Keep the site, scrap the mine

Maybe we need a longer-term view of higher education in this area. OSU-Cascades wants to build and grow. Central Oregon Community College has been growing and will continue to do so.

We have already paid for the land and design for OSU’s 10 acres. Let’s quit wasting money and get it built. As far as the pumice mine goes, it has many problems; scrap it.

Ten to 20 years from now, COCC will certainly need more classroom and housing space. Needed infrastructure at Juniper Ridge (roads, sewer, etc.) will likely have been made available by then. Build the ultimate large OSU-Cascades campus in Juniper Ridge at that time and transfer ownership of the 10-acre campus to COCC for expansion.

It’s a win-win.

Jon Krutsch

Bend

Stop raising student tuition

A recent Bulletin article titled“168 Deschutes public employees make $100K plus” revealed that our local university and community college officials hold the top three earner spots of public employees in Deschutes County.

Paired with the fact that the OSU board has approved a 7.6 percent tuition increase for Oregon students, myself, Austin Anderson and Sydney Scout, other concerned OSU-Cascades students, are left wondering how making upward of a quarter of a million dollars is justifiable in the face of tacking on an additional $600 a year to student costs.

Not only is tuition increasing, but the Pell Grants, which supply 50 percent of OSU-Cascades students with financial aid, are also in jeopardy, again causing us to wonder who is advocating for us if the people paid over a quarter of a million dollars to do so aren’t.

As a trio of involved students who have made time to lobby at the Capitol nearly half a dozen times this year while balancing full-time jobs and full course loads, we find it hard not to be cynical about whether our voices and best interests as students are ever kept in mind.

A rally and lobby at the Capitol held by the Oregon Student Association, which we attended Feb. 12, called for legislators and school board officials to freeze tuition, but instead, they have chosen to raise it.

Our generation is the largest voting body in this country, and because of this, we know that our opinions are important.

However, we are also perplexed as to why our state representatives, whose main job is to represent us, aren’t listening.

Stop raising tuition. Don’t cut our grants. Set us up for success. We’re the future.

Savanna Jones

Bend

OSU-Cascades location is terrible

Regarding recent editorials and letters about OSU’s west-side campus location, it’s no surprise that inaccuracies exist.

OSU made the location decision and the financial decision without any open discussion with the west-side residents, after which they created task forces and involved others. Several of the west-side “money” people were apparently involved in the decision process.

Just follow the money trail.

The only way west-side residents were able to weigh in on the done deal was to create Truth in Site and start a legal campaign. It’s unfortunate, but west-side residents really had no other choice to protect their interests.

Everyone wants an OSU campus in Bend. So quit with the guilt trips that we will not get it if it is not located on the west side.

Did anyone ever see the rigorous location study that OSU did? Me neither. It apparently doesn’t exist. So the only location for the best draw for students is the west side. Sure, there’s Mount Bachelor, and all of the pubs. Club Med at its finest.

Never mind the ridiculous parking solution and 30 percent of students walking and biking 12 months per year. I have some swamp land in Florida for sale if you buy into all of this.

Traffic and parking issues will become unbearable with 5,000 students.

And let’s not discount the coming college culture coming to our neighborhoods, with very possible raucous college parties.

Sure, they will fix all of the problems this creates “after” they occur. Let’s all sing “Kumbaya.”

John Moeckel

Bend