce the financial and
mental strain this causes on people,
or be removed altogether in order to
support the pennies a college student
manages to earn by the end of a month. FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
OPINION 5
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed in the Opinion section are NOT those of The Mossy Log and are held by the authors.Continuous rise of workplace technology indicates employment shift, new professions yet to be discoveredDisappearing job fields make career planning essentialSickness etiquette critical
to avoid spreading diseasesStudent income taxes
ruin financial stability
J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOG
ROSE BIALK/THE MOSSY LOG
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
FEATURES 6
Events honor Black culture, artists, vendors, offer career advice, highlight alumni, current studentsIME, BSU host Black History Month festivities
By NOAH CONTRERAS
FROM FEB. 12-16, another
beautiful Moss Appreciation
Week at Lewis & Clark
passed with several student-led
organizations coming together to
make it an extraordinary event. This
intricate affair included, but was not
limited to, a moss petting zoo, moss
poetry, an Investigate a Moss Clump
Workshop, a slug and snail race and a
keynote lecture by Assistant Professor
of Biology at San Francisco State
University Jenna Ekwealor.
The Natural History Club founded
Moss Appreciation Week in 2019 and
continues to be its main organizer.
Deanna Sunnergren ’24 is one of the
co-leaders of the Natural History
Club and helped coordinate the
multi-department effort.
“It was just a vague inkling we had in
the fall: ‘What if we got people to read
moss poetry and say moss in different
languages?’ We just kept reaching out
to people and people kept saying yes,
and I think that was a really rewarding
thing about Moss Week this year,”
Sunnergren said.
One such collaboration that
combined theatre and science saw Acting III students give dramatic
readings for historical descriptions
of moss. Another showcase, “Moss in
Many Languages,” displayed worldwide,
multilingual interpretations of the word
for what we call “moss.”
“‘Moss in Many Languages’ was a huge
project and it involved going to a bunch of
students and a bunch of students’ family
(and) friends asking anyone who knew
different languages, ‘Can you say moss in
your language?’” Sunnergren said.
The Natural History Club also hosted
a gastropod race on Thursday, Feb 15.
Supernova, a brown garden snail, came
in first while Slug O’War, a leopard slug,
came in second.
“I’m really grateful for everyone who
came out. All the departments’ support
was wonderful,” Sunnergren said.
Of course, for any student passing
through Watzek Library during Moss
Appreciation Week, the Moss Petting Zoo
was hard to miss.
“We actually had to bring in an expert
to curate (the Moss Petting Zoo), because
it requires such a vast knowledge of
mosses to be able to identify to species
level,” Sunnergren said.
Coupled with the petting zoo were
written tributes to moss in the form of
moss poems. One of these moss poets is Emma Krall ’25, who watered the moss of
the Moss Petting Zoo and is a thorough
appreciator of Moss Appreciation Week.
“I think (Moss Appreciation Week)
is so awesome. It’s like 50% of the
reason I go to LC. I remember hearing
about it from one of the admissions
visitors who came to my high school
and they were like ‘Oh yeah we’ve got
all these crazy programs, we’ve got
Moss Appreciation Week’ and I was
like that’s gotta be a joke. And then it
wasn’t,” Krall said.
Krall wanted her poem to highlight
the symbolic role of moss in the cycle
of life.
“I love that (moss) is kind of like a
sign of life after death in a way,” Krall
said. “When you go to Tryon you’ll
notice that there are a lot of dead trees
that are just weighed down with green
moss and I just think it’s really special.
It’s kind of inspiring.”
Another moss poet, Cleo Lockhart ’25,
shared what inspires them about moss.
“(Moss) can grow in unbeautiful
places, but it itself is something that
is really beautiful,” Lockhart said. “It’s
comforting, and it has this association
of peace and goodness. So whenever
I see it around, it makes me take a
second and (think), even if things are dark or difficult or don’t feel good,
beautiful things can grow here and
there can be selfness here.”
Lockhart contrasted the natural
greenness of moss with the green
commonly seen in the many suburbs
of America.
“I’m a big hater of a sterilized grass
lawn,” Lockhart said. “Moss is an
alternative green coating that makes
things look really beautiful but actually
is healthy, and it’s supposed to be there
and actually has this symbiosis with
everything around it.”Although Moss Appreciation Week
has completed its annual course, moss
remains a cultural staple of LC and a
beacon of inspiration for students and
the environment.
“It’s a good metric for how the
ecosystem is doing by looking at the
moss,” Sunnergren said. “When you
actually look at moss, it’s a bunch of
little individuals. You’re never looking
at one individual plant and so it’s a
very community-oriented organism.
It’s built on its brothers and sisters
around it. It’s not just there by itself.”By ROSALIE ZUCKERMANN
THIS FEBRUARY, Lewis & Clark
saw a wide variety of events in
celebration of Black History
Month put on by the Office of Inclusion
and Multicultural Engagement (IME),
the Black Student Union (BSU) and a
selected planning committee.
Cole Whitaker ’25, one of the leaders
of the BSU, explained some of the
intentions the collaborators had in mind
during the planning process.
“We really wanted to be a lot more
intentional about our programming …
and find a way to inject more meaning
into the regular everyday experience
here at LC and Black History Month.
The ground zero for educating people
about Black history would be the perfect
opportunity to do so,” Whitaker said.
“It’s been a little bit of a journey so
far, primarily because of the fact that
we started very small. We amassed so
much momentum going into the ’23 -
’24 school year, the point where now it’s
like something every single week, it’s just
nonstop event after event.”
Dr. Joslyn Armstrong, an assistant
professor at the graduate school’s
Marriage, Couple and Family Therapy
program and an advisor to the BSU,
reflected on the scope of the events.
“The events for this month are
bigger, much more diverse in a variety of
things that we offer. There’s a plethora
of events that folks can attend (on) any
number of different topics and interests
and experiences connected to the Black
experience,” Armstrong said.
These events included a “Black Joy:
Friends, Lovers & Other Relationships
in IME Suite” activity on healthy relationships, a Portland Art Museum
and lunch field trip to see the Black
Artists of Oregon exhibit and a dinner
for students, staff, faculty and alumni
panelists. There were also lectures and
presentations, such as Kenneth Andrews’
Lessons of the Civil Rights Movement &
Black Freedom Struggle, an endowed
lecture at the Law School from attorney
Ben Crump on Martin Luther King Jr.
and a Career Transitions & Pivots panel
from the Black Alumni Association &
Student Alumni Association.
Armstrong’s favorite event that
she attended was the Black History
Month dinner.
“It was for all Black students, faculty
and staff. We actually had an alumni
panel (where) over various years of
former Black alumni come and share
their experiences. The theme was
‘Beyond the Academy.’ So share some
of their experiences while at Lewis &
Clark at the time, and then how do they
essentially sustain themselves? And
what tools have they utilized in their
career options? And where are they
now?” Armstrong said. “It was like a
bridge between all three campuses, for
everybody to come together in a space. It
felt very uplifting, encouraging.”
While not part of the programming
for February, Whitaker highlighted
last spring’s Black graduation as his
favorite BSU event.
“It was a very emotional moment for
a lot of us because it was all these seniors
who I had become friends with, a lot of
them through basketball. They came in
during the COVID years with basically
little to no support. So to see them then
be able to become friends with not only
one another, but myself and a lot of the underclassmen as well, and then
have this moment where they’re just all
individually celebrated,” Whitaker said.
He commented on the impact that
this celebration had.
“I did these little intros for every
single senior last year,” Whitaker said,
“shouting out everybody’s individual
characteristics and really just trying to
make them appreciate it. They had told
me that they hadn’t had anything like
that this entire time that they’ve been
at school.”
Over recent years, the BSU has
increased their programming and
grown rapidly.
“The prior years, like when I was
a freshman, we, all the leaders, were
very busy. We didn’t really have a lot
of programming. We had maybe one
or two (events) a year, but it was pretty
slow moving overall,” Whitaker said.
“Then going into my sophomore year,
where I was appointed co-president,
we started to kind of ramp it up and do
weekly gatherings.”
Whitaker outlined the buildup last
year all the way to this year’s Black
History Month.
“The thing that I wanted to do in my
mind was just make it so that everything
is memorable. And so that’s what kind
of kicked off that month and a half of
just an event every single week, building
up all the way to graduation. And then
going into this year, it was the same
thing … I think that the alumni especially
saw everything that we were doing and
saw how much momentum that we had
amassed,” he said.
Whitaker also noted how much
time and money these events take,
emphasizing the support of Associated
Student Body and alumni as their
endeavors have expanded.
“It’s trust and faith in the
community overall that’s led us to this
point,” Whitaker said.
Armstrong joined the planning
committee in December, but preparations
had been going on since October. She
elaborated on her role in designing
the events for Black History Month in
collaboration with student leaders.
“It was a more student-led
committee, which I was initially
surprised at … Everybody had such
a wide variety of ideas and it’s
really been nice to see that most of
those ideas have come to fruition,”
Armstrong said. “I kind of sit back, if
you will, and let the ideas flow. I may
offer some other suggestions, things
to think about. And then also maybe
push any connections that I have in
the community forward. But for the
most part, I’m there to kind of support
students, visions and their ideas, trying to see if we can narrow down, make it
realistic for the resources and the labor
that’s available to us.”
Whitaker spoke to how valued this
support and guidance is.
