Leo Baudhuin has a great story in the Emerald on the long history of our students’ efforts to end their $1.7M payment to Duck Athletics for “free” football and basketball tickets, here.
They finally succeeded this year. So President Schill turned around and gave the athletic department another $1.2M from licensing revenue – money that has historically been split 50/50 between the athletic and academic budgets:
Instead of replacing the ASUO agreement with a similar mandatory fee, Schill proposed a plan to provide students with 5,000 season tickets for a discounted fee of $100 — a price consistent with that of a “Pac-12 Package” for football under the most recent ASUO and athletics agreement. Schill said he will subsidize the agreement by paying athletics $1.2 million out of UO’s licensing revenue.
Back in 2007 or so when the state agreed to let UO sell $235M in bonds for the Knight Arena – ultimately guaranteed by future UO tuition revenue and the full faith and credit of the university – they insisted the athletic department set aside $1 of every ticket over $8 for an emergency reserve fund in case ticket revenue and Uncle Phil’s Legacy Fund couldn’t cover the deficit. The prediction was that this would build to $7M by 2019, but ticket sales have been slow and it is actually only $5.8M.
Now President Schill has let our VPFA lend it all to Duck Athletics at 0% interest, so they can keep paying the coaches:
The money is of course fungible, and will allow the Ducks to keep paying the bloated salaries of their coaches, despite the language in their contracts making clear that UO does not have to raid the rest of the budget for them. E.g.:
UO’s Law School gives the average student a 50% discount on tuition. The cost of this is now $8M a year. The money comes from UO’s general fund – which is mostly undergrad tuition for College of Arts Sciences students, and state funds:
You’d think that would buy us a pretty respectable law school. Barely. The US News rankings put our law school in a tie for #72. Almost every other UO graduate program, with the notable exception of the Lundquist College of Business, does better, despite the Law school money suck:
Kyle Raze, a graduate student in economics at the University of Oregon, studied turnout patterns in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. The court declared Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get preclearance from the Justice Department for any change in election law, unconstitutional. Shelby opened the door to the enactment of voter suppression measures.
Despite well-founded fears to the contrary, the Shelby decision does not appear to have widened the turnout gap between Black and White voters in previously covered states.
Instead, Raze found
an accumulating body of evidence that suggests that voters mobilize in response to increases in the cost of voting when those increases are perceived as threats to the franchise.
Jack Stripling has the report in the Chronicle, here. These were LSU Board meetings, presumably he’ll get around to trashing OSU soon. Here’s hoping he kept screenshots of those secret NCAA portal communications. Those will be crucial to making sure the other big-time college sports presidents help him find his next job running SHEEO or something.
Oregon State to buy out F. King Alexander for ~0.7 Gottfredsons, from “private funds”. Both sides to release all claims. No word on WittKiefer refund, no apparent recognition from Board that they got rolled and failed at due diligence.
Heartfelt remarks from Trustee & former BB player Lamar Hurd on corruption in big-time college sports.
Other board members now saying how they share others pain, "may have been too cold" during public testimony.
Trustee Steve Clark wants to work on an "engagement strategy". Nothing yet on a transparent hiring policy.
Whoops, he's not a trustee, just the OSU PR flack. Sorry, rookie mistake.
Yup, now he's telling the board to be careful when they talk to the press.
Pres F. King Alexander now saying "it's all about the students" (and the $700K buyout he must have demanded). Board puts him on admin leave until April 1, with pay.
Board will empower Provost Ed Feser until Interim Pres is appointed. (Close call for @JonBoeckenstedt and @waynetinkle). Board Exec will meet in public tomorrow to consider process for appointment of interim Pres.
Trustees won't admit they blew it with secretive Alexander hiring process, but are promising transparency for interim Pres appointment process.
OSU Board Chair closes meeting with heartfelt thanks to UO Emerald alum & USAToday reporter @kennyjacoby for tirelessly pursuing the public records that led them to realize WittKiefer had tricked them, and Alexander needed to be fired.
3/22/2021: LSU Board tells OSU Board F. King Alexander is a liar:
Just in time for their 8:30 AM meeting Tu. I predict they pay him 0.5 Gottfredsons to leave. Maybe they’ll even ask WittKiefer’s Zachary Smith for their money back. Full letter here.
Every professor I know gets spam like this about fake academic conferences with prestigious sounding names, held in popular holiday locations. They accept all papers, have a similarly unreviewed “journal”, and I assume some people try to get reimbursement for them, or try to use them to pad their c.v. – which would be laughable at any reputable university.
What a scam. A scam run by OSU’s new President and his family. You’ve got to wonder what else the OSU Board of Trustees and Witt/Kieffer search consultants Zachary A. Smith, Ph.D., Suzanne Teer and Kim Brettschneider missed – or ignored.
Who or what is behind these efforts? They appear to be organized far from Oxford by the International Round Table Symposiums, which is said (6/2/17) to have have a “location in Oxford” at the Harris Manchester College. But a webpage on its history — which does not indicate when and where this group was founded — reveals that
The Round Table is, thus, not an academic programme conducted by the umbrella University. Harris Manchester College is the venue, the situs, location of the Round Table. The colleges, themselves, in their private corporate capacity, traditionally host an array of academic conferences assisted by Conference Oxford. The Round Table is one such conference. Harris Manchester College was selected as the location for the meeting because of its reputation, its location in the heart of Oxford, and because of its congenial working relationship with the members of the Round Table Programme Committee and Advisory Board.
I have not located the names of any members of the committee or advisory board. The history webpage ponderously advises that
The International Round Table Symposium is an international educational organization whose purpose is to promote education, art, science, religion and charity … effectuated by the conduct of interdisciplinary symposia and the publication of meritorious manuscripts emanating therefrom. …
The lack of sponsorship by Oxford University is a virtue because it advances “Academic Independence”:
Academic Independence is an important aspect of the Round Table. As a private charitable educational organization, the Round Table is not under the control of the hosting Oxford colleges, most of which are established as endowed sectarian foundations, nor is it in anyway under the aegis, restraint or sanctions of the University of Oxford; rather, the Round Table is free-standing, apolitical and non-denominational.
When accused by an Oxford faculty member of deceptive advertising, the group sued her. The domain name oxford-population-and-environment-symposium.com is registered to Shenette Alexander, London Education Research Symposium, Sand Dune Aly, Saint Augustine, Florida 32080, telephone: (562) 676-6382, email: internationallawsymposia@gmail.com. Shenette describes herself as “Dedicated Wife, Loving Mother, Assistant to Oxford Round Table.” Her husband, Fieldon King Alexander, is the chancellor of Louisiana State University and A&M College and president of the LSU system. The group, which has existed under various names and corporate charters (mostly in the US) is a creation of the Alexander family.
The OSU Trustees hired Alexander last year, after a closed search by Witt/Kieffer search consultants. At LSU Alexander’s accomplishments included a $85M “lazy river” and firing a professor for cussing. But these weren’t his only problems. Former Daily Emerald reporter Kenny Jacoby, now working for USA Today, uncovered Alexander’s role in covering up the usual sorts of big-time sports scandals that presidents of sports factories get paid the big bucks to cover up. USAToday has a summary here:
… Alexander has come under increasingly heavy criticism since the March 5 release of the Husch Blackwell report, which detailed LSU’s “serious institutional failure” when it came to handling cases of physical and gender violence. Husch Blackwell is the outside law firm LSU hired in November to review its handling of Title IX cases after USA TODAY chronicled systemic failures.
Of course it’s equally possible that during the hiring process Pres Alexander bragged about his ability to keep these sorts of scandals private – as UO General Counsel Kevin Reed did – and the trustees saw it as a positive.
Full opinion here by the Honorable Jay Bybee, joined by Kathleen Cardone, both G.W. Bush appointees. The dissent was from Trump appointee Lawrence VanDyke.
The efforts by the UO administration to set a precedent that would gut the equal pay act by arguing no two professional jobs can be compared have been rejected. The case now goes back to Judge McShane for a jury trial. Here’s hoping that President Schill finally decides to settle this before inflicting more shame and billable hours on UO.
