When Jaclyn Kellon committed to University of Oregon’s Ph.D. chemistry program two years ago, she knew she’d face academic rigor. But the Cleveland native wasn’t prepared to be one of the only minority students in her cohort, and she wasn’t prepared for the sudden onset of self-doubt.

“I’ve always identified as biracial, and I’d say I finally had come to terms with it at the end of college,” she said. “But when I moved here, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m the black person now.’ ”

Since 2005, the number of graduate students of an underrepresented ethnicity has made only modest growth at UO. In 2015, students of color made up 12.7 percent of enrollment, compared with 7.4 percent a decade earlier.

Kellon said that not seeing more students like herself left her questioning her right to be there. On the toughest days, she considered transferring from UO or giving up on a Ph.D. altogether. But after the first year of her program, she resolved to change things.

“I wanted to help others not feel that way,” she said. She began a local chapter of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. But only herself and one other student fit the club’s demographic. The two of them teamed up with another group to form the Community for Minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

As the number of UO graduate students of an underrepresented ethnicity remains low, the students have started taking it upon themselves to recruit and retain a diverse community in the natural sciences. But with few structured programs coming from administration and no sign of a campus-wide culture shift, the groups lack conviction that their legacy will continue.

(Stacy Yurishcheva/Emerald)

Fehmi Yasin, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate, said his drive to increase diversity ignited the day he learned he is one of three Latino physicists at UO. There’s 86 students in UO’s graduate physics department in total.

In October, Yasin attended a national conference for diversity in sciences with funding from the physics department and the Community for Minorities in STEM. Over 4,000 students attended the conference, a majority of which were undergraduate students of an underrepresented ethnicity, he said.

“What astounded me is that none of them had UO on their radar at all. None were planning on applying to the graduate program,” Yasin said. He spoke with approximately 20 students about what UO’s science programs have to offer, including the summer research program that he participated in as an undergraduate. He said spending 10 weeks researching and exploring the greater Oregon area was what convinced him that UO was worth the graduate application.

Yasin believes that maybe two to six of the undergraduates he spoke with will actually apply to UO’s graduate programs. “It seems like we should have a recruitment team to go down to conferences like this to really push hard and show that we’re an institution that is supportive,” he said.

Diversity recruitment efforts are largely up to individual departments, especially at the graduate level, according to Gordon Hall, the interim director of the UO’s Center on Diversity and Community.

“We’re just helping departments make sure that they engage in recruitment strategies that help them extend their departments rather than replicate them,” he said. The Center on Diversity and Community was founded in 2001 to advance “inclusive excellence through critical thinking and an ethic of care” among graduate students, faculty and staff. The center coordinates cross-campus diversity training programs, professional development workshops and public events, according to the center’s website.

Since integrating with the Division of Equity and Inclusion in 2013, the center has focused on increasing diversity in faculty hiring, which is “kind of an uphill battle,” according to Hall. Last year, UO hired 12 faculty members of an underrepresented ethnicity, bringing the university’s total to 210 out of 753. Over 70 percent of the tenure-related faculty still identifies as white.

The Center on Diversity and Community serves as a resource for current professors interested in increasing diversity and inclusion. For the natural science faculty, the center holds an annual workshop where professors can exchange ideas on how to better serve underrepresented students.

“The purpose of these workshops is to publicize what’s going on. Many of these people are doing this work because it’s important. They’re doing it without fanfare,” Hall said of the approximately 40 faculty members who attended this year. But some come for another reason.

“When professors are evaluated by their departments for promotion and tenure, they are asked about diversity and inclusion,” Hall said. It’s a motivating factor for why some UO faculty members have incorporated diversity initiatives into their research.

It’s encouraging to see this progress, Hall said. But he acknowledged it’s just the start.

