The big brown moth comes humming out of the jungle night and lands gracefully on Lan’s shoulder, furry little antennae bristling as a light wind blows past. He looks down on it with little interest, brushes it aside. It takes to the air, joining the multitudes swooping and diving around the flickering fluorescent light of the rest stop. A gecko darts out from behind a faded portrait of honorable comrade Phomvihan to snatch one up. Lan likes to watch the little lizards hunt. Here it’s always easy pickings.
He leans back against the restaurant’s tin siding and watches the people come in from the side of the road. The jungle forms a wall around the road, rising to meet the night sky and mingle in a uniform blackness. There is only one bathroom, inadequate for the forty some traveling south on this first-class night bus. Most would rather piss into the gulch at the edge of the road than wait to use the toilet. He drops the butt of his cigarette onto the space between his faded black Converse sneakers, and takes out another. The tourists eye him warily as they walk into the restaurant to buy Pringles or maybe brave some of the local food. They don’t really understand his purpose here, and neither does he. Lan is eighteen years old.

Besides himself and the other employees, the people on this bus are not Lao. They are white, most from England but with a healthy number of Australians and the occasional American or Italian. He speaks none of their languages. His mother wanted him to learn English. He doesn’t have the knack for it but he speaks Thai fairly well. In the last ten years, his country has changed from hermit socialist republic to an increasingly capitalist state, wanting nothing more than western dollars pouring in. All the best jobs are in tourism, and this usually requires some knowledge of English.

Lan doesn’t know much about tourism. He didn’t want this job, but his mother insisted. It was time he started making some money for the family. It got tough when his father died. His older brothers went out to get jobs away from home; there were still two little ones to take care of. The boss-man at the local bus station knew his father and got Lan this job. He tells Lan he will work seven days a week. His father worked every day driving an old tuk-tuk taxi down the highway between villages. Most days he would come home exhausted and go right to sleep.

Lan doesn’t have to drive a cab or this bus. All he has to do is come along. Lan is now employed riding on night buses between Luang Prabang in the north and the capital of Vientiane in the south, armed with an AK47. He sits right next to the driver, trying to pretend that he is some kind of tough guy. If anything happens, he is their protector.
He is well skilled with a rifle. He had gone out hunting with his father since he was seven years old. They would catch whatever they could to supplement what his mother bought at market. A hunting rifle and an assault weapon are very different things though. He has no desire to kill anyone. This is just a job. He is illiterate and cannot read the newspapers, but people tell him that this country is far less dangerous than it once was. There have been no real wars for a long time.

The bus-company was looking for local boys who knew how to use a gun. The boss came to their house and offered Lan the job. Lan needed to start working, but the idea made his mother very nervous. The bus man did his best to convince her.

“He will be fine! Route Thirteen is not the lawless highway it once was. Things are much better, but the more tourists come, the more security we need. These people need assurance. They need to feel safe. They are paying good money to come and visit our country. To see your son with that big gun will let them sleep easy. Don’t worry, he won’t have to do anything but sit on the bus.”

He seemed very confident that there would be no problems. The idea still makes Lan nervous. Shooting a deer and shooting a man are not the same. This is the third run he has made so far. All the nights have been quiet. A few water buffalo refused to move off the road the night before, but they moved off after a little shouting and pushing. His mother is proud and he is earning good money, more than he has ever seen. He thinks about buying his own scooter. His mother wants him to use the money to go to the trade school in Savanahkett, learn to be an electrician, a plumber, a career job that will make him someone.

Lan watches the driver and his mechanic friend tinkering in the bowels beneath the bus. The air conditioning has stopped working and the passengers are complaining. The windows are not made to open, and the air inside is stifling. Lan’s eyes stray inside to the restaurant where a tall blonde woman is arguing with the owner about something. Lan cannot understand her and the owner himself seems to be having trouble. It is probably about the price. An old television sits in the back, playing music videos from Thailand. Laotians sit silently, leaning back in their plastic chairs smoking cigarette after cigarette, occasionally picking at the assortments of rice and noodles the owner’s daughter has prepared for them in back. The tourists sit around mindlessly. They cannot understand the television, and most have woken up out of a dead sleep. The blonde woman is still arguing but eventually just hands the owner a few bills. She gives him far too much. They will probably be here for an hour or more, but the tourists have no idea. Some of them have not even gotten off the bus, they expect to be underway in a few minutes. Lan knows better. This stop might require him to purchase another pack of cigarettes. In the dead of night, smoking becomes like breathing.

Two American kids who cannot be much older than Lan look up at him from their bowls of noodle soup. They smile and say hello in Lao…sabai dee…but the pronunciation is all wrong. He nods and hopes it will end at that. His gun fascinates the younger tourists. They think he’s some kind of action hero and want his picture. One of them offers him a cigarette, even though it’s clear he has his own. He gives them a final nod and walks over to the restaurant owner.