Some snippets:
Reversing the district court’s summary judgment on the Equal Pay Act claim, the panel held that on such a claim, the plaintiff has the burden of establishing a prima facie case of discrimination by showing that employees of the opposite sex were paid different wages for equal work. The plaintiff must show that the jobs being compared (not the individuals holding the jobs) are substantially equal. The panel concluded that, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Freyd, a reasonable jury could find that she and her comparators performed a common core of tasks and did substantially equal work.
and
The panel concluded that, first, Freyd challenged a specific employment practice of awarding retention raises without also increasing the salaries of other professors of comparable merit and seniority. Second, she put forth evidence that this practice caused a significant discriminatory impact, and a reasonable jury could find that her statistical analysis showed a prima facie case of disparate impact. The panel agreed with the Seventh Circuit that where a sample is small but the results nevertheless indicate a disparity, the granting of summary judgment in favor of the defendant is premature.
which does get to the difference between statistical inference and conditional population means. The other complexities of regression analysis are explained in a single footnote:
3 A regression analysis is “a common statistical tool . . . designed to isolate the influence of one particular factor—[e.g.,] sex—on a dependent variable—[e.g.] salary.” EEOC v. General Tel. Co. of Nw., Inc., 885 F.2d 575, 577 n.3 (9th Cir. 1989) (quoting Sobel v. Yeshiva Univ., 839 F.2d 18, 21–22 (2d Cir. 1988)) (alterations in original).
Full disclosure: I haven’t read the whole thing, comments welcome.
May 12, 2020 update: 9th Circuit to hear oral arguments in Freyd case May 12, on Zoom
UO’s payments to Barran-Liebman (not just this for this case) are running about $280K a year:
12/21/15
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 690
2/9/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,230
2/9/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,230
2/15/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 4,272
2/15/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 4,272
2/29/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,070
2/29/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,070
6/1/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 240
6/2/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 13,890
6/13/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 570
6/15/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 43,932
6/20/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 29,423
6/30/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 510
6/30/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 109,382
10/10/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 175
10/10/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 175
10/12/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 650
10/12/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 700
10/12/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 700
10/12/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 650
12/22/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 7,808
12/22/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 11,035
12/22/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 7,808
12/22/16
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 11,035
2/10/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 19,000
2/13/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 19,000
3/31/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 390
3/31/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 390
4/13/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 14,592
4/13/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,910
4/13/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 14,592
4/13/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,910
6/29/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 6,641
6/29/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 6,379
6/29/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 930
7/11/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 11,011
7/14/17
Barran 1/5/17 – Claim 1704-02
$ 5,000
7/14/17
Barran 1/5/17 – Claim 1704-02
$ 14,000
11/20/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 49,517
12/4/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 250
12/4/17
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 64,724
2/13/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 44,431
2/19/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 23,393
4/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 52,962
4/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 44,077
4/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 120
4/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,550
4/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,650
5/23/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,610
6/20/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 117,413
7/10/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 133,860
7/11/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 6,216
7/12/18
Barran Clm 1706-06
$ 24,075
7/12/18
Barran Clm 1706-06
$ (24,075)
11/12/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 10,658
11/26/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,770
12/10/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,680
12/31/18
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 1,580
1/22/19
Barran Invoices July – Oct 2018
$ 3,060
2/4/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 490
2/19/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 8,950
3/22/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 15,949
4/15/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 4,330
4/29/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,910
5/29/19
Barran Liebman Attorneys
$ 2,114
Total
$ 967,522
May 10, 2020 update:
(Note: All my posts on this case are here, including the most recent take down threat from UO’s Lawyer Paula Barran, here. Haven’t heard a peep from her since.)
The link is at https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/live_oral_arguments.php and I assume on Tuesday they’ll have a link to live-streaming at the Pioneer Courthouse (Portland). Court opens at 9AM and this is the third case, so it will probably start sometime after 9:40, although for the circuit court arguments Judge McShane inexplicably kept a full courtroom waiting for 20 minutes, so who knows.)
Cases are heard by a randomly drawn subset of three appeals court judges, and this panel includes recent Trump appointee Lawrence VanDyke. Wikipedia reports on his nomination process:
The nomination was to the seat being vacated by Judge Jay Bybee, who previously announced his intention to take senior status on December 31, 2019.[13] Six retired justices of the Montana Supreme Court publicly opposed VanDyke’s nomination.[14]
VanDyke received a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. ABA evaluators conducted 60 anonymous interviews with lawyers, judges, and others who had worked with VanDyke. The ABA published a scathing critique of VanDyke in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee; that letter asserted that interviewees described VanDyke as “‘arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice'” of law.[15] The ABA added that “‘There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility, has an ‘entitlement’ temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful'”.[16]
The Senate confirmed him 51-44.