“We’re just very grateful for them,
obviously, because none of this would
have gotten done without them,”
Whitaker said. “This is going to be
something that just keeps getting
steadily built up over the years and
I’m happy they’re on board. Dr.
Armstrong has been a huge part of
planning for Black History Month. Dr.
Stacy Thompson is going to be a huge
part of planning Black graduation for
2024 as well.”
Dr. Stacy Thompson ’79 is the
President of the Board of Alumni as
well as a trustee, and in her time at LC
she founded an earlier iteration of the
BSU. Her continued contributions to
Black students at LC include assisting
in the organization of the BSU’s Black
Graduation ceremony.
Director of IME Joann Zhang was
another key person involved in this
year’s Black History Month events.
“Our hope through planning
committees is to bring together
interested students, staff, faculty
and student organizations/unions
to collaborate on how we want to
acknowledge, learn and celebrate
together,” Zhang said. “My role is
to help our student staff lead those
meetings and assist with logistics.”
She drew attention to one of the new
events they put on this month.
“I am excited for our On the Hill:
Black Marketplace, our first attempt at
hosting a vendor fair featuring our very
own students and external vendors,”
she said.
The marketplace occurred in
Stamm Dining Hall on Feb. 24 and
featured a variety of Black artists
and small businesses. Booths sold
crocheted items, greeting cards,
paintings, t-shirts, beauty products,
waist beads and other jewelry, clothes
and even hot sauce. There were also
tables set up with food samples for
people to try as they milled around.
“(It) is a place for all these Black-owned
businesses to reach a different customer
base that they may not have reached
before, and to expose other students
to other Black-owned businesses in
Portland,” Armstrong said. “There’s
going to be live music, there’s going to
be a food tasting, there’s going to be an
area where you can actually play like
board games and card games. Building
community beyond just learning like
what’s (in) the Lewis & Clark campus
community, but seeing what’s in the
broader community.”Armstrong pointed out Whitaker’s
role in planning the marketplace.
“Cole, who is one of the presidents of
BSU, had the idea of giving the historical
value of the Black stock market and how
revolutionary that was back in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, before the fires, and before
that town was completely destroyed.
There was a thriving Black community
and economy there,” she said. “The
Black marketplace idea stemmed from
that revelation and honoring of that
historical event and moment within
Black history.”
She also highlighted an event that
she found especially impactful from her
perspective as a therapist.
“There’s another event that was put
on around Valentine’s Day which was on
looking at relationships and love for Black
folks, so like romantic relationships,
friendships, family relationships. Being
a Marriage, Couple and Family therapist
myself and working in the Marriage,
Couple and Family Therapy program
in the graduate campus, it was nice to
see an event kind of centered around
relationships and love. I think they were
making gratitude statements and having
a discussion about that, so I thought that
was really cool as well,” Armstrong said.
Although Black History Month
has come to a close, events will still be
continuing throughout the year.
“While it’s important to celebrate
Black History Month, our month of
celebrating and learning does not
conclude at the end of the month. We
will continue to support, celebrate and
learn throughout the year, so events
and opportunities will continue beyond
February,” Zhang said.
Armstrong reflected on the influence
of these events on Black students at LC.
“With as many events that we’ve put
on this month, I do think that it shows
that Lewis & Clark is open to student
input, and having student-led events
that can be successful. I think the core
message for Black students is that you
matter, you’re important and we see you.
We want to offer support in any way we
can. These events are further affirming
of your Blackness and affirming that
there is community here. It may be
difficult at first to find it. But once you
tap in, it’s really an edifying experience,
an uplifting experience.”
Keep an eye out for upcoming
events from BSU and make sure
to follow the BSU and IME on
Instagram: @lclarkbsu and @ime_lc.
“Shout out to Cole, Isha, Kai, Ashwini,
Deriontae, Blessing, Alvin, Jaime, Dr.
Armstrong,” Zhang said. “Thank you for
your dedication and support!”
Additional reporting by Amelia Doyle.
Moss Appreciation Week showcases organisms, poetry
Natural History Club’s celebration features lecture exhibitions, workshops, art praising bryophytes
The petting zoo showcased specimens in Watzek library for the duration of the week.STELLA MERCER/THE MOSSY LOG
One IME event featured a Black alumni panel accompanied by a catered dinner.COURTESY OF IMEBy CAROLINE DREW
WANDERING the streets of
Portland, you may have
noticed animated cut-out
creatures poking out of yards and
framed in shop windows. As the work
of Mike Bennett, they are delightful,
simple and colorful designs that share
a distinct, cartoon-style cuteness. As
a self-described “public joy creator,”
Bennett sells a line of yard signs — snails,
turtles and sloths who remind you to
drive slowly, as well as families of goats
and possums that caution drivers to
consider kids at play — which Bennett
playfully calls “buddies.”
These buddies have made
countless Portland yards their
home, but their origin is even
more whimsical. At Wonderwood
Springs in Portland’s St. John’s
neighborhood, Bennett’s creatures
inhabit the bespoke world of a coffee
shop and an adjoining miniature golf
course. Each detail of the interior
is deliberately world-building
and uniquely crafted to create an
immersive art experience. Cut-outs
of cheerfully hand-drawn beakers
and boba cups crowd thick, uneven
wooden shelves behind the bar. Heavy
antique tables and sturdy chairs host
families and small groups chatting
and enjoying some of the many board
games available for play. Along the
wall opposite, a bench stretches the
length of the room, delicately covered
in faux-wooden planks crawling
with moss — all drawn in Bennett’s
distinctive style.
True to the experience,
Wonderwood Springs is described
as an immersive fantasy cafe. Fairy
Popcorn, a treat advertised by a
caped, bulbous character named
Prince Popcorn, combines fresh-
popped popcorn with chocolate-
covered potato chips, Heath toffee
bits, mini M&Ms and roasted peanuts.
A gingerbread cookie butter latte and
butterbeer latte bring a fantastical
touch to the coffee menu. Soft serve
ice cream is always available, as it is
in any child’s dream. You can order
that soft serve plain or swirled into
a ‘Whizzard,’ Wonderwood’s take on candy-filled milkshakes. Snacks and
simple sandwiches fill out the rest of
their refreshment offerings. Though
the cafe is exceedingly kid-friendly,
the uncomplicated entree choices and
wonderfully elaborate treats evoke
nostalgic comforts for any adult.
Wonderwood is the kind of
place that feels new and different
while deeply familiar. Though its
doors only opened recently, worn
furniture and warm lighting lend the
cafe a comfortable, cozy feeling and
the comically optimistic fairytale
elements of Bennett’s art-turned-
decor can make you feel transported
into a beloved novel.
Bennett’s artistic vision for the
immersive space is acutely well-
executed. Walking into Wonderwood
Springs, his goal is immediately obvious. From the portable lantern-
like lights to the rope-based
chandelier, from the shape of the
mugs to the popcorn containers,
each decision is intentionally made.
The result is a space that sparks
awe. The sheer attention to detail is
impressive, but the childlike joy that
exudes through each piece of art and
each artistic decision is what makes
the space truly remarkable. Watching
guests enter the cafe, the space’s
charm is evident.
Bennett started dreaming about
an immersive art space in 2020
during the pandemic. While at
home in lockdown, Bennett created
elaborate life-sized dioramas of sea
creature scenes in his front yard —
hoping to put his creative skills to
work and boost his neighbors’ spirits. Wonderwood Springs extends these
early displays with narrative elements
and, of course, edible imaginings.
These narrative elements come to
life through Wonderwood Springs’
miniature golf course, located next
door to the cafe. Bennett designed
the course to guide players through a
plot. Each hole advances a story that
entangles his signature whimsical
characters with the golfers. The nine-
hole course features over 750 hand-
painted creatures and scenic elements.
Art-driven golf course experiences
have risen in popularity in the last few
years. Bennett offers a unique twist on
this trend by focusing on mini-golf as
a way to move through a story, rather
than focusing solely on the game. The
result is an enveloping experience
that raises the stakes of every putt and generates gleeful memories — whether
you win or lose.
St. John’s is a fittingly charming
neighborhood to find such an exquisitely
animated space. Crossing the bridge into
Cathedral Park, you will begin to feel
the delight take hold. Let it guide you to
Wonderwood Springs. On a gloomy day,
there is no better place to hunker down
with a board game and a tasty treat. If
you are feeling antsy, get on your feet
and mosey through nine holes of fantasy
adventure at the miniature golf course.
Wonderwood Springs is located in
the St. John’s neighborhood of Northeast
Portland at 7410 N Chicago Ave. The cafe
is open Wed. - Thurs. from 9 a.m. to 9
p.m. and Fri. - Sun. from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The miniature golf course is open Mon. -
Thurs. from 1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and Fri.
- Sun. from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
FEATURES 7
Passionate PDX artist’s cafe perplexes, delights
Wonderwood wows with whimsically delicious wares, wacky creatures, weird new mini golf course
By SUMMER DAE BINDER
TUCKED AWAY in the basement
of the Fowler Student Center is
Lewis & Clark’s Student Health
Center. They are dedicated to the well-
being of LC students, staff and faculty,
yet many may not know all that they
have to offer.
“The Health Center’s mission
is to support the health of the
LC community and provide
compassionate and comprehensive
medical services that support students
in reaching their academic goals and
in living healthy, well-balanced lives,”
the LC website states.
