Local Campaign Info and Meeting Times
OSPIRG Core Meeting
When: Mondays @ 4pm
Where: SOURS Leadership Center (3rd floor of the SU, RM 308)
Want to work towards better public transit in Ashland? Come to our 21st Century Transportation campaign project meetings.
When: Thursdays @ 3pm
Where: SOURS Leadership Center (3rd floor of the SU, RM 308)
Contact: Cymry, de-lune@hotmail.com
Come find out ways you can be involved with helping address hunger and homelessness in our community.
Contact: Krystle, sougirl07@yahoo.com
Global Warming Solutions and Coal Free Oregon Project meeting times TBA
Contact: Jeff, xxthejackalxx@gmail.com
Hunger Cleanup Spring 2010
SOU students raised $835 to donate to local, national, and international relief agencies, and then got together and collected 445lbs of food for the people of Ashland and the Rogue Valley.
All food donations will be donated to the Ashland Emergency Food Bank. Half of the money collected went to Uncle Food's Diner, a local community meal provider. 35% will went towards the National Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness, and 15% went to OxFam's relief efforts in Haiti.
Transportation Freedom Day!
Representative Peter Buckley joined OSPIRG's Jenn Lavelle, OSPIRG student Cymry Reardon, and SOU students to celebrate Transportation Freedom Day and call for more transportation options! Transportation in the Rogue Valley costs families more money any than other major city in the state. See more from our Transportation Freedom Day Press Conference on KDRV and in the Ashland Daily Tidings!
http://kdrv.com/news/local
http://www.dailytidings.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100417/NEWS02/4170312
SOU OSPIRG is holding elections for the student Board of Directors!
What is the Board of Directors? The board is made up of students from all the chapters across the state of Oregon. The board is responsible for making decisions for the organization. Those decisions include: hiring and setting priorities for the organization with the Executive Director; developing statewide and local projects and campaigns; and approving and allocating the budget for OSPIRG.
All those who have attended at least one chapter meeting are eligible to be nominated and are eligable to make a nomination.
Our election will be held Monday March 1st at 6 pm in the SOURS Leadership Center (top floor of the SU).
Green Building Tour at Standing Stone Brewery
Thirty students and community members came to this event to learn how this local business embraces sustainability and green technology.
Don't forget to vote in the Oregon Special Election Tuesday January 26th!!! SOU OSPIRG is collecting ballots in front of the SU Tuesday between 10am and 2pm.
Drop your ballot in our box!
SOU OSPIRG KICK-OFF MEETING
SOU OSPIRG CORE MEETING
COME FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SOU OSPIRG AND HOW YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE EACH MONDAY AT OUR CORE MEETING. WE MEET AT 6PM IN THE SOURS LEADERSHIP CENTER.
THERE ARE BOTH VOLUNTEER AND INTERN OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE AT SOU OSPIRG.
Internships:
Internships with OSPIRG give students the opportunity to earn course credit while working on current issues. Each week there is an intern class held to educate and train students on grassroots organizing, running campaigns, working with the media, and much more! You can be an intern for course credit or just for fun!
Here are the campaigns we are working on this quarter:
Global Warming:
Our mission is to have the Public Utilities Commission accept an energy plan that cuts the Boardman Coal Plant (THE ONLY COAL PLANT IN OREGON) out of the picture, and instead rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency. We would like to get petition signatures to shut down the coal plant, attend 1 hearing, hold a letter to the editor session calling on PGE to adopt a green energy plan, have a green building tour to show solutions, and hold a green your campus day.
Hunger and Homelessness:
This quarter we want to meet people's immediate needs in the Ashland community and shift public opinion so we can enact long term solutions. We hope to have a Faces of Homelessness education panel, 2 food and necessities drives, and volunteer bimonthly at local agency Uncle Foods Diner.