“Long night?” the man asks in Lao, sitting back on his stool as Lan leans against the counter. He is rather portly and his face looks crushed and sunken in the harsh light from above. The years have not been kind to him. Half of the business he sees is in the middle of the night, and it shows in his eyes.

“They are all long nights. The driver keeps the music cranked up, always pop from India. The passengers always complain about something and… I have to carry this thing.” He lifts the gun a bit so the owner can see.

“You never can be too careful,” he says quickly, and then is silent. His expression has changed dramatically at the sight of the weapon. He turns to face the television. It is obvious that their conversation is over. Maybe he has seen guns too often, or maybe he is just uncomfortable around them, like everyone else. Lan doesn’t like it either. It weighs heavily on his shoulder and he never forgets about it. He has been running back and forth between the cities for three days now, twelve hours each way. He only gives it back into the hands of a bus company man when it is time to sleep.

Lan sleeps on a mattress on the roof of the travel agency, along the main drag in Vientiane. The honking and the noise of so many people only starts to pick up as he lays down. He will stay here until the day bus leaves at ten. There are several other mattresses here, tucked under a little awning crisscrossed with clotheslines. Shoes, hats, and plastic bags full of clothes lie strewn about. Bus people have been sleeping here for a long time. Only then, as the sun rises from behind the distant mountains and dawn has fallen upon Laos does he sleep. Only in that capital of men that seems so lonely and unnatural does he relinquish the weapon.

He leaves the restaurant, meandering over to the men working under the bus. The mechanic has slid deep under the vessel and the driver stands by, holding a dimming flashlight. They do not notice him. The compartment holding all the travelers’ luggage sits open. It would be so easy to dig for purses and wallets as his older brother suggested, but Lan is not that kind of man. The mechanic curses and bangs his wrench against some unseen mechanism down below. Lan looks out into the blackness and sees nothing.

The air is different here, along the highway and so far from the river. He has spent all of his life along the Mekong. He learned to swim soon after he learned to walk. Here you cannot smell the faraway highlands from which the water has come, you cannot sense the coming storms with your hand in the current. Land without water is so foreign to him. He smells the air and gets nothing but the hot, damp of the jungle and the oppression of lingering exhaust fumes.

The noises are different too. There are no bird-calls or monkey howls, the big slab of road scared them away long ago, only the drone of the insects accompany the night. But now this incessant buzzing begins to lose ground to another sound, an engine chugging away down the road. A truck comes into view, its bright lights illuminating the forest on either side of the road. It comes up the hill toward them and Lan is blinded by the headlights. He looks away and the truck honks a warning as it speeds up to pass them.

A loud popping noise issues from the big vehicle. It’s happening.

Thoughts flash through his head in an instant. He is needed. It’s bandits, or rebels. They’re attacking. They’re going to kill him and take all the tourists hostage. He has to fight back; he must protect them. He turns, instinctively, raising his gun. He pulls the trigger and fires into the light. Most of the bullets careen wildly off into the jungle but a few punch into the tin sides of the truck. There is shouting from the truck. They are frightened, and speed off as fast as they can. Everything seems to stop. The sound of the gun hangs heavily in the air, echoing into the distance.

He is shaken back into the moment by the stern hand of the driver on his shoulder. Lan looks into his furious eyes and realizes what has happened. It was just the truck’s engine backfiring. All the trucks are at least ten years old. It happens all the time. He splutters out an apology but he’s drowned out by screaming passengers still inside the bus who watched the whole thing. The driver quickly leaves him and the mechanic climbs out from under the bus. The air conditioning can wait. The driver gathers all the tourists together and explains in halting, company-taught English that everything is fine, just an accident, a misfire, and that now it is time to go. They all file quickly and silently onto the bus, each of them risking a little glance at Lan standing sheepishly in the dust. Soon they are all aboard and the engine is purring to life. The driver has waited to see them all onboard. He messes with his belt, hiking up his pants and tightening it before he comes over to Lan.

“Why did you do that? It was just an old truck. The passengers are very scared now! Our customers do not pay good money for trouble like this. The bosses will fire you! Give it to me.” Lan hands him the weapon and the driver stows it with the luggage.

“I’m sorry,” Lan says, as the driver climbs aboard. He comes up and takes his seat. The bus is back on the road to Vientiane, five more hours now. The fluorescent light of the rest stop disappears as they plunge back into the dark.