The Health Center is a mini-clinic
on campus, offering a large variety of
services. Staff can tend to many needs,
whether it be a treatment of illness
and injury, physical examinations,
pregnancy screening, birth control
counseling and supplies and gender-
affirming care. The Health Center
also offers referrals to off-campus
healthcare and specialists.
Consultation appointments are
free, so students can come in to discuss
health concerns without being charged.
Charges are associated with services
including blood testing, medication
prescription, vaccinations and for
equipment like crutches and blood
pressure cuffs.
For more information on pricing,
visit the “Fees for Services” page on the
Health Center’s website.
Though the clinic itself is only
open 8 a.m. to 12 a.m and 1 p.m. to
4 p.m. Monday through Friday the
Health Center does offer after-hours resources. One such service is a nurse
consultation hotline, which students
can call to receive urgent medical
advice when the Health Center is not
open. This service is offered from 4
p.m. to 8 a.m. on weekdays and 24
hours a day on weekends and holidays
at 1-877-617-9531.
The Crisis Counseling Service is also
available through the Health Center. The
Crisis Counseling Service is available
when the counseling center is closed or
when the staff is unavailable. Students
can reach The Crisis Counseling Service
at 503-265-7804.
Currently, the Health Center is
experiencing a staffing shortage,
which has resulted in many students
experiencing delays in appointment
availability. If the Health Center is
not able to accommodate a request
for an urgent health concern, staff
members encourage that students
seek an off-campus evaluation.
Neighboring the Health Center is
the Office of Health Promotion and
Wellness (HP&W). The two are often
confused for one another but are
separate, if similar, offices. HP&W’s
focus is not strictly medical, but rather
seeks to provide for students’ holistic
well-being, including their emotional,
physical and sexual health.
Their work includes educational
programming and prevention
resources, as well as frequent
collaboration with other campus
organizations. Outside their office,
students can pick up free condoms,
internal condoms, dental dams,
finger cots, Fentanyl test strips and
other resources.HP&W’s services include Zoom
Rooms that students can reserve up
to two weeks in advance for private
calls. The rooms are typically used for
Telehealth appointments or virtual
interviews and are located in the HP&W
office, which can be found on the first
floor of Fowler.
HP&W has launched several new
initiatives for the 2023-2024 academic
year concerning sexual health and harm
reduction.
“There have been a couple of new
programs that have been launched this
year. First would be our LoveSHAC
initiative, which took place in the Fall
and was a series of workshops that
covered many different topics around
sexual health and consent such as
sexual decision-making, contraception,
pleasure, consent and substance use,
and more,” said HP&W Director
Michelle Callahan over email.
Callahan elaborated on the
additional ways that the office has
expanded its support networks and
wellness opportunities for students.
“We’ve worked with athletic
staff to get students trained on
bystander intervention for sexual
violence prevention. We’ve developed
anonymous online self-assessments
that students can take at any time
to reflect on their relationship with
substance use,” she said. “And finally,
this semester, we’re working with the
Harm Reduction Community Outreach
Club and offering a drop-in peer
recovery group for those who experience
substance-related challenges happening
weekly on Wednesdays in JR Howard
114 from 3:30 - 4:30.” Campus health departments seek to holistically heal
Offices offer variety of support services, compassionate care available to all students, whether sick or healthy Restaurant-goers are encouraged to revel in regal, red interior of Wonderwood Springs.COURTESY OF WONDERWOOD
Bennett beams, surrounded by beloved “buddies,” sword and paint roller in hand.COURTESY OF WONDERWOOD
In spite of staffing shortages, the Health Center’s skilled team stands tall, ready for all.J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOG
Pamphlets are available to take covering topics like addiction, illness, sexual wellness.THE MOSSY LOG ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
ARTS 8
By KAI MERMIS-CAVA
RECENTLY, artificial intelligence
(AI) art generators have been
increasing in popularity. Well-
known AI art generators include
Dall-E, Midjourney, NightCafe
and most recently, a terrifying
development in the form of OpenAI’s
Sora, a program that can create
videos based on a text prompt. All
of these art generators work through
the input of a text prompt so that the
computer program can create a piece
of art based on the prompt.
Somewhat amusingly, these
pieces have become the center of
ridicule in many spaces. AI art
generators often make mistakes,
warping body parts to the point
of being unrecognizable or simply
creating images that do not make
sense. They create images of
fabric falling in ways it could not
possibly fall, or shadows that do
not match up with the light source.
If one looks closely at the hair
on an AI-generated art piece, it
becomes obvious that the creation
itself is a mess.
Despite these blunders, AI
art has become something of a
phenomenon online. People continue
to use AI art generators, despite
pleas from artists to stop, and
creations from these art generators
have spread across the internet.
However, I do not think that AI art
even deserves to be called art.
It is soulless and steals the work
of artists who have put years of
time and effort into honing their
craft. Art is beautiful because it
depicts the human soul, no matter
the situation occurring at the time
when the art was created. That is
why so many beautiful pieces of
art have survived the centuries.
From statues like the “Winged
Victory of Samothrace” to paintings
like “Starry Night,” art is meant to depict every facet of humanity
and the human experience. Artists
breathe life into their art with every
brush stroke and every second they
put into their pieces.
Graphics created by a computer
generator are not capable of any
of this. AI art programs steal the
work of genuine artists, and are
nothing more than an exploitation
of people’s work, and in some cases,
even their livelihood.
Some AI art programs can even
be “trained” off specific artists,
creating works in that artist’s style.
This, more than anything else,
feels like a violation. Artists put
time and effort into creating their unique styles, and for those working
in an artistic field, their art styles
become their own unique brand.
For an AI art generator to steal it is
demeaning and insulting.
It is almost poetic how some of
the earliest pieces of art, and the ones
we remember most, depict hands.
Ironically, hands are one of the most
difficult aspects of a piece for an AI
art generator to depict correctly.
Most notable was a recent issue on
X (Twitter), where a person took an
apparently incomplete painting and
‘finished’ it in an AI art generator.
The painting in question was the
“Unfinished Painting ” by Keith
Haring, who passed away in 1990 from AIDS-related complications.
The painting is a famous piece of
queer art, purposefully left forever
unfinished to reflect the devastating
void left by the AIDS epidemic.
The use of AI to complete this
piece is abhorrent. There are no words
to truly describe how disgusting this
use of AI art generators was. More
so, the AI art program butchered the
painting. In the original piece, human
figures can be seen, mingling with
each other, which appear mangled in
the computer’s approximation.
It was never meant to be finished,
because the blank canvas is meant
to represent the millions of lives
lost. The painting itself is beautifully devastating, and an incredible
record of humanity. “Completing”
it with an AI art program destroys
the heartbreaking meaning of the
original piece.
AI art generators are useless, and
ultimately revolting. Art should be
created by a human hand, or through
any other method that one might
have available. It should be created
with emotion, any kind of emotion,
not the cold code of a computer.
It is meant to depict humanity, to
stand the test of time and to express
oneself with; there is no other
medium that would convey what
you are feeling. AI “art ” can do
none of this. AI-generated artwork threatens authenticity
By ELLA DUNN
TO A PACKED reception at the
Frank Manor House, writer
Claire Vaye Watkins said:
“Books heal people all the time,
just not usually the people who
write them.”
Watkins visited Lewis & Clark
on Tuesday, Feb. 20 to read from
the autofiction novel she is currently
working on, to be entitled “Yellow Pine.”
I read her most recently published
novel, “I Love You But I’ve Chosen
Darkness,” in anticipation of her visit
and loved it. Her writing is absolutely
fantastic, by which I mean this event
was an excuse for me to find one of my
new favorite authors and proceed to
fangirl when she visited.
I had so many questions after
reading her book. Watkins' style is
very grounded and the main character
shares her first name, so I believed
the story was autobiographical until
I looked it up online and discovered
that its actually autofiction. Watkins
is simply extremely convincing in her
art. She draws from her own life while
exaggerating elements of the plot
and fabricating some events that she
did not experience.
“If I could choose, I wouldn’t write
autofiction,” Watkins said, divulging
her natural draw to the genre, and how
the ideas come to her.
Watkins has a large body of work
including novels and essays, fictional
and otherwise. The 2021 novel deals
with themes of generational trauma,
grief, motherhood and sexuality.
“We have loved and loved and been
loved despite the fissures and losses,
violence, cruelty, smallness, deficits
in money and time and attention, despite the betrayals and indifferences,
the distance and weather, despite
developing different definitions of
certain words,” Watkins wrote in her
latest book.
The main character is a woman
named Claire who leaves her job,
husband and one-year-old daughter to
unearth her trauma back west where she grew up. Along this journey, she learns
to accept herself and her sexuality,
reflects on her improper preparation for
motherhood, and, cliche as it sounds,
finds herself again.
“The first thing to leave you in the
desert is time,” she wrote.
Watkins’ home in the rural desert
of California and Nevada plays a significant role in “I Love You But I’ve
Chosen Darkness,” and from what she
read from her new novel, that story
will take place in the same area. The
novel begins with background on her
childhood, and even further back to the
lives of her parents and how they met.
Though the story is autofiction, the vivid
details surrounding her family history made me feel so close to the author. It
is a fantastic way of getting the reader
attached to and knowledgeable about the
main character.