(Alex de Verteuil/Phillips Laboratory)

For Kellon, it’s clear that the diversity and inclusion tenure requirement is not enough. She participated in the Center on Diversity and Community’s natural science workshop last year as the only graduate student. No one discussed support programs for students of an underrepresented ethnicity, she said. Instead, they focused on what she sees as the easier way to fill the diversity and inclusion section on tenure paperwork.

“They only talked about [outreach to] women and K-12,” she said. “It blew my mind.”

When she voiced her frustration at the end of the workshop, a few professors followed up with her. They’re now supporting Community for Minority in STEM, she said.

One faculty member taking initiative without incentive is biology professor Patrick Phillips. After working at UO for over 20 years, Phillips grew dissatisfied with the lack of change in diversity among his upper-division biology students, believing that administrative, top-down approaches weren’t working.

“You don’t just talk to students or have them come to a program. You have to really get in there and give them a lot of one-on-one mentorship,” he said. He didn’t know about some of the diversity offices, like the Center for Multicultural Affairs, until recently.

Last year, Ph.D. candidate Alex de Verteuil approached Phillips about starting Students of Color Opportunities for Research Enrichment, and Phillips took the chance to influence effective change. Phillips and de Verteuil equip undergraduates of an underrepresented ethnicity with skills and confidence to gain early research experience, which is typically reserved for older students.

A laboratory is a natural mentorship environment, Phillips said. The nature of research-based learning is hands-on and team-orientated, meaning that students often form an academic community. De Verteuil believes that if they train enough undergraduates to succeed in research, they’ll perpetuate the mentorship, helping the next generation of younger students get into labs.

Phillips fears that de Verteuil’s four-year vision for the group might not continue after she graduates.

“You need some kind of centralized attention from the faculty or administration,” he said.

If not, students like Kellon may continue to feel out of place in the classroom, and the already-low population of underrepresented students could decrease.

“You can recruit students all you want,” Kellon said. “But if this isn’t a place where they’ll want to stay and thrive, then they won’t continue.”

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In an act of solidarity and a call for ‘peace and love’ following Tuesday’s presidential election results, 500 South Eugene High School Students joined University of Oregon students in the EMU amphitheater on Wednesday before marching through the streets of Eugene.

At noon, 200 University of Oregon students representing a range of campus organizations and communities gathered to reflect on Tuesday’s post-election protests, voice their concerns over President-elect Donald Trump and encourage students to convert frustration into involvement. At 12:45 p.m., the collective group marched downtown to Kesey Square with a UOPD escort.

Margaret Butler of the UO Young Democratic Socialists opened the forum by saying that students needed a time and space to be angry, “but also need to be there for each other.” She passed around a contact list, asking students to include the causes they wanted to support.

Students from a range of campus communities, including the Women’s Center, LGBTQ office under the Dean of Students, the Multicultural Center and the Peer Advising Office, shared locations where students troubled by the election results might find support and resources.

“We’re here if you need someone to talk to,” said a student from the Peer Advising Office.

Students unaffiliated with any campus organizations also stepped up to share their thoughts and hopes for moving forward.

“We’re all angry as hell, but let’s be smart about it. Don’t use violence,” one student said. He called for students to use an anti-violence hotline if they spotted something harmful.

Another addressed the females in the audience, explaining that she wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with Trump’s comments towards women. “I’ll personally give you my phone number if you want to talk,” she said. “Please know you’re not alone.”

The student comments were halted as a mass of 500 South Eugene High School students marched up 13th Avenue, chanting, “What do we want? Peace and love. When do we want it? Now.”

They congregated in the center of the amphitheater with signs and megaphone, explaining the purpose of their walk-out: To voice their frustration with the election results as a group who couldn’t vote.

“At 6:58 a.m. I called our Senior class president Rosemary Williams very distressed, and I asked her, ‘Do you want to stage a walk-out?’ ” said one of the organizers, Vanessa Lopez. “We were way too passionate about this issue to just stand by.”

As UO and high school students marched downtown together, members of the greater Eugene community stepped out of businesses and apartment complexes to watch. Some chanted along. Some were so touched by the youth’s support that they broke out in tears.

“As a member of the LGBT community both being gay and trans, as well as being a minority, this is actually really moving to me,” said Eugene resident Moe Tarhuni. Seeing youth express their views “is really beautiful to me, and it makes me happy to the point of tears.”

Desiree Bergstrom contributed reporting.

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Over 100 Eugene community members and University of Oregon students rallied in front of the Bank of America on the corner of 11th Avenue and Pearl Street on Friday afternoon to protest the bank’s perceived connection to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

If constructed, the $1.7 billion pipeline would stretch nearly 2,000 miles across four states, passing through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

A large group of demonstrators massed in front of Bank of America, located on 11th Avenue in downtown Eugene. (Christopher Trotchie / Emerald)

“Bank of America directly funds the Dakota Access Pipeline, so we’re trying to get people to divest, to take their money out,” said Anna Hoffer, co-director of UO’s Native American Student Union and a principal organizer of the event. “We’re here to be in solidarity with Standing Rock and the Sioux tribe.”

For two hours, the demonstrators waved signs with phrases like “defend the sacred,” chanted “Bank of America, you suck, you stole our future for a buck” and cheered when passing motorists responded with honks and shouts. Three private security guards from Bank of America and three Eugene Police officers looked on.

Kainoa Pilai, of Eugene’s SoJust Collective, led a group of protesters in chants that opposed the Bank of America’s involvement with the company building the oil pipeline through Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. (Christopher Trotchie / Emerald)

“We don’t like environmental racism and colonialism happening in our own country,” said UO student Brandon Ginkel.

Ginkel is one of several UO students who started a solidarity campaign to raise awareness and funds for the larger protest in North Dakota, which has garnered national attention. Another student involved in the campaign, Ryder Coen, travelled to the Standing Rock reservation to show solidarity earlier this term.  

Janie Coverdell recently returned from Standing Rock Reservation to collect donations of food and clothing for the water protectors who plan to continue the stand through the winter. (Christopher Trotchie / Emerald)

“There’s so much support here today,” Hoffer said. “The amount of spirit everyone has is really heartwarming.”

UO’s Native American Student Union and Eugene’s SoJust Collective served as the event’s co-sponsors.

Kainoa Pilai of the SoJust Collective concluded the demonstration with a comment that elicited cheers from the demonstrators: “Native lives matter more than oil.”

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By 4:45 p.m. on Oct. 6, the University of Oregon’s Student Food Pantry had been open for 45 minutes. But a line still snaked around the repurposed single-car garage. It stretched down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. And Eric* was in the thick of it, standing without a hooded jacket in the rain.

The fifth-year geology major is no stranger to the pantry line. On that day, he talked with another student to pass the time, sharing tips he’s gleaned from years of strict-budget living:

The student food pantry is open to students at UO, Lane Community College, Northwest Christinan University, and Gutenberg College. Donated food is handed out on Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm year round. (Justin Hartney/Emerald)

Be courageous enough to split rent with six strangers from Craigslist. Pack your lunch so you don’t have to eat at the expensive campus joints. Shop at WinCo — even if it means a 20-minute drive — and stock up on nonperishables so nothing gets wasted. And, as for the student food pantry: “Get here early — that’s the key,” he says. “The good stuff always goes first.”

With around 90 students visiting each week, the pantry is operating at its capacity. But as potential tuition increases loom, greater numbers of students may begin feeling financial strain and facing food insecurity — and viable solutions could take years.

More than just numbers

This May, the College and University Food Bank Alliance surveyed nearly 4,000 students from 26 American universities. The group found that 48 percent of respondents had experienced food insecurity within the last 30 days, meaning they lacked “reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food,” because of time, transportation or financial obstacles. About 22 percent met the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s definition of hungry: They faced physiological strain due to inadequate food intake.

