Winners

 1. Vinh Nguyen, a widely respected director of student achievement for 22 Portland elementary schools, may have lost a couple of days' pay last week, but she got something far more valuable in return: respect. Nguyen walked off the job to protest Rigler Elementary School Principal Larry Fleckenstein's misuse of funds for travel expenses. After sending her message to the district, Nguyen returned to work Friday.

2.Lewis & Clark'sClass of '98 cleaned up on academic honors. Laura Provinzino became the school's first-ever Rhodes scholar, winning one of 32 scholarships awarded nationwide, while Jeremy Brown and Alexis Gensburg won Truman scholarships, which carry $30,000 stipends for further study.

3. After years of settling for cult status in the Pacific Northwest, Portland's eccentric pop duo Quasi is becoming the darling of the national music press. The band's third album, Featuring "Birds," earned raves in the most recent issues of Rolling Stone and Spin, and the June 8 edition of The New York Times praised Quasi's appearance at the Manhattan club Under Acme: "Their well-honed, caustic pop exemplifies the good-natured sarcasm of bohemians who have seen their fantasies tempered by the salt of reality."

Losers

1. Attorney General Janet Reno's refusal to nix Oregon's doctor-assisted suicide law has thrown the ball to the U.S. Congress and the conservative ranks of Sen. Orrin Hatch. This is bad news for Sen. Ron Wyden, who finds himself forced to defend a measure he personally doesn't support. Wyden told WW last month that he voted to repeal the suicide law during Oregon's 1997 election, yet he vowed to defend it on the Senate floor. Wyden said he might be the only senator who will vote in favor of Oregon's law.

2.Bill Sizemore, who is pushing a ballot measure aimed at prohibiting public employee unions from spending members' money on politics, got some bad news last week when a similar measure lost in California, 54 to 46. Staffers at Sizemore's office are already trying to distance the Oregon measure from its California counterpart.

 3.The Oregonian was the victim of bad timing this weekend. By the time the paper published its front-page Saturday Metro story--"Portland homicides disappear for 8 weeks"--a 16-year-old boy had been stabbed to death late Friday night across the street from the Rose Festival Fun Center.