I appreciate your taking time to write in here – and to a certain extent I can see why you might not have thought it necessary to explain to everyone at the Linfield senate meeting that you had a personal relationship to PGE. Yet I believe this really was something that needed to be more out in the open. I feel it’s very likely your arguments influenced the senate vote at Linfield, and also that some people in the room might have reacted differently if they knew you had personal connection to PGE. From the standpoint of someone who was at the senate meeting when the vote occurred (though I’m not a Linfield student – I just came to help answer questions) I can say it wasn’t apparent from anything said that night that this connection existed.

Tuesday evening I was at a Department of Environmental Quality hearing on the fate of Boardman, during which people spoke up on both sides of the issue. One woman testified in support of PGE’s plan to keep Boardman open for ten more years, and said she was speaking that night as a Portland resident and member of the community. But she also explicitly stated that for transparency’s sake, she wanted to let everyone know she was also a PGE employee. I believe this transparency statement probably changed the way many people viewed her testimony, and that their reaction to what she said might have been much different had she not made this statement. I think this kind of transparency is important to discussions of this kind.

I’ve been working with the student environmental group at Linfield for a while (I work in a volunteer capacity with lots of similar campus groups in the Northwest). I therefore feel comfortable saying these students put a lot of work into their campaign to pass this resolution at Linfield, and that they would be justified in feeling they’ve been treated unfairly after realizing a senate vote was influenced by a conflict of interest not everyone knew about. Had they known a member of senate had a personal connection to PGE, I suspect they would have tailored their own arguments differently. I think they’re right in insisting that the dialogue needs to happen again, this time with all the facts presented to everyone.

I appreciate your own willingness to engage in a dialogue about this important matter, and hope that it continues.

Here is a response that I wrote to a article in the Linfield review, similar to yours.

“Hey everyone,
seeing as this article has to do with me, I figured that it might be good for me to maybe clear up some comments.

First, yes my father is Bruce Carpenter, Vice President of Transmission and Distribution. I told all of senate that I talked to the Vice President of Transmission and Distribution along with the rest of the people I talked to. Did I feel as though it was necessary that I say that it was my father? No, it was not. Though when people asked me how I was able to contact a VP, I informed them that it was my father.

Second, I am in fact not a ‘monkey wrench’ being used by PGE. I contacted my father ASKING for information on the Boardman Power Plant. All of the information that they gave me is readily available to the public. If people would like, I will get links for them.

Third, I would say that this is not an open close discussion on whether or not it is environmentally friendly. One needs to consider the social and economic effects as well as the environmental effects. This is the difference between being green (only looking to maintain the environment) and sustainable (social and economic impact).

I offer this dialogue to further the conversation on discovering what is best for everyone.”

-Andrew Carpenter