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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2011)
NEWS BRIEFS WHERE WILL LANE VOTE? The debate over whether and how to redraw voting district boundaries rages on in Lane County as concerns over gerrymandering continue. On Oct. 5 members of the public testifi ed before the Board of County Commissioners at a public hearing on the seven scenarios suggested by the citizens’ task force working on the issue. The majority of the comments advocated scenario one — keeping the voter boundaries the same, says Commissioner Pete Sorenson. After the hearing, Commissioner Jay Bozievich suggested another boundary scenario be added in addition to the ones suggested by the task force. He says, “Scenario eight is a revision to scenario six in response to the concerns of citizens of the Bethel area and Jerry Finigan’s (Santa Clara Community Organization) rethinking his desire to put Santa Clara and River Road together in a single district.” Sorenson and task force member Scott Bartlett have contended that the districts are at risk of being gerrymandered in order to create a Republican board majority by altering the districts to load already liberal South Eugene with more Democrats and make districts like Rob Handy’s North Eugene more conservative. Conservative City Councilor Mike Clark has fi led a prospective petition to run for the North Eugene commission seat in the next election. Commissioners’ seats are technically nonpartisan. Some at the redistricting hearing objected to the eighth scenario being added after the public hearing had concluded, but Bozievich says there is precedent, as former commissioner Bill Dwyer made a similar motion to add an option during the last redistricting process 10 years ago with, he contends, less public review. “There will be ample time for the public to review all three scenarios and to provide input in written or oral testimony,” he says. The board voted three to two to send scenarios one, three and eight on for fi rst reading, with Sorenson and Commissioner Rob Handy dissenting. Sorenson says Bozievich’s scenario eight oddly moves portions of City View into rural East Lane, “which appears to violate the provision of the Lane Charter which states East and West Lane are rural.” Bozievich argues, “Any scenario will require that the rural districts represent some Eugene-Springfi eld metropolitan areas in order to provide balanced population.” Sorenson says he advocates that the next public hearing, which he says will likely take place Oct. 25 or 26, be in the evening to allow county residents who work in the daytime to weigh in on the issue. The public hearings, he says, will only be on scenarios three and eight because there does not need to be an ordinance voted on by the board for scenario one, as nothing would change. EW will post updates on the votes and public hearings at blogs.eugeneweekly.com To see the redistricting scenarios, go to http://wkly.ws/149 — Camilla Mortensen PLEASE SEND BOOKS Former Eugenean Miyoko Patricelli is a teacher in Jackson, Mississippi with Teach for America. She says if there is one thing she needs to support her in her teaching efforts, it is for her students to be able to read. The problem is they don’t have books. Patricelli is an alum of South Eugene High School and Eugene International High School and is in her second year with Teach for America. The organization places recent college graduates in rural and urban schools to help eliminate the educational inequity between low-income children and their wealthier peers. Patricelli has spent the last year teaching high school math, but her students, she says, “are often not literate enough to tackle word problems.” She says Forest Hill High School where she is teaching 10th grade is “98 percent African American, over 90 percent of the students are on free and reduced lunches, and it is located about 10 minutes from the location where Medgar Evers was assassinated.” She says that one of the reasons her students have trouble reading is because “Jackson Public Schools lack very basic necessities, such as books. My 10th graders do not have books to take home for their English class.” She says the 10th grade English teacher Elise Patterson “simply cannot assign reading out of a book for homework” because there are not enough books for the students. “Imagine, my students do not read books in English class,” Patricelli says. She says instead of reading books, the students do grammar activities and read whatever articles and short stories that Patterson can make copies of with only a limited paper supply. The students need to pass English II and Algebra I tests to graduate, she says, “but they must do it without reading … books.” Patricelli has teamed up with Patterson to try to get copies of Night by Elie Wiesel and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. She has started a wish list at Amazon.com and, thanks to an email appeal she sent out, people have already begun to send books. To donate to the cause and buy a book or two — Patricelli says used copies are as cheap as $8 including shipping — go to http://wkly.ws/14g and all the information needed, including the shipping address, is on the page. If you wish to purchase a book from another seller, such as one of Eugene’s local bookstores, and send it, then Patricelli