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UO Matters Discussion

For comments regarding general UO Matters: parking, misfeasance, malfeasance, sustainability, diversity, and architecture.

347 Comments

  1. Anonymous 12/03/2009

    So, obviously, everyone here is paying attention right now to the survey but I’m curious if I missed any mention of the recent NCAA report on “Graduate Success Rate” for college athletic programs. Penn State is happily promoting its 89% rate for its football team but I haven’t seen any discussion of Oregon’s somewhat less stellar 49% for its recent cohorts. Report here: http://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/nH8egsr2009/529.pdf
    Go Ducks!

  2. Anonymous 12/04/2009

    So lets add it up. The football coach gets paid 1 million plus for the failure of half his football program. Not bad, anyone else would get fired if they had a failure rate like that.

  3. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    Are you kidding about this parking stuff? The NCAA lets UO dole out perks like this? And campus planning lets this happen? Did this go through the planning committee? Did Chris Ramey sign off on it?

  4. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    A reserved spot costs $900 a year – if you can get one. How many slots were reserved? How much will this cost UO? $50,000? $100,000?

  5. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    These guys are athletes but they can’t walk a few blocks to their cars? We may as well give up the pretence of being a university and call ourselves what we are — a sports training institution.

  6. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    This is going to be very popular at the law school… can’t wait for the fireworks.

  7. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    How can the board “rent out” or “lease” state property? Or have authority to let a non state employee decide how state property will be used? Can they do that???

    I tell you our administration must stay up at night thinking of ways to screw the “commoners” and make their lives that much more fu–k-d. It won’t be long (could be now) that the administration will be the only people allowed to park near or on campus. And get this…we still have to buy a sticker to park blocks from the university…that’s screwed.

    I say make them walk..green the campus for clean air, open spaces and more classrooms. Just think classrooms where Dyke and Bean park…looks great to me. No wait! fill all the parking lots with classrooms and 2 million dollar offices for our faculty! Let’s have some equity around here…for everyone. Equity…I walk, they walk…that’s fair.

    I say that a motion be brought up in the faculty senate that vehicles are no longer allowed on campus property including parking lots or city streets therein except for vehicles used by service employees such as security, police, plumbers, painters…etc. GO GREEN!!!

    Let the administration park where they force everyone else to park. The administration justify s their parking spaces because they have to go to meetings…well here is an idea for them….take the bus to your car and go to the meeting…or walk half way across town get in your car and go to the meeting. So very simple.

    I’m betting that before Nike dies…the university will be renamed NIKE U. Why not? They bow to his every whimper now what would be the difference down the road with a simple name change?

    Funny that the athletes have to have parking within so many feet of a building. Are they not the most healthy people around? It’s not like a walk would hurt any of them.

    Has anyone looked into the Universities compliance with disabled parking? Just a passing thought.

  8. Anonymous 01/01/2010

    If there is a coffee shop in the athlete only learning center can a non-athlete buy something there ?

  9. Anonymous 01/02/2010

    Top of the post should be 1-1-10, not 09…

  10. Anonymous 01/02/2010

    Dog says

    1) Why do parking issues draw more traffic and comment on UOmatters than any other issue?

    2) someone should periodically inspect whether or not Lot 34 has any parked cars in it following this absurd change in parking designation.

  11. fstahl 01/03/2010

    On December 30, Anonymous wrote “I say that a motion be brought up in the faculty senate that vehicles are no longer allowed on campus property including parking lots or city streets therein except for vehicles used by service employees such as security, police, plumbers, painters…etc. GO GREEN!!!”

    Since Anonymous is anonymous, I cannot tell whether s/he has a right to bring a motion to the Senate her/himself. S/he has if s/he is an Officer of Instruction, an Officer of Administration, anyone of eighteen members of the Student Senate; twenty-five members of the ASUO Executive; and five members of the ASUO Constitution Court or a UO Emeritus.

    If Anonymous is a member of the population described above, s/he should bring such a motion, not just blog about it. If she is not a member, s/he should prepare a motion and ask her/his Senator to introduce it.

  12. uomatters 01/03/2010

    The ideal post includes sex, parking, and football. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

  13. Anonymous 01/04/2010

    Dog Says

    Today, the official opening of the
    Jacqua Center, conveys with it so many metaphors for the Charlie Foxtrot operation of the UO it can’t go undocumented.

    1. The Building is actually not yet done – there is yellow tape across the front door.

    2. The adjacent parking lot remains closed. The Law School Professor Lot, now closed to Law School professors, who apparently rank now below Student Athletes in the UO
    hierarchy, has 22 cars in at (at 10 pm) out of 62 spaces – what a surprise.

    3. If you look at the John Jaqua artsy fartsy sign from an angle of 45 degrees or larger, its not actually readable or in focus.

    4. The power went out to campus this morning, just about the same time that the Jacqua center would come fully on line electrically –
    see I guess student Athletes really do have all the power …

    3.

  14. Anonymous 01/05/2010

    And The Beat Goes ON:

    The UO electrical power system continues to experience problems today and campus may experience disruptions. These issues are related to the new switch gear housing and its computer control systems. Therefore, the power supply to campus still remains somewhat unreliable.

    The design engineers and software installers are on site evaluating the issues.

    Campus Operations recommends that people do not initiate experiments or connect electrically delicate gear until we have more confidence that the power will be stable.

    For my two cents, this is an indication that the term
    “Mission Critical” doesn’t resonate with leadership around here. There is no excuse for this
    that is acceptable.

  15. Anonymous 01/05/2010

    Is parking for student-athletes’ use of the new learning center an “extra benefit” and, thus, barred by NCAA rules?

  16. Anonymous 01/05/2010

    Starting to have the feel of a third-world university. The management cuts parking spaces — under the pretext of a supposed social goal of “sustainability”? — while hogging ever more reserved spaces for a select few.

    A new athlete palace is called a “Taj Mahal” by its manager, grabs more parking — and said manager says he hopes it helps to “build bridges”.

