Oregon Officials Frantically Google 'Who Is Cesar Chavez' After Realizing They Named 47 Things After Complete Stranger
SALEM, OR — Oregon government officials issued a collective "whoops" this week after discovering they have been enthusiastically naming institutions after labor leader Cesar Chavez for the past 30 years without a single person in the state government actually researching who he was.
"We just assumed he was that guy who did the thing with the grapes," explained Governor Tina Kotek, shuffling through a stack of hastily printed Wikipedia articles. "Turns out there's a whole complicated life story beyond 'fought for farmworkers' that maybe we should have looked into before naming our elementary schools."
The revelation came to light when a junior staffer finally got around to reading more than the first sentence of Chavez's biography while preparing for the dedication of the 47th Cesar Chavez Memorial Sidewalk.
"I was just trying to write a nice dedication speech about grapes and worker solidarity," said the unnamed intern, who has since been promoted to Head of Basic Fact-Checking. "But then I kept reading and was like, 'Oh no, there's more stuff here. Should someone tell the Governor we named a middle school after this guy without doing a background check?'"
State Senator Floyd Prozanski admitted that Oregon's naming committee has operated on a "vibes-based system" for decades, explaining, "If the name sounded inspirational and we had a vague positive feeling about the person, we'd slap it on a building. It's worked out fine so far, except for that awkward situation with the Benedict Arnold Community Center."
The Oregon Department of Transportation has already begun the expensive process of replacing street signs, while the Oregon Department of Education announced they will temporarily rename affected schools after "safe choices like trees or geometric shapes" until they can hire someone to actually read entire Wikipedia articles.
"Moving forward, we're implementing a revolutionary new policy called 'learning about people before we immortalize them in concrete,'" Kotek announced. "It's going to require hiring our first-ever fact-checker, but we think it's worth the investment."