Viking_Yearbook_71

Woman Faculty Member The mission of the committee I am on is to review PSU's hiring, promotion and pay practices and to come up with basic policies that will meet federal standards. The threat hanging over the heads of this and all the other higher education institutions is loss of their federal grants if they do not establish fair employment goals immediately, and lay out means to achieve those goals. With the data I have gathered and conversations I have had I can give a few general observations. First, in the matter of racial minorities; there are too few minorities here to make any generalizations. Of the 606 faculty members, there are only nine blacks and fifteen Orientals. So it is very sad that there are really too few to make any observations about. But when it comes to women, since there are 155 out of 606, we can make some generalizations. For example, for the same rank and degree few women if any are consistent with men in annual pay. I think this is a very serious matter. It really shows the time-worn state of cumulative discrimination. It is very disheartening to see what some of the long-time trends have been here at PSU. The university expanded very rapidly after its start (as an extension program) at the end of World War II. It depended on hard working people, particularly on women who did not have advanced degrees but who came here for very low pay. They came inspired by the challenge of this struggling start of a state college in Portland. These women are the backbones of this university. However, as the university became funded and able to attract more men with Ph.D's those women who had been working here and really started the school were passed by. They were passed by the younger men faculty with Ph.D's. They were women who at the time Portland State became a college worked here ten and more years, and their pay scale was surprisingly low. Now, years later many of them are still here and their pay is astonishingly low. They would be a good deal better paid had they taught in high school. Personally, I have never been discriminated against. But I was lucky because I was always ahead of men for the same position. I had special abilities. So, let it be very clear that when I talk about this it is nothing personal. It is quite ironic that, because I have nothing to gain or lose I can speak loud and clear on women's discrimination. Many women I have talked to get emotional; they talk in tears . . . so that the issue doesn't come clear. I can speak for women faculty because I can blast out without any emotion or bad feeling. My proposal for PSU to equalize opportunities for men and women on its faculty is a multiple approach. I mean that the discrimination should be attacked from the bottom and from the top. The university should upgrade the average, the long-time women teachers, for instance. We hear the argument that if a department takes part of its limited budget to bring women teachers up to something like parity, it would deprive the men of raises. The way to avoid this is to set aside a budget at the presidential level to be distributed as a corrective bonus_ Another thing that is very disheartening is that very high salaries are offered incoming faculty in order to get the good ones while the older faculty who stay here are getting lower salaries. I think this is a pathological element in a growing university, and the price we pay is that we cannot retain the good ones. In attacking from the top, one qf the vice presidents ought to be a woman. And where a department has an associate dean, let it be a woman unless the department head is a woman. I am not trying to establish an artificial prerogative for women. I propose this because it will create a dramatic, symbolic shift for woman's position in the university and society. Campus Coffee Shop Proprietress When I came to the United States about 21 years ago I was very lonesome. My home was Yugoslavia. I had no family here. I lost my husband. I started a kind of luncheonette on the corner of Hall Street and Broadway and ran it by myself. Shattuck School was across the street, and I served grade school children. Then Portland State started up. Students from the Art Department and especially professors would come in. The college started growing and growing. They took the place over-1 was not the owner of the building, I just rented downstairs. They took it over and built there. It was a different neighborhood then-little shops and rooming houses. There was another little grocery store that they tore down, Miller's. But that's progress. Everything has to be changed. We hope for the best. If they had let me go when my lunchroom was torn down i"n 1966 I would have been just lost. I had been at that place 16 years. It was my life. Some Portland State people knew how I felt . The director of facilities planning came one day and he told me they were going to build a coffee shop for me. I never believed they'd do something like that. Nowadays planners often don't care about people. They have to make parking places, you know. I didn't believe that they would do it. But they did. It's just something. Since this shop is in the Business Administration Building I get a lot of those students and professors. And I sti II get the Speech Department. They're my pals. The Art Department, Philosophy, English-they all come. I know lots of professors and students. The professors, they are my friends for 15 years. When they come here I don't want us to talk about university problems. We have to talk about nice things, pleasant things, to relax. Then I send them back to work and to their troubles. They've got big jobs. Most students I know have been here a long time, but I get a few who have been around just one or two years. When they come once, the nice ones (I don't care for the hippie type). they stick around. When it snows or something they come to my house to pick me up and bring me here. They're afraid I won't be around. You see, I never had children. And I love children. So all these children are my children. A girl came here for lunch today. I knew her when she started at Portland State. She got married, and now she's got a baby and she teaches. So she brought the baby and sat down and we talked about how nice it was when she used to go to school here and all that. I really enjoy it here. This place is my life . Really. 129