He and his father were deep in the jungle hunting when it happened. The explosion had knocked Lan to the ground and left a deafening emptiness in the air. His father had stepped down on a bomb, one of a thousand live explosives lying across the countryside. It was dropped there by the Americans, in a secret war against communists that ended years before Lan was born and of which he knows nothing about. His parents never wanted to talk about the war days. He had found his father in a small clearing where all the brush was gone. He had only been half there, but Lan had tried to carry him back to the village anyway. It was hopeless. He had been very close, and the burst of the explosion was with him ceaselessly day and night for weeks afterward. Now it has returned, but this time it is quickly fading, not burned into his memory. He slumps down in his seat and thinks about going home, about telling his mother that he has lost the job. He thinks of his father, and what he might have said, but that really doesn’t matter. He puts his face against the fogged glass of the window and watches the night roll past.

In the vacant lobby of 239 Cherry St., I hesitantly pen my name on the unattended sign-in sheet, though it doesn’t seem mandatory. From the street, the building is indistinguishable from the other boxy, grey industrial-looking ones around it. Inside, it’s clinical and corporate. I sit at the head of a long table set with shiny, varnished wooden chairs until Jason Salfi, CEO, co-founder and partner of Comet Skateboards, emerges from the door behind to greet me.

In paint-speckled jeans, tattered Nikes and a black zip-turtleneck, Salfi doesn’t come across as the CEO type—but then again, this is a skateboard company, a green skateboard company.
I can envision the eyes rolling now—another environmental consumerist goody that will no doubt join the ranks of Natalie Portman’s designer line of vegan pumps and C-IN2’s collection of men’s bamboo briefs. Upon mentioning Comet to a friend, she replied, “Doesn’t that just undermine the idea of environmentalism?” She was referring to the overabundance of green stuff for sale, which can distract from actual issues at hand. And in a way, Comet Skateboards will fit right in with the other sustainable schlock that constitutes green consumerism.

The workroom that we enter is lined wall-to-wall in bare decks, many of which are made of North American maple. In addition, Comet Skateboards utilizes other local, sustainable materials—like soy and hemp—for their production. Their method has only come to fruition as the result of years of research by Patrick Govang, former industrial partnerships director for the Cornell Center for Materials Research, and Anil Netravali, professor of fiber science and apparel design at Cornell University. Their brainchild, e2e Materials LLC, fuels Comet skateboards and falls in line with a revolutionary new way of doing business. It also is saving Salfi money, contributing to Ithaca’s local economy, and serving as a prototype from which to resolve two of the most disconcerting crises facing our country and the entire world: economic recession and climate change.

It’s what many are calling the “green-collar solution,” a concept that is poised to become ever more vague and overused as we approach Election Day. But it’s also the most promising thing to emerge from environmentalism in recent years—the panacea that will ideally revitalize our nation.

First the green-collar concept will have to pass through a dangerous labyrinth of misguided politicians, underdeveloped industries and resistant capitalists for its potential to be realized. It’s a harrowing journey but one that is already beginning in Ithaca.

Green, in the context of collared jobs, is arguably white and blue—let’s just say light teal. What defines a green-collar is its positive impact on the environment, which makes the term somewhat difficult to define but easy to apply.

Jerome Ringo, president of the national environmental organization The Apollo Alliance, offered a succinct, visual explanation of the green sector on Feb. 15 for NPR’s All Things Considered. “When we talk about production of wind turbines for example, someone has to design those wind turbines, someone has to build those wind turbines, someone has to install those wind turbines, someone has to maintain [them],” he said.

So green-collar encompasses both professional jobs (the heads of renewable energy companies, the designers, the accountants) and manual labor (the builders, the installers, the maintenance workers).

“From my perspective ‘green-collar jobs’ is a term that encompasses a range of functions,” says Gay Nicholson, program coordinator for Sustainable Tompkins, a local county-based environmental coalition. “But it’s all towards a shared goal of living and working differently and having jobs that support people living and working in a more sustainable way.”

Sustainable Tompkins is currently focusing on expanding the regional marketplace through increasing awareness and community access to different burgeoning industries—renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building and, yes, green purchasing. True to form, these fields require workers of many different types.
But in terms of manual green-collar work, each different realm or industry has its own specific training. For instance, Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y. offers “envelope professional training,” which prepares workers for careers in sustainable ventilation and heating. After the 30-hour training session, which includes classroom and field experience, graduates will earn a Building Performance Institute, Inc. certification. Depending on regional demand, this makes workers more marketable and gives them a sustainable edge. But it also costs $1,125.

Unfortunately, fees like these may present a problem to the unemployed blue-collar workers who stand to benefit most from jobs created through the green-collar movement. HVCC has a partnership with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which allows for individuals in the program to be reimbursed 75 percent of their tuition upon completion. But this again is a regional perk, not a national one.
The key to creating a new blue-green workforce is getting politicians to appropriate money in the right places. With the recent passage of the Green Jobs Act of 2007, $125 million was set aside for training workers for clean energy jobs. But to foster these kinds of manual jobs, policymakers must cover all aspects of workforce reform.

