Posts tagged as “junkets”

Diane Dietz has the story in the RG. Good to see Roger Thompson’s admissions office is doing more than organizing sham events to cover for our administrators’ bowl game junkets. Speaking of which, President Gottfredson’s office is now denying they have any public records showing which UO administrators and spouses got junkets “paid work related travel” to the San Antonio Bowl:

The university has searched for, but was unable to locate, records responsive to your request made 12/24/2013.  The office considers this to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter.  Thank you for contacting the office with your request.

Sure. Last year’s Fiesta Bowl memo is here. I wonder why JH is so secretive about this year’s list?

1/6/2014: Ducks to lose money on Alamo Bowl after administrator junkets?
Now 3 weeks, and still no memo from the public records office. But Troy Brynelson has a great article in the ODE about our administration’s tortured efforts to justify their Alamo Bowl junkets as a worthwhile admissions recruiting trip, here.

12/30/13: More than two weeks since I made this request, and UO is still hiding the memo showing which administrators got Alamo bowl junkets.

12/27/2013 update from Lewis Kamb in the Seattle Times:

For the Alamo Bowl, which pays nearly $3.2 million to the conference, the conference pays a school $1.2 million, plus up to 500 charter seats and the ticket subsidy.

“The reimbursement usually does not cover the entire bowl game expense amount,” the UW’s Sasaki said.

True, but each university also controls the size of its travel party to a bowl game — a factor that largely determines whether it financially wins, loses or breaks even.

Then there’s the $50K bonus we have to pay Rob Mullens.

12/26/22013: Ducks cancel Alamo Bowl junkets over tax issues

Or maybe they just gave them a different name. On Dec 11 I made this public records request, after hearing rumors that President Gottfredson had cut back on the number of UO administrators and spouses getting all-expense-paid trips to this year’s bowl game:

12/11/2013: This is a public records request for a copy of any email, memos, or similar announcing which UO employees will get paid junkets to this year’s “Valero Alamo Bowl”. I ask for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest.

These trips are a potential conflict of interest for UO administrators like VPFA Jamie Moffitt, who must make tough decisions about cutting athletics subsidies after getting a sweet free vacation from the Ducks. Just to make sure the public records office knew what I was asking for, I followed up with a link to last year’s announcement – which took a month or so to obtain, if memory serves me:

12/11/2013: if you need any clarification on this PR request about junkets, last year’s announcement from President Gottfredson is here: