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Posts tagged as “Senate”

Meeting Today: Senate: Coltrane Q&A and more policy work

Summary: A kickass meeting. Large turnout. Coltrane and Lim are generally forthright. Coltrane and Library Dean Lim commit to public review of UO public records problems. That’s my takeaway from their generally positive and constructive statements and the Q&A at today’s Senate meeting. (Archives too). A public review of Dave Hubin’s…

Live blog: Senate meets Wed to continue fixing Chuck Triplett’s policy debacle

Over the summer Mike Gottfredson hired Chuck Triplett, the OUS Board Secretary who’d helped Pernsteiner fire Lariviere. The BOT and Angela Wilhems then put Triplett in charge of revising UO policies – and taking away the Senate’s former control over academic policies. No search, no faculty input, no affirmative action compliance, just…

Senate to move on policy adoptions, deletions. Today, 3PM.

In December the Senate was able to postpone the threat to shared governance from Chuck Triplett and Doug Park’s policy power-grab. That policy will come up again at the Trustees meeting in March. Meanwhile John Bonine (Law)has set up an independent process for making sense of the existing policies and determining which…

The UO administration’s secret plan to abolish the UO Senate

1/4/2015: The UO administration’s secret plan to abolish the UO Senate UO Matters operatives have obtained a “confidential” memo from former UO General Counsel Randy Geller to former Interim President Bob Berdahl, recommending that Berdahl abolish the University Senate and prohibit most faculty members from being members of the Faculty Personnel Committee, Faculty…

Chronicle of Higher Ed quotes Coltrane on Senate strike vote, Board Chair Lillis speaks.

Scroll down for the Senate agenda and live-blog.

Institutionalized News Media Updates:

Once again Johnson Hall’s administrative incompetence crowds out the important news, in this case Chuck Lillis’s speech. Alexandra Wallachy does have this in the Emerald: UO has “bad reputation” for faculty-admin relations, Lillis says. And well paid former TV journalist and UO PR flack Jennifer Winters has the spin in “Around the 0“.

Chronicle of Higher Education: University of Oregon Draws Criticism for Response to Threatened TA Strike

The University of Oregon’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to rebuke the institution’s administration for planning for a threatened strike by graduate teaching assistants in a manner that bypasses the faculty and stands to bring about “the dilution and degradation of teaching standards.”

The Senate, which includes representatives of the faculty, student body, administration, and staff, adopted the motion in response to a confidential memorandum that Oregon’s top academic and human-resources administrators sent to deans and directors last month. …

Scott Greenstone has a good report in the Emerald on the dilute and degrade legislation, here:

By supporting this resolution, University Senate is saying two things:

– University Senate does not support the administration’s plan to change finals and called it “diluting academic standards” in the resolution. The plan includes turning final essays into multiple-choice tests, shortening long essay finals, or hiring non-GTF graduate students, officers of administration or even upper-level undergraduates.

– University Senate doesn’t appreciate the UO administration sending the plans to department heads instead of discussing the plans with the senate. University Senate wants to instead work with the university and come up with a solution together.

Originally, the plans were sent out with a stamp of ‘confidential,’ which the faculty pointed to as an attempt to hide the plans from them in the resolution. Barbara Altmann, senior vice-provost of Academic Affairs, denied this. Altmann said the watermark was “vestigial,” and that the university knew emails would be shared and faculty would learn of the plans.

Altmann says she and Blandy marked the plan as confidential, and only addressed it to deans and directors – not department heads, not faculty – because they knew that meant they’d get a lot of attention and feedback from the faculty. And these people wonder why no one trusts them?

GTF Union updates:

GTFF responds to today’s flex-time proposal from the administration here, and officially calls the strike for Dec 2nd, press release here.

Senate Meeting Highlights:

1) UO will dump Blackboard course management software for Canvas. Live Spring 2015. Yea!

2) Lillis speaks, answers questions. Very honest about UO’s situation and in the Q&A. (See below.) He wants administration and faculty to cooperate more to help UO. But will the Johnson Hall administration step up to the plate? Their refusal to work with the faculty on how to deal with the GTF bargaining and strike planning is not encouraging.

