PSU Magazine Winter 1994

LETTERS Fall article offends I am insulted and offended by the Fall '93 issue and I am returning it; I do not wish to have it in my house. "A Record of Intimacy" [PSU study on gay and bisexual men in Portland] is a trespass on my choice of reading material. I do not wish to remember PSU with such an association, nor do I wish to see the university publicly aligned with it by this journalistic se lection. Constance M. Manning '90 Portland PSU magazine wants to hear from you; we reserve the right to edit for space and clarity. Send your comments to PSU Magazine, Portland State University, P.O. Box 75 1, Portland, OR 97207 . Costuming for television Theater Arts Profe sor Sarah Andrews-Collier and five Portland State students put in an intense week as wardrobe personnel for "The Cindy Williams Show," a one-hou r comedy special filmed in November at Oregon Public Broadca ting (OPB). The TV sitcom, a series of 15 different sketches, is schedu led to air Jan. 10 on The Family Channel. Producers, directors, and writers for the show include William , perhaps best known for her role in "Laverne and Shirley," her husband, Bill Hudson, and Brett Hudson (both forme rly of "The Hudson Brothers" variety show). Harry Anderson of"Night Court" is one of the guest stars. Bill Hud on, an O regon native, was a political science major at PSU for a short time in 1968. In part because of this connection, Bill and OPB contacted the Theater Arts Depart– ment to discuss use of the costume shop and the hiring of drama student . A deal was sewn-so to speak. Collier hired on as wardrobe mistress and costume designer, and tudents Jay Mortensen, Linda Warren, 2 PSU Magazine Joanne South, Sandra Zodnik, and Denise Damico worked as wardrobe personnel and dressers for cast members. All were familiar with theater and had worked wardrobe for major PSU theater productions, but the requirements of television were surprising. "For instance, fabric patterns which are fine for the stage may create a strobe effect on film," says Mortensen. "And details are really important: how a garment hangs, if there are wrinkles. The attention given to lint was almost laughable." The week of filming was inten e and exhausting. Because of the number and variety of sketches, and because of the first-time, perhaps one-shot, nature of the special, co tume needs were especially rigorous. "Costumes ranged from regular treet clothes to a gorilla suit, and we had to constantly improvise," says Warren. But Andrew -Collier was proud of her crew. "The students mea ured up to every crisis," she says. "People kept commenting on how professional they were. I couldn't understand why they were so surprised." The Hudson-Williams team intend this special as the pilot for a 12-show series which they hope to film at OPB. There is talk of continuing the colla– boration with PSU in the future; but Andrews-Collier demur . "For a controlled length of time it was manageable," she says, "but we'd probably have to take a leave of absence from school and work if we were called in for a series. I'm not sure we could do that." Still all agree the experience was special, and one that doesn't come along very often. Preparing for the big one Portland buildings that might pose a erious risk of injury in the event of a major earthquake are being identified in a new civil engineering project. The tudy involves assessing 4,500 non-residential buildings in Portland as part of a wide pread earthquake preparedness program for the Metropolitan Service District. Metro has awarded Franz Rad, professor of civil eng ineering and chair of the department, a $49,650 grant for the project. The study area focuses on the heart of Portland, roughly from the Columbia River on the north and Ross Island Bridge on the South, to the Washington County border on the west and 39th Avenue on the east. It will include office, commercial, and school buildings. Rad says all the building informa– tion will be put into a database with other data that the state Department of Geology and Mineral Industrie has gathered on the geology and soil composition of the Portland area. The data will be used by Metro to develop a se ismic hazard reduction program, as well as to help form emergency response and recovery plan . "Eventually, we'll have a region-by-region assessment of areas that are most heavily prone to earthquake damage," says Rad. The research team, comprised of tudents from PSU, University of Oregon, and Oregon State University, has been gathering basic information on each building, including types of materials used for construction, structural irregularities, building u e, and building population. Rad says emphasis is on identifying areas susceptible to severe earthquake damage rather than on pinpointing individual buildings as hazards. "We're more interested in the aggregate behavior of buildings, not the exact behavior of individual buildings, during an earthquake," says Rad. "It would take a two-to-three-month examination to get a highly accurate idea on how one sub tantia l building would respond to a given earthquake magnitude. In this project, however, we're trying to estimate with a reasonable degree of accuracy how buildings in a broad area may respond."