Eye Health Focus
Hands-On Experience
Optometrist
reaches out to help
the under-served
Summer jobs
support careers in
natural resources
See Health, page 5
IrJîartÎattit
'City o/Roses’
îy ÿ
Volume XXXXI
Number 29
See Metro, page 11
k 4 i 31 www.portlandobserver.com
www. F
U l LS Wednesday
wednt
• August I. 2012
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
years
of
•'community service
Empowering the Vote
Student groups
on mission to
impact elections
B y M indy C ooper
T he P ortland O bserver
photo by M indy C ooper /T he P ortland O bserver
Portland Community College students Trieste Desautelsare (left) and Amy Stevens at the PCC Cascade campus in north Portland. The
students are part of a statewide effort to increase the number of students who are registered voters.
Aimed to empower students
to become more politically in
volved and not sit idly by as
college tuition soars and other
needs go unmet, a group of non
partisan student coalitions have
registered nearly 20,000 new vot
ers.
As part of a statewide cam
paign to register and educate over
40,000 students to vote, students
at Portland Community College
have joined forces with theircoun-
terparts, the Oregon Student As
sociation and the Oregon Com
munity College Student Associa
tion, to make a difference at the
ballot box this November.
“We are already halfway to
meeting that goal with 19,500
students registered across the
state since April,” said Sarah
Westover, Oregon Student Foun
dation vote organizer at PCC
Cascade. “More than 1,300 of
those students were from PCC
Cascade alone, and we hope to
register 1,200 more on this cam
pus before the election.”
Throughout the past year, the
non-partisan coalitions have per
formed campus visits and pre
pared classroom presentations,
which has helped secure the
previously unregistered voters
to prove to elected officials that
students care about the political
process.
“O ur best chance to advocate
for better funding and more ac
cess is to prove to them that
students are paying attention, and
do vote,” W estover said.
continued
on page 9