CONSIDERING CLIMATE I want to tell you that I really appreciate the most recent Faculty Voices in Portland State Magazine. As someone who regularly teaches UNST232 Global Environmental Change, I frequently have students ask about reasons for hope, if any. While I have my own reasons that I share with them, it was good to hear thoughts from other faculty. It is becoming increasingly necessary to help students emotionally process the rapid ecological and climatic changes we are all facing. So, it’s good to hear colleagues thinking along the same lines.Thank you for dedicating an entire issue to hope and climate change. —Frank Granshaw Jenny McNamara [featured in “Hope Starts Here”] is inspired by the “progressive insights” of students and dismissive of “the old or slowly incremental ways of doing things.” Seemingly Ms. McNamara, the director of campus sustainability, is biased against science, engineering, and economic research methods which are well-established, time consuming, and from which we achieve durable solutions. Let’s please be progressive in a conservative way. —David Blessman ’91 MS ’94 I am a two-time graduate of PSU and horrified by the opening image [for “Hope Starts Here”]. I admit I could not read the article and jettisoned the whole magazine. Do the world (and PSU students!) a favor, please, and do what you can to shift the approach given in this image. Rather than coddle and coax students with hope, give them the challenge to grow so as to be able to face and meet the challenges to all our lives, to look overwhelm in the eye and carry on anyway, and to become real, worthy, and capable adult human beings who have developed the character, strength, and focus to bear up under duress. Give them ways to know and to be in love with the wild organic world they depend on for their lives, so as to be better able to gladly shoulder a big share of the responsibility for keeping it all going. Give them the opportunity to become great and beautiful when succeeding and also when failing to meet their goals. Give them the tools and capabilities to be in love enough with life and with their work not to lose heart when things go awry. Help them grow their capacities to do difficult and challenging work and to be able to make sacrifices without losing themselves. Give them an environment in which to be real. —Dina Hartzell ’79 ’91 I was heartened to read the May 21 Oregonian column about thousands of young Portland-area students protesting against climate change at City Hall just days after our plaque unveiling ceremony at PSU commemorating the anti-war protesters of 52 years ago. It means the torch of activism has been passed to a new generation! —Doug Weiskopf ’71 inbox portland state MAGAZINE THE CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUE SPRING 2022 INSIDE: SCHOLLE MCFARLAND WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Send your letters and comments to psumag@pdx.edu. We reserve the right to determine the suitability of letters for publication and to edit them for clarity, accuracy, and length. CORRECTIONS Charles Moose received a Ph.D. in urban studies, not in criminology. More than 100 people gathered outside the Simon Benson House to hear speakers and share memories before dedicating a plaque commemorating Portland State’s legendary May 11, 1970, protest of the Vietnam War and the Kent State killings. Shown here (left to right): Cathy Wood Wyrick, Joe Bernt, Clifford Walker, Doug Weiskopf, Tony Barsotti, Sue Ellen White, and David A. Horowitz. FALL 2022 // 3
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz