Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 2003)
FILE COPY Left: Cyndee Mady, Clackamas student, had the top of her convertible slashed in a recent rash of car vandalism. Right: Car vandals also broke Regina Joo’s window. The cars of several of Joo’s teammates on the women’s bas ketball team were also vandalized. LUKE MAHAN Clackamas Print PETE FORD Clackamas Print Vandals hit hard in McLoughlin parking lot, student cars fall victim to break-ins News Editor/ Staff Writer Several vehicles owned by stu dents were vandalized over the week end when they were left overnight in the McLoughlin lot. Public safety received reports for 12 cars, including some owned by non-athletes. However according to Jim Jackson, athletic director, 13 stu dent-athletes’ cars were broken into. In addition to the vandalism, A Honda was stolen from campus at 12:30 p.m. Monday in the McLoughlin parking lot. There was a witness, and the case is currently under investigation by Campus Security Offices. Although the car theft and the van dalism both took place in the McLoughlin parking lot, Public Safety does not believe that they are related. “There is no particular reason that McLoughlin was a target,” said Carol Patterson, Associate Dean, Campus Services. Student-athletes generally leave their cars in the Barlow parking lot when they have to travel with their team to an event. However, due to con struction in Barlow, they were asked to park in the McLoughlin lot. “We asked them not to park (in front of Barlow) because of what was out there. They had fenced off this whole area down here where athletes would normally leave their cars,” said Jackson. “However, I don’t think the matter was where they were parked. The matter is that the lights go out at midnight on this campus, and if you’ve ever been here when the lights go out it is pitch black. Secondly, we have no Public Safety coverage.” Public Safety runs on an 8 a.m.-4 p.m. shift, a 4 p.m.-12 a.m. shift, and sometimes a graveyard shift, accord ing to George W. Sims, Environmental Health & Safety Department. Sims said that the graveyard shifts are cov ered randomly, so that the public does not know when officers are present. According to Lodonna Cox, the officer handling the car break-in case, the graveyard shift was not covered on Friday night. According to Public Safety, a large group of the cars vandalized were parked next to each other. All the cars were parked on campus overnight. One victim, Cyndee Mady, parked her car overnight after attending Friday night’s date auction. Both sides of Mady’s BMW convertible top were slashed. A friend of Mady’s had her windows broken out of her car. Basketball player Stephanie Farrell was one of eight on her team whose cars were vandalized. Farrell, who left her car overnight for the first time that Friday, said, “They took the driver’s side window out of [my team mates’ cars], but they took the whole back window out of mine.” t’arrell esti mates her window damage to be about $1200, plus approximately ' $2000 worth of damage to interior contents. Basketball player Jessica Heslop incurred approximately $4500 worth of damage to her car, according to teammate Ashley Storms. This was the greatest amount of damage done to a women’s basketball player’s car. Jackson is concerned about find ing a solution to keep this type of inci dent from happening in the future. “It hasn’t happened in the past until now, but somebody’s caught on and they nailed us big time...We’ve got to come up with an answer [to this problem] and I don’t have it right now,” Jackson said. “We’ve got to make it so that it can’t happen. I mean, we can’t put ourselves out there to be vandalized like that.” Public safety officers have contact ed all of the victims who reported damage and are currently working with the car owners to find out what was taken or destroyed. Phi Theta Kappa Measure 28 fails; college faces deep budget cuts, tuition increase auction provides fun, not funds I ® WW JS • Siili ffiWWS ISWFI Managing News Editor “We will have a significant increase in tuition, that is for sure,” said CCC President Joe Johnson, reacting to the failure of Ballot Measure 28 on Jan. 28. Measure 28 would have increased personal and corporate income taxes for the next three years. The Measure was defeated by a 56-44 percent margin on Jan. 28, and only passed in four of Oregon’s 36 coun ties. “Measure 28’s passage would have given us some additional monies to help balance our books, but its failure had already been bud geted in,” said College President Joe Johnson. “Without it, we are still facing a $1.6 to 2.6 million budget shortfall for the 2003-04 budget year. The amount of money that we will have to pay to the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) is still up in the air, but we anticipate a deter mination on that real soon.” Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski proposed a budget that would cut approximately $33 million from state community college funding for the 2003-05 bifennium, a larger percent age cut than either K-12 education or the state’s seven major universities would be facing. “When the governor’s budget proposal came to light, we were, very frankly, shocked and surprised,” said Johnson. “We just did not anticipate that the governor would go that far [with the cuts].” President Johnson said that the w Dealing with this budget is J like trying to change a tire on a moving xSt* Al Erdman Dean of CoBege Services college is taking a multi-pronged approach to the budget. With the combination of hiring freezes, retire ment and tuition increases, the col lege hopes to stave off the latest cut backs and keep the ship afloat. “We are looking at a $300,000 to 400,000 reduction in personnel costs, through employee attrition and other cutbacks,” Johnson said. “We may also look at our labor contracts and see if we can convince the unions to accept some sort of dialogue on reducing our costs at that end.” Dean of College Services Al Erdman said, “The college is work ing hard with its staff and faculty to facilitate discussions on how we can save money in every area of our operations. We have taken a lot of input from the staff and these people have been very creative in how to deal with the current situation.” President Johnson is hopeful that the current session of the Oregon Legislature will produce some favor able results for community colleges in the state. “State Senator Kurt Schrader [D- Canby] is one of the key members of the Senate’s Ways and Means com mittee, and has some pull with the members of that group,” said Johnson. “Schrader has always been a strong advocate of community col leges and we hope that he can influ ence the legislature into looking at the budget from our perspective, where the cuts don’t have to be this deep.” The college administration has worked hard on the issue at hand, but all is not rosy. “There will be some impact on everyone,” said Erdman. “My favorite analogy on this whole issue is that dealing with this budget is like trying to change a tire on a moving car. Meaning that everything changes all the time. We come up with some thing that might work, then the whole plan changes. We are learning how to be very flexible in this whole process.” A&E.Editor The small crowd at the Gregory Forum was all smiles last Friday evening; the PTK Date Auction Concoction was underway. The event was planned to benefit the American Cancer Society. Unfortunately, due to weather condi tions and the large expense of the Date Auction, PTK was unable to raise enough money to benefit the American Cancer Society. The 6 p.m. social hour was a scene of sporadic clusters of people, and the visibly worried bachelorettes were wondering whether or not there would be enough people there for dates. By the time the auction started at 7:45, however, there were enough people in attendance to ensure that no one would leave alone. The auction was a quick paced game of “who can outbid Dick,” one of the bachelor’s (Bradley’s) dad. He was bidding on all of the girls, putting up a sum of $60 for Annie, the first bachelorette. He had many of the young men there frantically scram bling to find ways to afford the date of their choice. “It’s a dirty old man’s dream,” Dick jokingly said. At the end of the auction, he allowed each girl to pick the date of their choice from the crowd. The highest bid of the evening went to Megan, who sold for $130, and Stephanie came in a close second with $120. Jesse had a sponsor; James Dean Construction agreed to match his selling bid dollar for dollar. He walked away having earned $180 for the American Cancer Society. Everybody brought in a fair amount of money, as the lowest bid was $30. The limos arrived, and each cou ple was off to Pasta’s, a quaint restaurant in West Linn. Pasta’s made a generous donation of 26 din ners. Menu seclections included New York steak and grilled salmon. Dinner was filled with sing-a-longs and many laughs. A quiet “dance party” com menced after dinner at the Rivershore Hotel in Oregon City. The girls kicked off their shoes, and the guys were able to finally take off the bow ties and boutonnieres. A quiet ride back to the college ended with hugs and kisses and smiles and laughs. “I’m so glad I did it because I met so many cool people,” said Stephanie, one of the bachelorettes.