3) Opposition to administration’s efforts to dilute and degrade academic standards in the event of a GTF strike. AKA “educational malpractice”: dropping essay exams, canceling classes, having students watch videos, etc. Blandy: Tries to cover his butt, it’s all about protecting our undergraduates. Altmann: THe confidential stamp was there to attract more interest for what was an initial draft. We knew it would get leaked in 30 minutes to UO Matters (WTF? It wasn’t stamped “draft”, it was stamped “confidential“. And it took me days to get it. Embarrassing. And Altmann just can’t keep from digging that credibility hole deeper and deeper.) Dreiling: Sometimes good people make bad decisions. This secret memo was a bad decision. Just Settle. Lots more discussion, Coltrane gives a weak defense of how he’s handled the situation, gets called out on mis-statements by many in the room. One speaker gives HLGR’s $300-an-hour lawyers a special mention for abusing and insulting our grad students, during the year of botched negotiations that led UO to this point.

Legislation passes unanimously almost unanimously (25 to3?) at 5:10, Senate then adjourns. How’s that for Senate action to help UO improve its research standing, by making clear we stand behind our grad students? Now it’s the administration’s turn to show they can work together on this important goal.

Packed room. I’ll try and live-blog a little. No promises, check the livestream link. Usual disclaimer: nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

Senate meets today to deal with Sex Violence report, student conduct

Agenda below, I’ll try to live-blog a little. And don’t miss the Faculty Union’s General Membership Meeting, 5-7PM tonight at the Alumni Center. The hand picked “President’s Review Panel” that Coltrane inherited from Gottfredson has scheduled its final meeting for a luxury hotel in Portland, to get away from the pesky students…

Live-blog of UO Senate meeting. Connie Ballmer on search. TF on Sex Assault

News reports on Task Force recommendations: Alexandra Wallachy in the Daily Emerald: University Senate was action-packed and attendance-packed at its meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 22. The Senate Task Force to Address Sexual Violence and Survivor Support co-chair Carol Stabile presented the task force’s recommendations at the meeting held in Lawrence…

UO Senate to meet on conduct code, legal services, Transparency Award.

Synopsis: Coltrane looks like he likes the job, and his colleagues. The faculty and staff clearly like Coltrane too. He gave a brief talk, answered questions, easy rapport. What an improvement. (Funny how when Berdahl and Gottfredson kept insisting we were all colleagues it was so plainly manipulative. Coltrane didn’t even…

SPQUO: Senate prepares for new era of shared governance, we hope

President Gottfredson’s relationship with the Senate was bad. He pointedly ignored Senate resolutions on athletics, set up a variety of “administrative advisory groups” to bypass Senate committees such as the IAC, and started pointless fights over academic freedom, legal services, and delegation of authority. The Senate had a resolution for a vote of no confidence in Gottfredson scheduled for October, and it’s difficult to see how it could have failed.

Fortunately Chuck Lillis saved us from that, and in the process gave most of us a lot of faith in the Board. (Although everyone seems to think they could have negotiated a tougher deal than Sharon Rudnick’s $940K giveaway.)

Now it’s up to Interim President Coltrane and Senate President Rob Kyr to try and rebuild some trust between the administration and the faculty and Senate. The message below is Kyr holding out the olive branch. Let’s hope Coltrane responds quickly by undoing Gottfredson’s mistakes. We need some quick, clear demonstrations that things are going to change.

To: University of Oregon Community; University Senate & Senate Executive Committee

From: Robert Kyr, University Senate President

Senate Exec to hold open meeting in lieu of full Senate session

6/3/2014 update: Because of problems getting a quorum for this last minute meeting, the Senate Exec will meet with those senators that are available, to make progress on the issues below. Room 110 LAW, public.

6/1/2014: Senate to meet Wed June 4 in an extraordinary session on conduct, athletics, kitchen.

Room 110 LAW, 3PM, Agenda here. Note room change. No live video, but I’ll see what my phone can do for a recording.

Senate to vote on major changes to Student Conduct Code at May 28th meeting

5/27/2014 These are significant changes to the student conduct code. They are important and needed and some parts will be controversial. This post is worth reading in full, especially if you are a voting member of the Senate. 