“Whenever you’re trying to start something new, you need to dismantle the subsidies that have gone into the destructive thing that you’re doing,” says Nicholson.
Money from the Green Jobs Acts is said to equip approximately 35,000 workers with skills suited for green-collar work. But legislators need to shift their focus to the white-collar sector—the industry leaders that will employ these green workers. Only when government incentives for change are in place, will there be an increased demand for blue-green-collar workers.

Marian Brown is the Special Assistant to the Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs at Ithaca College. Brown is in charge of most of the sustainability initiatives on campus. Her office in the Center for Health Sciences is cluttered—potted plants, both real and synthetic, rest on the desk and shelves, while green-colored pamphlets, books and buttons frame a patch of bare carpet where two maintenance men are replacing her computer for its triennial update.

She corrects me when I attribute the mess to the tech support, cheerfully joking that “it’s always like that” as we head to the coffee cart. Once there she buys two coffees, one for her reusable mug and one for me.

“For most people, if you say green-collar right now, they would think of a blue-collar adaptation for renewable energy, technology and skill development,” she says. Ithaca College’s role as a liberal arts institution prevents it from tackling this sort of manual labor training head-on with its students. But at the same time, some students are able to seek out these types of experiences themselves.

Stephen Figgatt, a senior environmental studies student at Ithaca, is one of them. “There’s so many things you can do in the environmental realm, especially now,” he says. “I personally want to go into renewed energy development, mostly wind.”

For many college students like Figgatt, environmental studies appeals to both idealism and practicality by preparing them to work toward positive change in an emerging field with widespread job opportunity. Having interned at Renovus Energy Inc. last semester, Figgatt was able to learn first-hand about the installation process for solar panels and wind turbines. Through pursuing independent studies, Figgatt has also utilized the plethora of opportunities available in the Ithaca community, working extensively with the EcoVillage through the ties they have with IC.

With our country on the verge of a recession, every viable presidential candidate has touted a green-collar economy as a potential solution for both economic and environmental woes. Though candidates are many times insincere, climatologists
aren’t; the need for significant environmental reform is as necessary as global warming is imminent.

Darren Usinowicz is a recent graduate from Green Mountain College
in Poultney, Vt.—a small liberal arts college that incorporates environmentalism into all of its studies. “We’re in such a unique position with all the different climates we have [in the U.S.]. We’ve got desert, tundra and everything in between. You can work on any of those technologies in any one of those climates and adapt that all over the world,” he says. “So how can you go wrong in developing that industry?” Currently, Usinowicz works at Agricultural Consulting Services, a firm based in Rochester with a satellite office in Groton.

Green Mountain College is certainly a unique place, but it speaks volumes to the role of the college-aged generation in the environmental movement. Students, especially in Ithaca, are increasingly greening their career paths, sometimes in very unorthodox ways. Alicia Emer ’07, who graduated with an Integrated Marketing Communications degree, is one of them, pursuing a career in green marketing.

“Green marketing is when a company will promote its positive environmental aspects,” she says. “Right now, green is kind of the buzzword in marketing.”

At first, it seems that the two ideas are paradoxical; marketing for commercial companies is based solely on making a profit, while environmentalism emphasizes the importance of compromising revenue to make change. But there are advantages to companies, consumers and the environment; companies market their green features because that’s what consumers are now interested in, and by doing so, these companies are creating competition to see who can out-green the other.

In fact, for the green-collar movement to really take off, more businesses need to start adopting its principles. Brown says that IC is seriously considering this train of thought, not just for humanities or communications students, but also for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

“Having people think differently and put a sustainability decision-making framework on so that they really do take into account: Is it good for people? Is it good for the environment? Does it make economic sense?” says Brown. “That’s what we’re doing at the business school hopefully.” There are also little things that Brown wants to focus on.

“We’ve done a lot with education for students, but we have not really, in a meaningful way, stepped up to faculty and staff,” she says, turning to the buzzing drink machine behind us. “In many cases they’re the ones who see a lot of opportunities, and we need to start to empower them to say, ‘Now wait a minute. Figure out a way I can turn the bloody light off on the Snapple machine after hours.’”

Back on Cherry Street, Salfi and I walk to the second, more mechanical room of the Comet Skateboards plant. Some near-finished boards jumbled on a large table catch my eye; their designs create a vibrant display with loose wheels scattered on top. We move around to the workroom to some hulking devices, where the skateboards are pressed with airbags instead of a popular hydraulics system.

“It’s very unique and has allowed us to adapt our own technique,” Salfi says of the press. “The standard skateboard press can’t work with the materials we use.”

