Savage Love

Dan Savage. click to view source

“Savage Love”Author Talks LGBT
 at OSU!

I had the absolute privilege of attending Dan Savage’s lecture at the LaSells Stewart Center on Oregon State campus. The center was almost full with students, staff and curious citizens.

For those of you who don’t know, Dan Savage is a well- known writer of a sex column called “Savage Love.” He also is a gay rights activist and creator of the “It Gets Better Project,” which is about preventing suicide in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) teen community.

Savage began his lecture by explaining the “It Gets Better Project.” The hope of the project is to show positive gay role models living real and fulfilling lives. Savage hopes this will help prevent suicide of gay teens like the series we had in 2010. The site has been a huge success and now has over 10,000 videos and many more links.

The site is something very personal to Savage who just wanted to help kids, “I needed to talk to LGBT kids, especially those who have parents who are hostile and or bullying themselves.”

Savage looked for an outlet and realized the age of the Internet gave him his opportunity. He said, “In the Youtube era, I was waiting for permission, which I didn’t need.” In the end, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, created the “It Gets Better Project.”

The project itself has had a huge impact, affecting how people go about reaching out to LGBT teens who feel scared and alone in this world. According to Savage, “The goal was to save lives, and we have done that.” He talked about how a preacher who was linked to his website was actually able to prevent a suicide. “It saved lives. It still saves lives,” Savage said.

For the second half of his lecture, Savage took questions from the audience. They ranged from harmless questions like how to lose your virginity at 21, to fetishes about urine, to more fun questions like, “Who would you go straight for?”

Savage was a light of personality as the whole crowd ate up his humorous and searing openness to every question. He truly was fearless in all aspects, both sharing his personal sex stories and his views on our culture and how we treat each other. Savage was a true inspiration to those who believe in a world more kind and less judgemental about sex.

Savage said it best when he talked about all the changes we have made since he came out in 1981. “I had to tell my parents I couldn’t be a Marine, but just in my lifetime I’m married, I have children, and I can be a Marine.”

LBCC does Lobby day!!

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LBCC students (from left) Melissa Hite, Ricky Zipp, James Smith, Emmanuel Bernal and Stephanie Land discuss the event. by Bryana Bittner

I had the privilege to join Ricky Zipp and many other LBCC students at the Oregon Student Association (OSA) Lobby Days at the Oregon legislature in Salem. Not only did we lobby, we also participated in a rally to help raise awareness of rising tuition in the state of Oregon.

The headquarters for the OSA and other student groups involved was filled with electric excitement as those who were there for lobbying were giving their assignments and training. The whole of the place was nautical, with signs all over the walls saying “S.O.S.,” standing for “Save Our School” and “I [heart] Money for Schools.”

Our group was placed in regional team two. Our leader was the often overly-motivated and very spirited Zipp. I interviewed many of our team; one Brandon Green, who was as new to lobbying as I was, told me “This is something I’ve never done before and so I’m pretty excited for it!”

Our team, the most underdressed in attendance, really showed the family feels of our school. Compared to the suit-wearing students from places like Western Oregon and Oregon State, we looked like real activists in the purest fashion. Zipp was ecstatic, stating, “I think it’s really great and we had a great turnout.”
Many schools came together for the common good of everyone’s education.

Tom Worth, the vice chairman of the Oregon Community College Student Association (OCCSA), was also filled with emotion. “We’re making sure that legislators knows that higher education funding needs to be a priority,” says Worth. “Students have been constantly spending more and getting less from their tuition.”
I asked Worth what he thought about the coming day’s lobbying, and with a glimmer of hope is his eyes he told me, “I think it’s pretty good so far. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun today. I also believe that this lobby day will allow students to have their voices heard.”

Much of the effort was to get the Oregon Senate to pass Senate Bill 742 for tuition equality. This bill, if passed, will bring in millions of dollars to universities all across the state that they currently don’t have access to. This was just one of several bills that students lobbied for all day Monday.

