NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Understanding the Civil Rights Movement through VR
The Observer
LA GRANDE — Eastern
Oregon University is giving students
and faculty the opportunity to virtu-
ally step through time to 1968 and
witness events of the Civil Rights
Movement during Black History
Month.
The EOU Library, in collabo-
ration with history faculty and the
Office of Student Diversity and
Inclusion, is providing two educa-
tional virtual reality programs
during the month of February: “I Am
A Man” and “Driving While Black.”
“The ‘I Am A Man’ virtual real-
ity experience is an immersive docu-
mentary that focuses on archival
primary sources. It has recordings
from the time period, both video
and audio. It has archival images
from newspapers, photographs,
pamphlets and materials that have
been collected around the time,” said
Sarah Ralston, associate professor
of library.
Talks between the library and
history department began in the
fall with planning and set up begin-
ning in January. The VR rigs were
originally planned for set up in the
library, but moved to the Multi-
cultural Center to increase student
accessibility and to prevent large
queues.
“We talked about setting it up in
the library, but we don’t get quite
the same amount of foot traffi c as
(Hoke Union Building) gets, so it
was a good idea to have it hosted over
there by the Multicultural Center so
people can just drop by and try it
out,” Ralston said.
Eastern Oregon University/Contributed Photo
The Multicultural Center at Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, is hosting a pair of educational virtual reality
programs during the month of February: “I Am A Man” and “Driving While Black.” Two Oculus virtual reality
headsets are available, one for each program. A separate screen is available in the Multicultural Center to view
the programs while students experience them virtually.
“Basically, the experience takes
you through a few scenes. In the
opening scene, there’s a garbage
truck and garbage can and you’re
able to pick up the can and dump it
into the truck,” Ralston said. “It’s
meant to set the stage to where
you’re participating in events lead-
ing up to the sanitation workers’
strike. There’s a scene where there
are actual strikers marching down
“I Am A Man,” created by Derek
Ham, puts users on the ground
during the 1968 Memphis sani-
tation workers strike and cycles
through various computer-gener-
ated scenes and locations, culmi-
nating in the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. The expe-
rience lasts 10 minutes and uses
a mix of animation and archived
images with some interactivity.
Forecast for Pendleton Area
TODAY
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MONDAY
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the streets with signs and there are
tanks going up and down the street.”
“Driving While Black,” a virtual
reality experience created by Felix
& Paul Studios, includes more real-
world imagery and functions simi-
larly to an oral history, as the user
is being told personal stories while
sitting in a restaurant booth.
“It provided a completely diff er-
ent kind of experience. Have the
Supporters appeal Oregon secretary
of state’s ruling on initiative proposals
By HILLARY BORRUD
The Oregonian
Partly sunny;
becoming windier
Showers around;
breezy, cooler
Cloudy and chilly
with some snow
Sunny and very
cold
Cold with clouds
and sun
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
57° 38°
45° 33°
43° 19°
28°
9°
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HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
57° 40°
51° 37°
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OREGON FORECAST
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
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TEMP.
Seattle
Olympia
48/41
49/34
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Kennewick Walla Walla
55/38
Lewiston
47/41
59/41
Astoria
48/40
Pullman
Yakima 52/32
48/37
56/39
Portland
Hermiston
49/41
The Dalles 57/40
Salem
Corvallis
49/37
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
52/34
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
50/40
61/33
57/34
Ontario
48/31
Caldwell
Burns
58°
28°
50°
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71° (1930) 5° (1929)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
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Albany
48/38
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0.03"
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1.08"
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WINDS (in mph)
58/28
58/30
0.00"
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through 3 p.m. yest.
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Pendleton 48/28
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24 hours ending 3 p.m.
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HERMISTON
Enterprise
57/38
55/42
60°
32°
48°
30°
76° (1902) 6° (2006)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
46/36
Aberdeen
45/31
48/33
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Wenatchee
47/39
Today
Sun.
Boardman WSW 10-20
Pendleton
W 10-20
Medford
63/35
WSW 8-16
W 10-20
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
61/26
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2022
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
Last
6:51 a.m.
5:28 p.m.
9:03 p.m.
8:31 a.m.
New
First
set on and look to your left and you
see an actual person rather than a
computer-generated person. To me,
‘Driving While Black’ left more of
an impression just because it felt like
I was really sitting next to someone
in a coff ee shop,” said Mika Morton,
interim director of Student Diversity
and Inclusion.
Both experiences are part of a
greater Black History Month proj-
ect to provide students context to
Civil Rights Movement events, along
with the greater cultural, social and
historical impact of the era.