    Then, the electricity experiences major malfunctions. Is it possible someone has been skimping somewhere? Could this have anything to do with the government cutting the overhead rate the University is allowed to charge?

  17. fstahl 01/06/2010

    From local publications, we learn:
    If Measures 66 and 67 do not pass, it is likely that UO students will face tuition increases and cuts in services. (Local FOCUS, 12-9-09)
    “Nike, the biggest athletic-shoe maker in the world and Oregon’s only Fortune 500 company, has given $5,000 to a PAC that is working against the measures, although Nike is not among the businesses listed by the campaign as an official opponent of the tax increases. Nike Chairman Phil Knight has personally contributed $50,000 to the effort to defeat the two measures, while Nike spokeswoman Erin Dobson has issued a statement criticizing the measure that lawmakers put on the ballot.” (Register-Guard, 1/4/10 – A bigger bill for big business)
    So, Phil K. boosts the Jocks with one hand while slapping the rest of the students (and their cars) with the other.

  18. Anonymous 01/06/2010

    No wonder we have to build a giant crystal advising palace for athletes. According to the AP, we are giving these athletes preferential treatment in admissions, over and above what we give the general population:
    http://tiny.cc/Ml2DG

    Gotta make sure we tutor them enough to get our 50% graduation rate!

  19. Anonymous 01/07/2010

    Dog says concerning the loss of parking.

    I don’t believe the loss in parking
    (which in principle, I agree, sucks)
    as quantitatively large as you suggest.

    the law school lot (34F) had 62 spaces in it (so far, since I walk through that lot every day in my drudge walk to drudge campus) its
    been either empty or has a few cars with yellow tickets on them (3 cheers for another revenue stream)

    the total number of spots lost in the Oregon Hall parking lot is likely close to 150.

    my prediction is that lot 34F will be restored back to what it was after a few weeks of observations reveal its under utilization in its new form.

  20. Anonymous 01/07/2010

    Do not forget the LISB project is another five story building that is supposedly going to be stuffed in between Franklin and Oregon Hall. That construction will impact parking and the building will need some permanent spaces I am sure.

  21. Anonymous 01/11/2010

    “Barbara West” is the local realtor? Are you sure? Not Barbara West of the President’s Office? Are you sure you’re not an idiot?

  22. uomatters 01/11/2010

    Someone told me this was the same Barbara West, but it was a while back and I don’t remember who. Anyone with more info please post it. (About West, not about my idiocy, which has never been in dispute.)

  23. Anonymous 01/12/2010

    The Barbara West helping Dave Frohnmayer is a partially retired, long-time UO administrator. She is not the same as the Barbara West who works with Windmere-Jean Tate.

  24. Anonymous 01/12/2010

    Theoretical Leadership. Interesting that such a person as he has reveled himself to be is allowed to teach such a class. Maybe being just theory it isn’t real and all the personal perks of our administration are just our imagination.

    Will this class touch on how to use the institution for your own personal gain? That seems to be what all our administrators know how to do best.

    I guess you could say his theory works and is worth teaching. He has himself yet another personal perk… he now has his own building to teach in with its own parking. Great job Dave! Your respect meeter is now at the bottom and going under.

    What is the legal standing for people that use the University for their own personal gain?

  25. Anonymous 01/12/2010

    Whoever Barbara West is, it’s a scandal to pay her $12,000 to co-teach a class. As a tenured professor I earn $5,000-$6,000 to teach a class all by myself.

  26. Anonymous 01/12/2010

    Dog Makes 2 Observations:

    1. Barbara West used to be
    Barbara Edwards

    2. Lot 34F has been absolutely devoid of any parked cars now for
    the last two days.

    Totally empty – a symbolic representation of the UO in the view of the dog.

    Go ducks …

  27. ZStarMac 01/14/2010

    How is Peter’s resignation “good news” for faculty government?

  28. fstahl 01/14/2010

    To ZstarMac,
    Peter chaired this week’s Senate Meeting masterfully in every complimentary sense. His generous dedication to University Governance as WebMaster has (or should have been) greatly appreciated.

  29. Anonymous 01/14/2010

    yeah but now we have the opportunity to watch Tublitz try to shape the Senate into his own personal weapon to aim at Johnson hall – this will likely serve to only increase alienation

  30. fstahl 01/14/2010

    We’ll see. I don’t see why anyone would have animosity to the current Chief Occupant of Johnson Hall.

  31. uomatters 01/14/2010

    Frank’s got a point, many responders to the union survey thought Lariviere should be give more time to try and fix things. So far though there’s not much sign of progress.

  32. fstahl 01/14/2010

    Maybe the Prexy is expecting the Faculty to govern, as the Charter mandates. We can hope for a more favorable response to such initiatives than we received under the previous JH occupant.

  33. ZStarMac 01/15/2010

    But my question to UOMatters is why Peter’s resignation is a good thing.

  34. fstahl 01/15/2010

    Yes, that’s a good question. My response was meant to indicate that, for some easily identifiable reasons, it was certainly not an entirely good thing.

  35. Anonymous 01/15/2010

    It seems to me by the actions at the last Senate meeting Peter could not fulfill the request of the Senate vote to notify administration of the Senates stand on RRP. From my personal witness Peter sided more with the administrations wishes than the Senate. Anyone that witnessed the VP of Senate vote last year know who sided with whom. Call a club a club and quit dancing around the pole. This is a good thing.

  36. Anonymous 01/16/2010

    New UO president and Bellotti discussing sport culture at Cozmic Pizza on February 12…..are they smoking something ? What a weird event.

  37. uomatters 01/16/2010

    Wouldn’t surprise me if the job has already driven him to it. You’d never catch Frohnmayer responding to audience questions though, so I hope people give them some respect and maybe we’ll get more of this in return.