The LBCC group did much of the lobbying across the Oregon legislature. They passed out books with many stories of fellow LBCC students to the state representatives. The hope was to inform them of the plight we all experience trying to pay for school. We also had the chance to be part of the rally, yelling our cause to those in the senate. We also heard Governor John Kitzhaber speak.

We also were able to personally lobby State Senator Fred Girod. We did our best to impress on him the need for more financial help to colleges across Oregon. Though seeming nonchalant to our pleas, he did leave us with this, “I do think that you are the jobs of the future – we need to support you.

LBCC welcomes durg sniffing dog

Officer Davis lets Hutch lead him to the suspicious material.Photo by Alyssa Archer 

LBCC will soon be the new training area for Hutch and his trainer, Officer Aaron Davis of the Albany police department. Hutch, a drug-sniffing dog, is a three-year-old Belgian Malinois who was most likely bred in Holland.

When Hutch was found, he was reported as a coyote hanging around a gas station just outside of Los Angeles.  An officer from Medford, Rob Havice, flew down to evaluate the dog. He found that Hutch came from fine breeding – the kind you would find in Europe, where the best police dogs are from.
Officer Havice brought Hutch back to Oregon, where the Albany Police Department took control of him on Labor Day 2010.

Officer Davis, who has over 18 years of experience in law enforcement and spent seven years as a detective investigating narcotics manufacture, distribution, and trafficking in Albany, was selected to be the dog’s trainer.  Davis went to the Border Patrol’s K9 center near Fort Bliss, Texas, for a six-week course in dog handling.

“The class had 34 border patrol agents and me,” says Davis. “One of these things is not like the other.”
The border patrol does some of the hardest police training in America. According to Davis, the border patrol has graduated 2,000 dogs though its program.
Out of the 18 drives that dogs have, Hutch has four attributes and three character traits that make him a great drug-sniffing dog. He has trainability, is active and playful, has the desire to hunt, retrieve, and play, and can detect air scents.

When asked to describe his relationship with Hutch, Davis said “I’m the pack leader,” and that they get along very well. Hutch is a very friendly dog.
Davis went on to say, “He would very easily be a great pet, but that’s not his job. His job is to find drugs.” Hutch is trained to smell cocaine, meth, heroine, and marijuana. Hutch was never trained as a patrol dog, so he isn’t violent in any way.

Patrol dogs do protection work, tracking work, and pursuit. Drug-sniffing dogs are called detection dogs because they do just that – detect. There are many different kinds of detection dogs, from drug-sniffing dogs like Hutch, to bomb-, accelerant- and even agriculture-sniffing dogs. All these kinds of dogs do their part in law enforcement around the nation.
Hutch allows for the APD to do further investigations. He is a great tool to build probable cause in criminal investigations.

“He is also a great labor-saving device,” says Davis. “He can search a greater area than people can. He won’t find scales or guns, but he will find the drugs.”

“Detection dog training is entirely based on positive reinforcement. This is unlike most law enforcement; you don’t get pulled over because you do something right or to get a great citizen award.
In detection dog training, he gets an award instead of getting punished, unlike most law enforcement.” Davis goes on to say “Hutch exists for one purpose, and he loves is job.”

When asked how he felt about his job, Davis was nothing but filled with joy when he described his work. “I have a partner who is happy to see me every morning. In 18 years of law enforcement I was looking for a challenge. It wasn’t easy, but if it was I wouldn’t do it.”

LBCC Club in search of next Poet Laureate

The current poet laureate Whitney Smith. Photo courtesy of Commuter.

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The search is on for the new poet laureate! Could you be the one?

Current LBCC poet laureate Whitney Smith is very close to the end of her one-year term. The club will soon be on the search for a new club leader and will be taking submissions.
Anyone with a love and passion for poetry could be a perfect match.

The poetry club has been led by Smith, who according to the many members of the club, is “the beating heart of the poetry club.”

Smith is the one who gives the club its many prompts to the poems that are read during the club meetings. Last week’s was “ancestry.”

