Campus Living's new procedures fall short

ZIBBY PILLOTE /// Editor-in-Chief

“The Easiest Move: Stay On Campus!” read an email dated Jan. 28 to rising junior and senior students currently living in dorms. But securing a desirable spot on campus is not all it’s cracked up to be. This spring, Campus Living implemented a new strategy for assigning students to on-campus housing for the 2013-2014 school year. The strategy involved incentivizing rising upperclassmen to stay on campus by offering them the first choice of housing accommodations, a three percent rent reduction on the 2013-2014 room rates and the chance to win iPads, parking permits and bookstore gift cards. The email from Director of Campus Housing Sandi Bottemiller also emphasized new block meal plans and free laundry.
In order to be eligible for such benefits, students had to enter into a lease agreement that involved a “required (non refundable) $200 deposit.” While the email mentioned the sense of community and benefit of convenience that comes with living on campus, it failed to state how many apartments were available for rising juniors and seniors, and through what sort of process the applicants would be chosen.
Ted Jack (’15) took issue with the way his deposit was handled after he did not receive the apartment that he had applied for. “The general sense was that if you applied early, you would get an apartment,” said Jack. Jack and his friends were wary of the “non-refundable” fee, but wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to significantly increase their chances of getting the apartment of their choosing. “We only proceeded with the application because we had been told that if we didn’t get our apartment we would be able to get refunds. This eventually became the general consensus among students.”
Originally, the early action housing initiative was assumed to be on a first-come, first-served basis. On March 13, Bottemiller announced that Campus Living would be switching to a lottery system in order to assign apartments “in the most fair way.” According to the first-come, first-served system, rising seniors were given priority over rising juniors, who were first-time applicants to the apartments.
When Jack and his friends began to suspect that they would not receive a four-bedroom apartment and would instead be split into two double apartments, the group decided to try to cancel their lease agreement. Bottemiller alerted the group eight days before announcing outcomes to all applicants that they would not be issued refunds because Campus Living “could have accommodated [them] in two-bedroom units.” Though Bottemiller’s Jan. 28 email clearly states that deposits were nonrefundable, other Campus Living employees had told Jack that in the event of a four-bedroom being split into two two-bedroom apartments, the deposit could be refunded.
The initial decision was that no person who had applied early would be issued a refund under any circumstance; this included students who had applied for four-bedroom units and were offered two-bedroom units, as well as students who had applied for either and received nothing. After a number of students voiced their dissatisfaction, Campus Living changed the policy so that students who did not receive either two- or four-bedroom assignments could get a refund, and students who received two-bedroom apartments after applying for four-bedroom apartments could receive a partial refund and have the rest of the money go towards living on campus. The inconsistency in granting refunds was extremely frustrating for Jack, who was determined to do something.
The lease agreement for the apartment states that students may receive a refund if their application is cancelled before July 1 for the fall semester, or Nov. 15 for the spring semester. Early action applicants are an exception to this rule—for the privilege of signing up early, deposits may not be refunded.
After a meeting with Dean of Students Anna Gonzalez and Bottemiller, Jack received his deposit back in return for his silence. “They essentially asked me at the meeting to let people speak for themselves and stop taking action on behalf of the student body about this. What I took from it was they were saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll refund you, now shut up,’” said Jack. Jack encouraged other students affected by the debacle to share their stories with him in the hopes of building a legal case against the school.
“It turned out I couldn’t take legal action. They refunded me so I couldn’t [do anything] on my account, and the other person in my situation received an offer [for a partial refund] from [Campus Living] and she took it,” said Jack.
On March 28, students were notified as to their apartment living situation. Jack was forwarded an email by a friend sent to “Students awarded doubles” that clearly states that in lieu of losing the $200 completely, “you may opt to apply for a residence hall room instead...We will refund $100 of your deposit if you choose to complete the housing contract, keeping the remaining $100.”
The event has sparked a series of discussions on campus, in the Campus Living office and beyond. On April 1, a meeting was called in Akin Hall to address these issues. “Bottemiller seemed to [think] that I was making all this up and there weren’t any problems, and we addressed the fact that they refunded some people but they aren’t refunding other people, and they won’t tell people what the actual requirements are to get a refund, and there’s just a lack of transparency,” said Jack.
“It leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. You’ve got all these students paying $40,000 a year to go to school here, and they’re not going to refund you your $200. Really?” said Jack.
Jack says that he and his friends will be living in a house off campus next fall. He admits the apartments are nice, but does not believe that they are worth so much trouble. Two-bedroom apartments and four-bedroom apartments each cost $3,677 a semester before the addition of a required meal plan. Four-bedroom apartments feature a full stove and oven and a full-sized fridge, while double apartments have a two-burner stove and microwave oven.

