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It’s official folks: El Niño is upon us. For some, that means get ready for an unseasonable deluge of rain; for others, things are about to get a lot dryer. And for a huge swathe of the world, the coming months are going to be scorching, as climate researchers warn about the potential for one of the hottest summers in the record books.
Sure enough, the summer heat is already on our doorstep, broiling Tennis players at the French Open, killing off vast shoals of fish in American waterways, and claiming dozens of human lives across the globe.
Yet another telling example came during a commencement ceremony at the University of Oregon. According to the school’s student newspaper the Daily Emerald, the dean of the university’s College of Design collapsed in the middle of a graduation speech as outdoor temperatures reached a sweltering 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
The dean, Adrian Parr Zaretsky, was promptly taken off the field by paramedics in a stretcher, the Emerald reported.
“I felt myself starting to get dizzy, my ears were starting to block up, and then at a certain point the next thing I know I was on the ground,” Zaretsky told local paper Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
The dean wasn’t the only one. According to Lookout, four graduating students also collapsed in the scorching conditions, calling into question why school administrators didn’t postpone the outdoor graduation ceremonies altogether.
That and other graduation events were held at the university’s Autzen Stadium, where surface temperatures on the artificial turf reached an astonishing 155 degrees, according to University of Oregon spokesperson Angela Seydel.
As if mother nature hadn’t made things horrible enough on their own, the university had advised graduating students not to bring their own water bottles into the stadium. When volunteers eventually began ferrying cases of water to graduates, a scrum broke out, as students began “fighting over” them, one witness told Lookout.
In an email, Sydel told Lookout that “Monday’s record-setting heat made conditions during our afternoon ceremonies challenging, and we understand the frustration of the graduates and families whose celebrations were affected. It added radiant heat in these record temperatures, and as on-field conditions reached unsafe levels we made the decision to move the affected ceremonies indoors.”
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