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Willamette High School Receives National Award
<br />Willamette High School (WHS) is one of 48 schools across the country to
<br />receive recognition as a 2014 National Green Ribbon School.
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<br />The honor, announced this week on Earth Day (April 22) by the U.S.
<br />Department of Education, is for the school’s efforts to improve the
<br />health and wellness of its students and staff, reduce environmental
<br />impacts, and provide environmental and sustainability education. The
<br />recognition award is part of a larger U.S. Department of Education effort
<br />to identify and disseminate knowledge about practices that are proven
<br />to result in improved student engagement, higher academic
<br />achievement and graduation rates, and workforce preparedness, as well
<br />as a government wide goal of increasing energy independence and
<br />economic security.
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<br />Some of the activities which earned WHS the honor include: collection of 2,000+ pounds of recycled material each week,
<br />use of paper towels that are EPA-certified 85-percent post-consumer waste, participation in the City of Eugene’s Love Food
<br />Not Waste commercial compost program, an annual community Recycle Round-Up, use of raised garden beds and
<br />hydroponic garden systems that serve as skills training for students, a student-led recycling effort incorporated into
<br />instructional program, and much more.
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<br />The City of Eugene partners with Bethel School District to integrate investments in buildings, curricula, educational
<br />programming, and on-going facility operations.
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<br />For more information, contact Waste Prevention and Green Building Analyst Stephanie Scafa, 541-682-5652.
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<br />Dangers of Drunk Driving Emphasized in Staged Crash
<br />On April 15, personnel from Eugene Springfield Fire, Eugene Police, Lane County Sheriff’s Office, Life Flight air ambulance,
<br />and Churchill High School staff and students participated in the “Every 15 Minutes Program.” This emotionally charged
<br />program offers real-life experience without the real-life risks and is designed to dramatically instill teenagers with the
<br />potentially dangerous consequences of drinking alcohol and texting while driving. This powerful program challenges
<br />students to think about drinking, texting while driving, personal safety, and the responsibility of making mature decisions
<br />when lives are involved. The event involved a staged motor vehicle accident in the parking lot of Churchill High School
<br />involving six students with realistic make-up to simulate injuries as the result of a crash. In this simulation one student dies
<br />in the accident and four students are extricated from the vehicle by firefighters. Three of the extricated students are loaded
<br />into medic units and leave the scene code 3 with lights and sirens. The fourth extricated student is loaded into the Life
<br />Flight helicopter. Another student is given a field sobriety test, arrested and taken away in a police car. The one student
<br />who was pronounced “dead” at the scene is placed in a body bag and leaves in a funeral car. The entire reenactment is
<br />performed in front of hundreds of students. The next day students gathered for an assembly. The focus of the assembly
<br />stresses the dangers of texting while driving, and that the decision to consume alcohol can affect many more people than
<br />just the one who drinks. This very emotional and heart-wrenching event illustrates to students the potentially dangerous
<br />consequences of their use of alcohol and texting while driving, regardless of how casual they believe their use is.
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<br />For more information about the “Every 15 Minutes Program”, contact Deputy Chief of Shift Operations Randy DeWitt at
<br />541-682-7147 or Randy.C.DeWitt@ci.eugene.or.us.
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<br />Novelist Karen Joy Fowler at Eugene Public Library
<br />Bestselling writer Karen Joy Fowler, winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for
<br />Fiction, will speak at the Downtown Eugene Public Library on Friday, May 2, at 6 p.m.
<br />Admission is free.
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<br />The PEN/Faulkner Award is America’s largest peer-juried award for fiction, with aprize
<br />of $15,000. Past winners include Sherman Alexie, E.L. Doctorow, Ann Patchett, Annie
<br />Proulx, Philip Roth, and John Updike. Fowler was honored for her latest novel, “We Are
<br />All Completely Beside Ourselves,” which explores family dynamics, animal rights, and
<br />activism through the story of a woman whose researcher father raised a chimpanzee at
<br />home as her “sister.” Writing for the New York Times, Barbara Kingsolver praises the
<br />work as “so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart, it deserves all the attention it can
<br />get.”
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<br />EUGENE CITY COUNCIL NEWSLETTER PAGE 2
<br />April 24, 2014
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