R.T. Chatfield wants the students of Oregon State University to unite.
They have nothing to lose but their bed bugs.
People sang, marched, chanted and generally protested against the Trump administration at 3,000 rallies across the United States Oct. 17. Several hundred protesters gathered in front of the Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis. According to organizers, the impetus of the day was to get folks to vote early and use County Ballot Drop Boxes instead of the post office for ballot returns.
Elaine Rosenberg, one of the protesters, moved to Corvallis in May. However, Saturday was not her first protest. “I’ve been coming to these all the way back to the Women’s March in 2017,” she said.
Protesters focused on issues including war, immigration, inflation, totalitarianism and a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Chatfield told The Advocate she is concerned about all of those things as well. However, she also wants to think small.
Starting with bed bugs.
More specifically, the chair of Oregon State University’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter wants to address conditions in OSU’s residence halls.
“We want to get the mold out,” Chatfield said. “We want the bed bugs, the roaches and the rats out. We have a list of demands. We’re working on building support to march down to the housing office and deliver that.”
The student chapter is affiliated with the larger Democratic Socialists of America. Prominent DSA members include U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan.
In Oregon, state Reps. Farrah Chaichi, D-Aloha, Travis Nelson, D-Portland, and Lesly Muñoz, D-Woodburn, are members of the organization.
Chatfield and other chapter leaders polled OSU students about their concerns last fall. ICE was a big one. Students loathed the idea of ICE agents coming to campus and abducting people off the street.
However, immigration is a massive issue.
“We sat down at tables,” Chatfield said. “We talked to as many people as we could to ask what issues they cared about on campus. There were a few that came up that were popular, but this was the one that was the most attainable for our club at the time.”
The chapter has tried tackling larger issues in the past. It did not go well.
In May two years ago, chapter members protested Israel’s conduct of the war with the Palestinians. The protest took the form of an encampment on campus grounds.
Organizers demanded OSU officials disclose their financial investments in Israel. They called for the university to cut all ties to Israel as well as a ceasefire in Gaza.
The encampment lasted a month. In August 2024, OSU officials suspended the Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter for a year and imposed $3,000 in fines for damaging the turf on the quad outside Memorial Union.
That experience led chapter members wanting to rebuild by setting their sights a little lower, Chafield said. “We’re scared of putting ourselves so far in the hot seat that we get permanently shut down. We had a year of lying low.”
University officials claim they didn’t discipline students for what they were saying, but how and where they were saying it. The university’s Freedom of Speech and Expression Policy bans overnight camping and unauthorized grounds use on the Corvallis campus.
Chapters leaders aren’t fighting the university in court. “I don’t know a ton about the legal side of it,” Chatfield said. “I didn’t get to see it in person. I just heard stories.”
One of the problems with a student organization is lack of institutional knowledge. Students graduate, transfer and otherwise leave the university for a variety of reasons — causing constant turnover.
“Turnover is difficult,” Chatfield said. “We contend with it with a lot of training and making ourselves replaceable. I’m the chair, but I try to work with several other members and try to get them ready to take over when I step down. I plan to step down long before I plan to graduate.”
That’s another good reason for the chapter to rebuild its strength by focusing on conditions in the residence hall. The issue attracts a lot of freshmen.
In addition to working the bugs out, chapter members want to push for a cap on price increases as well as the instillation of air conditioning and defibrillators.
A series of town halls are planned to bring attention to conditions in the dorms.
Chatfield is a junior. However, she might stay on at OSU to get a master’s degree after getting her undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.
“I’m pre-med, and the reason I got into socialism is because healthcare for all is really important to me,” she said. “It’s really hard to treat people when people can’t afford to be treated.”
She said she didn’t understand the difference between socialism and communism when she was in high school in Grants Pass. “I felt strongly about things, but I disagree with a lot of the things I was saying back then,” she said.
Oregon communities don’t burn much redder than Grants Pass. Donald Trump won Josephine County in 2024 by 64% compared with Kamala Harris at 34%.
“It’s a large part of why I didn’t understand socialism,” Chatfield said. “Many of my teachers and authority figures were talking about how it ruined other countries and people’s lives. A lot of that is not true.”
She added she has since learned a lot more, especially about the effect of global imperialism. “Understanding more about that made me more motivated toward socialism,” she said.
Chatfield said she knows her personal views as well as those of her fellow young socialists can be unpopular, even in an often-liberal community like Corvallis. Socialism often comes with a stigma in the United States.
However, with a federal government openly hostile to even the mildest dissent, she added that protesting has never been more important. And she’s going to keep doing it.
“I’ve always been a loudmouth,” she said. “It’s hard to crush the spirit.”
By Tom Henderson. Photography also by Tom Henderson unless otherwise noted.
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