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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 3, 2018)
Saturday, November 3, 2018 OFF PAGE ONE MILLENNIALS: Only 51 percent voted in the 2016 presidential election Page 12A East Oregonian Continued from 1A responded to a Facebook post on the East Orego- nian page about Millenni- als include Shelby Getz, a recently engaged dental assistant and office coor- dinator from Pendleton; Devon Marks, a 26-year-old who works as a local cloud service provider who has an apartment to himself; Erin Babb, a 26-year-old Pendle- ton medical assistant expect- ing a baby with her husband; and Sam Irons, a 23-year-old firefighter from Boardman who owns a home with his wife and hopes to become a parent in the near future. Kaitlin Gustafson, born in 1982, is a high school sci- ence teacher in Boardman. She said in her early teach- ing years she was actually in the same generation as some of her students, but found that “my daily life- style choices, behavior pat- terns and expressive lan- guage were very different than theirs.” She doesn’t post selfies or pictures of her dinner on social media, for example, and she didn’t get her first smartphone until age 28. She bought a home with her husband in 2012. “We quickly found that renting in our small town would be nearly impossi- ble due to a lack of available rentals for families,” she said in an email. “Thankfully we were able to find and pur- chase a home for a reason- able price at the time.” She said many of the older Millennials who found themselves in a dif- ficult financial position in their twenties did so because of a difficult economy, not lack of trying. She said she and her husband struggled early on in their marriage with layoffs and finding jobs because they graduated from college in the midst of the Great Recession and high Staff photo by E.J. Harris Millennial Kip Krebs holds the hand of his 19-month-old son, Kelso, as his wife, Sarah, talks with Jim Jepsen, the family’s exterminator, at the couple’s ranch outside of Ione. unemployment nationwide. While jobs are more read- ily available now, some Mil- lennials are still working to make up for lost time in the early years of their career. “It takes a lot more hard work and education to make it to the middle class than it did for my parents,” she said. While homeownership is one of the reasons Gustafson doesn’t feel like she fits the Millennial stereotypes, there are Millennials who liter- ally do live in their parents’ basement. In 2014 living with parents became the top living arrangement for peo- ple ages 18-34 for the first time in 130 years, accord- ing to Pew Research Cen- ter. That year 32 percent of Millennials (back then ages 18-33) were living with par- ents, compared with 31 per- cent living with a spouse or partner. Nina Madrigal, age 23, lives in her mother’s base- ment in Pendleton with her fiance and two children. But she said the situation is a temporary setback — a landlord evicted her, and while she won a settlement in small claims court, she hasn’t gotten the money yet to use for a deposit some- where else. She said with unemploy- ment low right now but the housing market tight, some- times it just makes more sense for people her age to move back home. “I don’t think it’s jobs as much, because there are jobs around here, but it’s the housing,” she said. Many people see technol- ogy use as a defining char- acteristic of Millennials, but the generation’s age range means a wide variety of experience with technology. The youngest Millennials were 2 years old when Goo- gle was founded and 8 years old when Facebook came on the scene. They had smart- phones in high school and used Tinder to find dates in college. The oldest Millennials, on the other hand, didn’t have Google or Wikipedia to help them research their high school papers. Their senior year only 36 percent of Americans owned cell- phones. Facebook, Twit- ter and the iPhone weren’t invented until after many of them had graduated from college. Megan Lauer, who is almost 30, falls somewhere in the middle. Lauer is the chief operating officer of Eastern Oregon Indepen- dent Practitioner Associa- tion in Pendleton and the president-elect of the local Altrusa chapter. She said she had a cell- phone for part of high school and a laptop her senior year. One Millennial trait she dis- plays is the fact that she doesn’t have a television or cable, preferring to stream anything she watches online. She also doesn’t have a land- line in her house. Lauer said her younger brother’s age bracket is bet- ter than her at figuring out new technology, but she has embraced tech more than many of her older co-workers. “In an office setting, I’m more apt to say, ‘Isn’t there a piece of software we can use?’ or I’m saying, ‘Have you Googled that?’” she said. Being “digital natives” is one of the strengths Mil- lennials bring to the work- place, said Kimberly Nevil of Worksource Oregon’s Hermiston office. “There is some reverse mentoring there,” she said. Nevil, a Millennial her- self, listed some other gen- erational differences that can be a source of strength or a challenge in the work- place. Millennials are the most educated generation. They have a more abbrevi- ated style of communica- tion, preferring texting or a messaging app to phone calls. They also tend to want more transparency instead of a top-down approach, which Nevil said can make them seem unprofessional to older generations when they ask management the reason- ing behind a decision. Nevil said research shows Millennials place a much higher emphasis on benefits, such as parental leave or a flexible schedule, which is likely where some of the perception of Mil- lennial entitlement comes from. “For older generations, it was more of a treat to have that work-life balance. You have to