  38. Anonymous 01/17/2010

    The new Oregon Quarterly magazine- there are free copies at the UO Bookstore/Duck junk store- has a interesting article about automated storytelling in the new alumni center design. Once the massive smart screens are installed UO can impress tourists with a Minority Report like techno-utopia. They will save money on tour guides. Cutting edge mind machine interface stuff…….revenge of the nerds.

  39. Anonymous 01/18/2010

    Regarding your post on ORI

    ORI tried for several years (since 2005 at least) to get a building downtown.
    First in the Centre Court building, and then on the pit across from the library.
    Ultimately though, after a grant fell through, they were unable to reach a deal with the City, who apparently prefer an empty whole in the ground to a business that would have employed 200 some-odd workers.

    The sordid details are available through the Register Guard and your favorite search engine.

  40. Anonymous 01/18/2010

    I seem to remember this too – anonymous. Do you have a good link or quote?

  41. Anonymous 01/18/2010

    ORI and research park issues: To see a old RG article about the simmering ORI site toxic dump use Google search with the article title: eweb uo battle over soil cleanup. Will the UO Foundation (or Future Expansion L.L.C.) buy the current ORI site ? Will the price be contingent on UO sreamlining the city permit process (UO runs the Eugene Planning Department)for the new ORI site ? The current ORI site is directly across from the controversial “Jock in the Box” facility. The ORI appeal hearing on this Wednesday should be interesting. There is a effort to build a second building (South side of the tracks along the millrace) in the research park and it is unclear whether this ORI meltdown will sink or stall it.

  42. Anonymous 01/26/2010

    So now our salaries are online. So much for privacy. Maybe next they’ll post our medical records?

  43. Anonymous 01/26/2010

    … and it’s ‘All Systems GO’ for low-ball offers from other institutions — finely calibrated to come in JUST above the amounts on this generously published list — to anyone who might consider applying elsewhere at some point.

    Not that anyone would confuse UO for a hideout of excessively compensated faculty, but this will make things particularly convenient. Chapeau!

  44. Anonymous 01/28/2010

    Regarding Larviere: what UO really needed was a one year turnaround President to clean up the admin deadwood that accumulated around DF. Only after that should we have hired someone to bring in a new team of their own, and start fresh.

  45. Anonymous 01/28/2010

    I was at a place that did this. Everyone knew it was the plan, and it was pretty brutal on the senior admin who’d been counting on coasting to retirement. Then the new President came in, brought his new staff and Provost, and it was a big improvement. He was a teambuilder, and I don’t think would have taken the job unless someone else had done the dirty work already.

  46. Anonymous 02/03/2010

    Yes, Lariviere is starting to look disappointing. Still padding the administration? This bears watching by the UO senate budget committee, if they are not completely comatose. Yet when it comes time to raise tuition again, the rationale will be that they need it to pay our underpaid faculty, just to keep them at their present low level.

    And on the Pacifica issue, it looks like he applauded the students, who basically behaved like brownshirts in shouting down the meeting, from news accounts. This is going to make it even easier than now to shut down what little open discussion there is at UO of socially controversial subjects. Few people have more reason to detest the swastika more than I, but allowing it to be used as a pretext to destroy free speech is horrendous. In a way, the Pacifica morons and the student radicals are working together. Of course, what they both want is publicity. It would be far better simply to give the Pacifica group the silent treatment — let then turn themselves into non-persons.

  47. Academia Nut 02/07/2010

    Thanks for posting the tidbit about Janis Lariviere’s $135,300 job as a “Senior Counselor” in the Development office. I gather that Ms. Lariviere did some good work back in Kansas and/or Texas; maybe she’s continuing that here. Still, this strikes me as nepotism. Certainly the “trailing spouses” of faculty members don’t get this kind of treatment. And do the Larivieres really need all that money? I’m disappointed.

  48. A fan on Agate St. 02/07/2010

    Drinking in the office? Has it come to this?

    Depending on the circumstances, you probably aren’t violating this policy or the OAR to which it refers: http://hr.uoregon.edu/policy/drug-alcohol-policy.html

    Make sure you proof-read that essay tomorrow. FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS DRINK AND DRAFT.

  49. Anonymous 02/07/2010

    Dog says

    If your a faculty member at the UO
    drinking in the office is vital sanity maintenance

  50. Anonymous 02/07/2010

    Dog Barks

    The overall union concerns me a great deal for the following reasons.

    1. It seems to be gaining momentum via an increasingly felt persecution complex on the part of OAs and faculty.

    2. The OA’s are far more discontent than faculty (outrageously so in my view)that they might overwhelm faculty in any OA+faculty union vote.

    3. There is nothing proactive about this union and no identifiable tangible benefit to faculty – just a lot of cheerleading.

    4. What functionally is the union supposed to do and I mean specifics here!

  51. Anonymous 02/08/2010

    Okay, so Dog lists specific grievances on the part of all employed dogs at the UO. (note that Salary is not on this list, cause dogs don’t get paid shit anyway …)

    1. Unbalanced investments in athletic vs academic infrastructure

    2. Increasing the student population without the commensurate increase in instructional resources

    3. No one is paying attention to our graduate student enrollment problems and the loss of our status as a Research I University.

    4. Lack of sufficient internal money for a summer faculty research program (80K is pitiful)

    5. A completely broken general education system, which everyone agrees is completely broken, but no one is willing to fix it because it costs too much. As I barked before, this is Sardine Can University.

    6. A completely dysfunctional Instructional/Information Technology environment that now offers no relevant services. We need to start over here.

    7. A total adherence to a mostly irrelevant now, departmentally based degree programs. If interdisciplinary training is the career pathway of the future, why are we doing squat here?

    8. Chanting sustainability when we are about to bring an 8MW Fossil Fuel generator on line to support the arena project thus *increasing* our carbon footprint associated with electricity generation.

    well I wouldn’t expect the Union to consider items 6-8 I would expect some action on 1-5

    so, readers of UOmatters, would I get any real action on 1-5 from a Union or just an endless UOsenate type debate …?

