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Posts published in “Uncategorized”

President Margie Paris slams Geller’s sneak attack on shared governance

As posted on the Senate website, here: Obviously, this is an important foundational document for our new system of governance, and it has direct implications to the shared governance work of the Senate and its constituencies. Yet none of us among those constituencies was aware of or had read this…

Gottfredson fails on transparency, so UO Matters resumes blogging.

Summary:

This was the board’s first substantive meeting. We’ve got a good, fully engaged board. Yesterday they listened to the faculty about Geller and Gottfredson’s attempt to grab power from the faculty, and today they voted unanimously to send that policy back to the Senate for review. They also had a frank discussion about the need to do an evaluation of President Gottfredson. The OUS Board did this in secret last year, with no faculty input to speak of. I have the feeling our board is going to want to conduct a much more open process. They also agreed that future meetings would be held when UO was in session. All in all I’m very optimistic.

3/28/2014 8:30 AM Live-blog: Come on down, they’ve got free coffee.

The kerfuffle yesterday reminds me of what happened in 2012, when Randy Geller tried to slide a new random drug testing policy for athletes through over the summer. The faculty fought back, and Geller sent out this snarky email to the Senate President and the IAC Chair:

Dear Rob [Senate President Kyr] and Brian [IAC Chair McWhorter]:

I received your email of July 24, 2012, requesting a delay in the public hearing scheduled for August 23rd, 2012. The hearing will be rescheduled for September 13, 2012. Written comments will be accepted until noon on September 14, 2012. We will similarly postpone the date the rule will be filed with the Secretary of State and become final. The rule will be filed on September 21, 2012.

Your allegations about the University’s rulemaking processes are offensive and false , as are the comments made publicly by members of the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee. I ask that you apologize in writing to President Berdahl, Rob Mullens, and me. I also ask that you censure the members of the IAC who have published offensive and defamatory comments.

Randolph Geller

General Counsel
University of Oregon

Nothing came of his threats, of course.

Now on to today’s live-blog:

President Gottfredson reads a housekeeping motion on fees and tuition, passes.

Board returns to policy on board authorities. No Dotters-Katz? Susan Gary proposes adopting policy with automatic sunset. Wants the minutes to reflect that the Senate will convene an ad hoc committee of the Senate, including Bonine, to collect comments and report by April 30. The Senate will take the comments and make proposals to fix Geller’s policy. She reads the motion.

[Strange, I don’t see anything like this policy on the Oregon State Board website. How is it that UO urgently needs it and OSU doesn’t?]

Geller looks sad. Motion passes unanimously. Big win for shared governance!

Gottfredson proposes a “strategic retreat” for the board. I believe this is a loophole under the public meetings law, that will allow them to meet in secret. [Update: No, the DOJ’s public meetings law has already ruled on this – retreats are open, public meetings.]

Allyn Ford raises the question of when the UO Board will take responsibility for conducting an evaluation of President Gottfredson. [Last year OUS did a secret evaluation. Gottfredson didn’t ask the faculty to provide feedback or even tell them he was being reviewed].

Lillis discusses setting goals for the performance review. Important that board gives Gottfredson information on what metrics he will be reviewed. Lillis notes that it’s important to set the schedule of board meetings for times when UO is actually in session – not like this meeting!

Willcox asks if the board can get summary of meetings, minutes, agendas out sooner. Geller says Tim Clevenger is working on a summary for this session.

9:27, board adjourns.

Yesterday 3/27/2014: UO Board meeting live-blog. Short version:

Encouraging to see Chuck Lillis in charge of the meeting. Inspires a certain amount of confidence.

Gottfredson and Geller try a power grab. The new Board policy on rights and responsibilities was prepared by Geller and due to be ratified by the board today. I found it on the Trustee’s website, here: http://trustees.uoregon.edu/sites/trustees3.wc-sites.uoregon.edu/files/field/image/March%202014%20Agenda%20032114%20-%20final%20-%20post.pdf

Apparently the board had no plans to show this document to the UO Senate before ratifying it. No one on the faculty even knew of it until I started emailing it to people on Tuesday night.  (Except the sole faculty member on the board, Susan Gary, who helped draft it, but did not tell anyone about it)

The proposed policy takes significant amounts of power away from the faculty.

John Bonine prepared a rushed but comprehensive dissection last night, got up at 6:30, revised it, and presented it to the board during their public comment period. See below for his full text. But at first it seemed that the board was going to ram it through today anyway, pretty much as is.

There was lots of pushback from several board members. Very encouraging to see this. Student member Sam Dotters-Katz made a strong case that a new board didn’t want to get off to a bad start with something this important.

In the end the board decided to delay at least until tomorrow’s meeting, and potentially for 10 additional days, to seek faculty input. Still not clear how much input the faculty will get and how. My read is that parts of this policy are indeed necessary for the board to do its work, other parts are an attempt by Geller and Gottfredson to consolidate their ongoing efforts to take power and responsibility away from the UO faculty.

Senate speakers:

UO Matters suspends publication, hands transparency job off to Gottfredson

I’ve been running this blog since April 2009. Five years, 2,934 posts, several thousand dollars for public records, the occasional defamation threat, 18,576 comments, and about 2 million page views. It’s time for me to take a break. President Gottfredson says he wants to improve transparency, build trust with the faculty, and…

UO pays scary old white guy $2M to scream at unpaid college students

Andrew Greif has the story in the Oregonian: 3/19/2014: Coach Altman didn’t know transfer had been accused of campus sex assault? Another sad story from the seamy business of big-time college sports. Steve Mims has the details in the RG. In earlier reports, losing OSU Coach Craig Robinson takes Altman…

UO grad-student union bargaining, Friday at 3:30PM, 302 Gerlinger

3/21/2014 update: Today, Friday at 3:30PM, 302 Gerlinger. Topics to include pay and health care. 3/14/2014: President Gottfredson’s team has been giving our students a hard time. Their “Hired Guns and Hired Help” live-blog of the bargaining sessions is here: The admin’s position is that what the admin spends on…

Hell Yeah!

UO Board creates Audit Committee! Sorry, it’s hard to contain my enthusiasm. The UO Board of Trustees will soon be charged with conducting due diligence regarding UO’s many peculiar financial deals:

Local law firm starts looking into UO sexual assaults

From Dave Hubin’s public records log, here: Sexual Assault information Requester: Middleton, Jennifer Organization: Johnson Johnson & Schaller Initial Request Date: 03/20/2014 Status: Requesting/Reviewing Records This is a request, as authorized by the Oregon Public Records law. Documents Requested:(1) True copies of all complaints or other initial contact with university…

Coltrane says response to Espy’s cluster hire plan “uniformly positive”

Update: Coltrane has posted a new (March 14) draft of the cluster hire proposal (archive here) – removing some of the sillier language. That’s the word from “Around the O”: Cluster hire proposals are due May 1, and may come from small groups of faculty, organized research or curricular programs, departments,…

Official Beaver blog brags their tuition is lower than UO’s

3/15/2014: Official Beaver blog brags their tuition is lower that UO. Is it? The Beaver’s version of “Around the O” is called Life@OSU. Either they are confused about the difference between the “rack rate” and what students – particularly low income students – actually pay, or they are hoping to confuse prospective…