ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
THURSDAY, JUnE 10, 2021
PHIL WRIGHT
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Vaccine
lottery
is worth
a shot
G
ov. Kate Brown’s plan for
using a lottery giveaway to
encourage more people to get
the COVID-19 vaccine got praise and
criticism.
It may encourage some people to get
vaccinated for a shot at the $1,000,000
grand prize or one of the $10,000
prizes awarded in each county. There’s
even a special drawing for Oregon
residents aged 12 to 17 who had a shot.
There will be five $100,000 contribu-
tions to Oregon College Savings Plan
accounts in their names.
The Take Your Shot, Oregon
campaign also was criticized for being
wasteful and “the worst lottery odds
in human history.” Actually the odds
of winning the grand prize in Oregon’s
vaccination lottery, while very small,
are an order of magnitude better than
winning any of the national grand
prize lotteries.
The vaccine lottery is a prized-
based social policy. It tries to feed
off the lure of a lottery prize to give
people a nudge to do something. Many
people are eager to spend a few bucks
or more every week to buy lottery
tickets. There’s usually only an incre-
mental chance of winning big. What
the ticket buys is the opportunity to
dream big.
The lottery prize idea has been
used as a way to encourage people to
save money. Some people don’t have
enough money set aside for emergency
expenses. So what if you gave people a
prize if they did?
Credit unions in Michigan joined
forces to offer prizes to people who
saved money and kept it there for a
year. There were smaller prizes and a
$100,000 grand prize. People wouldn’t
necessarily lose anything and could
win an outsize prize.
Savings made exciting. Getting
vaccinated made more exciting.
What’s so wrong with that? Of course
it would be better if such incen-
tives weren’t necessary. And maybe
they aren’t necessary. They don’t
seem wasteful if they encourage
more people to save or help bring the
pandemic to an end.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
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‘I am a student and I seek teachers’
BRIGIT
FARLEY
PAST AND PROLOGUE
T
his month, another memory of a
semester’s study in Leningrad,
USSR, 40 years ago, during the
Cold War.
Our group of 25 American college
students traveled to Leningrad (now
St. Petersburg) to improve our Russian
language skills. But we came away with
considerable insight into Soviet society,
too, just by being students at Leningrad
State University.
Once we were settled in, it was time
for our ceremonial convocation. The
university rector grandly urged us to
be worthy of alumni gone before us. I
thought he was going to mention such
luminaries as Mendeleev and Shosta-
kovich, but no: he was referring to the
founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir
Lenin.
In fact, Lenin was never formally
admitted to the university. He chal-
lenged the law school curriculum and
earned a degree without attending. That
didn’t matter to the rector. He directed
our attention to a giant painting of the
young Lenin before his examiners,
putting them to shame with his genius.
It was hard to miss the allusion to the
young Jesus Christ in the temple. And
here we had thought that there was no
religion in the Communist world.
After our official welcome, we
queued up for the obligatory paperwork.
Universities were not public places in
the USSR. Everyone on campus had
to have a propusk, or pass, to show the
guards at each entrance. If you wanted
to use the library, you had to have a
separate picture identification. As the
stacks were closed, patrons showed ID,
submitted requests and waited for the
verdict of the library staff.
Books with controversial content
were forbidden unless you had official
permission. Access to information, we
concluded, was a privilege rather than a
right in that culture.
When classes began, we buckled
down to grammar, phonetics and liter-
ature. Our societal/cultural education
continued, too, often not in ways that
would please university officialdom.
For example, we learned about Soviet
attitudes towards physically challenged
people through the experiences of our
group member, Suzanne.
Blind since birth, Suzanne had
made herculean efforts to adapt to the
sighted world. She had nearly finished
her undergraduate Russian degree at
UC/Santa Cruz and was contemplating
grad school. Suzanne was thus outraged
when Soviet officials balked at allowing
her on our program. After they finally
relented and okayed her application, she
was chagrined when she would travel
after class to visit the nearby House of
Culture for the Blind.