The second member is Kathleen Cardone, a G.W. Bush appointee whose most cited opinion regards labor law and progressive discipline. She found for the employer.
The third member of the panel is the Honorable Jay Bybee, of whom wikipedia notes:
He was confirmed by the Senate before his role in the torture memos was revealed.
Dec 3, 2019: Updates on Prof Jennifer Freyd’s pay discrimination lawsuit
1: The UO administration could have followed the Psychology department head’s advice and given her a $15K raise 4 years ago. But instead the lawyers that run UO wanted a lawsuit. Her department colleagues are now circulating a letter of support, here:
The Article includes a screenshot of Ms. Barran’s profile on the Barran Liebman LLP website. Barran Liebman LLP has copyrighted the material on its site and does not grant UO Matters the right to use its copyrighted material. If Barran Liebman LLP’s copyrighted material has not been removed from the UO Matters site within five (5) days, my clients will file a DMCA Takedown Notice.
Presumably her lawyer explained to his “Top Point Getter” client that the fair-use copyright exemption includes parody:
3: Speaking of parody, Barran, Zaerpoor Le, and Bonner have finally filed UO’s response to Freyd’s appeal in the Ninth Circuit, here. Barran has, sensibly, dropped her Kubrickesque rants about “bodily fluids”. Now they are “biological samples”:
4: Meanwhile, Barran convinced the Honorable Judge McShane to make Prof Freyd pay President Schill $3,537.15 in court costs, and the University of Oregon and Hal Sadofsky $7,145.12. Ruling here. Last time GC Kevin Reed did this, in the Bowl of Dick’s case, he paid HLGR’s Bill Gary about $50K to get UO’s costs reduced by about $12K. I’m not sure how many billable hours Barran collected from UO for this, but these things aren’t about the money, they’re about using institutional power to intimidate potential plaintiffs from filing discrimination lawsuits.
5: Barran also seems to have dropped her claim that one of the comparator faculty Freyd identified was better than Freyd because “he just secured – while this case was pending – a $3 million grant from the Gates Foundation for his work.”
The truth, corroborated by an email from Prof. Allen, is this:
He was a co-investigator on a grant from the Gates Foundation, but the grant was obtained by colleagues at Berkeley. He had a small subcontract. He also noted that the grant had very little to do with the digital sensing work.
I’m sure I’m going to get a grateful letter from Barran, or her attorneys, thanking me for pointing out these problems with her prior arguments.
6: The real problem with Barran’s brief is that it reiterates the UO administration and President Schill’s argument, which McShane’s opinion accepted whole-hog, that professors’ jobs are not just different from each other, but so impossible to compare that no female professor will ever be able to identify comparator male professors, and therefore will never be able to win a gender discrimination lawsuit. I’m guessing this is not what the Congress had in mind when they wrote the law against gender discrimination.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for forwarding the course description, full text below. President Schill’s own porkalicious contract, which will presumably be #3 on the reading list when it comes to reasons for the increasing cost of college – after faculty pay and guvmint interference – is here:
and, just in case Uncle Phil decides Schill hasn’t done enough to promote Duck sports and has Chuck Lillis fire him, he’s got this insurance clause. Smart:
And here’s the course description, which seems like a pretty good summary of the frustrations of trying to run a university these days:
Professor: Michael H. Schill
HC 410H: Higher Education in the United States: An Introduction to Key Issues and Challenges
2.00 credits
CRN 37045: Mondays, 1515-1715 @ REMOTE
Higher education today faces an unprecedented set of challenges. Even before COVID-19, many of the most divisive issues facing our nation were playing themselves out in the ivory tower. Partisan politics either cast universities as places overrun by the left and inhospitable to freedom of speech or as corporativist entities out to exploit the poor and middle class. The Black Lives Matter movement added fuel to the critique by suggesting that universities were failing to adequately serve marginalized populations. Costs rose every year faster than inflation as universities competed for faculty and administrative talent, as students demanded greater levels of services, and as government saddled universities with costly requirements. State support dropped precipitously and student tuition and debt increased to fill the void. In 2020, COVID-19 threatened the very underpinnings of many universities by making it difficult or impossible for people to study together in a residential setting.
