While I have often disagreed with your editorials, I totally agree with you in that the current city code is the city code and this business of requiring Oregon State University-Cascades to develop a master plan for just 10.44 acres seems to have been settled.

After all, Kelly Sparks, spokesperson for OSU, did say, “OSU-Cascades does not have a 56-acre phased project. Our only project is the 10.44-acre campus site plan application.”

That said, the leadership at OSU-Cascades and Kittelson and Associates, Inc. — the firm that did OSU-Cascades’ transportation and parking management plans — have been noticeably silent since The Bulletin’s recent article of April 26: “Millennials embrace cars, defying predictions.”

It’s inconceivable to me that such a prestigious firm as Kittelson could have been so unaware of the ongoing research and ultimate findings of J.D. Power, the Global Market Research Company.

For the uninitiated, the firm concluded that millennials accounted for 26 percent of new car sales in 2014, and that number will likely increase by the end of 2015.

How is it possible that so many spokespersons for OSU-Cascades could be so wrong about millennials and their assumed disdain for cars? I have been at numerous gatherings these past 12 months where I have been told, even during the City Council’s review of Truth In Site’s appeal process, that approximately 30 percent of our millennials will either bike or walk to school.

On April 15, at 9:30 a.m., I walked the parking lots at Summit High School and counted 663 cars, with only 12 bicycles on the racks.

In January 2014, I attended an open house sponsored by OSU-Cascades where its leadership introduced their strategic concept for the west-side campus. When I first heard the representative from Kittelson and Associates brief his transportation and parking management plans, I sat there in total disbelief.

My intuition said he was simply “cooking the parking space numbers” to accommodate OSU-Cascades’ limited space availability and thus tried to rationalize his numbers by telling the audience about the biking and walking habits of millennials.

OSU-Cascades Vice President Becky Johnson is on record in describing the different nature and priorities of our millennials. “Many of whom,” said Johnson, “don’t necessarily want a car, or to drive everywhere.” Kathleen Burke from Automotive News recently reported, “Millennials top generation X in new-car buying for the first time in 2014.”

I would suggest that J.D. Power’s findings have called into question OSU-Cascades’ basic assumptions regarding their transportation and parking plans.

I believe it’s time Kittelson and Associates reassess their numbers in light of this new evidence. An honest re-evaluation will give substance to OSU-Cascades’ mantra of “wanting to be a good neighbor to the citizens of Bend.”

Failure to ignore the evidence and not do a reassessment could potentially cause enormous traffic jams at the Century/Chandler/Colorado Circle.

“Hobbes’ Jungle” will certainly prevail when 1,980 students, plus 70 faculty and staff, all vie for just 326 parking spaces.

Simply said, assumptions are things that are accepted as true or certain to happen without proof. One only has to reflect on Vice President Dick Cheney’s classic assumption, “We’ll be welcomed as liberators in Iraq.”

So let us not proceed with the fundamental assumption that millennials don’t like cars. The evidence is in; they do like cars, and in increasing numbers.

OSU should not put one spade in the ground on that 10.44-acre site until we see new, realistic projections about transportation and parking. Let’s see the numbers that reflect millennials driving their new, high-tech, compact cars.

Finally, what is the leadership at OSU-Cascades going to do on the first day of classes at the new site when those 30 percent of millennials, who were supposed to either walk or bike, drive up to campus and look for a place to park?

— Retired Lt. Col. Jack Matthews, of the U.S. Marines, lives in Bend.