“The protesters are planning to meet Saturday and make new posters to put up on the fence for the school. But before I do a piece for the news show, we need to decide if we want to fight the admin to cover those protests.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Lam asked. “We’ve been covering the downtown ones.”
Emily, however, understood what Cage was getting at. “When the admin tried to shut that coverage down, Ryan made the argument that it was in PSU’s neighborhood, effectively. That we couldn’t ignore it. But this isn’t in our neighborhood.”
Joanna Montgomery, the sports editor, had been listening silently, but now she spoke up. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “That area around ICE is closer to PSU than the arena is, and we cover all the PSU sports there right? It’s on the other side of the river. Either the City is our Campus or it’s not.”
Emily and Cage grinned at each other. “Wait until Ryan hears that argument,” Emily said gleefully.
“Well, it’s true,” Joanna said defensively.
“Yes, it is,” Emily reassured her. “And Ryan is going to be so jealous that he didn’t think of it.”
Everyone laughed and broke up to go back to work, but Lam was silent.
“Lam?” Emily asked.
He sighed. “We pride ourselves on diversity here,” he said gesturing around. “We’re much more diverse than Portland is.”
Emily nodded and waited for him to go on.
“Portland is very white, Oregon is very, very white, and we have a racist past that we still haven’t dealt with,” Cage said in agreement. He was his father’s son after all.
“Yes. But the 20-25 percent of Portland that isn’t white is diverse among itself. I just looked it up. We’re 8 percent Black, 8 percent Asian, 7 percent mixed race, and 8 percent Latino. But much of our diversity is from recent immigrants to the U.S.: Hmong, Somalians, Central American refugees. This city is an immigrant city.”
Emily sorted through what he was trying to get at. “And so is our diversity here?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But before we take on ICE, we need to make sure our own staff is protected from pushback. Those thin-skinned bastards just pulled down posters made by school kids. What will they do if we expand our coverage?
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it,” he said. “I think we should. But we need to give warning to our own first.”
“You and yours OK?” Cage asked.
He nodded. “We’re good. We’ve been here generations. But I don’t know about others.”
Bianca Parks had been standing behind Lam for the whole conversation. Emily thought people got so focused on how beautiful the young Black woman was that they overlooked how smart she was. She was frowning now.
“Bianca?” Emily asked. Bianca was Black and Latinx, she thought.
“Huh? Oh, no, my family is good, although my mom makes everyone carry a copy of their birth certificate with them,” she said. “But I have a friend. She was adopted from China when she was a baby. Her parents are those do-gooder liberal types, you know? Well, ICE is sending her back to China. Seems her parents never applied for US citizenship for her when they adopted her. Guess they thought adoption did that. And it doesn’t. All the appeals have been denied. Her flight is Friday. But her parents work for Nike.” She frowned. “I think it’s Nike. Anyway, they’re high enough up the ladder that they’ve applied for a transfer to China to go with her. They’ll apply for her citizenship from there.”
“Why not apply here then?” Emily asked.
“You can’t. You have to be outside the country to apply,” Bianca said, then paused. “Can that be right?”
“I think it’s true,” Lam said. “I’m not sure it’s right.”
It took a minute for everyone to get it; Bianca patted his shoulder in appreciation. “I’d like to do her story,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it as a news story until now. But it is, isn’t it?”
“If she’ll talk,” Emily agreed. “I wonder what other stories we’re missing? It’s the problem of not being a residential campus.”
“But back to protecting our own?” Bianca said. “Most people aren’t going to tell you they are here illegally.”
“No. Let’s sleep on it,” Emily said, yawning. “And I’ll talk to Ryan tomorrow. His call. But Cage? I think you should cover the poster making.”
Cage nodded.
Chapter 9
8:20 a.m. Thursday, PSU campus — Ryan was feeling a bit smug as he walked across campus. He’d successfully navigated the bathroom tasks of a 3-year-old boy this morning, with only a modicum of giggles, splashes and a damp floor. He’d delivered Rafael to Bianica’s house — not far from the Washingtons’ parsonage, he found — and he’d navigated the mass transit system out of the Portsmouth neighborhood successfully: a 10-minute walk to the bus stop, a 35-minute stop-and-go ride.
And his migraine was gone. He could look forward to the 8:30 a.m. seminar taught by a renowned historian about homosexuality in ancient Greek and Roman culture. He had noticed that the scholar focused only on gay men, and he was toying with making his paper about gay women. It would tweak the old man a bit, he thought.
His good mood stopped when he saw the Provost walking toward him. Somehow, he doubted it was coincidence.
“Provost McShane,” Ryan greeted him.
“Walk with me?” the Provost said. Ryan fell into step, glad to see that they were still headed in the direction of his class. He would be sorely pissed to have made it on time to the early