Throughout the book, Watkins
also recalls something particularly
close to home: the life of her father,
Paul Watkins. Her father was loosely
involved with the Manson family before
the infamous murders, and famously
is the author of “My Life With Charles
Manson.” Tying it to him, Claire
Watkins includes passages from his
novel in italics throughout her own.
“I think of (my autofiction
characters) as an ‘I.’ In ‘I Love You But
I’ve Chosen Darkness,’ the narrator
had a different name (at first). It just
felt very fake, like I knew that she was
a version of me, a ‘Claire,’” Watkins
said. “It felt interesting to invite the
conflation of author and character.”
Initially, I expected that she
would read passages from her 2021
novel. However, Watkins decided to
read from the novel she is currently
working on. “Yellow Pine” will be
related to environmental science
and conservation, although it is
still fictional and is not solely about
these topics. Watkins discussed her
particular interest in environmental
science and the essays she had
previously written on the topic. As she
read, I loved how her style between
books stayed consistent. Watkins has
a distinct writing style, with rawness
and realistic dialogue as particular
strengths of hers.
Reading Watkins’ writing is a
privilege; it is a gritty, naked view of her
life and her mind. I highly recommend
“I Love You But I’ve Chosen
Darkness,” and I plan to read much
more of her work.
STELLA MORAN/THE MOSSY LOG
Authors share their stories and writing process with students and staff in front of Frank Manor House ’s dramatic fireplace.Student shares thoughts on human expression, ethics of mimicking distinct styles, revising iconic paintings
Visiting Writer Series features up-and-coming novel
Claire Vaye Watkins discusses childhood inspiration, environmental themes that underlay her workCOURTESY OF X USER @DONNELVILLAGER
Personal and political significance are lost in this computer-completed version.
COURTESY OF KEITH HARING
Haring’s "Unfinished Painting" piece speaks to lives cut short by AIDS, as his was.FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
ARTS 9
SEED screens Ghibli
environmental film
GALLERY OFFERINGS
Nationale:
Mélange , curated by Jeremy Okai
Davis
On view through March 31
15 SE 22nd Ave
Portland Art Museum:
Black Artists of Oregon
On view until March 31
1219 SW Park AveTHIS WEEKEND
1 - Film: The Mother of All Lies
7 p.m. @ PCC Cascade
Cascade Festival of African
Films - Free!
1 - Film: Dan Savage’s Hump!
6:30 & 9 p.m. @ Revolution
Hall
1 - Art: Scrapbook Art Exhibit by Joe
Rudko
11 a.m. @ PDX Contemporary
Art2 - Film: Lionheart
7 p.m. @ PCC Cascade
Cascade Festival of African
Films - Free!
2- Art: Breathing Light by Georgie
Friedman
5 p.m. @ Oregon ContemporaryAND BEYOND
7 - Art: Art Therapy Open Studio
Sessions
3 p.m. @ Grad Campus
8 - Music: Fridays @5
5 p.m. @ Evans Auditorium
8 - Theater: Wolf Play
7:30 p.m. @ Fir Acres Black Box
9 - Music: Gamelan Music & Film
“Goong: Sound Through Fire”
7:30 p.m. @ Flanagan Chapel9- Art: Zymoglyphic Museum Open
11 a.m. - 3 p.m. @ 6225 SE
Alder St.
11 -Literature: “Edges of Noir”
Michael Mirabile in
Conversation with Jerry Harp
3:30 & 7:30 p.m. @ Flanagan
Chapel Upcoming Events - MarchBy EMMA FORD
WHO READING this remembers
the monsters of high school?
Screenwriter Diablo Cody’s
film retinue surely does. The modern
film buff sings praises for “Jennifer’s
Body,” Cody’s vision of monstrous
femininity starring Megan Fox
and Amanda Seyfried. And rightly
so — the common language of
high school horrors unites viewers in
Cody’s worlds.
The latest entry casts a girly, neon
glow with “Lisa Frankenstein,” a
horror-comedy starring Kathryn
Newton and Cole Sprouse. Immediately
recognizable, it is not a stretch to
visualize the “Lisa Frankenstein
aesthetic” popping up online, all
gore-splattered ’80s scrunchies and
gothic polyester.
Full of cinematic callbacks to
contemporary ’80s movies, as well
as film history beyond that (including
a repeated reference to George
Mielies’ “A Trip to the Moon”), movie
lovers have a lot to pick up on. As
reveling in its references as it is self-
satisfied with its style, the movie cuts a colorful figure across screens with its
classic story of teen love and lust. Or,
perhaps, bloodlust.
While the look of the movie and its
playful engagement with film history
are not to be ignored, the movie also
has a rock solid plot.
Newton’s titular character is the
timeless teen heroine with a dead
mother, a sensitive, cute crush on
an older boy and an evil stepmother
(played by Carla Gugino). With
her mother’s death, her father’s
(Joe Chrest) remarriage and Lisa
transferring to a new school, the
movie opens like a fairly typical teen
flick — right down to the perkier,
prettier, cheerleader-ier stepsister
(Taffy, played by Liza Soberano).
After spending days tending the
grave of a bachelor, a lightning storm
on the night of an unfortunate kegger
finds Lisa with that very bachelor,
undead and dripping earthworms,
hiding in her closet.
But the bachelor, Sprouse, coated
in ghastly makeup even once the
graveyard dirt has been washed
away, is missing a few parts. During a confrontation with the stepmother,
however, the two stumble across a
solution. From there, bodies begin to
pile up.
The film is, as a sum of its parts (if
one will pardon such a turn of phrase),
great fun.
It has the feel of a pulp horror novel
taking place in the Babysitter’s Club
universe. Where murder occurs among
a multicolored ’80s backdrop, and
giggling teenagers interrupt mayhem
to gossip about events only the
audience is privy to, Cody and director
Zelda Williams craft a nostalgic and fun
mood that utterly charms the audience.
A sense of familiarity is instilled in
the viewer so deeply that the movie
hardly needs to communicate finer
details — we already know them.
Some tropes are refreshingly
subverted. Taffy is hardly the wicked
stepsister one might expect in a teen
movie; she is truly kind to Lisa, and
the relationship between the two drives
an unexpectedly compelling subplot.
Soberano’s performance steals each
scene with a sweetness so genuine it
cannot be besmirched as saccharine. Soberano is not the only cast
member who appears to be sinking
their teeth into their role. Newton
brings classic adorkable awkward
protagonist vibes without falling into
the traps of such a character, growing
a three-dimensional weird-girl heroine
out of what could easily have become
a caricature. Her spunk and humor
stand out just as well in solo scenes as
they do in a crowded frame.
The only member of the main
cast who fails to impress is Sprouse.
While he is given nearly nothing in
terms of dialogue, the undead aspect
of his character being played mostly
for laughs, makes moments that were
surely intended to be endearing fall
flat. However, the moments that land
do so satisfactorily.
“Lisa Frankenstein” is not perfect.
It suffers when it gets more wrapped
up in its own aesthetics than it does in
delivering simple scenes and plot, and
when jokes rely too heavily on knowing
winks. As much as one may simply
yearn for a version of “Heathers”
where Veronica and J.D. stay together
and get away with it, this does not make for a fully cohesive movie. There
must be something new to say, or the
film risks being a fanfiction.
As a retelling of Frankenstein,
“Lisa Frankenstein” has little to say
about its inspiration, rather using an
undead creature and sewn-together
body parts as window dressing for a
campy romp in polyester and pastel
eyeshadow. There are few references
to the themes of the original story
beyond the most superficial aspects
of resurrection via lightning. In a
way, the movie’s superficiality in
this regard could be in tribute to its
setting. However, the effect is likely
not intentional.
However, the sheer joy of watching
an original script take an idea and
run with it cannot be overlooked.
Cody’s latest film is a love letter to
the awkward teen in all of us. After
all, who does not feel occasionally
misunderstood? Sometimes, we need
someone, or something, that gets us.
And as Taffy says, paraphrased by
Lisa to her beloved Creature, “You
shouldn’t try and change a guy, you
should take him how he is!”
By CORRINA CHAN
ON FEB. 20, Students Engaged
in Eco-Defense (SEED) held a
movie screening of “Nausicaä
of the Valley of the Wind” from 7 - 9
p.m. in the Council Chambers. The
film is a Studio Ghibli production set
in a post-apocalyptic world. It follows
the princess Nausicaä, who has been
tasked with preventing a war between
the few remaining kingdoms. This film
is from 1984, one of Hayao Miyazaki’s
first movies. Forty years later, its
messages ring truer than ever.
With SEED’s focus on
environmental protection, it only
makes sense that the club would
screen a movie that does as well.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
highlights themes of environmental
destruction and animal protection
(even ones that have grown into giant
monsters) as well as a driving message
that protecting the environment is
always worth it, even long after we feel
it is beyond repair.
Set 1,000 years in the future, the
film takes place in the aftermath of a
calamity known as the “Seven Days of
Fire,” caused by a bio weapon known
as a “Giant Warrior.” One day Princess
Nausicaä comes across the embryo of
the Giant Warrior when a cargo ship
carrying it crashes into their world,
she attempts to find a balance between humans and nature by protecting
the habitants of the jungle from the
fearsome Tolmekians, members of
a military empire. Control over the
embryo then becomes a source of
conflict between Tolmekian troops
and the inhabitants of the Toxic
Jungle, the poisonous forest where
Nausicaä lives.
