Third-party delivery apps essential but frustrating for small Portland restaurants
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After nearly a year of uncertainty and financial anxiety, restaurants throughout the Portland metro area are slowly beginning to reopen. The state government formally concluded last month that Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties all fell beneath the “extreme risk” threshold for COVID-19 transmission, allowing them to open at either 25 or 50% capacity, whichever number is lower. Many restaurants throughout the country continue to lean on third-party delivery apps for revenue, since they lack in-house delivery services. Since these restaurants’ ability to host in-person dining hinges on reduced COVID-19 transmission rates within their communities a situation that remains unpredictable it’s unlikely things will change anytime soon.
Standing up for academic freedom
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Academic freedom: What is it? What does it protect? And where is the line between free speech and abuse?
These are some of the questions the Portland State Faculty Senate set out to answer in a resolution passed unanimously on March 1.
“Academic freedom is to the university what the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly are to democracy,” the resolution reads. “As with the abuse of democratic rights, carelessness in the exercise of academic freedom can undermine, stifle, and annihilate academic freedom itself.”
“As Faculty, we must be thoughtful in our exercise of academic freedom and guard against its cynical abuse that can take the form of bullying and intimidation,” the resolution continues. “This kind of abuse of academic freedom destroys academic freedom by eroding the trust that makes possible open dialogue, which is a central tenet in university intellectual life as well as in the practice of
PSU isn’t living up to its values
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Portland State prides itself on its values, its mission and its position in the community. These values include “excellence and innovation,” “integrity” and “inclusion and equity.” Recently, President Stephen Percy named three new strategic priorities for the university: “centering the school’s effort to improve racial justice and equity to combat structural racism, focusing on student success to improve retention and graduation rates and engaging with the community to strengthen Portland as a whole.” The next step is to answer the question: is PSU living up to those values?
Let’s look at PSU’s Black Studies department. The administration has been criticized for barely funding the department; Dr. Ethan Johnson, chair of the department, said in an interview it has “some non-tenure track faculty and some adjunct faculty, but I would say we’re not really a department…the university knows that Black students are
In his new book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, Ngo details the violent rise of this organized but "amorphous" group in the United States.