Blind Leningraders awaited the insti-
tution’s van in back alleys. The van had
curtains drawn, so that no one could see
in the windows. When it arrived at the
House of Culture, it pulled around to the
back. Once inside, the residents were
“protected from prying eyes,” according
to the director, by thick window drapes.
Suzanne often wondered who was
protecting whom from what.
American students weren’t the only
ones learning that spring. Our demeanor
in the classroom revealed a lot to our
instructors about the culture we came
from. They were taken aback by our
boisterous and freewheeling behavior.
My cohort was very lively. Everyone
was always “on” in class, joking and
laughing.
One day, our phonetics instruc-
tor, a reserved and prim 40-something
woman, began to teach us how Russian
animals talk. The idea that dogs and
cats speak Russian, too, was somehow
so hilarious that we all began loudly
gaf-gaffing and miu-miuing to one
another. The outburst so unnerved our
instructor that she began to flap about
with her arms, like a large, awkward
bird, trying to regain control of this
rowdy company.
“Students, stop this,” she squawked.
“I will be forced to separate you.”
Afterward, she always retreated
behind her desk when we breezed into
class, somewhat discomfited by this
unruly group.
American reaction to Soviet class-
room methodology also proved instruc-
tive. Like their colleagues everywhere,
Soviet instructors highly valued correc-
tion and criticism. Ours went a step
further. They wanted us to critique each
other.
If one of the instructors felt that
Brigit Farley spoke Russian like a
turkey, garbling the most elementary
phrases, they also wanted to hear fellow
students make their own pointed obser-
vations and criticism. Of course, we
were not going to do that because we
thought it harsh and overly personal.
Our refusals left the instructors ques-
tioning our seriousness of purpose.
“They won’t criticize each other —
they aren’t interested in improvement,”
I overheard one of them say. We in turn
marveled at Soviet education’s high
tolerance for insult and indignity.
In 1991, after the fall of the Commu-
nist regime, Leningrad became St.
Petersburg again, the city founded by
Peter the Great. A man of many inter-
ests, Tsar Peter took as his motto, “I
am a student and I seek teachers.” As
students in our Leningrad University
semester, we followed in his footsteps,
sought teachers and learned a lot from
them — and they from us.
———
Brigit Farley is a Washington State
University professor, student of history,
adventurer and Irish heritage girl living
in Pendleton.
because they are unable to help their
attorney defend them in court— has
more than tripled. As a portion of the
OSH’s overall patient caseload, the
percentage of aid and assist patients
climbed from 11% in 2012 to 69% in
2021.
People who could have been treated
in the community are ending up at
OSH. Because OSH is the most restric-
tive, least cost-effective part of our
system, the human and financial tolls
of this practice are enormous. People
do better when they can access treat-
ment in their community. Subjecting
individuals to unnecessary segrega-
tion and institutionalization is uncon-
scionable.
We solve this by providing people
housing, support and the treatment
they need where they live.
K.C. Lewis
Disability Rights of Oregon
Portland
Sports fan wants to know
where the courts are
YOUR VIEWS
State hospital should be a
last resort, not first choice
The Oregon State Hospital is nearly
full. Members of the military have
been called in to care for patients in
need of 24-hour on-site nursing and
psychiatric care. What led to the crisis
unfolding before our eyes?
Our mental health system is meant
to provide a range of care.
Tragically, we have not yet built
a key piece of this system: treatment
services that people can access in the
community.
People are surging into the level
of care that’s meant as a last resort —
our state psychiatric hospital — and
stressing it. This is a natural and fore-
seeable consequence of not building
the other essential part of the system.
In less than 10 years, the aid and
assist population — people who do not
have the mental capacity to stand trial
I have a couple of questions for the
Hermiston City Council.
Why is there no public tennis court
in Hermiston? I checked; all belong to
school district. Hermiston has a large
tennis community that plays year-
round. Compared with other outdoor
sports, tennis courts would be used
more frequently than fields for other
sports. Please build at least a group of
four.
The baseball field next to the Field
of Dreams was named Shockman Field
to thank the family for the construction
of the field with their heavy equipment
and many man-hours of labor. The sign
that named the field is now gone. What
happened? Please replace the sign to
continue honoring their hard work.
Mike Mehren
Hermiston