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Former Eugene Weekly intern Kevin Sullivan is now with Our Oregon.
National high school graduation rates are on the rise: A recent report from the U.S. Department of Education found that high school graduation rates in 2012 marked an unprecedented high of 80 percent. However, last year in Eugene, roughly only 64 percent of high school students graduated in four years in the 4J School District. Continue reading
My “sex education” classes always failed me. “Your privates are gonna get bigger and you’re gonna start smelling bad,” one of the teachers said during my fifth-grade sex-ed class. At the end, the teachers provided us with a stick of deodorant — thanks, Mr. Johnson. In middle school, health classes were more of a “you-need-to-exercise-or-you-will-get-fat-you-pathetic-pear-shape” than about sex at all. Continue reading
Tonya Bunning became a single parent of two teenagers when her husband left. She remembers thinking, “Oh, crap. What do I do? Where do I go?” Bunning and her children went to live with her family in Arizona for a year and a half, but her severe asthma and unhappy children led her back to Oregon. The family of three sold all they could, fit the rest in their van and drove to Eugene. Continue reading
In response to the city of Eugene’s proposed “paid sick days” ordinance, the Lane County Commission has proposed three of its own ordinances. After voting 4-0 to move forward with the ordinances on July 8, the Board of Commissioners will have an emergency meeting the morning of July 21, before the Eugene City Council’s public hearing is set to take place. Continue reading
A dispute over a Bloomsday reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Kesey Square has moved literature — and performing it — out of the classroom and into the legal quagmire of Eugene’s downtown. Continue reading
Kick, push, kick, push; clunk, clunk, clunk. With the official opening of WJ Skatepark + Urban Plaza June 21, those are the noises that Eugeneans will be hearing a lot more of. And that is music to the ears of Jeremy Conant, the marketing director for Tactics, a Eugene-based skate, snow and surf shop, located just blocks from the new skatepark. Continue reading
Craft brewing companies like Ninkasi have put Eugene on the map as the place to experience and purchase quality beer as well as support local causes. Now Elk Horn Brewery and Mancäve Brewing hope to make names for themselves by using innovative ideas and supporting the community. Mancäve Brewing Continue reading
The current fight against GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in Lane County is one small battle in a larger war, according to Thomas Linzey, the executive director of the legal nonprofit group the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Continue reading
Aprovecho Sustainability Education Center wants to teach you how to make soap, manage cattle and learn other permaculture-related activities for little cost. Aprovecho began giving workshops this spring on a gift economy basis — the nonprofit education center will teach you permaculture and in return ask that you give back in some way through donating, sharing a skill that you know or even simply bringing a friend. Workshops are held every Sunday. Aprovecho, which was started more than 30 years ago, is on 40 acres of land outside Cottage Grove. Continue reading
Students, faculty and staff at the University of Oregon have the right to conduct controversial scholarship and teaching or hold contentious public positions, according to the University Senate, a body made up of faculty, students and staff that is a partner in the shared governance of the UO. In early April the senate body unanimously passed an Academic Freedom Policy. Professor Michael Dreiling, the president of the UO’s newly formed union, United Academics, says that this policy would help to unlock “the greatest potential” that the UO has to offer. Continue reading