UO Matters

Docs here. It appears Chair Ginevra Ralph has decided not to have a public discussion about how to hold what will almost certainly be a private, closed search for the next permanent president. That has been removed from the agenda announced previously and the trustees will presumably hash it out with phone calls, in violation of the spirit and perhaps the letter of Oregon’s Public Meetings Law.

Mullens:

Phillips: There is no contract in the materials for Phillips, since it’s presumably for less than $5M the Trustees can do it in secret. The last time they had to appoint an interim (after Gottfredson, you know, that Scott what’s his name guy) they forgot about money until someone asked. Lillis just looked blank then said something like “same terms as previous?” and it was done.

Surely these contracts have been finalized, 3 days before the Trustees meet to approve them, and the Trustees told what they will be rubber-stamping. So why is Ralph hiding the details from the university and the public? Normally the meeting docket includes the contracts. Not this time:

And then there is the less important matter of the search for a new UO president. Given the lack of information here, I’m guessing this is going to be run along the same lines as the OSU search that dredged up F. King Alexander.

Wait, I got that wrong – he’s suing because they *blocked him* from reading DEI tweets. Which is weird, because he seems like just the sort of guy that DEI would want to reach out to. Betsy Hammond has the report in the Oregonian here:

Portland State University political science professor Bruce Gilley, with backing from a national free speech group, has sued the person who ran the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion to unblock him from seeing or responding to the account’s posts.

The public university cannot, under the First Amendment, create a public online forum and prevent him from having equal access to it based on his point of view, the suit says.

Gilley, who champions race blindness and is highly critical of typical university diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, found himself blocked from @UOEquity in June after he retweeted one of its Tweets about racism with his comment “all men are created equal.” …

The complaint is here. Thanks to an anonymous reader from OSU for the alert. Sorry I cannot verify the rumor Oregon State will be suing Professor Gilley for disparagingly referring to UO as Oregon’s flagship university:

I need some ethics advice. An overnight visitor leaves a iphone charger in the guest bedroom. I should:

A: Fed-Ex it them immediately

B: Email them that I found it and offer to mail it back

C: Pretend you didn’t see it and leave it for the next visitor

D: Put it in the kitchen drawer with the iphone chargers from past decades

E: ?

From Eric Kelderman in the Chronicle:

According to the survey, presidents most often expect criticism from lawmakers. When asked “which group of people is most likely to respond negatively if you were to publicly take a position,” presidents pointed to elected officials for all but one of eight possible topics — state and national politics, but also Covid-19 policy; diversity, equity, and inclusion; free speech; gender and sexual identity; and racial justice. Only academic freedom was deemed relatively safe.

Back in 2015, in the midst of a lawsuit by the RG to force the Eugene School District to release public records about a potentially illegal firing decision, the District’s law firm Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick mistakenly emailed the entire file of documents to the RG. This ended the case, but not in the way the Harrang et al were being paid to end it. Original post here:

4/29/2015: Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick way too transparent with potentially incriminating public records

Bill Gary, Sharon Rudnick, and Randy Geller of UO’s HLGR law firm must be shitting their pants. I’m no lawyer, but sending a dump of emails that potentially incriminate your clients to the local newspaper, by mistake, seems unlikely to bring in the billable hours.

That would of course be OSU:

Meanwhile here at UO, application numbers are a closely guarded secret, to prevent department heads from getting uppity and asking tough questions about why JH is starving them.

Just kidding, they renovated the Alumni Center where the trustees meet, over by the basketball arena:

… I appreciate you beyond words and am so proud of the University of Oregon you showed the world. Thank you again. And, Go Ducks!

Michael H. Schill
President and Professor of Law

Full yada yada here.

Meanwhile for those interested in numbers instead of mindless sports boosterism, here’s the ECONorthwest economic impact doc. It looks like the reality may have been a bit shy of the numbers that were ginned up to justify the state subsidies:

The NYT on the failure to expand the aging fan base:

… “The fans gave me almost chills.” The problem is, there have not been many of them compared to other championships. Hayward Field has a capacity of about 30,000. Once sponsors and delegations from every country were taken care of, it sold about 12,000 seats per session. It still sold 90 percent of available tickets, with some but not all night sessions selling out.

If you want to put on the best track meet in the United States, Eugene is an obvious choice. If you want to expand the reach of the sport in the United States, it is not the best choice. Only locals or fans willing to make a long pilgrimage could have attended. Both of those groups are composed of people track and field already has. …

“We knew there was a risk,” Coe said. “I do politely make the point there weren’t a lot of options available. There should have been, and we should have engaged earlier.” Coe wished more cities had engaged with USATF, but only Eugene pushed to host after World Athletics made clear it wanted to bring the event to the United States.

The Eugene Weekly on the shitty local economic impact:

… My Soul Hot Chicken’s business model is focused on locals, Wiley says, and doesn’t rely on tourists or students. But after hearing that Oregon22 would be good for restaurants, he says, he ordered a lot more chicken and bread than he normally would for a week. 

But business during Oregon22 has been so slow, he adds, that for this week he only ordered some cabbage. “I am 25 percent of what I projected to do,” he says. 

So far, Wiley estimates he’s lost thousands of dollars — a big number for a new business. “I was paying payroll and had barely enough to cover it,” he says. “It’s been shitty.” 

Losing so much money in a 10-day event that the state of Oregon poured $40 million into has been frustrating, he says. “You think they’d want to make sure local businesses would do well,” he says. “Everyone I’ve talked to has done poorly.”

When the actual data is out it will be interesting to revisit EcoNorthWest’s 2015 Economic Impact study, which was used as justification for the state subsidies.

In the Oregonian:

… While representing clients, mostly in professional football and basketball, he was fond of the “holdout,” a tactic where the represented player would sit out for an extended period of time during the season to put on pressure during contract negotiations. In a 1985 profile on Slusher, People magazine described his execution of the gambit as an “art form.” …

Link is updated as new shit comes to light. No idea if 5.5 is bad, informed comments welcome.

From FIRE:

SEATTLE, July 13, 2022 — When Professor Stuart Reges challenged the University of Washington’s position on land acknowledgements, administrators punished him, undermining his academic freedom. Today, backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Reges sued the university to vindicate his First Amendment right to express his opinion — even if it differs from the party line.

Colleges increasingly promote land acknowledgment statements that recognize indigenous ties to the land on which a college sits. On a list of syllabus “best practices,” UW’s computer science department encourages professors to include such a statement and suggests using language developed by the university’s diversity office “to acknowledge that our campus sits on occupied land.” The fact that the statement could be adapted seemed clear — until Reges wrote one that administrators did not like.

“University administrators turned me into a pariah on campus because I included a land acknowledgment that wasn’t sufficiently progressive for them,” said Reges. “Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court. I am pleased that FIRE joined with me to fight back against University of Washington’s illegal viewpoint discrimination.”

Is it normal for host countries to use international track meets to show off their military hardware? From the World Athletics press release:

On opening night on Friday, July 15, a flyover will take place when the session kicks off at 5 p.m.

On Saturday night, there will be an F-15 jet flyover right before the introduction of the athletes in the men’s 100m final.

On Monday, July 18, the night belongs to women, beginning with a Women in the Spotlight presentation followed by a Black Hawk helicopter flyover at 5 p.m. The helicopter will be flown by a female pilot.