This factory is Salfi’s dream, a culmination of more than 10 years of work that materialized just a few months ago. He came back to Ithaca in 2007 to team up with Patrick Govang of e2e Materials. Salfi’s manufacturing plant was moved to Cherry Street in October, up and running in November, and producing new e2e skateboards lines by early February 2008.

A 1993 graduate of Cornell, Salfi had been living in San Francisco, selling Comet Skateboards and developing his own production system. On a road trip to the East Coast in 2005, he decided to visit one of his professors, Anil Netravali, who had been working with Govang to develop what is now known as e2e Materials. At the time, their substitute for the popular but expensive and toxic adhesives used in skateboards drew him in.

“What e2e Materials does is replace products that exist today that use petroleum with stuff that can be grown in one year,” says Govang. “So, for example, our resin technology leverages soy protein rather than petroleum-based resin. And then we combine them with natural fibers that are rapid renewables compared to say, a tree, which would typically go into a product like particleboard or maybe density fiberboard.”

These local fibers, such as flax, jute, bamboo and hemp, can all grow within the span of one year and are also biodegradable. The whole process, in turn, is a cycle that continuously sustains itself.

Aside from using a sustainable approach to production, Comet Skateboards has also been able to cut down on costs; the regional materials they use save money on shipping. And their independence from petroleum-based resin helps them bypass the continuously rising costs of oil by-products.

“Sucking from the oil nipple isn’t going to help anything,” says Salfi. “Having a bio-based solution that isn’t influenced by a crazy geopolitical climate is a good solution.”

Another innovative aspect of Comet’s factory is that it’s located in Ithaca—not exactly the manufacturing capital of the world. But local production is something that the U.S. government will want to look into very soon.

The way in which most goods are currently mass-produced is both hurting our economy and environment. Many products use materials from different parts of the world, which are then shipped to China to be assembled and shipped back to the U.S. When companies outsource their manufacturing like so, they are not only taking away jobs from Americans, but also perpetuating a system that leaves a massive carbon footprint by using harmful materials and transporting them through extensive air travel.

It’s here where Comet is able to both cut costs on shipping and contribute to Ithaca’s economy. The workers in the plant are local, and the farmers who supply most of their materials are based in the Northeast.

To some, Salfi’s success may seem rare; but it won’t soon enough. Govang and e2e Materials plan on developing their technology for the renewable resources found in different regions of the country. But for now, they’re focusing on the Northeast and have been drawing attention from many interested furniture companies.

“I think the challenge [for us] is: do we view our company as a triple bottom line company?” says Govang. “The single bottom line that drives capitalism today is the dollars at the end of the day. With the eye on the dollars, we also look at a bottom line of our impact on the environment, the bottom line of our impact on society.”

This triple bottom-line approach—caring about profit, society and the environment—has the potential, when applied on a national scale, to fix many of our problems. But as Govang points out, we live in a capitalist society, staunchly driven by profit. Add to this the comfort with which many Americans live today and the widespread change necessary in reversing our environmental impact, and the challenge for green industry is even more apparent.

Even if many are becoming increasingly aware of global warming, there is a spell of denial that has fallen on our country, one that allows us to recognize the problem and falsely feel at ease that others are working to fix it.
“The human psyche is unprepared for what we’ve wrought together, very unprepared,” says Gay Nicholson. “But on the other hand, in terms of human potential, we are maybe poised for a leap forward in human consciousness.”

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Mike Berlin is a senior writing major. Email him at mberlin2[at]gmail.com.

Company Newsletter January 7th, 2008

Hey, everyone!
Dave Bishop here to give your quarterly update in our little neck of the woods. I hope all of you had a wonderful time off for Christmas vacation (and I hope you didn’t spend your bonus all in one place, Fred. Just kidding.). I’m not sure how you can top our Pollyanna Party before vacation though.
Well, as you know, last year was just great for the company. Our profits soared last year and we hope to continue our path of success in the New Year. The work we’ve been doing in Iraq has continued to give us much satisfaction—both fiscally and morally. I don’t know how many times I’ve been thanked for the work we’re doing here at Halliburton. We’re all so proud of everyone’s work at the company.

Of course, not everything was so great. We had to say farewell to one of our most esteemed colleagues, Charles Thompson. He retired after working 42 years in the accounting department. Charlie was a wonderful asset to the company. We’re all going to miss his wonderful coffee break stories. I think we all remember his farewell party when Christie Gregson from advertising rocked the house with her rendition of “Beat It.” After a night of dancing and singing, Charlie gave a wonderful farewell speech and is now living in Florida.

