Western Front - 1993 April 13

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Murray: 'Changing the Senate's language'
Senator thinks funding may be cut for Pell grants, community block grants.
photo by Matt Hulbert
Sen. Patty Murray talks with a
student.
By Guy Bergrstrom
staff reporter
"I have been elected to the U.S. Senate
at an absolutely wonderful time."
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, an­swered
questions from a group of students
and faculty at Western Monday.
"The nation is looking at the six women
senators and watching whether or not we
make an impact," Murray said.
The newly-elected women senators are
well aware of the national spotlight, she
said.
"I can tell you right off the top that we
have made a tremendous impact," Murray
said during a packed conference that took
place in Arntzen Hall.
Murray cited key committee assignments
given to newly-elected women senators
and a change in the focus of the nation's
upper house as evidence of the impact fe­male
members of the Senate have had.
"If you've ever watched C-SPAN,"
Murray said, "what you see is a lot of
people talking with charts behind them and
speaking with heavy doses of jargon.
"Whereas women come in and we talk
about our communities, our families, what
the impact of this legislation is at home.
What a lot of people say who have been
watching for a long time is we truly have
changed the language of the Senate.
"When government becomes something
thatregular people understand and they see
how it affects their lives then they won' t see
it as a negative thing," Murray explained.
"So I think we've made a tremendous im­pact"
Budget battles and fillibusters
Murray, who serves on the Senate Ap­propriations
Committee and also holds seats
on banking and budget committees, has
been immersed in the political fight over
President Clinton's economic stimulus
package.
With Democrats short of the votes needed
to end the current Republican filibuster,
Murray says a compromise is likely, with
the final stimulus packaged dropping to $9
See MURRAY, page 3
Legislators heckled during conference with students
By Karl Schweizer
staff reporter
It was an opportunity blown.
State lawmakers discussed higher educa­tion
issues with about 200 college students
in Olympia—only to be frequently inter­rupted
by boisterous hecklers in the crowd.
The coordinator of the event, Steve
Lindstrom of the Washington Student
Lobby, at one point threatened to cancel the
meeting if audience members didn't stop
interrupting.
The event, called Student Union Day,
was organized by the Washington Student
Lobby. Students from technical and com­munity
colleges and private and public 4-
yearcolleges,gatheredatnoonin thecapitol
rotunda to hear Gov. Mike Lowry.
Lowry, who spoke without being inter­rupted,
said an educated workforce was the
key to the state's economy. He placed a
high priority on increasing financial aid for
Washington's students. He said his budget,
which calls for a 30 percent tuition increase
over two years,
would double state
financial aid.
When a reporter
asked the gover­nor
whether
higher tuitions and
higher financial
aid were the keys
to higher enroll­ments,
he an­swered
yes.
He also called
for higher taxes.
"It is not pos­sible
to do what is
photo by Karl Schweizer
Gov. Lowry met with students in the capital Friday.
necessary to protect education ... in this
very, very tight budget, without a tax in­crease,"
Lowry said.
The governor then departed, and the
students moved to a stateroom to meet
House Higher Education Committee Chair
Ken Jacobsen, Senate Ways and Means
ChairNitaReinhart, SenateMinority Leader
George Sellar, and other legislators.
Jacobsen defended his proposal to in­crease
tuition by 72 percent, saying his plan
put a true price tag on quality education. He
said such an increase would raise $374
million to eliminate university budget cuts,
increase financial aid, add 10,000 students,
and have money left over for unspecified
enhancements.
"Everybody loves a bargain, but they
don't love a shoddy bargain... We're not
doing anyone a favor with low tuition and
low quality," Jacobsen said in support of
his high-tuition, high-financial aid ap­proach.
"You know what's going on in Oregon
and California," he said, "They commit­ted
themselves to keeping low tuitions, so
they entered into a scenario of raising
tuition as little as possible and cutting
programs... Well, you know what's hap­pening.
A lot of Californians are turning
up here."
Sellar, criticized raising tuition to pay
for financial aid and more enrollments.
"That's kind of robbing Peter to pay
Paul," he said. "I think if we could look
at some other (spending) cuts, we could
get away with a lesser tuition increase or
maybe no tuition increase at all," he said.
Sellar said paying state employees
only once a month would save $11 mil­lion,
and that every million dollars could
put 167 students into 4-year schools. He
also suggested cutting travel budgets.
Opera pay draws protest
By Kris Whipple
staff reporter
Orchestra students staged a
small protest at an afternoon op­era
rehearsal of La Boheme last
Wednesday.
They were upset after learn­ing
several selected orchestra
members were receiving pay­ment
for performing in the up­coming
production of La
Boheme.
After calling the students' ac­tions
the equivalent of a strike,
Peter Marsh, orchestra director,
failed to explain the payment
discrepancy, saying the question
was "a real stickler." He did say
the students were being paid be­cause
they filled what would
otherwise be empty seats in the
orchestra pit.
Many orchestra students re­fused
to take their positions and
play at the beginning of the re­hearsal.
Jennifer Minkema, se­nior
orchestra member, voiced
student concerns and frustra­tions.
Minkema said the protest
wasn't a personal attack on fac­ulty
members nor an attempt to
undermine the vocalists. Instead,
it was an effort to remind. Rob­ert
Sylvester, dean of the fine
See OPERA, page 2
Trillium spinning off new real estate firm
By Josh Barnhill
staff reporter
Bellingham's Trillium Corpo­ration
will not develop another
square inch of land in northwest
Washington.
Instead, it created a separate
company, Pentas Development,
to pursue real estate operations
here.
Trillium will now focus on de­veloping
out-of-state real estate
projects and managing its 56,000
acres of Whatcom County timber-land.
Trillium has been the object of
protests since the early '80s by
those concerned about its land
development and forestry prac­tices.
The company pushed the
Bellis Fair mall and the
Semiahmoo resort.
David Syre, Trillium's owner
and president, said spinning off
Pentas to handle local develop­ment
will allow each firm to
maintain small-company cultures.
The company will focus on
long-term planning. Syre said he
believes most of the current urban
and rural planning techniques are
obsolete because society is too
short-sighted.
"We tend to be thinking in a
long term of 10 years, and I be­lieve
the short term should be 50
years and the long term should be
150 to 200 years. There needs to
be one big wake-up call, but I
don't know who's going to hit the
gong," he said.
Trillium is trying to build a
forest base large enough to make
large-scale, long-term manage­ment
possible, Syre said. His
company owns around 100,000
acres of timberland in Washing­ton
and Alaska. It is the largest
private landowner in Alaska.
GeorgiaPacific, CrownPacific
and Scott Paper have sold forest-lands
to Trillium in the last de­cade.
"We're one of the few, if not
the only Washington organiza­tion
that has been acquiring trees
that are young," Syre said.
See SYRE, page 5
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