The survey’s creators say it is the largest and most college-specific survey to date. According to UO Health Promotion Director Paula Staight, student food insecurity has only recently made agendas at national college health conferences.

No conclusive, UO-specific survey on food insecurity has recently been conducted. However, Reverend Doug Hale, director of UO’s Student Food Pantry and UO religious director, has surveyed first-time pantry visitors for the last two years. He said that over 800 distinct students have visited, and their circumstances represent the range that the term ‘food insecurity’ encompasses.

The student food pantry is open to students at UO, Lane Community College, Northwest Christinan University, and Gutenberg College. Donated food is handed out on Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm year round. (Justin Hartney/Emerald)

Some, like Sarah*, only come once or twice, when in a pinch.

“My husband and I are just going through a tough time right now,” said Sarah, who is pursuing a master’s degree. “He’s working, but I haven’t been able to find anything.”

Sarah tracks everything she spends on a spreadsheet. It wasn’t feasible for her to spend her $300 for food this month, given that she has pressing expenses like rent and monthly medical treatments for an autoimmune disease.

Others, like Jessie,* come because they want to nutritiously supplement their UO residence hall meal plans. When he ran low on meal points his freshman year, Jessie realized that the healthy food on-campus, “is definitely more expensive.”

“I just wanted a home-cooked meal,” he said. “Coming [to the pantry] allows me to have a sustainable meal for free.”

Because there is a limit on how much students can take, the pantry acts like more of a cushion than a source for three square meals a day.

“At the end of the day, if this wasn’t here, I could still eat,” Eric said. “But I’m on a strict budget.”

Ideas for a fix

Over 360 colleges and universities have started food pantries or food banks through the College and University Food Bank Alliance. This July, the University of California system announced that it will commit $3.3 million to increasing food access for its students. And 20 universities have joined the ‘swipe out hunger’ program, which allows students to donate unused meal points to other students.

At UO, the first step came when the pantry began in fall 2011.

A student connected with the Episcopal Campus Ministry expressed concern that a fellow student was not able to afford regular meals, Hale said. It started a conversation between the ministry, administrators, campus dietitians and a group of students.

The group wanted to start a food pantry on campus, but could not find adequate space and faced obstacles to obtaining donated food.

The ECM building offered up a single-car garage connected to their property located at 1329 E. 19th Ave. UO provided a little administrative support through the Health Center, but then backed off, Hale said.

In winter 2013, the pantry partnered with Food for Lane County, which is still its primary food provider. Food for Lane County helped the pantry grow from serving 90 people per month to today’s 360.

Among the pantry’s inefficiencies, Hale lists space — students have to wait out in the rain — and the limited hours: Thursdays from 4 to 6 p.m.

If the pantry did have the time and space to begin offering more food, it would need to satisfy USDA pantry requirements and serve more than just students, Hale said.

Opening the pantry to the greater community might turn off some students. Eric said he’d “feel bad taking food from a city food bank” because it would feel like taking from Eugene’s homeless.

With the pantry’s growth at an impasse, Hale said the UO community needs “to be working on some other ideas to spread the solution around.”

Solutions in the works

The Student Food Security Working Group is exploring solutions. It formed in October 2015, after a visiting lecturer from Oregon State University spoke about national student food insecurity and OSU’s implementation of an emergency relief center.

The group’s 33 members include representatives of academic programs, community groups and student organizations like ASUO and the Radical Organizing and Activism Resource. The working group has met three times, and they’ve discussed the need for a collaborative, multifaceted approach to fighting food insecurity.

The student food pantry is open to students at UO, Lane Community College, Northwest Christinan University, and Gutenberg College. Donated food is handed out on Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm year round. (Justin Hartney/Emerald)

According to member and undergraduate student Kiara Kashuba, the group hopes to start a bigger, more accessible food pantry on-campus. Per UO President Michael Schill’s request, Vice Provost Lisa Freinkel and Associate Vice President Kathie Stanley met with members of Kashuba’s sub-committee.