  52. OregonCommentator 02/09/2010

    Professor,
    Not sure about this question, although on a moral basis, we approve. Ossie once left some empties in the trash at the EMU. They slapped us on the wrist. Do they treat professors like they treat us students? You know, as insolent children? In that case, maybe close the door.

    -OC

  53. Anonymous 02/09/2010

    OAR 571-004-0005: Family Relationships and Employment, references 571-003-0010 as outlining the greivance procedure.

    I cannot find OAR 571-003-0010 anywhere online. Their conspiracy, or my idiocy?

  54. Anonymous 02/11/2010

    speaking of Jim Bean’s overpaid staff. ever noticed how his executive assistant got a nice raise from summer quarter to fall quarter? or how the director of the office of multicultural academic support’s director salary is significantly higher than the original job posting salary range?

  55. Anonymous 02/11/2010

    Dog Barks on the “New Budget Model” – which is really not all that new and certainly confines us to business as usual.

    The basic problem with the Simple Budget Plan is that it re-enforces counting beans, particularly at the
    general education level. Now all colleges get to compete for 200-300 students per X101 class.

    So CAS should offer “The Physics of Sex”

    Business should offer “The Business of Sex”

    Journalism should offer ‘Multimedia Sex”

    blah, blah, blah.

    The UO started going significantly downhill in 1997 when our then provost decided to maximally de-centralize and have all the schools and colleges compete against one another.

    Well, now we are decentralized to the point of complete campus dysfunctionality and this budget model will merely perpetuate this.

  56. fstahl 02/13/2010

    Prexy says “”People know about the U of O, they know about the university of Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Berkeley because of the athletics program,” he said, “not necessarily because of the quality of their Sanskrit programs.” That may be true for many potential undergraduates, but it is probably not true for the best students and is certainly not true for good faculty. Good faculty and good students seek positions where there are good faculty and good students. When faculty quality is allowed to decline, bigger and better football is more likely to have a detrimental effect on university quality than a beneficial one.

  57. law prof 02/13/2010

    In response to your post about the new budget model, I’m writing to clarify that there is actually a net outflow of $1.5 million from the law school to the rest of the university. The first version of the budget model had a few mistakes, and the updated version shows a net outflow from the law school to the rest of campus.

  58. Tom 02/17/2010

    Why do you hate UO athletes?

  59. Anonymous 02/17/2010

    Dog Barks about Grade Inflation –

    well before UO matter heaps praise on the UC, let it be known that the UC first took up this issue in April of 2005.

    Progress has been slow, to say the
    least and rather than adopting an aggressive campus wide policy (which would show some balls) – they will simply defer back to the departments
    and then “trust them”

    This is not leadership.

    And yes Grade Inflation (or more accurately) Grade compression is not unique at all to the UO. I have done research on this matter and have found that what is unique to the UO is the excessive amount of A+ grades that are awarded – especially in Military science were 1/4 of the class can get an
    A+ (this is also true of some Music classes).

    Once again, I don’t think anyone at the UO cares about any academic issue involving scholarship and academic integrity – those just get in the way of our real business – taking student tuition dollars and processing them through legacy based curricula leaving them careerless, in debt, and needing to back to a real school (if any are left …)

  60. Academia Nut 02/18/2010

    The introduction of a “victory lap” into Commencement is of a piece with the recent “Celebrating Champions” campaign on the UO website (http://www.uochampions.org/), where we learn about “gamebreaking professors” and our “academic depth chart.” The university leadership is now actively blurring the distinctions between athletic gamesmanship and serious academic study, allowing the rhetoric of the former to dominate its very attempts to defend the latter.

  61. Anonymous 02/18/2010

    Dog Barks on graduation:

    Well, now faculty have a chance
    to register their discontent. I have gone to graduation ceremonies for the last 12 years straight.

    But I am now planning to boycott the 2010 ceremony (even though I am
    supposed to give a 5 minute presentation) in protest of the

    a) the Victory lap
    b) Moving commencement so that the NCAA can do laps

    it may be a small thing but if faculty really are fed up and very few show up in “idiot gowns”, that would certainly register on the administrations academically blind radar. I seriously doubt faculty will boycott and instead they will show up and whine.

  62. Anonymous 02/19/2010

    The recent jury verdict related to charges of race-ethnic discrimination at the UO simply confirms the patterns of retaliation and hostile employee relations that are documented throughout this blog. My understanding of the situation is that Professor Rogers reported wrong-doing, including illegal discrimination, to University authorities. She then experienced systematic retaliation, ending in the termination of her contract. This termination was exacted in a highly irregular fashion and contrary to the vote of both the midterm review committee (including both departmental and external members) and her department. Until reporting the illegal discrimination all reviews of her work had been exemplary. The retaliation was clearly spearheaded by those who were the focus of the reports of discriminatory behavior.

    This pattern of discrimination and, especially, retaliation has been repeated numerous times throughout the University. When challenged, the University, using the Attorney General’s office, spends inordinate amounts of money fighting charges of discrimination. (For instance, the state has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting this particular case and that is before payment of damages and legal costs to the plaintiff.) The administration also engages in extraordinary measures to harass those who dare to challenge them, with numerous and varied attempts to ruin reputations and financial standing of their challengers and their families and friends. Only a very few, brave people are ever able to withstand the onslaught and the deep – in fact virtually bottomless – pockets of the University and the state’s legal apparatus.

    The UO’s approach to employees appears to involve fierce attacks on anyone who dares to question an administrative decision or to point out possible wrongdoing. One, now retired, administrator has been quoted as saying, “We’ll always fight as hard as we can against employees. Only a few people will have the energy to continue all the way against us. Even if we eventually lose a few cases, most people will be too scared to take it all the way, even if they have the law on their side. Thus we probably save money by playing hard ball.”

    I’m not a lawyer, but I have been told that smart organizations approach employment relations in a manner exactly opposite to this. Smart organizations use employment lawyers to help them figure out how to conform to laws and regulations and obey employment related laws – not to harass and intimidate employees or to justify decisions and practices that are blatantly illegal. It is time that the UO entered the 21st century and began to do the same. They should reinstate Professor Rogers to her position and develop fair, non-discriminatory practices and procedures.

