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