B lack H istory M
Page B6
s p e c ia l
c o u e ra a e
onth
Mentors Give Minority Students
February 9. 2005
Hope
’ The kids feel valued.
That’s something you
can't tell them - you
have to show them.
- Lewis and Clark College of Law mentor Roberta Phillips
continued
from Metro
Kong, a first-year law student at
Lewis and Clark University, is
“someone you can talk to about life
and school.”
Kong had already enjoyed vol
u n te e r
o p p o r tu n itie s ,
so
mentoring seemed like something
she w anted to try.
“T here’s a personal satisfac
tion from helping som eone out,”
Kong said. She noted sh e 's al
ways had a good support system
from family and friends.
Portland OIC teachers said that
it’s im portant that the m entors
are people of color and com e from
various racial and ethnic groups
because a child learning with
som eone from a sim ilar back
ground might find it easier to re
late to that person, an im portant
com ponent when form ing a rela
tio n sh ip .
M entor Antonio J . Gonzalez is a
second-year law student who got
into the program because he wanted
to set an example for the next child.
“The Latino community has a
photo by K atherine
K ovacich /T he P ortland O bserver
Sophomore Juanita McGull (left) with her mentor, first year law student Connie Kong.
high dropout rate,” he said. “You
can do it if you stick with it. We
d on't have to be relegated to ser
vice industry jobs.”
Gonzalez also said mentoring
allows a little break from graduate
studies.
“The nature o f grad school is
isolating,” he said. "Y ou have to
make an effort to keep tight ties
with people. O therw ise it will
quickly becom e an abstraction
and not reality. I want to be out
and working with people, to make
sure 1 have an im pact on the lay
p erso n .”
Non-profit Portland OIC is part
o f an international collective o f
more than 66 com m unity-based
c en ters to p ro v id e ed u catio n ,
training and jo b placem ent ser
vices to educationally and eco
nom ically disadvantaged youth
and adults.
For more information on the Port
land OIC Mentoring Program, e-
m ail K im F illa at k filla
@po rtlandoic.org.
Students Lose as College Textbook Prices On the Rise
continued
from Metro
“One of my books that had a CD
Rom was used twice and that was
only forextracredit,’’Connolly said.
"A lot of the bixtks are wrapped in
cellophane, you can’t return it be
cause it has to come with the whole
package. They can’t sell it back
unbundled.”
OSPIRG's 2003 study asked fac
ulty whether new editions were jus
tified and 76 percent said only “half
the time” or less. It was found that
65 percent of faculty included terms
like “rarely” or "never.” This shows
that the claim made by publishers
that faculty are demanding new
editions is false.
American students are also pay
ing more for their books. Surveys
photo by K atherine K ovacich /T he P ortland O bserver
New editions of textbooks sit on shelves at Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus.
“Y ork
and t h e
C orps
of
D iscovery ”
A L ecture and Slide Show
on www.amazon.co.uk showed that
books were twice as expensive in
the United States than in the United
K ingdom . O n the T h o m so n
Learning’s website, all of the books
found cost an average o f 72 percent
more in the United States than in
the United Kingdom, Africa and
the Middle East.
“It’s so ridiculous,” Connolly
said. “It obviously shows that they
don’t care about us receiving an
affordable education. In addition
to that, our bookstore actually tried
one year to bring in books from
oversees. Once the publisher found
out we were buying books from
other countries they stopped let
ting us buy them online.”
Connolly hopes that through the
national campaign and media pres
sure, publishers will stop putting
out new editions every few years.
“W hen things do change, you
don't need to put out a whole new
book if it’s just a paragraph. If it’s
one chapter, add a packet. Students
can then purchase an inexpensive
supplement. With our economy,
the prices are just skyrocketing with
new editions,” she said.
At Campusbookswap.com, a site
set up by OSPIRG, students can
buy, trade and sell their books
online, similar to an E-bay format.
“Many other schools work on their
own book drives,” Connolly said.
"W e're trying to spearhead a valu
able used market on campus.”
More information on the full re
port can be viewed at www.make
textbooksaffordable.org.
Share Your Black History
w ith Dr. D arrell M illner
T u e s d a y , F e b r u a r y 2 2 , 2005
A Black Heritage Month Program
at the Oregon Historical Society
1200 SW Park Avenue in downtown Portland
5:30 — 6:30 p.m. Galleries open for viewing
6:30 — 7:45 p.m. Lecture and Slide Show
In this engaging presentation and slide show, Dr. Darrell Millner discusses the
contributions of York to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and challenges long-standing
ideas regarding the status of York as a slave after the expedition ended in 1806.
Dr. Millner is Professor o f Black Studies at Portland State University’ and author of the
book York of The Corps of Discovery.
Free with Museum Admission.
(No charge to ( )HS Members)
For more information please call
503-222-1741 or go to www.ohs.org
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HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
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Remembering the Vanport Flood: After a deadly flood on the
Columbia River in 1948 when a dike broke, almost 20,000 residents of
the now defunct city o f Vanport were displaced, with 15 people
confirmed dead. Vanport, the largest public housing project ever built
in the United States, was a revolutionary community, crossing color
lines and ridding its area o f segregation. Mrs. Lizzie Phillips (above)
and her children were one family left without a home.
Photo memories
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