We also had a surprise engagement announcement between Bill Richardson and Kate Scott. Bill popped the question after pretending to be hurt in a rigging accident. I’m sure in the coming months they’re going to have a great time planning for their wedding in May. Just make sure to stay away from Kate if she becomes a Bridezilla (Just kidding!).
February is coming up and you know what that means—our Annual Charity Bachelor Auction! Last year, we raised nearly $250,000 for Iraqi Orphans. This year we’ve set a goal to raise $300,000. And maybe someone can top Eric Lane’s dance to “Right Said Fred.” We all know how that turned out.

Speaking of upcoming events, March is Women’s Appreciation Month. We’ll be hosting a series of speaking engagements throughout the month. While attendance isn’t required, it would be great if you all could go. These are some really great women coming out and it would be a shame to miss it. You can go to our Web site to see the dates and times of the events.

Now for the boring stuff (Just kidding, Brian.). Brian in IT has been working on moving our e-mail system to a new platform. We’re set to change the system on January 18th, so if there are any problems we just want you to give you a heads up. Of course if Brian’s working on it there will definitely be problems (kidding!). Everyone’s e-mail address and password will be the same, but the layout of the e-mail system will look different. On January 21 there will be a short seminar to discuss the new system.

In other news, Doris Lawson, head of food services, has implemented an alternative to the oil we use in our French fries. Starting January 14 the cafeteria will be baking the French fries instead of using our usual peanut oil. Doris says that this alternative to peanut oil is safer and healthier; it also reduces strain on the environment.

Well, that about does it for this quarter’s issue. I can’t reiterate how much you guys (and gals) rule and how successful we’re going to be in this upcoming year. You’re all doing a great job. We all know that the world is in shambles now, but do what I do: take solace in the fact that you work in a wonderful company like Halliburton.

Go, team, Go!

______________________________________________________
Harrison Flatau is a junior writing major. E-mail him at  hflatau[at]gmail.com.

By Meagan Murray

Lindsay DeVries never thought that it would require an inheritance from her grandfather to pay back her private student loans.

After graduating from Ithaca College last May with a degree in speech-language pathology and audiology, DeVries left for graduate school at the University of Washington already $17,000 in debt to the federal government. She was able to defer her federal loans until 2014, but she approximates that she will have to pay back around $75,000 in federal loans—equaling an estimated $700-per-month installment plan.

In the private sector, however, DeVries had difficulty deferring the $12,000 she had taken out in loans from the American Education Services. DeVries said that AES accrued her interest up to $11 per day for a deferment. In a morbid twist of fate, the death of her grandfather allowed DeVries and her mother to pay off her AES private loans.

“Got lucky there,” DeVries quipped. “Everyone is in impossible debt only to get educated. And when we leave school, the dollar will be worthless, so we’ll be making less and paying on loans taken out when the dollar was worth more.”

Her outlook may sound a little bleak, but who can blame her? In DeVries’ defense, many analysts agree that the coming recession will have an effect on students’ abilities to pay back their tuition loans.

According to a Feb. 20 “Forecast” by The Economist, the predicted economic crisis in the United States is indeed a reality.

“We have revised down our forecast for U.S. real [gross domestic product] in 2008 and 2009 to 0.8 percent and 1.4 percent from 1.5 percent and 2 percent respectively. This reflects our view that the housing market will deteriorate more sharply than previously assumed as well as the impact of the deepening turmoil in the financial sector.”

The unstable U.S. economy is a result of several faltering dimensions: the continued plummet of the dollar, now at 1.4825 dollars to the Euro; a growing global economy; fluctuating federal tax programs; military spending for the war in Iraq; and, of course, the sub prime mortgage crisis.

Last month Congress approved a $168 billion federal stimulus package, designed by the Bush administration, that would extend rebates to U.S. taxpayers, give tax breaks to businesses and make more expensive mortgages available through the government and government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies.

“The data isn’t in on how different sectors of the economy are going to be affected by the recession, but we already see that the housing sector is currently being affected,” said Shaianne Osterreich, an assistant professor of economics at Ithaca College. “This will affect people’s jobs and also families’ abilities to have financial assets to help pay for college and [provide a] buffer when there are hard times.”

Osterreich said that the current stimulus package was formed primarily to temporarily boost consumer spending and will have little effect on creating new jobs. Moreover, she believes the faltering economy will lead students to take out more loans for tuition payments.

“Students are taking more loans than they have in the past because [the cost of] college education is going up,” she said. “Jobs that are paying them well enough to easily pay loan payments will be a challenge to find.”

It’s no wonder the federal government is cringing as students send in their FAFSA forms alongside their college applications. Nearly 70 percent of student financial aid is provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid program through either grants or student loans.