  63. Anonymous 02/20/2010

    Are they really going to abandon the departmental graduation ceremonies? If so, big mistake. Despite the tedium of the same program year after year, I enjoy getting together with my students one last time and sometimes meeting their families, getting pictures taken, getting pictures taken with a big study group from the class I taught them senior year ….

    It doesn’t matter much what I enjoy, but the students and parents love it, that is the point. I can’t imagine the new format will do the same for them.

    It sounds like another sports-style entertainment extravaganza dreamt up by Nike or people who think they have learned to think like Nike. It worked pretty well for the Convocation last Fall, I have to admit, but it won’t work in place of the small-format graduation.

    All the blather about the fake excitement about fake “new traditions” and such is too rich for one reading. You really do need to savor it slowly. Is this really Jim Bean’s silver pen or have the geniuses in the sports marketing operation made a breakthrough into new territory? It’s on the same level as the snake oil about sustainability, green chemistry, the fake Big Ideas etc. etc. that they seem to be staking the reputation of the University on these days.

    They may think it will uncork more alumni donations, I wouldn’t bank on it.

    One advantage: I won’t have any reason to go to any more graduations on those June weekend afternoons.

    Perhaps I’m jumping the gun and this is going to be in ADDITION to the departmental ceremonies? Then I might have to take it back.

    Clarification anyone?

  64. Anonymous 02/21/2010

    Notice to “Faculty” Regarding the Former Commencement

    1. Henceforth, the fan support and athletic appreciation event previously known as “Commencement” will be known as “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™.” “Students” or “faculty” who refer to it by any other name will face potential civil liability for copyright infringement or trademark dilution, as well as University discipline.
    2. “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™” will be held in the John E. Jaqua Academic Center and will be attended by all UO varsity athletes who are graduating. If not enough are graduating to fill the auditorium, remaining seats will be filled by their lawyers, sports agents, and probation officers. Approved “faculty” members may also attend when necessary to tell the graduating athletes when to stand, sit, raise their hands, etc. PlayStations will be provided for the graduating athletes to stave off boredom or accidental thought.
    3. “Students” and their families (“fans”) will not be excluded from all the fun and excitement of “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™”! The proceedings, including Coach Kelly’s peptalk (formerly known as “the graduation address”), will be shown on Jumbotrons at Legendary Hayward Field ™ and “students,” “faculty,” and their families may attend and will be seated according to the size of their contribution to the “O” Club over the twelve months preceding each year’s “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™”. The Duck Cheerleaders will lead the cheering as each graduating athletes’s stats are shown on the Jumbotron.
    4. Following the “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™”, major athletes not already prohibited from so doing by terms of exclusive marketing contracts will offer a 15-minute opportunity to obtain autographs. “Students,” “faculty” and their families will form a “Duck Victory Cordon” on both sides of Agate Street to cheer the athletes as they speed by in their limousines. (Correctional system vans returning athletes to work camps will take an alternate route.)
    5. After the conclusion of “Northwest Dodge Dealers Graduation™”, Duck Apparel will be offered for sale. A 2 percent discount will be offered to “students,” “faculty” and their families, and to maintain the festive atmosphere, all these groups will receive coupons good for $1 off a giant pizza at Tracktown (one per diploma, please).

  65. Anonymous 02/21/2010

    The traditional departmental ceremonies will continue. The only change is in the timing and nature ot the University-wide ceremony.

    Here’s what is says in the Provost’s memo:

    Following the University Graduation Celebration, our traditional school, college and department ceremonies will take place at noon and 3 p.m.

  66. Anonymous 02/25/2010

    yaaaawwwn.

  67. Anonymous 02/26/2010

    Earlier today the Provost emailed an update on the “big ideas” projects. These projects are intended to “power the university to the next level.” Each of the projects received $50,000 from the Provost to get started. After reading the sustainable cities progress report, I was left wondering if they are using university funds to support Kitzhaber’s campaign for governor?

    Here’s the link to the sustainable cities progress report:
    http://provost.uoregon.edu/files/2010/02/Sustainable-Cities-progress-web-sm.pdf

    And here’s the relevant bullet point reporting on sustainable cities activities that may also be supporting Kitzhaber’s campaign:

    National/International Partnerships
    Robert Young has developed strong partnerships at both the local and national
    level. Future partnerships on projects include work with the Western
    Environmental Law Center in Eugene, and The Pinchot Institute for
    Conservation in Corvallis and Gensler Architects in New York City. Robert’s
    continued work with the Oregon Way and with former Governor Kitzhaber have
    led to potential sustainability initiatives at the state and even international level.

  68. Anonymous 03/01/2010

    Don’t get excited. Kitzhaber’s campaign approached Young for help on an economic strategy, and he provided it based on ongoing research of his, totally unrelated to SCI. The bullet point from the SCI progress report is indicating nothing more than a potential future direction.

  69. Anonymous 03/08/2010

    Dog says good bye Ernie Kent

    Now is this a good thing or a bad thing – is it fair or unfair?

    Tough call here: On the one hand, Kent did build a real program here which did result in occasional Pac 10 titles and deep runs in the NCAA tournament (getting to the elite 8 twice – in 03 and 07).

    On the other hand, in big time college sports once you have established success your supposed to maintain that. Over the last 3 seasons the ducks are 41-51 and finished at or near the bottom of the Pac 10 the last two seasons.

    So its so long Ernie but , while I don’t strongly disagree with this move, it does kind of suck that the guy who built the Ducks BB program to some kind of national prominence, doesn’t even get a chance to coach in the New Palace of RoundBall.

    It would be good if some investigative reporting could be done here -George Schoeder – do you read this blog – to see exactly how much Phil Knight was behind this. Did Knight really not want Kent in his Palace?