LC has always strived to find a
balance between entertainment,
student life and educating its students.
Finding that balance in a fun, yet
constructive way is not only a value of
this college, but also of Studio Ghibli.
The animation studio has produced
many films that touch on themes of
nature, protection, loss and familial
and romantic love.
SEED is an environmentally
focused organization on campus
that “is dedicated to creating a more
sustainable and just world,” according
to LC’s website. They have held events
such as flower pressing for Valentine’s
Day and “Bug Snug Build Day,” as
well as running the Bee Garden on
South Campus and the free detergent
stations located in upper Fowler.
It is possible that the organization
felt that, because there is a possible
future for us that might look similar
to the world in “Nausicaä of the
Valley of the Wind,” it might be a
good movie to show, having a more
hopeful ending. Frankenstein retelling subverts expectations
Vibrant, campy horror rom-com lead Kathryn Newton brings adorkable quirks to creative new flick
By ELLA DUNN
THE OSCARS are coming up, and
many film geeks are waiting in
anticipation of the results. This
year is going to be a tough one — there
are plenty of strong opinions about the
movies competing. Barbenheimer, a
cultural event, was a 2023 milestone,
but these are not the only two in the
running — “Poor Things” and “Killers
of The Flower Moon” are up there too,
among others.
In the spirit of Oscar season, I
watched two of the nominated movies
and am providing my opinions on
the story, message, cinematography
and aesthetics. If taking less than
half of a Radical Film class with
Michael Mirabile (so far) makes one
an expert, then you can consider this
an expert opinion. If not, consider
this the opinion of a mere casual
movie enjoyer.
Barbie
I have seen Barbie several times
now, for many reasons. That said,
this is not a movie I want to see many
more times. It was fantastic the first
time, and yes, I cried in the theater.
The aesthetics and attention to
detail in the sets and costumes were
wonderful, especially with so many
callbacks to classic Barbie accessories
and outfits. But despite this, it is not
very re-watchable, in my opinion, due
to the predictability of the plot and the
overplayedness of the soundtrack.
I will be the absolute last person on
the planet to dump on Greta Gerwig;
her writing and directing skills are
incredible, and the writing specifically
for this film was right up my alley with
a perfect level of satire and what I
would describe as confusing humor.
Confusing, because coming out of
the theater the first time we watched
it together, my mom seemed more perplexed than anything, and said to
her it just seemed “weird,” not being a
person who particularly enjoys satire.
The humor was meant to imitate the
style of a child’s “pretend play,” the
dialogue purposefully odd at times
in ways a child might have the dolls
interact, and that humor just is not
appealing to some.
The messages about feminism and
equality were wonderful and presented
in an easily understood role-reversal
manner. It is an enjoyable comedy
with a deep societal message. I would
not complain if it won, but I also
think there are more great films to
consider first.
Past Lives
This film ripped my heart out a little
bit, I will not lie. It twisted together a
fated romance, an immigrant story
and the existence and discovery of
platonic soulmates into one gorgeous
film that made me shed a tear or two
as the credits rolled. The lead actress,
Greta Lee, was fantastic in her role,
and Celine Song wrote and directed a
beautiful script.
I enjoyed the cinematography
as well; every shot was visually
interesting. The characters were
complex, particularly Nora, the main
character, which made it feel so much
more real. Culture also played a large
part in the story, with Nora’s Korean
American identity serving as a strong
driver of the plot. Different characters
are meant to represent certain parts of
Nora’s cultural identity, depicting her
past relationships as tied to the places
she lived in at the time. The film brings
into question the existence of different
forms of love as well as the ways that
culture can separate or unite people.
This next part will include spoilers.
Moving onto the story, it gave me
very complicated emotions, to say
the least. I am a true lover of doomed love stories (I enjoy a good cry every
now and then) but this was one that,
for once, I hoped would not work out.
For a while, I saw the relationship
between her and her childhood “love”
going in the direction of an emotional
affair, due to the fact that she ended up
married to someone else who loved her
deeply. Personally, I am not the type
who enjoys emotional affair tropes
in romance, and I was already typing
out my angry review in my head. But
luckily, the two childhood sweethearts
had a respectful conversation, and
they managed to have a very deep
platonic relationship by the end, a
bond that started with the possibility
of becoming something more but did
not, and never will in this life.
Movies are long, and I only got
through two, but there are many
excellent ones nominated this year for
the Oscars, so keep an eye out for the
results and follow me on LetterBoxd.Oscar Nominees bring range, from
predictable to pleasantly surprising
Two childhood best friends meet again.COURTESY OF IMDB
COURTESY OF IMDBFRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
SPORTS 10
By LILLIAN SMALL
EVERY WEEK the Lewis & Clark
athletic department chooses two
exemplary student athletes to
highlight. The Pios of this week were cross
country runner Macy O’Hara ’24 and
swimmer Zach Martin ’26.
O’Hara broke a new indoor program
record in the 200 meter, and was a
member of two relay teams that reset
program records.
Zach Martin described what makes
the LC swim program special.
“The swim team here has a really good
culture. We’re all very close inside and
outside of practice. And I think in general
sports culture here is very inclusive and
interconnected. We do a lot of stuff with
the golfers so it’s pretty fun,” Martin said.
Martin recently broke a 36 year
program record in the 200 meter free-
style, with a 1:42.51 time. He also won
two All-NWC accolades at the Conference
Championship Meet.
“It’s pretty exciting. I’ve been trying for
that record since last year. I tried for it at
our midseason meet, and I was just short
of it, so I’m pretty excited that I was able to
get (it) at our end of Season,” Martin said.
As to his future goals, Martin expressed
interest in expanding the program.
“I hope that we can grow our program
a little bit more. We still have a pretty
small team. As it is we’re only about 20
people,” said Martin. “So hopefully we can
grow the team a little more, do better at
conference next year, and break a bunch
of personal and school records.”
Can you solve our perplexing, playful puzzle? Find answers on The Mossy Log website piolog.comElijah Washington plans professional
football future, recounts his journey
Sleet or sunshine, try funky fresh crossword anytimePio of week
highlights
team bonds
By ELLA DUNN
ELIJAH WASHINGTON ’24 is a
running back and long snapper,
who just played his final season of
college football at Lewis & Clark.
Washington has had a long
journey in football, playing for many
teams at many levels. As he prepares
for the next leg of his football career,
he reflects on his time playing the
sport, and how it led him here.
Washington has been playing
football his entire life, which is why
it was natural for him to decide it
was his path as he was entering high
school. He played all four years and
was a starter on the varsity team for his junior and senior years. Going
into college, he had hoped for an offer
from a Division 1 school.
“My size, strength and speed at the
time just weren’t up to that level — yet. I
had a few Division 3 offers, and I ended
up going to University of Laverne out
of high school,” Washington said. “I
rode the bench my first season — they
already had two guys they were set on;
I got in a few times but not as much as
I’d liked to.”
Washington felt that he was not
getting the opportunities at Laverne
that he had expected, so he decided to
move to College of the Canyons in Santa
Clarita, CA, where he spent one semester,
not playing a season with them. “By the end of the summer with
(College of the Canyons), they still had
fourteen running backs. What I was
chasing then was getting enough film
to get looked at by the Division 1 level,”
Washington said.
When players are hoping to transfer
to a higher level, they try to get as much
“film” or video content of themselves
playing in games as possible, because
that is what coaches look for. Without
enough footage, many coaches will
hesitate to take a risk on an athlete they
have not seen play.
Seeking more time on the field,
which comes with valuable video
footage, Washington transferred to
Glendale Community College where he
spent his sophomore season.
“I got named All-State for JuCo, and I
thought I would get some offers through
that. My whole journey up to that point
had been full of coaches who weren’t very
invested in me and helping me get to the
next level,” Washington said. “You need
to be helped out coming from a smaller
school; you need people to vouch for
you.”
Due to National College Athletic
Association (NCAA) rules, each player
is only allowed to play for four years at
NCAA schools. Many athletes who hope
to transfer to larger programs may need
more time or film to become an attractive
prospect. JuCos, or Junior Colleges, are
schools where players can continue to
practice and hone their skills, as well
as gather film, without losing valuable
years of NCAA eligibility.
Washington then took a gap semester
to focus on working and training.
“I knew I still wanted to play
football — it was still my dream. After
that seven months, I had a couple of
walk-on opportunities, but both fell
through,” said Washington. “Then a
buddy from high school, a receiver on
Lewis & Clark’s team last season, told me
to come here. I got in contact with the
coaches and they really liked me so they
brought me in. It’s been awesome ever
since here.” Washington has played two seasons
at LC, his most recent being the most
exciting for him.
“I’ve had two amazing seasons; in my
junior season I split time with Deante
before he transferred to Oregon State,
but this last season I had the backfield to
myself,” said Washington. “I was really
able to showcase what I could do if I got
enough touches. (This last season) we had
the best record we’ve had in conference in
years — it felt good to help bring that back
to LC football.”
Looking to the future, Washington
hopes to make the NFL roster.
“Making an NFL roster would be
a dream come true; it doesn’t really
matter what team or where they’re at.
Even if I got to a mini-camp and got the
opportunity to show the coaches what I
can do,” said Washington.
If he had to choose a team, though,
the Dallas Cowboys is his ultimate dream,
having been his favorite team for years.