earn it, whereas Mil- lennials expect it,” she said. While Millennials have already surpassed the num- ber of Baby Boomers in the workforce, they are still catching up with their num- ber of eligible voters, at 62 million to Boomers’ 70 mil- lion. Only 51 percent of Mil- lennials voted in the 2016 presidential election, how- ever, compared with 61 percent of the total elec- torate. Millennial turnout for next week’s elections is expected to again be sig- nificantly lower than other generations. ——— Contact Jade McDowell at jmcdowell@eastorego- nian.com or 541-564-4536. “In an office setting, I’m more apt to say, ‘Isn’t there a piece of software we can use?’” — Megan Lauer, chief operating officer of Eastern Oregon Independent Practioner Association VOTE: Took the ballot home and voted Continued from 1A ing skills, offers information and assistance for students who want to become U.S. citizens. That includes assis- tance with filling out ballots and understanding the vot- ing process. Sharone McCann, an instructor at BMCC for 34 years, helped Ortiz with the process. “We looked through the information, read through the candidates and mea- sures,” McCann said. “Juana reads well, but even when you read well, it’s hard to understand.” She said for some of the measures, she helped Ortiz break down what a “yes” or “no” vote would mean. When it came to deciding how to vote, Ortiz made the decisions herself. “She didn’t vote in front of me,” McCann said. “She took the ballot home and voted.” Ortiz said the process to become a citizen took her about six months, but she had been considering it for a long time. Though she can speak and understand English, she took the citi- zenship exam in Spanish, as is permitted for those over 55 who have lived in the U.S. for more than 15 years. Ortiz said she knows peo- ple who have said they don’t want to vote, or don’t see why it’s important, but she hopes to convince and help family and friends who may need help navigating the voting process. “I want a place with good laws for my grandchildren,” she said. Using data from the May 15, 2018 primary, Oregon’s Secretary of State office put together a breakdown of voter registration and par- ticipation by county, and by age group in each county. Umatilla County saw 10.8 percent of its 12,498 eligible voters ages 18 to 34 return ballots. Voter participa- tion increased significantly with each age bracket, with 59 percent of the county’s 10,092 eligible voters over the age of 65 returning bal- lots. In total, 31.8 percent of eligible Umatilla County voters returned ballots for the May 2018 primary. Though McCann said Ortiz was the only person who asked her for help this year, there have been others that have approached her in the past. Ortiz said she is not sure what kind of job she’ll seek once she finishes the ELA program. “Right now, it’s really important to learn and speak English for taking a job,” she said. Tammy Krawczyk, director of College Prep at BMCC, said there are between 150 and 200 stu- dents in the ELA program for all the campuses. MCKAY CREEK ESTATES Are you worried about falling? McKay Creek Estates 1601 Southgate Pl. • Pendleton, OR 97801 www.PrestigeCare.com By TOM KRISHER AP Auto Writer DETROIT — Nearly eight months after one of its autonomous test vehi- cles hit and killed an Ari- zona pedestrian, Uber wants to resume testing on public roads. The company has filed an application on with the Pennsylvania Depart- ment of Transportation to test in Pittsburgh, and it has issued a lengthy safety report pledging to put two human backup drivers in each vehicle and take a raft of other precautions to make the vehicles safe. Company officials acknowledge they have a long way to go to regain public trust after the March 18 crash in Tempe, Arizona, that killed Elaine Herzberg, 49, as she crossed a darkened road outside the lines of a crosswalk. Police said Uber’s backup driver in the auton- omous Volvo SUV was streaming the television show “The Voice” on her phone and looking down- ward before the crash. The National Transporta- tion Safety Board said the autonomous driving sys- tem on the Volvo spotted Herzberg about six sec- onds before hitting her, but did not stop because the system used to auto- matically apply brakes in potentially dangerous sit- uations had been disabled. A Volvo emergency brak- ing system also had been turned off. “Our goal is to really work to regain that trust and to work to help move the entire industry for- ward,” Noah Zych, Uber’s head of system safety for self-driving cars, said in an interview. “We think the right thing to do is to be open and transparent about the things that we are doing.” Among the other pre- cautions, San Francis- co-based Uber will keep the autonomous vehi- cle system engaged at all times and activate the Volvo’s automatic emer- gency braking system as a backup. In addition, Uber is requiring more technical training and expertise of employees sitting behind the wheel of the vehicles, according to a 70-page safety report the company released Friday. WIN Enter To If you knew that there are several simple steps you can take to reduce your risk of falling, would you do it? You can make a difference. Stay independent longer by fall proofing your home and by getting your glasses and feet checked. Most importantly you can energize your body with exercise. By improving your strength, flexibility and balance you can significantly reduce your risk of a potentially serious fall. Call (541) 704-7146 today to schedule your FREE FALL REDUCTION EVALUATION. Uber wants to resume self-driving vehicle tests on public roads $3,000 Newspaper sponsored • Local Shopping Survey STEP INTO SAVINGS! Take posession of your apartment by August 31, 2018 and receive your 2nd and 4th month rent FREE. Enter to win now, go to: www.pulsepoll.com