Graduate school pioneers unique center for problem gambling treatment

KATRINA STAAF /// OPINIONS EDITOR

In a state where problem gambling affects roughly three percent of all people (as well as the people who care about them), some of Lewis & Clark’s pioneers have become part of Oregon’s solution: the Graduate School for Education and Counseling Psychology opened a gambling treatment center almost three months ago, where problem gamblers and those impacted by their behavior may receive a free year of counseling services from professionally-supervised students. Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, the center is the first and only in the Portland area to provide problem gambling counseling services on weekends.

LC’s treatment facility is also the first and only in Oregon to act as a training center for problem gambling counselors. This trailblazing trend may be attributed to Coordinator of the graduate school’s Professional Mental Health and Addictions Counseling Program Dr. Boyd Pidcock: facility Program Director Rick Berman explained that Pidcock has spent many years as “a leader…in workforce development for [Oregon’s] problem gambling services” and established the clinic as a contribution to such development.

Along with the Chair of the graduate school’s Counseling Psychology Program Teresa McDowell, Berman and Pidcock supervise four graduate assistants who do the actual counseling and five graduate volunteers who handle the outreach and program development aspects. Each treatment room is equipped with cameras that take live footage of counseling sessions, so supervisors can look on and later provide student counselors with feedback. Fellow student counselors may also watch the sessions as a way of learning from their peers.
While all state-supported gambling support services in Oregon are free, LC’s counseling center makes significant efforts to be accessible in ways that similar facilities are not. As a result of making services available in Spanish, roughly 25 percent of the center’s clients are Latino and speak Spanish as their first language (interpretive services in any language are also availwable).

Located at 4445 S.W. Barbur Blvd., the center is only a mile south of downtown Portland. It also relies on a treatment philosophy that encourages family involvement, which contributes to the weekend-exclusive schedule. According to Berman, the center’s desire to “help reduce barriers to high-quality services” stems directly from LC’s commitment to social justice.   

Due to its combination of student counselors and progressive supervisors, LC’s problem gambling treatment facility has the capacity to use highly innovative counseling methods with its growing group of clients.  To reiterate the center’s newness, Berman said, “We’re very early in the process of developing and testing our treatment model.” Still, current treatment already includes unique attempts at integrating a family counseling model with a standard model of individual addiction counseling in order to explore the relationship between interpersonal interactions and problematic gambling behavior.

Berman predicts that at least six months will pass before the center reaches full client capacity, and right now, anyone who seeks help can get it immediately. This facility presently serves a vital role in the greater Portland community, but also sets a positive tone for the future of problem gambling treatment. Thanks to the center’s experiential learning opportunity for students, Berman and his colleagues “expect [that] a whole new generation of problem gambling counselors will enter the field with a much higher level of competence than before.”

Improv show and a capella concert support a Ugandan medical clinic

ALLIE MCRAITH /// NEWS EDITOR

Nate Cohen (’13) spent last semester working as a medic in eastern Uganda at a clinic run by the the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children. This clinic is three hours from the nearest city and usually sees 65 patients a day, three-qaurters of which are under the age of 12.  
To aid their efforts at becoming solar powered, Cohen and SCRIPTed, with the help of a capella groups Momo and the Coop and Semper Solus, hosted a fundraiser on April 17.
“There is electricity, but it is extremely touch-and-go. It will not work for sometimes weeks at a time. This eliminates computerized record systems or refrigeration for things like vaccines or blood,” Cohen said. “Pretty basic things.”
In collaboration with the a capella groups, Cohen even freestyled, perhaps remembering his time in Uganda without electricity.
“One of my favorite things that happened while I was there was that the power went out and they told us that gorillas had got the wiring. We asked them gorillas with an ‘o’ or guerillas with a ‘ue.’ And they said they didn’t know. Then I realized we’re out here,” Cohen said.
This show took whatever donations students had to offer, but to donate directly, visit http://www.fimrc.org/ or get in touch with Cohen directly.