Right now, Washington is training for
his “pro day” — an event where athletes
showcase their skills in hopes of being
seen by a scout and selected for the draft.
Even if not selected for the draft, teams
can “sign” players to their roster, but will
start making cuts as the season draws
nearer. Being signed is not a guarantee of
success, but it is certainly a great way to
get on the NFL coaches’ radar and be seen
as a “pro-ready prospect.”
If the NFL does not pan out, he has
backup options.
“If I don’t make it to the NFL, there
are a lot of other leagues, such as the
CFL — the Canadian Football League
— and the UFL, which is a combination
of the two spring leagues. There are a lot
of different avenues for me, and other
leagues can all be ways to get to the
NFL. The dream is not dead if it doesn’t
happen this time,” said Washington.
With his final college football season
over, Washington’s work to go pro is
just beginning. His perseverance is an
inspiration to any athlete who feels
they have the skills to play their sport
professionally.
By OLIVIA LARIOS
Across
1. How someone with a Zyn addiction
might say “for the (boys)”
6. League of Mookie Betts or Shohei
Otahni
9. Encourages or assists someone in
a wrongdoing
10. That is sooooooo cuuutee!!
12. Director and star of “Argo,”
who has a pretty intense back tat
#lookitup
14. The sediment of wine in a barrel
15. Ice cream and Gelato or Will Ferrell and Chad Smith
16. The organ you might use to see 12
across back tattoo with
17. Harm Reduction Club tries to
prevent these
18. Bank of England, for short (bills
so big I call ‘em Williams for realll)
19. “On __”, a way of saying for real
with the use of a more powerful God
than Jesus
22. “Do anything for__, They do
anything for__”- Offset
25. Another n ame for Chief Keef
26. Actor that portrays Uncle Ian of
“Alvin and the Chipmunks” 28. Bad __, Spanish singer of “Chulo
pt.2”
29. A defensive structure established
on the fringes of conquered Muslim
territories
30. How many septum-pierced,
demonia-wearing people might
describe themselves
31. Bin Laden, founder of Al-Qaeda :(
Down
1. A tale or a story
2. How a goat might say eBay
3. Rapp or Zellweger (or my mother
#streamheronspotify)4. Donald Trump Alarm System, for
short
5. Text lingo for as frick
6. Places you might find Hot Topic or
Spencer’s
7. A former monetary subunit of the
Angolan kwanza from 1977 to 1990
8. American singer-songwriter of the
1994 hit “Loser”
11. Manage to support oneself or make a
living with difficulty
13. POV: you are a 13 year-old white boy
sporting ur fave Nike tech tracksuit, this
is the hairstyle you ask for.
17. Outfit of the day, for short 18. Another term for ripped or yolked
#beastmode
19. Loc, underground, indie rap artist
20. State in northeastern India known
for its wildlife
21. “ ___ la vista, baby”
22. Charles de Gaulle or Comme des
Garçons
23. “ __ _ whisper on my pillow” lyric
from hit 80s song “It Must Have Been
Love”
24. The shape of balloons, rackets, or eggs
25. Abbr. for Serotonin Reuptake
Inhibitor
27. Abbr. for Croatia
COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE
Washington recaps his unique athletic journey over the years at different schools.
Editor-in-Chief
Amelia DoyleManaging Editor
Rosalie Zuckermann
News Editors
Emma Ambroziak
Ava FrisonOpinion Editors
Corrina Chan
Tanvi ShuklaFeatures Editors
Leila Diaz
Olivia Fendrich Arts Editors
Caroline Drew
Corryn Pettingill
Sports Editors
Lillian Small
Will TrunzoThe Backdoor Editor
Emma FordVisuals Editor
J FrankCopy Chief
Maya Mazor-Hoofien
Head of Broadcasting
Isaac BabusBusiness Manager
Lauren EvansOutreach Coordinator
Summer Dae BinderWeb Manager
Claire BakkeFaculty Advisor
Molly Robinson
Staff Writers Photographers & Illustrators
Ella Dunn*
Olivia Larios*
Robert Manger*Kai Mermis-Cava
Jessie Shaw*
Noah ContrerasRose Bialk
Stella Moran
Olivia Larios*
Andrew Olmsted
Ella Stephan
COURTESY OF LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE
Record-breaking athletes smile brightly.By MAYA MAZOR-HOOFIEN
THOUGH THEIR season may be
over, Lewis & Clark’s football team
is far from done for the year. On
Feb. 24, the team invited LC students
to partake in a student-led football
clinic intended for people of any level of
athletic ability.
As someone who generally avoids
running in any and all non-emergency
situations, I was apprehensive to say
the least. However, my commitment
to my journalistic responsibilities
outweighed even my most stringently
held anti-running vow, so to the clinic I went. The promise of a free t-shirt,
admittedly, was a big part of the deal
for me.
The clinic, held on a rare sunny
Saturday, drew about 80 participants.
Combined with as many players from the
football team, about 150 people started
warming up on the field, tossing balls
back and forth, stretching and jogging in
their complimentary, bright orange L&C
Football shirts.
Head Coach Joe Bushman called
the group together to bring the clinic to
its official start, welcoming the group
and laying out the three objectives of the
afternoon. In order: to have fun, to not get injured (specifically but not exclusively
directed at mid-season student athletes)
and to learn more about football.
We were split into areas by grade
level and started the warm-up proper.
Lined up in 5 yard increments, we jogged,
shuffled and karaoke-d in time with the
whistle. This warm-up was led by Daniel
Pham ’24, one of the student leaders who
ran the entire event.
When we were sufficiently warm, we
reconvened and got to hear more from the
coaching staff. Coach Bushman talked us
through the beginning of a football game
and then passed the explanatory torch
to Assistant Coach Bruce Read, also the
special teams coordinator, who described
the kickoff.
At the start of the game, one team
begins by kicking off the ball. Beginning
at the 35 yard line, it is kicked as far as
possible to gain field position. The kickoff
team, one of the special teams Coach Read
oversees, is trying to get the ball as close to
the end zone as possible. Gaining yardage
in the kickoff sets up the offense to score
a touchdown, but is also an important
morale element to start off a game.
“It gets your team all fired up. So
there’s a lot going on in that very first play.
It sets the tone, oftentimes for the entire
game,” said Read.
Up next was Assistant Coach Mike
Machado, offensive coordinator, who
succinctly explained the main goal of
the offense.
“We want to score,” Machado said.
Scoring can happen in two ways:
a touchdown, when the team gets a
ball into their endzone by running, or
throwing it in. The other is to score a
field goal, which a team can opt for if it is
in a poor position to score a touchdown
during that drive, usually when they are
on their 4th and final down and are still
too far from the endzone to make scoring
a touchdown likely.
Then Assistant Coach Daniel Fields,
defensive coordinator, similarly summed
up the defense’s goal.
“Stop them from scoring,” Fields said.
The defense will prevent the
opposition from scoring by trying to take
away possession of the ball. They can do
that by intercepting a pass, or making the
other team fumble by knocking the ball out of their hands. Once they recover the ball,
they should run the opposite direction,
towards their endzone.
“There have been people who go the
wrong direction. Bruce, I’m looking at
you,” said Fields, earning a good-natured
laugh from the group at the expense of the
unfortunate cornerback.
He continued to describe the job of the
defense with great enthusiasm for his role.
“Our goal is to have 11 people hungry
and looking for this football, trying to
take it away and put it in the opposite
end zone. That’s defensive football. It’s
the easiest job on Earth. I just get to have
fun and get 11 people … to go after the
football,” said Fields.
With the educational segment of the
clinic over, we were off to get some hands-
on experience with the sport. The field was
separated into different stations, each with
a drill designed to highlight the specific
skill set each position requires.
Sports Section Editor Will Trunzo ’25,
a current linebacker on the team, promised
me when I agreed to go that these would
be the “fun drills” that the team “wish they
could do all the time!” and that I would be
“totally fine.” Not that I doubted him in
the slightest, but I was pleased to find that
these were, in fact, very fun drills.
One station had me shove a few
linebackers lined up with chest padding
(Trunzo included) and then tackle a rolling
doughnut-shaped, cushioned “bag.” I may
or may not have let out a girlish yelp as
I went for the take down, but I hear Ray
Lewis swears by the technique.
I moved on to a drill where a “rabbit”
chased a “fox” in a tight figure 8, and
another where I ran backwards and
diagonally in an X, flawlessly catching a
ball at the end. There were more drills,
more tackles and lots of energy. The
whole afternoon was full of laughs and
encouragement, and made me feel as
though I were being welcomed into the
camaraderie of the team.
This was the goal of the clinic, Bushman
told me in a conversation at the end.
“I think it’s just a way to generate some
school spirit,” said Bushman. “I think
sometimes that Lewis & Clark kids work
so hard academically, they need more fun
things to do. So I just wanted to kind of
create a situation where kids could come out and have a good time and get to learn a
little bit about the game.”
He told me about the student
organizers who planned all the drills
and ran them. They were members of
the team’s elected Leadership Council,
who meet with the coaching staff weekly,
going through leadership training and
discussing the iconic coaching book “Row
the Boat” by PJ Fleck.
“Every team I’ve been on that has been
a championship-type of team always has
really strong leadership,” said Bushman.
“So that’s what we’re trying to bring out of
the kids right now.”
