Dennis Sanderson told The Corvallis Gazette-Times that if the situation were reversed and a college student was shot at a homeless camp, he believes the judge's sentence would have been much more serious.

"If a college kid came snooping around my camp, and I shot him? I'd be doing 25-to-life," he said.

A former member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, Josh Grimes, served 150 days in jail after he was convicted of assault and unlawful use of a weapon for shooting Sanderson in October 2006. Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson asked for five years in prison for Grimes but a judge reduced it to jail time and community service.

The student claimed he was aiming for a trash bin behind Sanderson because he just wanted to scare the man away. Sanderson was shot in the leg.

This week, Sanderson won a $41,000 jury award in a lawsuit against Grimes and the fraternity.

"I'm satisfied with the verdict," Sanderson said, but added that he felt the shooting revealed a "culture of animosity towards the homeless" at the fraternity.

"If I'd have died, no one would've even known what happened," he said. "But I lived; and I wouldn't let go of it."

According to Robert Kerr, the Oregon State University coordinator of Greek Life, the campus chapter of Alpha Gamma Rho banned guns shortly after the shooting. Every fraternity and sorority associated with OSU already had banned firearms.

Sanderson said Corvallis police Detective Mark Posler apologized to him on behalf of Corvallis after the shooting.

"He said, 'I'll get the guy who did it,"' Sanderson said.

He said he hopes the money can help move him out of the low-income housing where he's living in Portland.

About $6,400 of the money will go to medical expenses. His wound has healed, except for a dull ache that occasionally flares up.

"I just try not to think about it too much," Sanderson said.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)