Opinion
4A
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Our View
Time is now
to rename
Pierce Library
he Eastern Oregon University Board of
Trustees meets today, Nov. 12, to vote on its
budget for 2020-21, presidential compensa-
tion and at the end of meeting — action item No. 13
— consider renaming the Pierce Library.
In the hour before that vote, according to the
meeting agenda, the board will hear a presentation on
renaming the library and then take public comments.
The board should take into serious account the
report from the renaming committee and listen to the
public, but there is only one conclusion the board can
reach in the end: The time has come to rename the
library.
Walter Pierce was an important figure in Oregon
in the early 20th century. Born in Illinois in 1861, he
moved to Oregon in 1883 and settled in the Grande
Ronde Valley, where he was a successful beef
rancher. He served one term the Oregon Senate 1902-
06, worked to develop Columbia River hydroelectric,
and he was governor of Oregon from 1922-26.
He won the highest elected office in the state with
the support of the Ku Klux Klan. Pierce was a racist
and a eugenics supporter. As governor, he put Klan
ideology into practice as Oregon policy.
His third wife, Cornelia Marvin, was the first State
Librarian but held similar views as Pierce.
All of this is well documented, including Walter
Pierce’s support for the imprisonment of Japa-
nese-Americans during World War II.
Recently the city of La Grande renamed Commu-
nity Field at Pioneer Park in honor of Doug Trice,
by all accounts a fitting recognition. Trice was a star
football player at La Grande High School and later
at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. But his
work as Special Olympics coach is what made him a
real standout.
Trice also was not a politician.
Naming public buildings and sites after public fig-
ures can be dicey, but naming them after political fig-
ures carries so many pitfalls that it’s worth revisiting
the whole concept.
Politicians have to reflect the values of the people
who elected them to office. But values can change,
and that reflection can sometimes start to get ugly.
The practice of naming structures after politicians
also verges on hagiography and can indeed require
whitewashing, which is the opposite of what a univer-
sity should engage in.
Removing the Pierce name from the library
would not be removing anything from history. There
is nothing historical about naming a library after
someone. But changing the name of the library would
put the university on the right side of history.
How do Black students at EOU feel about having
to use a university library named after someone who
received support from the KKK? How do students
with a disability feel about having to check out mate-
rials from a library named after people who would
rather they wouldn’t be born?
Hundreds of locals showed up June 2 in down-
town La Grande to add their voices to the Black Lives
Matter movement. Students from EOU made up a
large contingent of the crowd calling for racial and
social justice. Renaming the library would be one
more step in that direction.
Whatever powers that be all those years ago that
ultimately were responsible for picking the name
Pierce for the library knew the history associated with
the figures.
The Eastern Oregon University Board of Trustees
knows the history of those figures as well. The board
can and should rectify having the library bear the
name of racists.
But the board should not try to name the library
after someone else. There is nothing wrong with
calling it the Eastern Oregon University Library.
T
Our View
Revamp state requirements for mental health care
ublic pressure can compel the
Oregon Legislature to make
changes. And one place that
deserves public pressure is mental
health care.
In state rankings, Oregon usually
ranks near the bottom in mental health
care access. One reason could be it’s
harder to get a license in Oregon.
Oregon mental health counselors are
required to complete 2,400 hours with
clients under supervision. The state
of Washington requires only half that.
And therapists can end up having
to pay for those supervised hours
themselves.
There also is concern that people
of color can find it extremely difficult
to find a mental health counselor who
looks like them, as OPB reported.
A group called Clinicians Of Color
Community & Consulting formed in
Portland to help, but it still has to turn
people away. About 3% of Oregon’s
population is Black. And less than 1%
of mental health providers are Black.
Eastern Oregonians also know the
challenges of finding mental health
care. The dearth of providers and
mental health care workers mean
clients from La Grande and John
Day travel as far as Pendleton for
treatment.
Several legislators wrote a letter
to Gov. Kate Brown earlier this
year asking for changes in state
regulations.
A key recommendation would
change the disparity in supervised
training, only requiring 1,200 hours
for full licensure, instead of the
2,400 required in Oregon. “By com-
P
The Bulletin/Contributed Photo
Revisions to Oregon’s mental health care requirements could allow more peo-
ple to connect to help.
parison, Washington requires 1,200
direct hours, California 1,750 hours,
and Idaho 400 hours,” the legislators
wrote. Oregon already made a pan-
demic-related change allowing recip-
rocal licensure for those practicing
outside of Oregon, permitting them
to practice in Oregon for six months.
That would seem to be a de facto
approval of a lowered requirement for
supervised training.
Another recommendation was to
“allow mental health interns on insur-
ance panels so they can bill insur-
ance.” We are not as sure about
this one. Addressing the level of
supervised training could be more
important. It seems debatable to allow
interns to bill insurance as though
they had completed all their training.
State Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Dem-
ocrat who represents East Portland
and Happy Valley, also proposed
draft legislation for the 2021 session
that would do two things. It would
establish “a $50 million fund to
increase access to mental health care
for communities of color and a $40
million fund to recruit and retain
clinicians of color through pipeline
development, scholarships, stipends
and loan repayment.” Of course,
that will compete against the state’s
many other needs.
You don’t have to just let legisla-
tors decide these issues. If this issue is
important to you, email your legislator
and tell them what you think.
Letter to the editor
Wolves are assured
protection until recovery
It’s well that The Observer is happy
wolves have made a comeback but
wrong to say they don’t need federal
protection.
The Observer is pleased that
wolves are “doing fine where they can
be found.” But what about where they
can’t be found? They now occupy only
about 5% of their former range. Suit-
able habitat in Nevada and Utah have
no known wolves, populations in Cali-
fornia and Colorado are limited to one
known pack each, a few wolves eke
out a life in the Northeast, ditto some
red wolves in the Southeast.
The Endangered Species Act pro-
tects any species in danger of extinc-
tion throughout all or a significant
portion of its range. By including “sig-
nificant portion of its range,” Con-
gress meant that listed species should
not simply be saved from extinction
but rather recovered so that popula-
tions inhabit relatively large areas (i.e.,
significant portions) of suitable habitat
within historic ranges.
The idea of the ESA is to treat spe-
cies’ range holistically, not as a jumble
of different regimes. Turning over
management to state agencies will
lead in some states to eradication,
to brutal control policies (Wyoming
wolves aren’t protected outside the
immediate surroundings of Yellow-
stone and Teton national parks).
Conservationists resort to litiga-
tion against federal delisting because
the ESA is so explicit about protecting
any species in danger of extinction
within all or a significant part of its
historic range. That’s why this attempt
at delisting will be in court — because
it violates the ESA.
Wally Sykes
Joseph