UO E-clips, Dec. 9

Study details the power of negative racial stereotype (Los Angeles Times, same story in Cleveland Plain Dealer): Barack Obama's election as president may be seen as a harbinger of a colorblind society, but a new study suggests that derogatory racial stereotypes are so powerful that merely being unemployed makes people more likely to be viewed by others -- and even themselves -- as black. In a long-term survey of 12,686 people, changes in social circumstances such as falling below the poverty line or being sent to jail made people more likely to be perceived by interviewers as black and less likely to be seen as white. ... Penner and Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of Oregon, examined data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

Racial identity: Not a black-and-white issue (USA Today, same story in Chicago Sun-Times): As the USA's first black president is poised to take office, a new report about race suggests it is a "changeable marker of social status" rather than a fixed characteristic of one's birth. The data collected between 1979 and 2002 and analyzed by sociologists at universities in California and Oregon show change over time in both racial self-identification and the way people perceive the racial identity of others. "There is much less 'agreement' about what race a person is than is commonly thought," says co-author Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of Oregon-Eugene, "Fluctuations in both self-identification and how one is perceived by others happen more often than they would or should if race is something obvious or unambiguous.

Project alters course of river (Salem Statesman Journal): A $1.2 million project at Willamette Mission State Park soon will allow the Willamette River to flow through a 2-mile channel blocked by a dike since the 1940s. It is one of a handful of key restoration projects identified by the state for partially returning the Willamette River to its historical meandering course. The idea is to undo what has been done to rivers for the past 150 years: forcing them to flow in a single, predictable channel. ... "The emerging vision is a series of these projects — some of which are in public ownership and some in private ownership," said David Hulse, a professor in the department of landscape architecture at University of Oregon.

Late-night bus to cater to UO students (Register-Guard): University of Oregon students spending late nights at the library and early mornings in the bars will soon have an easier way to get home: by making use of new night-owl bus hours that will begin in January. The university and its student government will pay more than $40,000 for the extended service of Lane Transit District Route 79x, which circles the university campus and Kinsrow Avenue apartments near Autzen Stadium. The 79x service now ends at 6:30 p.m., and its sister route, the 79, stops running at 11 p.m.