According to FinAid.org, a public service site unaffiliated with the government, 87.3 percent of students who attend a four-year private institution accumulate an average of $28,138 in federal loan debt, excluding PLUS loans, which parents take out. The current tuition at Ithaca College is $39,798 per year, so depending on the financial aid package given, most federal loans and grants don’t cover tuition completely.

This creates a demand for alternative loan options, often in the private sector. Many recent graduates like DeVries are finding that they can’t afford to pay back their private loans on time. It’s a scenario that Osterreich believes will continue in today’s profit-driven market.

“Private student loans can be really exploitative,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend that anybody take private student loans, because a lot of times you can’t negotiate repayment schedules if you run into hard times. They’re happy to have you default, because they’re going to sell your loans or accrue interest on you.

“Federal government student loans really are designed to help people go to school for extremely low interest rates; it’s not a for-profit enterprise the way private student loan operations are.”

Carol Chernikoff is the chief lending officer at the Alternatives Federal Credit Union in Ithaca. As both a parent paying for her son’s tuition and someone who works in the lending industry, she sees the frustration from both sides.

“It’s the cost of higher education that’s so obscene. It’s a disgrace to this country,” she said. “We are looking at a system that’s broken and so elitist and exclusive at this point.”

While AFCU does not offer student loans due to the competitive rates of profit-driven national lenders, they refer members to College Payway, a national private lender that educates families about the choices they have when paying for education.

“We work with a lender we know we can stand behind,” Chernikoff said. “We are a community-based credit union to serve the underserved. We combine education with financial empowerment and literacy. I think going into anything, especially borrowing large amounts of money for education, with full disclosure—knowing what you’re doing and what you’re payments are going to be—is something we all need to have.”

More politicians are also beginning to pay attention to the expanding markets for federal and private student lending and the dangers of leaving the lending system unchecked. Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, was making waves for improving higher education standards long before his presidential bid was snuffed out last fall. As chairman of the Senate’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Dodd introduced the Private Student Loan Transparency and Improvement Act of 2007, which would amend the Truth in Lending Act. Private lenders would be required to inform applicants of their eligibility for lower-cost federal loans; provide more accurate and timely information to their customers about the interest rates, terms and conditions of their product; and allow for a 30-day grace period upon approval to allow the applicant to shop around for the best lending rates.

“It’s a pretty sensible approach to higher education,” said an aide to Dodd who specializes in banking. “What we’ve learned from what is happening today is that we’ve been inattentive of this market… Nobody said the sub prime market issue would explode to what it is today, and as a result, you have loans that were made with no documentation. We want to make sure that loans are made the right way in this particular market.”

Another of Dodd’s aides, who works with higher education, said that they are busy assembling a “list of shame”—an index estimating what tuition rates should cost based on the consumer price index. The index would take into consideration typical inflation rates and publicize any colleges or institutions that outpace the education inflation rate of tuition.

“The idea is to sunshine this issue,” said Dodd’s aide in higher education. The goal is to monitor tuition increases, particularly at public schools, and examine how these increases may relate to other budget decisions.

“States have to stop balancing budgets on backs of higher education, which is usually one of the first things to go,” said the aide.

A bill was passed in the House in early February that included some language from the Private Student Loan Transparency and Improvement Act. The next step, say Dodd’s aides, is to reconcile differences in Congress and present a package for President Bush to sign by April.

Chernikoff hopes that the federal government will realize the significant need for privatized loan regulation and take more responsibility for higher education.

“If the government doesn’t do something, this is going to explode on us, and schools are going to have a hard time getting students because they can’t afford it,” she said. “I’m not a pessimistic person, but if you step back and look at higher education and health care, who would have thought that the government would let things get this out of hand?”

DeVries said that she hasn’t lost complete hope in the lending system, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not bitter about the way the system is run.

“[Federals loans] are your best hope – lower interest rates and they are practically guaranteed,” DeVries said. “But I’d never take out those private ones again. During my undergrad I had loans, but I lived on campus and ate there, and it was no biggie. Now I have to watch everything to stay afloat.”

According to Dodd’s staff, while they have faced resistance from private lenders, some companies actually want better regulation in their market. “They want it well- regulated so that if there ever was a problem, no one can say this was the ‘Wild West,’ i.e. the sub prime market. It’s a way to ensure that the market grows and that people still have confidence in it.”

Like so many others, DeVries is still waiting.
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Meagan Murray is a senior journalism major. Email her at mmurray1[at]ithaca.edu.

By Kendra Sundal

While political candidates and media preoccupy themselves with health care and immigration debates, our public schools are failing countless children. No Child Left Behind receives growing criticism from educators and families, while simultaneously receiving less funding than is necessary to make it a success. One of the most troubling aspects of the law, which is often overlooked in these debates, reinforces educational inequalities by systematically according failing status to schools with large numbers of special needs students and English language learners.