asks if possible to try to purchase the same edition as the one listed on Amazon. — Camilla Mortensen slant • In The Register-Guard’s Blue Chip special publication, which reads like the Chamber of Commerce newsletter, Dave Funk and Sarah Bennett are trashing downtown with hyped crime claims and pushing for tearing up Kesey Square at Broadway and Willamette and selling the park land to a developer. Are they nuts? Downtown needs more parks and public space to attract people to the city center, not less. Have these people ever been to a great city? Will they only be satisfied when they destroy enough of downtown and lay enough barbed wire and broken glass and hire enough armed enforcers to keep everyone who doesn’t look exactly like them out of the city center? It’s frightening that such power brokers — Funk is a confidant of the mayor and Bennett’s family is constructing an office building with city subsidies — have such anti-public attitudes. Okay, Kesey Square does need some physical improvements. As suggested years ago, the city should give adjacent building owners loans and/ or grants to knock windows and doors in the facing brick walls to build restaurants with outdoor seating that faces the plaza. That will put more people on the square and more eyes on the public space to solve any rationally perceived problems. • Who knew we were going to feel so bad when we found out Apple founder Steve Jobs died Oct. 5? He’s the man who made computers user-friendly, brought us the iPhone, iMac and iPad and made black turtleneck sweaters cool again. He wasn’t perfect, nor are all Apple’s policies, but not many people can say they changed the world. Jobs did. To quote an early Apple “Think Different” ad: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. 10 OCTOBER 13, 2011 EUGENE WEEKLY Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” • The chattering classes keep inanely demanding goals and objectives and other mainstream markers from Occu- py Wall Street, Occupy Portland, Occupy Eugene, etc. These should be obvious if you’ve been following the news at all. But if you insist on a framework, here’s the 2011-13 theme for the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the UO: “From Wall Street to Main Street, Capitalism and the Common Good” with an invitation to “Join us in exploring ways of modifying the U.S. capitalist system to make it more just, stable and sustainable.” Russ Feingold, a former U.S. senator from Wisconsin and a leader of the progressive movement nationally, will give the Morse public address at 5 p.m. Nov. 7 in the EMU ballroom. His topic is “Corporate Power in Politics and the Economy; What the Citizens United Decision Means for Our Democracy.” Check other events and speakers for this winter and spring at waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu The Morse Center is truly offering us the issues and solutions that the “occupations” are all about. • Kudos to public radio station KLCC for taking a risk and changing its format. It’s always hard to make a change, and worse when you’re an institution around town, but we’re loving more local news while at the same time keeping up with all the good music. Like what you hear? Support KLCC with a donation. Heck, support all your local news and entertainment! • It’s a wise move for the UO and President Lariviere to bring Robert Berdahl back to the campus to work on strategic and academic planning and funding while Provost Jim Bean is off for a year. A highly respected history professor and Dean of Arts and Sciences at the UO from 1967 to 1986, Berdahl went on to become the president of the University of Texas (where he worked with Lariviere) and chancellor of the California system. He retired last spring from the presidency of the American Association of Universities. Portland is now his home,. He’ll commute to Eugene two days a week for this job which pays him $96,000 a year. That’s the rub. Some former colleagues say that’s a fair wage for his smarts and experience. Others on the campus are not so sure. But on Oct. 11, The Register-Guard announced Lariviere’s appointment of Jamie Moffitt as the UO’s new vice president of finance and administration at a salary of $270,00 a year. That’s an increase of $49,000 for that job, according to the R-G. Two days before that The Oregonian ran a front-page story about collegiate faculty and administrators across the state demanding equal salaries to those Lariviere has instituted here. So what’s the political upside in this down economy? The University of Oregon is still a state university in a state system. It looks like Robert Berdahl has his first assignment back in Eugene. It’s called Political Science 101. • When Eugene movie goers and activists will sit in a dark theater on sunny October weekend afternoons, something significant is happening. It was the Good Works Film Festival Oct. 7-10 at the Bijou, Hult Center and Eugene Public Library. Good crowds, often full houses, watched provocative documentaries and talked about them afterward. Cynthia Wooten and Linda Blackaby, both former Eugeneans now living in the Bay area, brainstormed and put together this creative prototype for cities across the country. Their theory is that a good documentary will move the viewer to action. We’re looking forward to next year. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