Many of the students had great poems about where they came from. The prompt inspired people to come up with ideas outside of the box. One person spoke of evolution in his poem, a woman talked about her experiences as her own personal ancestor and another talked about her father and her life through her poetry.
Club adviser Robin Havenick has a huge passion for poetry and writing. “About five years ago I went to a poetry club meeting at OSU,” says Havenick. “Loving poetry and wanting it to be alive here, they inspired me to start this club with my students five years ago.”

According to Havenick, things are going very well for this exciting club. “It’s been one of our strongest years.”
Club member Teagan Lochaer, an English major at LBCC, says, “The club is a lot of fun. It’s about bringing a lot of art and poetry to the school. It’s a great outlet for expression of ideas.”

“People think we are critical,” says Havenick. “People get nervous about sharing their poetry, but we are very compassionate about people’s poetry.”

Gabriel Shields, one of the newest members recruited from one of Havenick’s classes, put it like this: “I feel poetry gives people an outlet they wouldn’t usually have. They express because it gives them a way to do it when they usually wouldn’t. It gives me a personal chance to meet other people and see their inner spirit.”
The club is a great place for that lost poet in all of us. Meetings are in the Hot Shot Cafe every Tuesday at 3 p.m. Express your own inner spirit.

LBCC GSA Club sponsors Day of Silence!

Can silence make a statement?

The Gay strait alliance (GSA) plans on holing a Day of Silence on April 22 to help bring awareness to the suffering and silence that the Lesbian ,Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community is forced to often endure because of society’s intolerance.The GSA is also  planning on having a pride panel on April 22. This panel will include member of the LGBT community who will speak and answer questions on their experiences. The  GSA for those who don't know is a support group for the LGBT community and their allies.

The GSA does its best to both provide education to the general community and to give member of the LGBT world a place where they feel comfortable and safe. To give them a place where they feel like they belong.

               

The advisor Karelia Stetz-Waters who is also a professor at LBCC wanted to give back to the LGBT community. “I grew up in Corvallis”, says Stetz-Waters

“When I came out at 16 there was no group at the time for gay teens. So when I came back I wanted to reach out to other LGBTS, I wanted to make this exist for someone else.”

    
Cory Warren the student leader of the GSA looks forward to the day of silence. “The issues that do with equality relate to the intolerance of any kind in our society”. Say warren, Warren goes on to quote Martin Luther king Jr. “Injustice anywhere is a fret to justice everywhere.”

The GSA is a place where people who are allies and members of the LGBT can come and find a place to feel safe and to share their own experiences. So please support them on their day of silence on April 22

At a glance 
Meeting times- Mondays at 2:00 to 3:00
Place- Diversity Achievement Center  (D.A.C)
Adviser - Karelia Stetz-Waters (541-917-4556)
Next event - Day of Silence April 22
Student contact- Cory Warren (cm.warren@yahoo.com )

interview for news reporting!!!

I'm hoping to interview kerilia stezwaters about the GSA and from there to find student who are part of the club to write about. My interest is simply curiosity about what the club is about , their mission etc. my hope is for a better understanding. I have made initial contact with kerlia in passing in the hall we talked about me interviewing her and she agreed.I will email her with a time for an interview and find a time that works for her.

PC Gamer - Or PC Lamer?

The magazine I picked for this blog post is PC Gamer, which has been near and dear to me when I was in high school years ago.  As hinted by the title, PC Gamer is for and about PCs, Gamers, and games that said gamers might be inclined to play.  When you get past the ads, the magazine is usually filled with gaming news (such as new game announcements, game delays, or noteworthy updates), previews of upcoming games, and reviews of new titles or PC hardware.  The length of the articles can vary greatly, and most of the longer ones tend to focus on big-title previews and reviews or special features like the March 2011 issue’s list of the “Top 100 Best Games of All Time,” which incidentally left me raging like a Viking clad in a bear skin and little else.  (Hooray for berserker references!)