High Speed Rail:
Our goal is to pass a federal transportation bill that doubles the portion of federal transportation funding that goes to clean, efficient public transportation and rail that expands transportation choices. We ultimately would like to see a high speed rail put in between Eugene, OR and Seattle, WA. In order to do this we hope to hold 2-3 events this quarter for signing petitions and hopefully holding a rally.
Affordable Textbooks:
We want to publicize and create a demand for open source textbooks and convince professors to make the switch to open textbooks. We want to generate attention and start pushing on Congress to establish funding for open source textbooks. We would like to meet with 25 professors and survey students and hear their opinions on the issue.
Student Vote Coalition:
DON'T FORGET TO VOTE IN THE OREGON SPECIAL ELECTION ON JANUARY 26, 2010!!
As the year comes to an end, we wanted to look back at 2009.
Here on campus - and across the country - students are taking action. We're volunteering our time, educating the public, and working together for change.
Here at Southern Oregon University, we're excited about what we've accomplished this fall. Take a look:
Global Warming Solutions: We're calling for local, national, and international action to solve global warming. This term we held a Green Building tour at the Wilderness Charter School to show how energy efficiency is already being put to use. We teamed up with ECOS to form a 20-person bike parade downtown, as part of the community's rally on the 350 International Day of Climate Action, which was covered on 3 TV stations. We also brought 12 Southern students to PowerShift West, a regional conference to educate and mobilize young people on the issue of global warming.
Hunger and Homelessness: It's been a tough year for many local families. On Halloween we knocked on doors and collected 320 pounds of canned food for the Ashland Emergency Food Bank. In November we participated in the national Hunger Awareness Week by hosting a food and necessities drive to collect donations for those in need. We ended up with over 400 pounds of food for the food bank and over 50 necessities which we dropped off during the community dinner at Uncle Foods.
Voter Registration: We got together with OSA for a voter registration blitz. Our goal was to "rock the vote boat," as we helped register students to vote while wearing bandanas and eye patches and asking people "Arrre ye registerrred to vote?"
As a student funded and directed organization, we are only able to do this work because of you. Thank you for your support!
We've got big plans for 2010 and we hope you'll get involved.
350 DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION
This fall, we were a part of the largest international day of action in the history of the world. We called on international leaders for strong leadership on climate change.
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This FALL, we called on our leaders to commit to strong, science-based standards of emission reductions at The Copenhagen Climate Conference. Climate scientists around the world have said 350ppm is the amount of carbon dioxide that should be in the atmosphere for earth's climate to be stable. Read more about this campaign at www.350.org
The above photos were taken by Rebecca Gourley.
Check out our past accomplishments:
Protecting Oregon’s Forests:
SOU students helped mobilize the SOU community in support of protecting 2.5 million acres of Oregon old-growth forests. We got petitions signed, hosted a call-in day, and even met with our representatives!
Affordable Health Care:
We helped create an official recommendation to the Legislature to cut $10 billion in wasteful health care spending in ten years, while improving health care. The Legislature has taken these recommendations into consideration and has passed health care reform that will save Oregonions billions of dollars. We sent in petitions, testified at hearings, met with our legislators, and released our research to the media.
Affordable College and Textbooks:
Our work resulted in new federal legislation to increase financial aid, cut student loan interest rates in half, and make textbooks more affordable by requiring publishers to tell faculty what textbooks cost.
Renters’ Rights:
Our Renters’ Handbook is available for free on our website, and has been endorsed by Attorney General John Kroger as a ‘first rate resource for Oregonians’.
Hunger and Homelessness:
We have raised hundreds of pounds of food and volunteered at several local hunger and homelessness relief agencies including the Ashland Emergency Food Bank and Uncle Foods Diner.
Student Vote Coalition:
We worked with ASSOU to help SOU students register and vote, including making over 7,800 voting reminders. Since 2004, OSPIRG has helped over 50,000 students across the state register to vote, helping fuel the statewide and national increase in youth turnout. In 2008, young people held a larger share of voter turnout than the 65+ age group!