Students at Reed and Lewis & Clark are mostly hippie atheist liberal nerds -- at least according to the Princeton Review's 2008 edition of "Best 366 Colleges."
Reed and Lewis & Clark also both made the lists of schools with "students most nostalgic for Bill Clinton" and "Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians."
I can't speak for Oregon State and Portland State, but I spent 3 years as a grad student at the University of Oregon and these descriptors fit most of the students I knew at U. of O. in the Business School! I suspect the article describes most of Oregon's college students.
Oregon is a weird state; it has a very Twin Peaks feeling. The western part of the state, where most people live, is swathed in rain seven or eight months of the year. If you've read the diaries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition you know how depressing they found the Oregon winter.
While I studied in Oregon the most common automotive fatality was a one-car accident - in other words, vehicular suicide. The beleaguered acting President of the U. of O., Chuck Johnson, killed himself in this fashion. He swerved his VW head-on into a speeding logging truck on the McKenzie Highway.
Oregon's constantly gray skies are depressing. It is no place for someone with even a hint of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), take my word for it.
