In my freshman year at Oregon State, Ralph Nader came to Oregon and urged university students to fund a public interest research group that would hire experts to advocate for consumer and environmental goals. I circulated petitions and the student body governments of Oregon State, the University of Oregon, and most other major schools in the state agreed to contribute an average of a dollar a quarter per student to the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group.
In my sophomore year, OSPIRG announced that it would hire 16 student interns to work for the summer at $750 each. I applied but was told — probably because of my mediocre grades — that I didn’t make the cut. However, they did have $250 left over, and if I would work for that amount, they’d be happy to give me a project.
The previous summer I had worked as a parking lot attendant, and anything was better than doing that again. So I happily took the job and bicycled from my northeast Portland apartment to OSPIRG’s downtown offices in the Governor Building on 2nd and Stark. Downtown Portland was then a sleepy place that was practically dead after 6 pm. The Governor Building was a ramshackle office building surrounded by parking lots left behind after other buildings had been torn down. As I recall, OSPIRG was on the fourth floor, and I usually ran up the stairs two at a time rather than take an elevator. Continue reading