As I hinted to earlier, there are quite a few advertisements in this magazine.  At least they are relevant, and range from whole computers or components, monitors, laptops, and games.  Even though my interest was piqued, I was rather stunned by the sheer number of pages taken up by the ads in comparison to the articles.  I even went so far to compare to a few of my copies from a few years ago, and I was startled to see that the whole issue was about half as thick as my older copies, and yet it looked like the number of pages dedicated to ads was the same.   I almost feel like I bought a magazine of advertisements that also happens to have a few interesting articles.

One of the few articles that seems devoid of ads!

 

I have yet to figure out any real rhyme or reason that some articles end up on the website, and others end up in the printed publication.  In fact, I’ve even noticed some pseudo-overlap.  For example, a game called Dungeons was released just this month.  Within a week of the preview article posted on the website, the review was completed and posted, yet there’s an article in the magazine that is simultaneously both a preview and review, while being neither.  The article in print is probably not even something that really needed to be included at all, except maybe to the target audience that doesn’t have the internet.  Given that the target audience is PC gamers, well, maybe I’m not the only one who can see the problem there.  Maybe the printed article is there to just phone-in and still get a paycheck, since the person who wrote the online preview and review is different from the one who wrote the published article.  It’s also worth noting that the same team that works on the printed magazine also works on the website, so it’s not like they have the excuse of two separate teams. 

Now on to the particularly fun part: Comparing the two mediums a little less passively!  As I mentioned just moments ago, there’s just one big team involved.  That means the majority of the “essence” of PC Gamer carries over into both.  Both media have plenty of pretty pictures and screenshots to gawk at, almost every one of them captioned with some kind of snarky or silly remark.   

The printed version does have a couple of advantages over the online version, the best of which in my opinion is the fact that it’s a physical copy.  I can carry it around with me, I can bring it to school, take it into the kitchen to read while waiting for food to finish cooking.  I can’t read the website if the internet is down, power is out, or my computer decided to give up the ghost (which it hasn’t yet, knock on wood, or else you wouldn’t be reading this).  What I would also consider an advantage over the website is that I know I will read all of the articles in the printed version, if only because I feel motivated to get the most for the money I spent and because, again, I can take it with me and I have more general exposure to it.

What the website definitely wins out on, however, is how light it is on my wallet.  For the price of whatever I shell out to Comcast to keep my internet running, and however much of a drain of electricity my computer equipment is, I can check the website daily and see updates on gaming news, previews, reviews, download weekly podcasts, troll browse the community forums, or even purchase and download games at the PC Gamer Webstore.  That said, I don’t visit the site very often, since something about the blog-style format rubs me the wrong way.  

Even still, timely and free updates of a website whose layout I hate is better than shelling out a few bucks for an almost redundant vehicle for ads that has a few interesting articles inside.  Now if only those articles were unique to the printed copy, including the Top 100 Games list, I wouldn’t feel as if my wallet had been emptied in vain.  As if my “energized” disagreement with their selections wasn’t enough, now the salt of my missing cash is rubbed in the wound!

To wrap up the last couple of paragraphs, I have to say that I would stick to the website.  It’s free, the articles seem to be more fleshed out, I don’t have to wade through ads in pursuit of something interesting to read, and it even seems that they seem to focus on the website first, with the magazine as an afterthought.

And here’s a twist: I don’t even go to the PC Gamer website that often, and I usually do so only to check out the hardware section.  I typically stick to IGN to find anything that catches my attention, and then broaden my search from there.  As an added bonus, IGN also covers different consoles, movies, music, and essentially anything the target demographic of 18-35 year old men might enjoy.  Oddly enough, there are more ads on the IGN sites than on PCGamer.com.  And, related to recurring themes in our class, IGN was bought out by News Corp in 2005.

In doing this assignment, I learned that though I prefer to read something I can physically hold, I’m not sure that it sits well with me and my wallet.  I also learned I have no idea what the hell the people at PC Gamer are thinking.  Sell me some pretty glossy pages for what’s offered online for free at their own website?  Really?  Really?  At least I’ll always have the fond memories.