Alongside providing a leadership
opportunity for his players, Bushman
hoped that the clinic would build
connections between the team and
the rest of the LC community. The
team is planning to attend the Theatre
department’s mainstage play, “Wolf
Play,” together to show up for other
students on campus.
“That’s what we always tell them. If you
want your fellow classmates to come to
your games, you’ve got to be willing to go
support other students in whatever they’re
doing, because everybody here is doing
great things,” Bushman said. “You should
go, whether it’d be the concert or the play
or the game, to have students there rooting
for you.”
Our conversation was underscored
by students leaving for the day, but not
before Bushman thanked, congratulated
and bade them farewell. Just as he
teaches his players, he expressed
his enthusiasm and gratitude to
participants. He also appreciated the joy
that permeated the event.
“I walked around, and everybody
was laughing and smiling. And look,
we’re 15 minutes out and still have half
of the people still here. So that’s pretty
cool,” said Bushman.
Alex Sandoval ’25, a lineman on the
team, shared Bushman’s sentiment,
hoping to continue to connect athletics
to the greater student body.
“I think that the future of community
events can be very beneficial for the
football community, and that this can
lead to everyone being involved with
football and help the community grow,”
said Sandoval.FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
SPORTS 11
By WILL TRUNZO
ON FEB. 8, THE Lewis & Clark
Men’s and Women’s Swim
Teams traveled to Federal
Way, Washington for the Northwest
Conference Championship. Over the
course of the weekend, swimmers
competed across multiple events to
improve their race times. With many
swimmers finishing with personal
best times and the majority of the
team scoring points, it was a hugely
promising showing for the teams.
Two team members, Ella Stephan ’25
and Aiden Ringel ’25, reflected on the
season at large.
Ringel, in his third year on the
team, was named one of the men’s
team captains this year. As one of only
a few distance swimmers, Ringel swims
in multiple events, ranging from 200
yards to a mile. He attributes the strong
performances at the conference in part
to how the team pulled together to
support each other, especially in light of
the loss of last year’s seniors.
“We lost a really big point scorer last
year, but everybody was able to pick up
that slack,” said Ringel, emphasizing
the impact that each member of the
team had in their performance.
Given the loss of last year’s seniors
and the small size of the team, many
did not expect a strong showing from
LC this year. However, the swimmers
worked together to fill in the gaps, and
the results were exciting.
“Men’s team had a much stronger
showing than many people thought we
would have,” said Ringel.
The community of the team is not
siloed to within the men’s and women’s
respective teams, though. Ringel
highlighted that his teammate Kate Milne ‘24 finished in the top eight in one of
their final races at LC.
“For one of their last swims, (Milne)
swam in a final,” Ringel said “It’s the top
eight swimmers in that race.”
The women’s team also performed
impressively, coming out ahead in key
races and improving times over the
course of the weekend. Stephan, a captain
on the women’s team, reflected on the
team’s performance.
“It was good, it was really good.”
Stephan said, “We did really good points
wise, there were definitely a couple of close
races we came out ahead on. Most people performed better in finals than in prelims,
which is huge.”
Stephan highlighted how many of her
teammates scored points, which is key with
a smaller team like LC’s. She also credited
the new swim coach, Caitlin DeNise, for
her support and guidance throughout the
season, as well as her efforts in building
the future of the team through recruiting.
Looking back on the season and toward
what is to come, Stephan emphasized the
positive track the team is on.
“It’s a really good trajectory for next
year because we’ll have most of the same
people again,” Stephan said. Especially with ongoing recruiting
efforts, the future looks bright for LC
swimming. With the season ending and
time opening up, both Ringel and Stephan
plan on keeping up their training through
a multitude of means. The water polo
club, run by another swimmer, is starting
to meet, as is the triathlon club. Both
clubs offer opportunities for continued
training and athletic development and
are open to anyone.
“I feel like the team did a really
good job cheering for each other
and paying attention to everyone’s
accomplishments,” said Stephan. Ringel echoed similar sentiments,
emphasizing the community he felt
was present among the team in long
bus rides and shared meals.
“I really liked all the bus rides
to and from meets. Particularly
at the end of the season, when we
were coming back from conference,
celebrating the end of our season,”
he said.
With efforts turning towards
recruiting and training, and with
spirits high among the team, next
year is set to be a season to watch for
the LC swim team.Swimmers compete in NW Conference Championship
Women’s, men’s teams participate in end of season meet, set stage for further growth in upcoming yearsFootball team hosts student clinic, invites all
Activities, training offer students deeper understanding of sport, building connections outside of athletics
The football program welcomes over 80 participants, with the players coaching.EMMA FORD/THE MOSSY LOG
Kate Sowerwine ’24 tackles a bag in a drill run by linebackers, mimicing game scenarios.EMMA FORD/THE MOSSY LOG
Competitors line up and dive into their races at the University of Puget Sound’s pool.ELLA STEPHAN/THE MOSSY LOG
Students at competition finished year off strong, achieving personal best times.ELLA STEPHAN/THE MOSSY LOG
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024
12Maybe we deserve a symposium too!!
Island sees marooned majors struggle to survive
Stranded students battle each other for supremacy in deserted tropical paradise, violence, madness follows
By EMMA FORD
IN A MOVE that would make the
professor of any ethics class very
happy, I wish today to propose a
hypothetical to you. Imagine, if you will,
a great ship, its masts tall and proud, its
sails billowing in the wind. See it, grand
in your mind’s eye, sailing azure seas,
a p*oneer of freedom and exploration,
or at least that is what the PR branding
would say.
Now see it dashed against the vicious
rocks of a deserted island. After rolling
and pitching in a tempestuous storm, the
mighty ship succumbs to the elements, a
sole surviving lifeboat making it to shore,
passengers fleeing the wreckage. See them,
in your imagination, crawling to safety.
Did you picture Lewis & Clark
students? I forgot to mention that part.
For the subjects of our thought
experiment are they. I propose to you,
dear reader, a question rivaling the
trolly problem: Which majors at this
school would survive marooning on this
hypothetical deserted island? Who has
the strength of character, the mettle, to
live to see rescue?
With the utmost care and research
that a good IA/PoliSci double major is
sure to do, I have unearthed the answer
to this question of great import — as
sorted by major, the following are the
deaths I predict this imaginary group of
LC students shall face during their time
on the island.
In all fairness, I believe that all of the
major majors (get it) on the island would
survive the first 24 hours. The hardiness
of our students who endure Bon food and
dorm living would allow many of them to
start a shelter and a fire (and hopefully
keep the two separate), gather some
rudimentary food and figure out how not
to spread STDs like COVID cases through
Copeland. This is within our power.
However, after the first few days,
the casualties would begin to mount. Unfortunately for my beloved friends in
Computer Science, their lack of regular
sun exposure will not serve them well.
Hiding from UV rays under palm trees
will not save them from horrific burns,
and, shortly afterwards, death from acute
dehydration. A lifetime of exclusively
consuming Monster Energy drinks will
leave them with no water reserves, and
that eventually catches up with a girl.
Shortly thereafter, the Theatre majors
will follow them to the grave. Eventually,
they will tire of reciting woeful
monologues from “The Tempest,” and
will turn to a surefire coping mechanism.
In the longstanding tradition of that
slutty, slutty department, one Theatre
major will proposition the others with
the reasoning of needing to stay warm
(never mind the tropical setting). In the
proceeding, ah, activities, the battered
survivors already coping with eyeliner
withdrawal will overestimate their
stamina, confidence having been overly
boosted by the recent orgy that was the
Once Upon a Weekend party. To put a
fine point on it, they are gonna fuck each
other to death. What a way to go!
By the end of the week, we will also
see the end of the Philosophy majors,
and no, it is not nihilistic. In the pursuit
of outdoing Descartes and proving they
are actually on the island, they will forget
to eat. Leaving the cave means nothing if
you cannot feed yourself.
After this initially devastating period,
we will see some peace for a while as the
remaining survivors settle in for the long
haul, with the exception of Studio Arts
majors who will poison themselves trying
to make paint to decorate their shelters.
All peace will be shattered by the
mauling of SOAN majors, who will attempt
to interview a jungle cat for an ethnographic
study of the island, only for the interview
to turn bloody. What an intriguing
commentary on the inherent violence in
human-animal relations! At this point, we
move away from natural causes, and into inter-major violence — where we were
always destined to end up.
International Affairs and Political
Science majors, so often linked, will
devolve into a recreation of Lord of the
Flies in trying to decide on a temporary
government. As anarchy sweeps over
the island majors, a great battle will
brew, leading to their annihilation. In
the melee, the English majors (watching
smugly on the sidelines, having correctly
analyzed the story and identified the
Jesus figure, feeling quite superior to
their peers), will be killed in the crossfire.
Maybe if they were not so pompous
about their media literacy… Oh well, it
makes for a satisfying conclusion to their
narrative arc.
Many breathe a sigh of relief now that
Political Science students, who would
not know how to realistically govern if
they were paid to do so, are out of the
picture. At this point, I believe a council
of students made up of some overly
ambitious Math majors and a few quirky
RHMS folks would be attempting to rule
the island in the absence of anyone who
has actually taken Con Law.
This council of students will
be responsible for the death of the
Psychology majors. For the crime of
conducting a series of experiments on
the History majors without the oversight
of an ethics board, they will be publicly,
summarily executed, leaving the island
with not a single underqualified therapist
to help survivors cope with the losses.