This class will survey a number of different forces and issues facing the higher education sector. We will begin by examining the structure of higher education and some of the changes that have taken place over the past 75 years. We will then discuss the financing of higher education and how that has affected tuition and increasingly widened the gap between well-funded “elite” institutions and the rest. As part of this analysis we will discuss the critique of universities as “neoliberal” institutions. We will then launch into a discussion of a number of issues such as access and affordability, diversity and inclusion, freedom of speech, lagging levels of student achievement, and intercollegiate athletics.
The class will be in the form of a discussion with only occasional lectures. Expert guests may join once and a while. Student participation will be highly valued and grades will be based upon a combination of a final paper, short class presentations, and participation in weekly discussions.
NOTE: Thumbs up/down on comments has been disabled due to misuse by PR Flack supporters. Sorry!
ScienceDuck { That was the physics "same order of magnitude" same size! }
CSN { The economics department has 28 faculty on its website (including non-tenure related, not including the Dean or the Emerita). }
Your Obedient Servant { Really appreciate these periodic updates about the law school. It appears they are admitting anyone willing and able to borrow... }
Dog { I think this comment is mistaken. If you omit the M from the above then the comment would be correct }
ScienceDuck { Good to see some positives highlighted. Still, with 40-50 FTE faculty the Law School is the same size as, say,... }
Rank Flackerson { Some actual facts for balance: UO Law rose 16 places nationally and ranks #1 in Legal Research and Writing, #10... }
Compulsory Pessimist { Maybe Schill should hit up Unca Phil for that petty cash. https://www.inputmag.com/style/nike-hasnt-paid-federal-taxes-in-three-years-4-1-billion-profits }
charlie { https://www.ohiobobcats.com/sports/fball/2021-22/roster?view=headshot Posted above is the football roster of Ohio University. The program draws a smiliar number of people of color... }
uo professor { The false claim that nobody cares about Oregon football, which is not backed by any comparative data analysis is a... }
not that minor { "duck football" eyeballs to equal to a third of the searches for "university of oregon" during fall season when students... }
charlie { https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/national-championship-game-delivers-lowest-ratings-in-over-a-decade/ Worst ratings for a college football championship game in well over a decade occurred this year. Despite that, some... }
Unclassified { Yeah, why don’t you add the search term “duck academics” or “duck faculty” and see where that ends up in... }
XDH { It's called UoM "cherry picking". Change the search term to "Oregon Ducks football" and all the sudden you see that... }
Sara Hodges { Stubborn Twig is a great (sobering) book - I read it soon after moving to Oregon, as part of my... }
Lauren Kessler { On March 28, 1942 Min Yasui risked his career (the first person of Japanese ancestry to be admitted to the... }
uomatters { Thanks for the info! I see it's available on Amazon, at https://www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Twig-Generations-Japanese-American/dp/0870714171/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=stubborn+twig+kessler&qid=1617056708&sr=8-2. }
Thomas Hager { The Yasui family had several notable ties to the UO. Their remarkable story was told by emeritus professor Lauren Kessler... }
Thumbs Up { Thanks for sharing. Never would have heard of this remarkable alum otherwise. I thought they all played football. }
uotechmatters { Here is a link to the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Yasui }
Just classified. { Pfffft. If he was a classified employee, he'd get a big nothing and a boot on the toot besides. }
charlie { OSU: My gawd, we gotta pay $700k to get rid of this dope. USC: Hold my beer. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/usc-agrees-1-1-billion-settlement-hundreds-women-alleging-abuse-n1262075 }
anon { perhaps the most interesting part of his contract [ from perspective of a professor] was that when his term as... }
Peter Keyes { I just revisited our own experience from ten years ago to see what it used to take to actually fire... }
Fishwrapper { After today...sure seems like it... (but on the happier news front, Dr. Jane Lubchenco was on OPB's Think Out Loud... }
{ Second this motion! }
honest Uncle Gangsta { Effin' A! I overestimated our distinguished colleague at OSU. Only 0.67G, I thought surely 1.0. Our esteemed UOM twice as... }
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