“Part of advancing and promot-
ing equity and inclusion and moving
the DEI needle is being able to expe-
rience and really listen and try to
understand other perspectives. If
you don’t understand what others
are experiencing, that could lead to
dismissing somebody else’s expe-
rience as less than yours,” Morton
said.
The VR set-ups are meant to act
as a jumping off point for greater
student curiosity. Morton hopes that
the greater ease of access and the
unique in-person experiences will
generate more student interest in
the history of civil rights and racial
inequality.
“I hope that students will take it
as a learning opportunity and really
consider what they hear and what
they see in either one of the apps,
and that it will be thought-provoking
for them,” Ralston said. “Whether or
not they are able to emphasize and
put themselves in somebody else’s
shoes, it can’t not make them think
twice about looking at history in this
particular way.”
SALEM — Supporters of
campaign contribution limits
on Wednesday, Feb. 16, asked
the Oregon Supreme Court to
reverse a decision by Secre-
tary of State Shemia Fagan
that would effectively end
any chance of voters weigh-
ing in on contribution limits
in November.
Fagan, a Democrat
elected in 2020, said she had
to disqualify a trio of ballot
proposals that would have
set contribution limits due
to a 2004 Oregon Court of
Appeals ruling that initiatives
must include the complete
text of the law at issue.
Members of Honest Elec-
tions Oregon and the Oregon
League of Women Voters
filed the three proposed
ballot initiatives that would
set contribution limits and
require transparency on who
truly pays for political ads.
Two of the proposals were
negotiated with labor unions
and other political groups that
tend to support Democrats.
Elections offi cials at the
Secretary of State’s Offi ce
reviewed the proposals and
allowed the petitioners to
start moving through the
lengthy process to get on the
ballot.
But on Feb. 9, Fagan
an nou nced she would
disqualify initiative propos-
als 43, 44 and 45 from
appearing on the November
ballot because she said they
did not meet the requirement
in the state Constitution to
include the “full text of the
proposed law ...”
Previous secretaries of
state had interpreted the
Constitutional requirement to
apply only to the portion of a
law that would be amended,
not the sections of it that
would be left unchanged, and
courts had generally agreed.
In f ilings with the
Supreme Court, support-
ers of contribution limits
said that the 2004 Court of
Appeals ruling that Fagan
cited is not a binding prec-
edent. The Supreme Court
agreed to review the 2004
decision, but supporters of
the proposed initiative in the
case subsequently failed to
gather enough signatures to
get it on the ballot. The high
court decided not to annul
the appeals court decision,
noting that because the case
had become moot, secretaries
of state would not be bound to
follow the Court of Appeals
ruling.
Portland attorney Dan
Meek is asking the Supreme
Court to take up the challenge
of Fagan’s nullifi cation deci-
sion, bypassing lower courts,
because any delay further
jeopardizes campaign limits
supporters’ ability to gather
the necessary 112,020 signa-
tures for each initiative to
qualify for the ballot. “The
built-in delay for actions by
government officials and
opponents of the initiative
petition add up to at least 48
business days, equivalent to
9.5 weeks ... just to get to the
point when a ballot title chal-
lenge is fi led in this court,”
Meek wrote on behalf of chief
petitioners Jason Kafoury,
James Ofsink and Rebecca
Gladstone.
Full
NATIONAL EXTREMES
IN BRIEF
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 90° in Immokalee, Fla. Low -38° in Seagull Lake, Minn.
Feb 23
Mar 2
Mar 10
Mar 17
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
Portland’s famous elk statue
to return by early 2023
PORTLAND — After months of bureau-
cratic back-and-forth, Portland offi cials have
agreed to return the city’s iconic elk statue
to its longtime home along Southwest Main
Street in downtown by the end of this year or
early next.
The beloved public sculpture, which
protesters badly damaged during weeks of
demonstrations and riots in 2020, will no
longer perch atop the large granite fountain
that served as its base for more than a century,
offi cials told The Oregonian.
Instead, a narrower pedestal will make
space for a bike lane and give buses more
room to pass by on the two-lane, one-way
street.
Jeff Hawthorne, Portland’s arts program
manager, said the city on Tuesday, Feb. 15,
began to take steps aff ecting the statue and
its base — offi cially known as the Thompson
Elk Fountain — that are required due to their
status as historic landmarks.
Under the timeline, a design review
process for the bronze creature’s new base
would commence in June and include public
feedback.
The elk would reappear downtown no later
than early 2023 and atop a pedestal with a
signifi cantly smaller footprint than its granite
predecessor, according to offi cials.
In July 2020, protesters repeatedly defaced
the sculpture with graffi ti.
The nonprofi t Regional Arts and Culture
Council, which has overseen the care and
upkeep of the elk for decades, removed the
statue and has kept it in hiding ever since.
—— The Oregonian
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