NEWS
• The David Minor Theater celebrates its 8th
anniversary with a special viewing event “Beer and
Beyond” 6:45 pm and 9:15 pm Saturday, Oct 22. The
theater says, “An evening of celebrations including
discounted movie tickets and a special back-to-
back screening of the new Star Trek Beyond epic
are planned.” Tickets are $4. For more info, go to
davidminortheater.com.
• At the Oct. 8 Great American Beer Festival in
Denver, Eugene’s Alesong Brewing & Blending
tells us it earned a gold medal in the “brett beer”
category for its “Touch of Brett” saison. “GABF is
the largest commercial beer competition in the
world and recognizes the most outstanding beers
produced in the United States,” Alesong says. The
2016 GABF competition winners were selected by
an international panel of 264 expert judges from the
record number of 7,227 entries received from 1,752
U.S. breweries across 96 categories.
LANE COUNTY AREA
SPRAY SCHEDULE
Weyerhaeuser Company, 746-2511, plans to
aerially apply urea fertilizer to 684.1 acres south
of Vida and the McKenzie River near West Fork Deer
Creek and tributaries and to East Fork Deer Creek
tributaries. See ODF notification 2016-771-11891,
call Brian Dally at 541-726-3588 with questions.
Compiled by Gary Hale, Forestland Dwellers, 541-342-8332, forest-
landdwellers.org.
POLLUTION UPDATE
The Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality (DEQ) fined Dorena Hydro $11,400 Sept. 26
for various Clean Water Act violations associated
with reduced dissolved oxygen levels in the Row
River caused by the operation of Dorena Dam
Hydroelectric Project. The violations occurred in
April, when the Row River is designated as an active
salmon and steelhead spawning area. Starting
sometime in March, one of the monitoring sensors
at the project indicated a need for maintenance;
however, it appears that Dorena Hydro ignored this
information, leading to a malfunction and to illegally
low oxygen levels in the river. Dorena Hydro also failed
to properly notify DEQ of the malfunction and failed
to take the project offline as required in the event
of such violations. It appears that Dorena Hydro is
owned by ACD Hydro, a Delaware corporation that
is not registered with Oregon’s Corporation Division.
BY KIANNA CABUCO
CAMPUS LIFE COSTLY FOR
OUT-OF-STATE STUDENTS
E
ach year, tuition and fees have increased at the Uni-
versity of Oregon.
Meanwhile, student loan debt has reached $1 tril-
lion nationally, “becoming the second-largest con-
sumer obligation after mortgages,” according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For out-of-state students, jumping through the hoops
necessary to become an Oregon resident can save thou-
sands of dollars in student debt.
This past year, undergraduate tuition went up from $189
to $198 per credit for residents and from $672 to $702 for
non-residents. Add in school fees, and a full-time student
taking 12 credits as a resident of Oregon will pay $2,993.25
per term.
For a non-resident, that same 12 credits plus fees will
cost $9,041.25, and that’s with the bare minimum of credits
to qualify as a full-time student.
Brian Stanley, residency information officer at the UO,
helps students through the process of gaining residency
and determines whether a student qualifies for an in-state
or out-of-state tuition rate.
According to him, there are two ways students can gain
residency: First, if a student is a dependent, his or her par-
ents have to move to Oregon and live there for a year be-
fore they can become residents. The student would then
qualify as a resident.
If students are independent and providing more than
half of their own support, they have to live in Oregon for
12 months, take eight credits or fewer per quarter and do
something other than go to school, such as work or volun-
teer.
“When you boil it down it’s about — can you show
presence and can you show a purpose primarily other than
education?” Stanley says.
“I don’t determine whether the state thinks of someone
as a resident for things like paying taxes and getting a driv-
ers license,” he continues. “What I’m trying to determine
is whether a person meets the narrow requirements that it
takes to get the benefit of paying at an in-state tuition rate.”
Stanley says he often hears of students receiving mis-
information about residency from peers or well-meaning
professors, but if students are interested in the requirements
for gaining residency, they should set up an appointment
with him, he adds.
“There are a couple of organizations out there that purport
to provide advice to students about how they can establish
residency for a fee,” Stanley says. “We feel very strongly that
students can get all the same information that they’d get from
those organizations from us for free.” He also warns that if
students are trying to “game the system” in some way and
they’re caught, they could be written up for a conduct viola-
tion.
“It’s really up to them if they want to jump the hurdles to
get that benefit,” Stanley says.
Gus Morris is a journalism major at the UO going into his
third year and is finishing the process of gaining residency
after moving here from California. He says he only needs to
finish the paperwork.
“It was definitely not as hard as I thought it was going to
be,” Morris says. The school itself has numerous ways stu-
dents can find and understand the requirements for becoming
a resident of Oregon, he adds.
“You can definitely still go to school while you’re doing
it,” Morris says. “You just have to be careful.”
Morris says the cost of his junior year and senior year com-
bined will equal the amount he paid for his freshman year.
Like Morris, Elle Sullivan dedicated her second year of
college to gaining residency.
Sullivan is going into her fourth year of college and fin-
ished gaining residency a little more than a year ago. Origi-
nally from central Indiana, she had planned to study marine
biology and journalism.
While going through the residency process, Sullivan took
classes online and was also dual enrolled at Lane Community
College. On top of that, she worked at the UO Outdoor Pro-
gram and at Noisette Pastry Kitchen in downtown Eugene.
“In order to convince my parents to let me go to an expen-
sive out-of-state school,” Sullivan says, “I worked out a deal
where I’d be responsible for anything that would cost more
than what it would cost for me to stay in state.”
Sullivan says that when she first saw the requirements on-
line, they seemed terrifying and impossible. But, she says, she
found the process manageable with some guidance.
“It was hard and it sucked,” she adds, “but it made me
grateful to be able to come back and focus on school full-
time.” Through a combination of gaining residency, scholar-
ships and her parents’ help, she says she hopes to graduate
debt-free.
12
CHARLES DENSON
BY PAUL NEEVEL
HAPPENING PEOPLE
Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project
October 13, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
Though he was born in Eugene, Charles Denson moved to Silver City, Nevada,
with his parents when he was 6. “We came back to visit family in the summer and
for weddings,” he says. “I moved back in 2006 after high school and got started at
Lane Community College.” He began to volunteer with campus groups addressing
environmental and social justice issues, and he traveled to Copenhagen in 2009 with
a group of young people to lobby U.S. delegates to the United Nations negotiations
on climate change. “It was my first involvement with protests and direct actions,” he
says. Also in 2009, he helped organize Power Shift, an environmental conference at
the University of Oregon, and he became acquainted with the Civil Liberties Defense
Center (CLDC) through its workshops and trainings for activists on complex legal
issues. Denson graduated from the UO in 2012 with a degree in political science and
then spent two years as a field organizer for the Democratic Party in Arizona and Iowa.
Early in 2015, he started work at CLDC as membership director. “Now I’m associate
director,” he says. “My job is mostly outreach, event planning, fundraising, all the
non-lawyer stuff. In less than two years, we’ve worked on a lot of great cases and
trained over 5,000 people.” CLDC will present Theater of Dissent, an evening of benefit
dinner theater, 6 to 9 pm Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Wesley Center, 2520 Harris Street in
Eugene. CLDC lawyers Lauren Regan and Cooper Brinson will portray themselves in a
mock court scene, defending activists arrested at a pipeline project. Purchase tickets
for $50 and read about real-life CLDC court cases at cldc.org.