While designed to reward schools where standardized test scores are highest, the testing methods have been scrutinized as potentially discriminatory towards special education, minority and English-language learning students. To further complicate matters, special needs students and English language learners are transferred out of these categories when they are able to meet standards of proficiency according to the tests. However, these successes are not accounted for in school data, and this ends up hurting schools with large numbers of special needs students and English language learners. Students who reach proficiency are taken out of the subgroup, leaving only the “failing” students behind. Not only does this method discount the successful transition of some students, it also accords the schools a “failing” status based on the students who remain or who are added to the subgroups each year.

This creates what some researchers have termed a “diversity penalty.” Schools with a high percentage of students in these subgroups—which include English language learners, as well as special needs, poor and minority students—are disproportionately labeled as “needing improvement.” In order to address this problem, there must be a provision in the law to account for successes in these subgroups, and the students attaining proficiency must count towards the data about these groups. This is essential to determine how well the schools are performing, especially in regard to individualized education plans for special needs students and English language learners.

There are other reforms needed in special education programs. As it stands, quotas are set up that limit the number of low-income and minority students who can be labeled “special needs,” because the laws currently argue that non-educational factors (such as family income) must be carefully considered so as to avoid disproportional representation of poor or minority students with learning disabilities. Unfortunately for the law, studies show that there is a decidedly high correlation between poverty and learning disabilities, and likewise a high occurrence of signs of learning disabilities among minority students.
In my own experience working for a summer school program I saw the effects of these quotas. In a city with a small minority population, only one of my 15 students was Caucasian, and only one of my students had been afforded “learning disabled” status. The rest were simply failing—or, the system was failing them. These students deserve the individualized educational plans that their peers in special education receive, as a preventative measure against having them show up in summer school time and again without ever receiving the attention and support they need and deserve—to get ahead.
True, it would mean admitting that racial and class inequalities still thrive in our schools. This is a necessary step, however, to overcoming these inequities and adjusting educational support systems to meet the needs of our most disadvantaged and at-risk youth.

We have a duty to ensure that coming generations will see greater social, economic, and political equality in education. Such measures will result in fewer black men behind bars, fewer families on unemployment, and a more educated workforce. If poor and minority students were encouraged to remain in school, with the support necessary to help them succeed, we would be taking a step towards the educational equality envisioned in the 1950s but never achieved. Imagining equality is easy enough, but now we must recognize our stake in the success of students across the country. In order to bring students up to the levels of achievement NCLB desires, greater reforms and greater accountability are in order.
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Kendra Sundal is a junior politics major. Email her at ksundal1[at]ithaca.edu.

By Josh Elmer

I was walking through Park one of my first days back admiring the new white shoes that I had just purchased and realized that the floor in Park had switched from the gray tile that it was to a strange new tile pattern that I could not figure out.
“When did they do this,” I asked. I found out that it happened over break and furthermore that I should have known about it.
“Don’t you read the Dean’s blog?”
I don’t. Sorry.
So I took a look back through the archives of the blog and saw that it was definitely mentioned; January 16, “(but just WAIT until you see the lobby….),” January 20, (and how ABOUT that lobby floor? We asked for wild and dynamic, and we got it!). I’m not one for interior design, but that tile is definitely dynamic!

Some time ago, I heard that the floor in the lobby is Italian tile. I thought, well that’s really nice. After a short pause I thought “Whoa, whoa, Italian tile? Is that how we’re spending the money in Park?” I may be a bit old-fashioned but Italian tile in the lobby of Park is a bit over the top. I was fine with the lobby before the food cart, before the purple, and before the new tile.  The food cart and the purple I can understand, but Italian tile just seems a bit self-indulgent. How much did this cost?

I checked Dean Lynch’s blog to figure it out and read this: “(and if you’re the person who e-mailed me to say we shouldn’t be spending your tuition money to make the lobby look pretty, we’re not, I promise):” What the hell does that mean? Who did pay for it? And what’s with that strange colon?

The money came from the Office of Facilities’ Capital Improvements budget and cost $350,000 to complete. What kind of projects could be completed using it, you ask? These projects include “any alteration to, or expansion of facilities, new construction or office furniture and carpet.” Arguably the new lobby floor is an improvement, but the question is: couldn’t the $350,000 have gone to something more constructive?

By Byard Duncan

Ada Jacques can talk. I’ve seen it. She has no trouble stringing words together, conveying her ideas, or even cracking the occasional joke. The stories she tells often jump capriciously from topic to topic and can seamlessly stretch minutes into hours. When she laughs, the sly crinkles of skin that shoot from the corner of each almond eye tighten, and her hands—cracked and strong from years of shaping clay—tap cheerily on her kitchen table.