“It takes a while to get stuff moving, but they support it,” Kashuba said.

ASUO Local Affairs Commissioner Amy Schenk worked with the student group ROAR on an early attempt to set up a food pantry in the EMU last winter. The group couldn’t find a space larger than the current pantry. She said ASUO plans to re-commit support to an EMU pantry, and aims to have one in place by the end of this year.  

“We want a centralized, safe, accessible space,” she said. She is in conversations with OSU and Western Oregon University — both of which have successful on-campus pantries.

The starting point

In the meantime, Staight and her colleagues at the UO Health Center hope to help educate students on nutrition through the Duck Nest wellness center. Student volunteers will teach programs on healthy eating on a budget, and applying for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

Staight helped implement the most recent UO health policy: the smoke-free campus initiative. It took eight years, she said. It’s likely that getting university resources to fight student food insecurity would take just as long, but with the interest from the working group and ASUO, she “feels like it’s starting.”

She explained that the process would require sufficient, UO-specific data to illustrate that food insecurity is a problem on this campus. With that in hand, groups are more likely to gain administrative approval.

“There’s kind of a tipping point that happens,” Staight said of administrative support for health policies. The smoke-free policy was deemed unnecessary at first, but then more and more colleges started going smoke-free. The administrative leadership at UO didn’t want to fall behind peer-institutions by default, Staight said.

For now, students like Eric and Sarah and Jessie will wait in the pantry line, fighting to not fall behind on meals, not to mention the education and careers they came to UO to pursue.

*Names have been changed at students’ requests.

Safe Ride, an “assault prevention service,” plays an important role in shuttling the University of Oregon community for free, despite looming challenges.

The shuttle service’s recent history of budget issues factors into the increasing number of riders the shuttle service has to turn away every year. Still, Safe Ride gives roughly 15,000 rides to UO students, staff and faculty members per year.

“We’re one of the first programs like this,” said Safe Ride’s scheduling director, Rilee Dockins. “We’ve had a few other schools reach out to us in the past year looking to implement similar services.”

According to its website, Safe Ride’s mission is to “provide inclusive, safe and accessible alternatives to traveling alone at night.” The service aims never to turn away riders and encourages volunteers and staff to use gender-neutral pronouns.

But Safe Ride wasn’t always so inclusive. The service was founded in 1985, giving rides solely to women. In 1988 and 1995, Safe Ride faced a lawsuit and formal grievance for gender discrimination. In 2001, it expanded to provide rides to men.

Remnants of Safe Ride’s roots are tangible today. Its office — shared with a pro-choice student organization, Students for Choice — is located in the Women’s Center. The shuttle service works in tandem with events like Take Back the Night and trains its staff on current issues related to sexual assault nationwide and at UO, such as mandatory reporting.

The Emerald participated in a ride along on Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. During that time, 12 riders were transported in one of two vans, a low to normal amount for midweek, according to Dockins. All of the riders were female.

The first two riders said they were freshmen heading to Valley River Center to get their nails done for sorority recruitment events.

While it might seem on the surface like students would abuse the shuttle, Dockins said every ride stays true to Safe Ride’s mission. One of the freshmen riders, Jamie Arnold, said she first used the shuttle Monday night because “some creepy guy” was following her.

“Being a preventative organization, you never know what could have happened had we not given someone a ride,” Dockins said. “There are some people who use us every day, or people who call and say, ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m not going far.’ But we don’t want people to feel sorry for using us.”

The shuttle is funded by mandatory student incidental fees, and its budget is controlled by the Associated Student of UO.

Dockins named the budget as Safe Ride’s biggest challenge. In the 2015-16 school year, Safe Ride reported giving 13,688 rides but turning away some 5,943 rides.

“We do have a limit to how many rides we can give based on the size of our budget,” Dockins said. “How many people we can staff per night determines the number of vans we can run and then that determines how many rides we can give.”

Safe Ride currently owns four vans but typically runs only two or three a night, Dockins said. The service does receive student volunteers from the Women and Gender Studies program, but they work infrequent hours on weekends.

Safe Ride was granted an additional $8,000 from ASUO in May but used that money to develop a web-based application in partnership with the Designated Driver Shuttle service. The application is “still under works,” according to Dockins.

When ASUO granted Safe Ride those funds, a few of the senators voiced concerns that the money would be better spent expanding staffing or vans.

Dockins said she expects Safe Ride’s budget to remain the same this year.

The debate over University of Oregon’s sexual assault reporting policy is likely to take another turn this week. The UO Senate Workgroup on Responsible Reporting will hold a public forum this Friday, Sept. 30 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. in Columbia 150.

The workgroup has been crafting a new policy since the UO senate voted down a revision in May, and it aims to have the new policy passed by November.

“We’re trying to get a sense of how students feel,” said McKenna O’Dougherty, one of the two students on the workgroup and a co-facilitator of the event. She added that the committee wants to know the best way to keep survivors central to the conversation and preserve their autonomy.

“We don’t know how to do that with only one [undergraduate] student voice,” she said.

O’Dougherty is one of two student workgroup members who planned the forum and will serve as a facilitator. All of the workgroup will be in attendance to hear feedback.

The forum will include an introduction of the committee members and a brief history of the sexual assault reporting policy. The majority of the time allotted will be dedicated to gaining student feedback. Students will be able to submit responses anonymously during the forum, or through an online portal that will open soon, O’Dougherty said.  

The workgroup will ask specific questions related to mandatory reporting, such as which UO employees students expect to be a reporter and which they expect to keep conversations confidential.

Additionally, the workgroup hopes to understand student assumptions about sexual assault, given the backdrop of recent, high-profile sexual misconduct cases at UO and other universities. O’Dougherty and other workgroup members are concerned that the national attention and polemic public reaction these events have gained might deter survivors from coming forward.

“I fear there’s an attitude like, ‘Why would I get help if it’s just going to be more painful?’ We’re really trying to build another reality outside of that,” O’Dougherty said.

It’s a fear bolstered by statistics. According to a 2015 campus climate survey, one in five UO undergraduate women experienced unwanted sexual advances, sexual assault or rape. Of the surveyed sexual assault victims who did not report the incident, more than half felt nothing would be done about the incident or the report would not be kept confidential.  

Those numbers and victim reactions have been mentioned in some of the workgroup’s weekly meetings. They have influenced the group’s goals to narrow the university’s approach to mandatory reporting and implement an option for online reporting.

And they’re a primary reason that the workgroup is eager to gain student perspective on Friday.

Students should “expect to be listened to,” O’Dougherty said. “We really want to hear what people have to say.”

A Recent History of Sexual Assault Reporting Policy at UO:

Nov. 2013: The university implemented new staff training that revitalized a longstanding policy: mandatory reporting. Most UO staff members were informed of their duty to report any evidence of sexual assault.

Apr. 3, 2015: While the university was recovering from a high-profile rape case, then interim President Scott Coltrane announced an anti-sexual assault plan. It included altering the mandatory reporting policy to encourage more sexual assault survivors to come forward.

Sept. 11, 2015: A campus climate survey revealed that one in five UO undergraduate females experienced unwanted sexual advances, sexual assault or rape.

May 18, 2016: The UO senate voted down a policy that would have clarified and broadened the university’s approach to mandatory reporting.

Aug. 19, 2016: President Schill enacted an emergency policy that made almost all university employees mandatory reporters.

Sept. 30, 2016: The workgroup will gather feedback to shape the forthcoming policy at a student forum to be held from 1:00-2:30 pm at Columbia 150.

Nov. 19, 2016: The workgroup aims to have the new policy passed by the UO senate.