Pamplin Fellow Jules Bailey (’01) has some new digs in Salem.  Formerly Jules Kopel-Bailey, Bailey was elected to represent District 42 in the Oregon House of Representatives.  This district—including the heart of Southeast and portions of nearby Northeast—is so consistently Democratic, that the primary election, rather than the general election, is the real contest.  In the race to replace outgoing Representative Diane Rosenbaum, Bailey faced three other democrats and finished with 41 percent of the vote, more than 10 points ahead of his closest rival.  He had no Republican opponent in November, and handily defeated Pacific Green Party candidate Chris Extine.

Bailey has a dizzying resume.  A native of Portland, he attended Lincoln High School, and worked on invasive species removal in Forest Park before starting classes at Lewis & Clark.  He then took a leave from Lewis & Clark to work for a Swiss development company in Vietnam. After returning to LC to complete his degrees in International Affairs and Environmental Studies, Bailey won a Truman Scholarship, which he used to spend a summer working in Washington, DC at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through a policy program with the Brookings Institution.  From there, he went on to earn a Master’s in Public Affairs and Urban and Regional Planning from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  Professionally, Bailey has worked as a policy analyst for Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradley, as a consultant for UNICEF in the Sudan, and currently as a Senior Policy Analyst at ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm here in Portland.  Oh, and he also speaks Mandarin Chinese.

On leave from ECONorthwest for the duration of the legislative session, Bailey has been assigned to four committees: Sustainability and Economic Development, Environment and Water, Transportation, and Revenue.  He has several big goals in this session including an energy efficiency bill, which he’s been working on “every waking moment since the end of the primary.” The program would use publicly and privately-financed loans to pay for homeowners and small businesses to retrofit their buildings for energy efficiency.  The loans would be repaid slowly through utilities bills, but consumers would actually see a net decrease in these bills as a result of increased efficiency. The real beauty of the program though, according to Bailey, is that it will be revenue neutral.

Keep reading about Bailey at the Pamplin Society site…

“Allies and opponents describe him as having one of the sharpest legislative minds in Washington. Fresh out of law school in the early 1980s, he took his first job on Capitol Hill and never left,” writes Michael Falcone.

New York Times (New York, NY) The New Team: Phil Schiliro

Newsday (Melville, NY) Obama aide Schiliro honed his skills on Long Island

In her senior thesis,  The Little Clinic that Could: Neoliberalism, Structural Violence, and Community Resistance in Portland, Oregon, Jorgensen details the socio-economic effects of a local health clinic struggling to serve the uninsured. She writes:

“Unable to obtain sustainable funding, the clinic is in danger of being absorbed into the very system its directors had previously resisted. It must adopt bureaucratic policies to qualify for federal funding, which concomitantly entails accepting notions about patient prioritization that prevent the most vulnerable community members from accessing health care. Following the transition of this community clinic into a public entity reveals how the guidelines under which federal clinics function are in opposition to the purpose for which they are created and funded. If these federally funded clinics are unable to provide quality care for the uninsured, then what are they structured to do? How do these federal clinics represent political agendas and long‐standing historical processes which continue to reproduce inequality and enforce normalized standards upon vulnerable patient populations?”

Andrew served as the production assistant for Alien Boy, a feature length documentary  about Portland resident James Chasse, who died in September 2006 while in police custody.  Alien Boy will premiere at film festivals in the Spring of 2009.

Deeply committed to the defense and conservation of animals worldwide, McCoy served as editor-in-chief of the internationally acclaimed Animal Law Review while she was a law student. She also interned with the International Environmental Law Project and worked on animal rights issues.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, research, and enforce laws, treaties, resolutions, and regulations established to protect ocean wildlife and their habitats worldwide.

“Whale Wars,” a controversial mini-series that worked with Sea Shepherd, showcases the group’s interference with a Japanese whaling expedition in order to protect the greatest treasure of the seas: the great whales.

“Whale Wars” begins November 7 at 9 p.m. on Animal Planet. Learn more about Kim online.

Vielma’s short, “Go Nuts Animation,” was named one of 29 finalists in the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, which features the best animated shorts films from around the globe.

Each day in October, the Nicktoons website features a different short for which visitors can vote. At the end of the month, the video with the most votes will win the Viewer’s Choice Award. To vote for Vielma’s video, visit the Nicktoons website by Tuesday, October 28.

Vielma, who won a different national video competition last year, put more than 30 hours of work into the two-minute submission. “Go Nuts Animation” takes a fun look at college life, following a student who spends a fortune decking out his dorm room.

“What differentiates my work, and what probably made it stand out to the contest judges, has to be its complexity,” Vielma said. “Each minute of my animation is filled with ten minutes of entertainment; one view is just not enough. I added so many details and filled even the smallest of corners. It has to be that attention to detail and sense of humor that the judges appreciated.”

Currently in its fifth year, the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival is the largest event of its kind in North America. The Festival gives finalists like Vielma exciting opportunities to present their work on a national stage, giving animators access to television and Internet audiences and offering cash and prizes for winners.

“Having just graduated from Lewis & Clark, I’m finding so many directions to take my education,” Vielma said. “Animation and video work are two directions I’m pursuing right now, and they’ve brought me personal enjoyment and public recognition. I’m really happy with what I’ve been doing, but I’m always looking forward to new challenges and projects.”

Though less than one-half of the institutions met the September milestone for submitting reports on their greenhouse-gas emissions, Dautremont-Smith is confident that the data gathered from public reports will provide this environmental cause with a sufficient stepping stone: “Our sense of it is this is a long-term commitment, multi-decade for most schools, so we’re not going to fret about being behind a little on this particular deadline.”

See the progress Lewis & Clark is making toward its ACUPCC goals and learn about the institution’s greenhouse-gas report online.

Inside Higher Ed (Washington, D.C.) In Quest for Carbon Neutrality, Late out of the Gate

National Jurist (Arlington, Va.) Debt salvation