Economics majors will similarly die
at the hands of fellow students. After
attempting to start a currency made of
coconut shells and provide risky loans
to fellow castaways, it will become clear
to the islanders that the loans will never
be repaid. The bank built on the back of
these subprime loans will collapse, and
enraged at having their credit
ruined even on a desert island, a band of
survivors will carry out the extrajudicial
killing of the Economics majors. Next
time, they might do well to remember
that economics is not about money, but
the welfare money allows us to measure.
It is only after these killings that the
untimely death of the World Languages
majors will shake the few remaining
survivors from their bloodlust. While
trying to signal a passing ship via
semaphore, an argument between the
students will distract them sufficiently
that they will be swept tragically out
to sea (after all, unlike so many other
majors, World Languages never
bothered anybody).
After this, the last survivors will
be much more cautious. Took them
long enough. Classics majors sit
round the fire composing Homeric
oral poetry and the Music majors will
critique their rhythm — the hallmarks
of a society at rest.
But before their rescue, the
History majors, made paranoid
by the Psych experiments
conducted on them as well as fears
of becoming the next Donner Party,
will have become so malnourished
from refusing to eat any meat
and will die of starvation. The
truly tragic part? No adequate
documentation! At least take a census
and throw it to the waves in a bottle.
Our sole survivors, rescued after
months of horror and bloodshed,
will be Biology, Chemistry and their
Weird Barbie mashup of Biochemistry
majors. After all, they seem like they
have pretty good heads on their
shoulders. The ability to identify
edible plants, as well as pass
Calc I, has prepared them to
survive any hardship. By
the time they are rescued by a passing freighter, they will
be seasoned survivors. But the horrors
they endured, even with the relative
unfeeling nature of STEM bitches, will
stay with them forever.
Thank you, dear reader, for engaging
with my hypothetical. I truly believe that
in the very realistic event of shipwreck
on an idyllic yet deserted island, this
is exactly what would go down. If
you have alternate opinions, please
submit them to mossylog@lclark.edu
(as well as a personal statement that
includes your major and expresses your
discontentment for how I killed them
off/neglected to include them. Rhetoric
and Media Studies, that is a threat and
a challenge.)
By ELLA DUNN
T HE OXFORD Comma has long
since, according to The Mossy
Log’s style guide, been illegal. This
oppressive guideline has plagued the poor
Mossy Log staff for years, nay, decades!
One fateful day, the new editor of The
Mossy Log’s Backdoor was looking over an
article she had written, taking the edits the
lovely editors had so kindly left her, when
all of a sudden she froze. Sweat beginning
to bead on her forehead, finger hovering
above the touchpad of her laptop, she was
confronted with the ultimate conflict of a
writer: to accept the edit and abandon her
morals, or to stand her ground until print.
She immediately drafted an email to
the higher-ups, heart racing with sheer
passion for the subject of grammatical
correctness. It demanded an audience with
the mysterious Council of The Mossy Log.
The editor always had been and would
forever be the Oxford Comma’s biggest
defender. It was a matter of simple clarity.
In response, she got only the time and
meeting place, sent from an anonymous
email address. Her breath caught in her
throat. This could be dangerous, life
threatening even, but she was willing to
risk it all for the comma she held dear.
JR Howard was silent as our heroine
slowly opened the door to classroom 135.
There, in the darkness, the Council was
waiting, only the glinting of their blue-
light glasses visible through the shadows.
They were silent as she stood before them,
waiting for her query. She let out a breath
she had not realized she was holding.
Gazing into the sparkling orbs of the
paper editors, Y/N- I mean, the Backdoor
Editor found herself stuttering as she
tried to speak.
“I-I-I want to p-propose a rule ch
change.” Her heart was galloping in
anticipation. She gulped.
The Council spoke in unison, their
voices bellowing, “YOU DARE ASK US TO
ALTER THE SACRED TEXT?”The Backdoor Editor stumbled back
with a gasp as the Council began to rise
from their seats, a bright light emanating
from their bodies. They continued,
“REFER TO THE TOME OF WISDOM.”
With that, they disappeared into thin
air, leaving behind them a piece of paper,
fluttering to the floor. The Backdoor
Editor inched over to it, watching the
room for any sign that the Council was
watching. It seemed they had gone. She
lifted the piece of paper, heavy because
her arms were so delicate and petite and
tiny. It was a map to a spot marked with
an X. Classic. She quested through the
tall, swaying grasses of the glade and
passed the brick manor house.
After a journey through the
multiple trees surrounding it, she
arrived at the hulking emo walls of the
Fowler building, the place where her
quest was destined to end. She snuck
through the halls, being watched by the
Council’s guards, and finally made it to
the small office in Fowler where the X
was located on the map. She jiggled the
door — locked. She began to turn away
in defeat — but then a high-pitched
sound caught her ear.
The door began to glow. It recognized
the touch of a true author and would
grant entrance to only the worthiest of
Mossy Log staff members. Our heroine
coquettishly jumped back as it began to
shake violently before springing open.
Beyond the doorway she could see
only darkness. She slowly made her
way through the lit doorway. In the
center of the room, she could make
out a podium, upon which was a large,
leather-bound book.
The book was covered with a thick layer
of dust, and the cover looked worn and
ancient. She brushed off some of the dust
to see the words engraved into the leather:
THE MOSSY LOG STYLE GUIDE. So this
was where it all began.
Sensing her true intentions, the book
opened itself and flipped to the correct page, titled “Use of the Oxford Comma.”
The only phrase beneath was, “Do Not.”
The Backdoor Editor looked over her
shoulder, confirming that she was alone,
before taking out her trusty red pen and
beginning her edits. Her pen moved in a
frenzy, scratching out that evil “Do Not.”
and replacing it with a pleasant, “Under
necessary circumstances, the use of the
Oxford Comma may be permitted.”
In that brief, beautiful moment, the
Oxford Comma was officially legalized,
according to the sacred text, but before she
could celebrate her great accomplishment,
the page began to crease, crinkle and fade.
She watched as the paper erased her edits
and returned it back to its previous state,
with that dreaded “Do Not,” filling the page
with authority, finality and inclemency.
Our brave heroine trudged back home
in defeat where she returned to her edits,
dejectedly, morosely and inconsolably
deleting her beloved Oxford Comma from
article after article.
To report this heroic story, the editor
called upon her (favorite) new Staff
Writer, who made it her mission to try to
use her newfound privilege throughout
this article, an effort which has most
definitely been erased from the record by
our lovely editors. So goes the story of how
the Oxford Comma was (almost) made
legal in The Mossy Log, if but for a mere
few seconds.My Oxford Comma: Editor quests
to legalize contended punctuationUpcoming events (no for real)
THIS WEEKEND
1 - Watzek archival student nude
photo challenge
Submit your sexiest photos for
research purposes. What will you do
for the chance to earn 25 flex points?
5 p.m. @ Watzek Library
1 - ASB Guy Fawkes Tribute
BYO Barrel of Gunpowder to the
upcoming meeting
6:30 p.m. @ Senate Chambers
1 - Film : Mary Jane’s Film Fest
Classics of Stoner Cinema, snacks
provided, Trustfund-afarian attire
recommended
9 p.m. @ Copeland C30
2 - Theatre : Sheep Play *
Like Wolf Play, but in different
clothing
7:30 p.m. @ Fir Acres Theatre
2 - Coop Roommate Speed Dating
Find a new dorm buddy in time
for housing applications, without
all that pesky getting to know each
other in Instagram DM’s
8 p.m. @ The Co-op
2 - Reuse Room Wife Swap
Drop your keys in a bowl, flip
those pineapples and let fate do
the rest!
10 p.m. @ The ReUse Room
AND BEYOND
7 - The Eros Experience
Make those legs a-gape in annual
Agnes Flanagan Chapel orgy
12 a.m. @ Agnes Flanagan Chapel
10 - AI Symposium
Help us accelerate the decline of
our fragile world and pay tribute
to future robot overlords.
12 p.m. @ J.R. Howard11 - Activist Self Care
Constant white-guilt advocacy
got you burnt out? Do a face mask
while awaiting wire transfers
from your parents!
2 p.m. @ Holistic Wellness LLC
11 - Study Abroad Fair
Share a culture you never really
engaged with while away
4:30 p.m. @ Miller
13 - Another Fucking Symposium
IDK, the subject is bees or some
gay shit like that. We have stickers
Location TBD
15 - Music: Repeats on a Theme
The same thing that was played last
time but you cannot tell the difference
7:30 p.m. @ Evans Auditorium
15 - Poppers with the President
Just kidding lol
N/A
RECURRING EVENTS
Mondays - Platteau Open Mic
To start a rivalry between the Coop
and the Platteau, the Platteau is
muscling in on the open mic market
7:30 p.m. @ The Platteau
Thursdays - Co-op Open Mic
The Co-op thinks the Platteau is
not funny and very immature.
7:30 p.m. @ The Co-Op
Thursdays - Begrudging Troom
Troom with a group! Bitch loudly
about how you would not be there
if the Bon was better that day
5:30 p.m. @ The Troom
Saturdays - Music : Atonal Garage
Noise Fest
Get your vape stolen and your
heart broken at house show out of
a love of local music
8:30 p.m. @ Techno House
J FRANK/THE MOSSY LOGEMMA FORD/THE MOSSY LOG
* Political Science faculty barred from attendance (you know what you did)