EUGENE, Ore. -- The UO might be thousands of
miles away from the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but on
campus Wednesday, it was hard to miss the scenes of devastation.
Black tarps and garbage bags littering the ground of the Erb Memorial
Union amphitheater is how student activists tried to simulate the crude
oil gushing out of BP's broken well. Oil now contaminates large
swatches of the Gulf.
"It's odd because of the magnitude. It's hard to depict something
when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of barrels. It's
unfathomable," said organizer Cimmeron Gillespie.
Organizers say many students don't have time to follow the news, and
so some aren't aware of the magnitude of the spill.
"They really don't know how bad it actually it is. Right now there's
projections that it's equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill every two and a
half days," said Charles Denson of OSPIRG.
Wednesday's demonstration was designed to bring the devastation right
to the UO's doorstep. And though it wasn't even a fraction of the size
of the real gulf oil spill, students say it was still effective in
catching their attention.
"Just getting the word out about it, at least for people to know
about it, and I'm sure a lot of people would be willing to do something
about it once they hear how bad it really is," said UO Junior Sarah
Pond.
"I knew about it and everything, but that's half of it. Taking action
is the other half. Hopefully, this event will get a lot of people to
do that," said UO student David Greer.
A number of students signed petitions to urge President Obama to
reinstate the moratorium on offshore drilling, Organizer say that's one
positive thing that can come from this disaster.
"It's a tragedy on the one hand and on the other, it should serve as a
wake up call, a major wake up call that we have problems in this
country that we need to fix," said Gillespie.
On Wednesday, BP began its top kill procedure in hopes of finally
plugging the leak with a mixture of cement and mud. Oil executives say
it has a 60 to 70 percent chance of working.