  70. Anonymous 03/12/2010

    How about the fact that Ernie Kent’s players seem to do a much better job staying out of jail?

  71. Anonymous 03/12/2010

    I would kindly suggest that folks read the sentencing memo in the James case before lumping all of the incidents together as a sign of the football apocalypse.

  72. Anonymous 03/21/2010

    I assume the Bellotti payout comes from the Athletic Dept? If so, they can keep throwing away cash, as long as they don’t come begging when they run out.

  73. Anonymous 03/25/2010

    only a flight of fancy would think that bigduck(‘ Dave frohnmeyer) was not in on the bellotti contract/handshake…Does anyone think a brand new pres. sat down with mike and hammered out these details? Mike had already been in the position for 3 months or so. They can go ‘hollywood’ at the athletic department, if they can afford it but it’s a public institution and they are obliged to keep us informed. Shame on pres. la riviere for endorsing the ‘mighty sports entertainment business’ that has become college athletics, and to which he feels
    we must all bow. lets have the new pres. insist on knowing what the 5 or 10 year plan for the athletic dept is forcast to be. Fair dues to patrick kilkenny who does his best but lives in a different world…throwing money at a situation will solve any problem. “A head hunter firm’ to hire a coach? Hallo… Is it possible we dont know the candidates? Pat could have detoured via portland, and talked to my 2 grown kids, who have more than 40 years of experience in college sports, who know every detail of every college player and coach.in the country……AND they would have charged NOTHING

  74. Anonymous 03/30/2010

    Dan Williams sat in on a meeting I had with an associate AD about the design of the Arena and its location between two residence halls. He was clearly there to control how much information was shared.

    Dan was also present at the Ways and Means meetings about the Arena.

  75. Anonymous 03/31/2010

    The RG had an article about the need for new parking. Anyone have info on the Jacqua center parking lot? It seems empty most of the time. Too bad that has to go unused while the U then builds new lots next to daycare centers and the river.

  76. Anonymous 03/31/2010

    My understanding — I think UO Matters got ahold of the contract, perhaps they can clarify — is that one of Dave F’s later moves was to contract with Phil Knight to reserve parking space for the athlete center. Some of this is actually a mostly-empty lot up by the law school. Another one of Dave’s brilliant decisions. I wonder what UO is getting from Phil in return for this (apart from the new sports palaces). I hope it’s worth it. If you’re gonna be a whore, you should at least be sure to be well-paid.

  77. Anonymous 04/01/2010

    In her memo, Grier engages in the most blatant sophistry to justify a payoff that is so clearly unjustifiable. Sources tell me that President Larriviere is quite angry that his name has been dragged into this fiasco, which was orchestrated well before his arrival by four key players: Pat Kilkenny, Dave Frohnmayer, Phil Knight, and Melinda Grier.

    In the current atmosphere of increased public attention directed toward the questionable business practices at UO, the upper administration is desperate to keep secret (a) how many critical university decisions have been heavily influenced by the wishes of the Nike founder himself and (b) the extent to which the UO Foundation has devolved into a money-laundering operation to conceal questionable cash flows from source to recipient in order to facilitate those decisions.

    Grier has been instructed by the president to engage in effective damage control or be prepared to step down by the end of this fiscal year.

  78. Anonymous 04/01/2010

    I’d put even money on Grier outlasting Lariviere.

  79. Anonymous 04/01/2010

    > Bellotti believed he was promised a five-year contract.

    if verbal understandings are ironclad, why not honor this one too? it’d only add another $1.3 mil.

    thank you for keeping the heat up on this. i’m just reveling in the immorality of it all.

  80. Anonymous 04/01/2010

    I would be furious if I were Larivierre. His reputation endangered, apparently because of earlier machinations of the athletic paymasters and Dave F. What a screwy idea, a $2.3 million golden parachute with no written record. How could anyone think a public university could hide that, or get away with it when/if it is exercised? Larivierre left holding the bag, either stiffing Bellotti (and inviting huge legal trouble), or going through with this smelly deal. I doubt that the search committee or the chancellor briefed him on this while he was still at Kansas!

    Another odd thing is Lorraine Davis getting $30K/month for this. That is 2/3 or more of the salary of the president, and comparable to or more than the provost. What can she possibly be doing that is worth that much? Why is the athletic department willing ot pay this much? As far as I can tell from what I read, she isn’t involved in recruiting and hiring the new coaches. Again, what can possibly justify $30K/month?

  81. Open 04/01/2010

    Lariviere is no innocent. He was Provost at Kansas and a Dean at Texas – he’s seen plenty of boosters at work. He’s been on campus at UO for a year now, and he has kept Frohnmayer’s entire management team intact. What did he expect would happen?

  82. Anonymous 04/02/2010

    Why if someone decides to leave a job for another job should they be paid any amount for remaining years on the “contract” they are terminating. Why then let Bellotti leave at all? Why not have him clean the floors of the new Jaqua center instead? At least that way the UO would be getting something out of him.

    Are you kidding me? This is absurd.

  83. Anonymous 04/02/2010

    The University is not saying the $2.3 million will come out of the Athletic Department budget, it is saying it will come from “donors”. I wonder if these will be athletic donors or unrestricted sources, including the alumni fund. The University had better be careful to make sure it is absolutely clear that it comes from athletic funds — the budget, new donations, or the Legacy fund (but if the latter, better leave enough to cover the mortgage on the new arena, especially with lagging ticket sales!).

    This seems obvious, but then why do they seem to be hedging?

    Larivierre had better take charge of this quick or he’s going to be history. It may not be his fault that he didn’t know what a sinkhole he was getting into, but he’s in charge now. It’s sink, crawl out, or swim!

  84. Anonymous 04/03/2010

    Just wait til we find out how much the next bball coach makes–I mean, if they’re waiting on Tom Izzo, that’d be about a $4M/yr deal.

  85. Anonymous 04/04/2010

    4/3/2010: “I think it’s unfair to blame this on Lariviere, it’s got Frohnmayer’s fingerprints all over it.”

