Southern Oregon University

And in 2009, archaeologist Scott Byram actually found Camp Castaway.

It's currently an active archaeological dig being conducted by Southern Oregon University students and faculty.

Key sources in this story included works by Orville Dodge, Don Marshall, and Jesse Higgins of the Coos Bay World.

That's our show for today.

And I was super fortunate to do both of those.

When I had gotten done playing and I graduated, the coach that I had went and started my coaching career for was actually one of my assistants at Southern Oregon University.

And where I thought he did a great job was, you know, he knew I was pursuing a second pro contract and I had had tryouts around the world.

And he did a great job of spinning it like, hey, come work with me and stay in the basketball scene.

Um, was the point guard at the University of Oregon, was also a pitcher at University of Oregon.

Like he, he understood all of it, yeah, at a really, really high level.

Um, and then, uh, my offensive coordinator at the time was a guy by the name of Matt Zozo, who's still one of my best friends and, and, uh, is the head coach at Southern Oregon University.

And, um, you know, he had just came off a, a GA run with University of Oregon and, um, the Final Four and was really tied in with those guys.

And this is the piece of the puzzle that gets the least attention in healthcare policy discussions.

Southern Oregon's large employers, the school districts, Jackson County, Josephine County, Southern Oregon University, the major retailers, agricultural operations, manufacturers, they are paying health insurance premiums in a market that is not being negotiated effectively on their behalf.

they have no vehicle for collective action at the regional level.

Oregon Business and Industry runs a program called OBI Health Choice, which helps businesses with fewer than 100 employees access benefit programs normally available only to larger entities through a regents-backed network.

That is money that stays in the region in employee paychecks and organizational operating budgets.

rather than flowing out to insurers.

Now I need to spend a few minutes on Southern Oregon University specifically because the situation there has changed in ways that make this conversation both more urgent and more strategically important than it was even a year ago.

SOU is not just a potential partner with an institutional interest in healthcare workforce development.

OK,

well, so I went to this college in Oregon called Southern Oregon University, which was like a real theater-y theater school, like a real Shakespeare and like all the classics.

And then I immediately moved to New York to do theater right after I graduated, you know, you kind of moved to New York the way you do in the movies, like with two suitcases and a, and a bright coat and you just spin around and a dream, you know? And, um, and I just was like, not, you know, I, I, there's Broadway and then there's like little theaters all over the city.

And I just was like a little overwhelmed at where my place was.

Summit County had large employers without individual negotiating leverage.

Southern Oregon has the school districts, the county governments, Southern Oregon University, the major healthcare systems themselves as employers, larger private employers across manufacturing and agriculture and retail, none of them has the purchasing volume to negotiate meaningfully different rates on their own.

Together, they might.

And Summit County had a civic capacity to act, a foundation willing to fund the initial analysis.