The USDOE Office of Civil Rights recommended changes to student conduct codes in 2011, but VPSA Robin Holmes dropped the ball, busy with other things. On May 14th President Gottfredson told the UO Senate we were to blame for the delays in fixing the student conduct code. But the truth is the administration fumbled this badly. Carl Yeh, Gottfredson’s Director of Student Conduct, told UO he was leaving for OSU in August 2013. The UO administration did not get a new Director until March 31st 2014. The Director is an ex-officio administrative appointment to the Student Conduct Committee, and the convenor. Sort of hard to hold a productive meeting without a Director, given that he’s the convenor. For a matter this important Holmes should have stepped in herself. Instead she hired a consultant and then sat on his report for 6 months, apparently without even convening the committee.

After the March 8-9 basketball rape allegations finally became public May 5, UO Law professors John Bonine and Caroline Forell stepped in. They have done an amazing amount of work over the last few weeks to try and get a revised code in place before the new students arrive in September. All in all there will now be 4 motions on the table for the Senate meeting this Wednesday, 3PM, 115 Lawrence, along with a full slate of other business. Three relatively minor ones come from UO’s new Director of Student Conduct Sandy Weintraub, the last is from Bonine and Forell, and it has also been reviewed by Weintraub.

4.8       Motion (Legislation): Proposed Change to Student Conduct Code to Standard Preponderance of Evidence; Student Conduct and Community Standards Committee (Sandy Weintraub, Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards)

4.9       Motion (Legislation): Proposed Change to Student Conduct Code to Extend Jurisdiction Off Campus; Student Conduct and Community Standards Committee (Sandy Weintraub, Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards)

4.10     Motion (Legislation): Proposed Change to Student Conduct Code Regarding Definition of Words; Student Conduct and Community Standards Committee (Sandy Weintraub, Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards) [Suspension of the Rules]

4.11     Motion (Legislation): Proposed Revisions to Student Conduct Code Dealing with Sexual Misconduct; John Bonine, Professor (Law) [Suspension of the Rules]

These 4.11 revisions significantly expand the protections for those making accusations of sexual assault to level the playing field, and they make many other significant changes as well.

For background, Bonine and Forell’s video summary from the 5/21 Senate meeting is here:

Bonine and Forell’s detailed 5/22 explanation for the need for the revisions is here. New UO Ombudsman Bruce MacAllister has written a lengthy, thoughtful memo about the first draft of these revisions, here, endorsing some and criticizing others. Strangely, there has been no word from UO General Counsel Randy Geller’s office. Geller announced his resignation hours before the rape allegation story broke, and while he’s still on the books as GC until June 30th, no one has seen him since.

Below are the most significant revisions, from my initial read. However I strongly suggested reading the full proposal here, instead of my hack job post.

Bonine and Forell have highlighted the parts relating to sexual assault and violence in yellow, to make that easier. Additions are in red with brackets, strikeouts for deletions, blue for explanations from Bonine and Forell, and green for comments from Sandy Weintraub:

Screen Shot 2014-05-27 at 6.18.17 PM

Gottfredson: Weak on Freedom?

4/16/2014 update: It’s been a week now, no signing ceremony. The rumor is that President Gottfredson has stuck Dave Hubin with the job of finding some explanation – plausible or not, doesn’t really matter – for why although he would personally love to sign this policy, it would be a violation of his fiduciary responsibility as “The University”.

4/10/2014 updates: Senate passes academic freedom motion unanimously

InsiderHigherEd has a report on the “months of contentious negotiation” between the Senate, the union, and Gottfredson over academic freedom, and Betsy Hammond has a story on this in the Oregonian here:

Gottfredson, in an emailed response to The Oregonian, said, “I look forward to closely reviewing (it) …I fully support the strongest policy on academic freedom possible. Academic freedom is central to our mission and underlies everything we do as a university.”

This is our passive-aggressive president’s typical non-response. “Asked and answered.” “I’ll take that under advisement”. ” “I look forward to reviewing it”. Then nothing.

Here’s some more history, with his Randy Geller’s redlines of an earlier Senate draft. And here’s Gleason and Rudnick’s restrictive proposal on academic freedom, from 2/17/2013 during the union bargaining. All about the limitations, authority, and of course that easily abused requirement for “civil dialogue” – and if The University thinks it’s not, then discipline!