As part of ongoing budget cuts, the University of Oregon has cancelled the journalism school’s Portland Senior Experience internship program for this fall. The program will be back in spring 2018, according to Pat Curtin, associate dean for undergraduate affairs.

The Portland Senior Experience, or PDXSX, is offered to students in their last term at the School of Journalism and Communication. The program offers academic credit as well as on the job training. According to the PDXSX blog, more than 75 percent of all participants had internships extended or were offered full-time employment upon graduation.

The program is available to students in all four majors in the SOJC: public relations, media studies, advertising and journalism.

More than 225 students have received internships through this program, and most of the interns are paid. The program accepts around 25 to 35 students each cycle and runs every fall and spring.

In addition to cancelling PDXSX this fall, the SOJC cut Programs Director Josh Netzer’s hours in order to save money. Netzer was in charge of coordinating the program.

Curtin explained that because the classes offered during the internship often only have two to three students, the SOJC can’t fund the program this term. The program will be retooled so that it will be covered by the new budget and Curtin is confident the program will be offered to students next spring.

In April, the SOJC announced that five non-tenure faculty would be laid off.

Every department on campus is slashing its budget due to a number of factors. The state of Oregon held funding for higher education this year, a move administrators say is effectively a cut to funding, and as a result UO has made cuts in nearly every department and still remains about $8.8 million in debt.

Follow Frankie Benitez on Twitter @0ItsFrankie0 .

The post SOJC’s 2017 Portland Senior Experience cancelled due to budget cuts appeared first on Emerald Media.

As part of ongoing budget cuts, the University of Oregon has canceled the journalism school’s Portland Senior Experience internship program for this fall. The program will be back in spring 2018, according to Pat Curtin, associate dean for undergraduate affairs.

The Portland Senior Experience, or PDXSX, is offered to students in their last term at the School of Journalism and Communication. The program offers academic credit as well as on the job training. According to the PDXSX blog, more than 75 percent of all participants had internships extended or were offered full-time employment upon graduation.

The program is available to students in all three majors in the SOJC: public relations, advertising and journalism.

More than 225 students have received internships through this program, and most of the interns are paid. The program accepts around 25 to 35 students each cycle and runs every fall and spring.

In addition to cancelling PDXSX this fall, the SOJC cut programs director Josh Netzer’s hours in order to save money. Netzer was in charge of coordinating the program.

Curtin explained that because the classes offered during the internship often only have 2 to 3 students, the SOJC can’t fund the program this term. The program will be retooled so that it will be covered by the new budget and Curtin was confident the program will be offered to students next spring.

In April, the SOJC announced that five non-tenured faculty would be laid off.

Every department on campus is slashing its budget due to a number of factors. The state of Oregon held funding for higher education this year, a move administrators say is effectively a cut to funding, and as a result UO has made cuts in nearly every department and still remains about $8.8 million in debt.

Follow Frankie Benitez on Twitter @0ItsFrankie0 .

The post SOJC’s 2017 Portland Senior Experience cancelled due to budget cuts appeared first on Emerald Media.

Around 300 high school students marched through University of Oregon campus as part of the annual Raza Unida Youth Conference. They chanted phrases like, “El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido,” (the town united will never be divided) and “Migration is beautiful.”

The conference is an all-day event organized by MEChA in which Latinx high school students from Lane County and all over the state come to the UO campus to attend workshops on topics ranging from knowing your rights to latin dance. There is also a political action portion and a cultural portion, according to Amy Garay-Azucena, Media and Communications Director for MEChA.

MEChA is a student organization focused on education rights of Latinx students. Around 300 MEChA chapters exist nationwide, according to UO MEChA’s website. Latinx is a gender neutral way to refer to people of Latin American descent.

This year’s Raza Unida Youth Conference theme is “Mi Exsistencia es Resistencia,” (My existence is resistance). The conference aims to empower Latinx youth by providing education and resources that could help them get into college.

“I hope the high school students see folks that look like them succeeding” said Manuel Mejia Gonzales, a coordinator of the conference.

The students gathered to listen to speeches in the EMU amphitheater after marching to the Memorial Quad to place red flags in the lawn. The flags represented the 30,000 families separated by mass deportations last year. 

In President Trump’s speech announcing his presidential bid, he regarded Mexican immigrants saying, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

“Majority of mi gente [my people] who come from Mexico are not rapists criminals nor drug dealers. They came to this country for a better life, to escape the violence and for education,” said Alex Aguilar, 17-year-old Youth Organizer and Media coordinator for MECha. “You are not alone. Look around. We are here together. This is where we start. Remember we are seeds who will rise into a flower, just how a phoenix rises from its ashes.”

**A previous version of this story said the flags represented the 300,000 people deported this year. The story has been updated.

The post 300 high school students march with MEChA for the annual Raza Unida Youth Conference appeared first on Emerald Media.

On Friday afternoon, student protesters will lie down, imitating dead bodies, in the street on the corner of University Street and 13th Avenue to protest the war in Syria.

The protesters, beginning at 2:30 p.m., will attempt to disrupt the foot traffic that is usually dense in that area. This type of protest is called a “die-in,” and is a variation of a sit-in protest, in which people occupy a space peacefully to spread a message.

Hosting the protest is UO junior Miles Shepard. He recruited the UO Young Democratic Socialists group, the Radical Organizing Activist Resource Center and the Student Labor Action Project to help facilitate. The event’s Facebook page is here.

Shepard, a tall but soft-spoken Portland native, has been involved in protests and other direct action throughout high school and college, including through the Portland Student Union and the Oregon Student Association, as well as the UO Young Democratic Socialists.

Shepard saw a need to protest war when he saw that neither candidate in the 2016 US presidential election was advocating for peace. “It’s kind of horrifying that one of the only things that Democrats and Republicans agree on is that it’s cool to bomb Syria,” he said.

Shepard stated in an interview with the Emerald that his goal with the die-in is to call attention to the innocent lives being taken by the US government overseas, he said. “This is just a grotesque loss of life at the beginning of 2017 that should be acknowledged publicly. It should be talked about.”

The US and allied forces have carried out 20,205 strikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014, and although the Pentagon has only acknowledged the killing of 229 civilians, it is suspected that the real number could be in the thousands, according to an article in the LA Times last month.

“Even if there’s one person lying down in the street, a lot of people are going to walk by and see it and wonder what’s happening, and I think that there’s a consciousness raising that happens because of that,” Shepard said. “It’s on us to challenge our government’s cold-blooded killing overseas in our name.”

At least two other die-in protests have been staged on UO’s campus — one in 2014 protesting the killing of Eric Garner by police in New York, and the other in 2001 to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Neither protest stopped traffic, and both remained peaceful.

The post UO students plan ‘die-in’ Friday to protest war in Syria appeared first on Emerald Media.