    Au contraire, it was Lariviere who fired Bellotti and became a pawn to Beaverton in record time. Frohnmayer would have let Bellotti go on a year or so more before the ESPN job magically fell out of the sky to sweep him away. Senior athletic administrators frequent comments last fall on how great Bellotti was as a sports commentator and that he would probably leave for a TV job seem more than coincidental… the plan was likely hatched the moment Bellotti became AD from small minds with big ambitions and access to a deep-pocketed donor who can make these things happen. And Lariviere bought it. And had lousy counsel to manage it.

    If Lariviere is going to redeem himself in the slightest, he must prohibit his counsel from continuing to issue false statements to the public and quite possibly to the state board and AG. Bellotti was fired and it’s severance pay, end of story. THAT press can’t be any worse than this.

    Unless of course the truth comes out about how Bellotti really got the ESPN job.

    Welcome to big time sports, Mr. Lariviere.

  86. Anonymous 04/04/2010

    Interesting notion — Grier et al tied in with the AG office, so Lariviere better not cross them — typical recent Oregon style — corruption combined with a need to destroy someone for it, even when, especially when they’re not the wrongdoers.

    If Lariviere gets destroyed by this, it will tarnish UO’s national reputation for decades — its academic reputation has already slipped badly — this will tarnish its ethical reputation. Ability to attract top administrative and even academic talent will be compromised.

    An ugly story this, the AG quasi-blackmail scenario, I hope it’s wrong.

  87. Anonymous 04/04/2010

    Melinda Grier is married to Jerry Lidz? We did not know that, Dude.

  88. Anonymous 04/04/2010

    Yes, and Lidz stepped down from his partnership at Harrang when Kroger offerred him the Solicitor job. And Frohnmayer took a job at Harrang 2 months after stepping down as UO President.

    And you think Lariviere is going to out these people at a press conference? You’re a fool.

  89. Anonymous 04/04/2010

    The president needs to admit bellotti was fired and the $2.3m is severance due – bellotti’s name and legacy is being tarnished because they hatched a stupid explanation to save face for all. Administration feared the public outcry that would come with firing a faithful coach they only gave months to succeed as AD, but they were too short-sighted to anticipate the outcry over a seemingly undue exit check. If the president is to succeed he needs better than “mock” counsel.

    They will never admit who is really calling the shots though, that is certain.

    And with Lidz in Salem the final word from the AG may well be that it is a personnel matter and not subject to public disclosure.

  90. Anonymous 04/06/2010

    A splendid statement by Lariviere. It appears that he unknowingly inherited this mess from the previous guy, and when he decided it was time for Bellotti to go, he had to clean it up.

    Splendid, except: assuming what he wrote was accurately reported in the Oregonian

    “Furthermore, because I had made the decision that the university needed new leadership within the athletic department, an agreement was necessary to affect this transition.”

    he needs to learn the difference between the verbs “affect” and “effect.”

    Who knows? Maybe the Oregonian staff came up with this blunder.

  91. Anonymous 04/07/2010

    I am furious. Have you hired anyone lately at the UO? The hoops you have to jump through are incredible. Why does the athletic department get a complete pass on hiring someone with NO CONTRACT at all? Where was HR? Where was affirmative action? Where was payroll? You can’t just sweep this under the rug. It is an epic failure. I am disgusted.

    Also the present value of Bellotti’s contract cannot be $2.3 million. As long as we are giving away the store and we have to be oh so scared about the legal implications of somehow not honoring the ghost of a verbal contract – shouldn’t we consider the present value of the amount owed?

    We are run by a bunch of idiots.

  92. Anonymous 04/07/2010

    Athletics reports to the president to give an “image” of accountability, but since frohnmayer had less time than self-importance the day-to-day oversight was delegated to Grier, and the responsibility to negotiate the AD contract was delegated again to Kilkenny who talked the talk then either dropped the ball or passed it back to Grier. Do outgoing vice presidents negotiate the incoming’s contract? This whole blunder lies squarely with counsel (and DF) who didn’t take care of business. Grier “asked around” for a term sheet when it was ultimately hers to create. Nice deflection. I delegate my vote on first to leave to Grier.

  93. Anonymous 04/07/2010

    I think we wanted to believe so thoroughly that Lariviere was going to be the saving grace for the university. We dreamed of a President that would keep the university an academic based university instead of moving into a corporation based university full of administrative greed. I am disappointed. From the actions on this latest administrative blunder of verbal contracts…I don’t see anyone standing up for academia and saying NO. There stands before us another administrator trying their best to lie their way out of a lie. I am ashamed. Lariviere has given us an ugly black eye.

    Begs to ask the question…what has the administration promised him when he retires?

  94. Anonymous 04/07/2010

    I think the previous commenter is off in his/her estimation of Lariviere. While he talked about wanting a more business/finance-minded AD, a subtext of statements both he and Bellotti have made seems to be that there has been some tension between what the athletic department has been able to do in the past and how Lariviere wants things run. And while in this forum people won’t cheer Davis’s appointment, it supports this hypothesis because the strong default in such a setting is to ask an associate AD to be the interim. Time will tell, but we should have a good indication in the choice of the new AD.

  95. Anonymous 04/07/2010

    Lariviere calmly and effectively took charge and took responsibility for the Bellotti buyout yesterday and I believe him when he says he will insist on more accountability and openness in his administration. Time will indeed tell.

    Of course I’d have loved to hear him say that a university paying men millions to play games and millions to quit playing them has lost its moral compass. But that’s a societal failing, one that it would be politically suicidal for a UO president to take on. A firewall between academics and athletics is the best one can realisitically hope for.

    Bellotti came off yesterday as a rich man and a simple man who believes that he is entitled to more money. But Lariviere, crouched beside him, came off as the savvier and more powerful man. That’s what you want to see.

