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4 cheers for beards!
Off-roaders (and ’staches) give Walden their say on Sand Dunes
• More than 200 people competed in this year’s National Beard and Moustache Championships in Bend, but only four took top honors. See who won on Page B1. Photo of Willi Chevalier, winner in the freestyle category, by Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
Foreign exchanges
By Keith Chu The Bulletin
Oregon’s rural schools are teaching international students while collecting enrollment money from the state. It’s kept our smaller schools open, in part, but it’s also come under fire in Salem.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Greg Walden cheered off-highway vehicle users — and riled some local environmentalists — last U.S. Rep. weekend when he Greg Walden, stopped by a popu- R-Ore., has lar off-road desti- approached nation near Christ- several intermas Valley. est groups Walden visited — but not the Sand Dunes area conWilderness Study servationists Area at the invita- — on how the tion of the Pacific popular Sand Northwest Four Dunes should Wheel Drive As- be managed sociation. Walden, by the BLM. R-Hood River, said he’s beginning to sound out local groups on how the 16,000-acre stretch of inland sand dunes should be managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Wilderness study areas are candidates for future wilderness designation. They’re supposed to be managed to maintain wilderness values, but several activities are banned in wilderness, including mining and OHV use. They can only be released from study area designation by Congress. See Sand Dunes / A6
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Greg Cross / The Bulletin
STUDENTS, SMALL SCHOOLS AND SPORTS
Tyler Roemer / The Bulletin
The Kezerle siblings — Richie, 19, Rustin, 14, and Kelsi, 13, all at one time Burnt River School students — play basketball with Ban Du, 16, of China, in Unity, at the foothills of Eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains. This year the school’s football team had an international lineup: China, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany. Oregon’s smaller districts might struggle to keep their schools open — or keep their sports programs or electives going — without foreign exchange students living in their dorms.
By Lauren Dake • The Bulletin MITCHELL — n an overcast Saturday morning in this small Eastern Oregon town, Justin Williams woke to the smell of pancakes. It was his high school graduation day. The 18-year-old’s connections to this school run deep. His older brother, and before that his father and grandfather, went to Mitchell School. In the kitchen were former Mitchell students whom Williams considers family. Linda Hoorn, who came back from Holland for the graduation, flipped the hotcakes. Tran Diep, of Vietnam, scrambled eggs. For a decade, students have come from all over the world — Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Ho Chi Minh City — and landed in tiny Oregon towns like Mitchell, population 170; Spray, population 140; and Unity, population 120. On at least one occasion, a foreign exchange
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Vol. 107, No. 157, 48 pages, 7 sections
student arrived, looked around and said: There’s been a mistake. But eventually these little towns, where sawmills have been shuttered and populations have dwindled, become home for one high school year. Rural school administrators said bringing foreign exchange students into an isolated community, gives their home-grown students, like Williams, a peek into the outside world. It also helps boost enrollment numbers, which brings in more money and helps keep the schools’ doors open. But the Oregon Department of Education said what the small schools have been doing — placing exchange students in dorms and collecting enrollment money — is against the law. Some legislators argue it’s bad public policy to educate foreign students at a time when the state can barely afford to educate students from Oregon. Since at
Lauren Dake / The Bulletin
MIXING FAMILIES IN MITCHELL
2010 Mitchell high school graduate Justin Williams in the school gym with his mother, Doreen, and grandfather, Bill. The 18-year-old can’t remember the last time his family had a holiday without at least a few extra students from different parts of the world. “Teenagers are teenagers; I don’t care where you’re from,” says his mother, who is also the school’s dorm mom. least 2007, foreign students living in dorm rooms have not legally qualified for state funding. About a year ago, the state sent out letters letting districts know the law would be enforced. After the 2010-11 school year, these rural schools will have one more year to figure out another way to keep enrollment numbers up. Or they can continue to advocate for a change in the law. See Exchange / A4
Obesity and the perils of childbearing By Anemona Hartocollis New York Times News Service
As Americans have grown fatter, inviting more heart disease, diabetes and premature deaths, all that extra weight has also become a burden in the maternity ward. About one in five women is obese when she becomes pregnant, meaning she has a body mass index of at
least 30, as would a 5-foot-5 woman weighing 180 pounds, according to researchers with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And growing medical evidence suggests that obesity might be contributing to record-high rates of Caesarean sections and leading to more birth defects and deaths for mothers and babies. Hospitals, especially in poor neigh-
borhoods, have been forced to adjust. They are buying longer surgical instruments, more sophisticated fetal testing machines and bigger beds. They are holding sensitivity training for staff members and counseling women about losing weight, or even having bariatric surgery, before they become pregnant. See Obesity / A7
Krasev’s visa, pre-9/11, fell in ‘lax’ period of enforcement By Keith Chu The Bulletin
WASHINGTON — The rules for student visa holders like Doitchin Krasev haven’t changed much since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the way the law is enforced has, making it much more difficult for an immigrant student to disappear. Krasev, the former Oregon Liquor Control Commission agent whom federal agents recently identified as a Bulgarian national, Doitchin had lived as “Ja- Krasev, aka son Evers” for 14 “Jason Evers,” years, some time attended after 1994, when college on a he dropped out of student visa college. in the 1990s. He faces one federal count of falsifying a passport application in 2002 and an Ohio charge of stealing the identity of a child named Jason Evers who was murdered there 28 years ago. See Krasev / A6