Due to a new Portland zoning initiative, Lewis & Clark’s address will change sometime between May 2020 and May 2025. LC is located in the portion of the Southwest quadrant that will be changed to the South sextant. The Collins View Neighborhood Association (CVNA) discussed this change and others during their Nov. 7 meeting at Riverdale High School. LC’s neighborhood liaison and Dean of Spiritual Life Mark Duntley, and ASLC’s community service and relations committee’s neighborhood liaison Liam Casey ’22 discussed potential collaborations between the college and the neighborhood.
The CVNA is frequently involved in decision making processes for changes made in Portland, including changes that the college wants to make. Back in 2009, the college wanted to build apartments for student housing on a parcel of land that it currently owns at the intersection of Boone’s Ferry Road and Terwilliger Boulevard. The neighborhood association rejected the proposal and there were hard feelings on both sides.
Issues like parking, traffic, smoking and student parties, constitute the neighborhood’s primary grievances with the college.
“Especially since we just got rid of the designated smoking areas, that’s kind of a hot topic because we obviously have smokers on campus and if they cant smoke on campus, they smoke on the perimeter of the campus which is also often the yards of neighbors,” Casey said. “So there is that conflict and that’s part of the reason why we have a representative go to the meetings.”
The principal of Riverdale High School gave Duntley a copy of an email sent to her by a Riverdale parent complaining about LC students smoking and vaping tobacco and marijuana at the bus stops on the campus perimeter.
One of Duntley’s tasks is to figure out how to address these problems between the school and the neighborhood. Duntley proposed that the college put up signs at the bus stops so that the neighbors know that staff is aware that those are not places where students are supposed to smoke.
Neighbors frequently complain to the college and to CVNA about loud parties in the neighborhood. CVNA even has a section on their website with advice about how to handle “Party Houses.”
For issues like these, Duntley and Casey think it is important to have a student present at CVNA meetings. However, the October meeting was the first meeting attended by an LC student in four years.
“There really isn’t much we can do to control students when they are at their homes,” Duntley said. “We don’t even have fraternities.”
The primary reason for sending Casey to the meeting was to propose a collaboration between students and the neighborhood on service projects. The board members were audibly excited about the prospect of collaborating on service projects with students and had myriad ideas for potential projects.
“I plan on bringing all the ideas (to our committee), see which ones students on our committee are interested in and then pick like one or two that we want to get behind,” Casey said. “Then I’ll come to (the CVNA) with a more concrete plan and make it clear that we want it to be a collaborative effort and see if we can find some way to advertise among their neighborhood because we want to make sure we get neighbors and students involved.”
The CVNA talked about changes concerning LC at the Nov. 7 meeting. Effective May 2020, LC’s address will reside in the South sextant of Portland rather than the current Southwest quadrant. The creation of a South sextant is the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s solution to improve wayfinding for emergency personnel and law enforcement. The zero in front of addresses in part of the Southwest quadrant occasionally delays response time when 9-1-1 is called to the area.
“The anticipated improvement to the safety of our campus community is extremely important to us,” Roy Kaufmann, LC’s director of public relations, said to Portland City Council when he testified in favor of the project on behalf of the college. “From our understanding of the project, one of the objectives is to improve emergency and first responder response times by reducing confusion around existing numbering.”
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