  96. Anonymous 04/08/2010

    Dog Barks

    Don’t tell me what I want see …

    I might say, I want to see a new classroom constructed at 10% the cost of the Knight Palace

    I might want to see a Jaqua Box dedicated to the proposition that Athletics and Academics part Partners

    I might want to see more real faculty resourced hired to cope with our significantly increased number of undergraduates.

    I might want to see a funding model that embraces the scholarship of ideas and academic integrity more than counting beans

    I might want to see a Computing Center that understands its 2010

    I might want to see non-elite members of the community actually park in the new abandoned Lot 34 F

    I might want to see a lot things.
    But instead I witness nothing but
    backpedaling and vague overtures to a future different than the one know.

    Mostly, i wanna fuckin’ parking spot

  97. Anonymous 04/08/2010

    I generally enjoy the dog’s barking, but comments like this:
    “I might want to see a funding model that embraces the scholarship of ideas and academic integrity more than counting beans”
    make me gag. Let’s see – “scholarship of ideas” vs. “counting beans” (no pun intended, I’m sure) – which one sounds better…? That’s right up there in my book with “so, you don’t want to make abortion illegal… how many babies have you killed today?”

    There are serious, difficult questions in increasing and allotting university resources, and pretty soon we might to make the same “least bad” kind of choices that CA public universities are making now “gee, do we pretty much eviscerate expensive programs like music or do we go on-line exclusively at the 100 level (or both)?”

    Maybe, just maybe, we can figure out a model which is transparent and fair enough so that people can make difficult choices now instead of horrific choices later. I can’t say if the current model fits that – I just don’t know – but I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand. If we don’t count beans, we won’t have any.

  98. Anonymous 04/09/2010

    dog deciphers

    scholarship of ideas means
    “creating new knowledge”

    counting beans means

    “passing on a legacy based
    curriculum of accumulated facts
    in 100 level courses” to put it in CA language.

    In more blunt terms – do we invest
    in scholarship or butts in seats?

    Is that more clear?

  99. Anonymous 04/10/2010

    Does UOMatters have an opinion on the University of Wisconsin’s recent decision to sever ties to Nike due to labor issues in their overseas factories?

  100. Anonymous 04/10/2010

    Get the WRC story straight: As I remember it, the WRC was a national movement backed by students at the UO, who took the issue to the Senate, which advised Frohnmayer to join the WRC (see http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen990/US9900-10.html). He did so. This was an example of faculty actually being listened to on a matter of school policy.

  101. Anonymous 04/11/2010

    Dog,

    You can howl about “creation of knowledge” all you like, but the days when that paid the bills outside the sciences are long gone. In theory, that’s what state support should be about – investment in scholarship for the benefit of the public – but we all know where that has gone.

    Without state support you’re looking at donor support or tuition. Tuition is what we directly control, and there we can either go small and expensive or go with “butts in seats,” as you say. I’ve been on campuses which have followed each strategy and I have a slight preference for the latter. Someone whose parents are paying $25K for tuition feels mighty entitled to my time, and of course keeping tuition within reach does mean that a wider range of students have access to our university.

    Or, we could go with neither strategy and just cut faculty pay…

  102. Anonymous 04/16/2010

    Dog’s don’t really howl – howling dogs would be wolves and I am not yet at the wolf stage in my academic evolution.

    Would also like to start a new thread or issue, seeking permission of course from the mighty UOmatters CZAR of all things real on this burgeoning (that’s a big academic word for a dog) issue of grade inflation and grade culture at the UO. My current impression of this process is that its being done in the typical chicken shit way, no balls, no real attention to data, no real direct corrective actions.

    On the other hand, this is a highly disturbing story …

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-04-15-IHE-tough-prof-removed-LSU-15_ST_N.htm

    so maybe we should just all punt and go the butts in seats route that the previous poster seems to imply is the right thing to do.

  103. Anonymous 04/17/2010

    Wow, now they’re tracking their whereabouts?

    While we’re at it,how about posting the athletic department mental health records on the web?

    Hey, how about all the administrators and faculty?

  104. Anonymous 04/17/2010

    Dogs who fly say:

    Kilkenny’s Tail Number is only “public” information because he registered it,to the public domain.

    For instance

    http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N808TC

    is Tom Cruise (Cruise likes dogs …)

    So there is nothing to be surprised at. On the other hand, the UO parking permits contain tiny GPS transmitters so that Francis Dyke can keep track of you …

  105. Anonymous 04/17/2010

    Did you read the Coffeegate section on the Keep Ken Coalition website?

    http://keepkencoalition.org/Coffeegate.aspx

    From the e-mail correspondence between adjunct professor Ken DeBevoise and Political Science department chair Lars Skalnes, it’s clear that Skalnes acted in an arbitrary and petty fashion towards DeBevoise, overriding at the last minute DeBevoise’s decision to hold his class in a coffee shop. What’s astounding is that he justifies this by quoting a section of the Faculty Handbook that in fact indicates that it’s perfectly fine to have classes outside the classroom, so long as the professor is prudent about it. Then, he utterly refuses to engage DeBevoise’s reasoned arguments that point this out.

    Ordinarily, such an incident would be entirely trivial. But it came just a couple of months before Skalnes fired DeBevoise, and it gives some insight into Skalnes’s degree of openness to being contradicted by a subordinate.

  106. Anonymous 04/17/2010

    Dog Barks a quick one on Coffeegate:

    Over my (non)-illustrious teaching career at the UO I have occasionally held classes in non-standard locations. However, I would never,
    ever, do this, as described in
    DeBevoise’s email to his students.

    4. HOUSE RULE: Even though you may be on the Anorexic Diet Plan, as matter of common courtesy to the coffee shop owners, everyone needs to buy at least a cup of tea – or something. Please order before we start if possible.

    The text ‘everyone needs’ is the
    key here. While this may seem like a moronic detail for me to bark about, when viewed from an external perspective, it looks bad.

    Yes, I once had senior level class session in a local bar, but at least I paid for everything myself (personally, no department reimbursement).

    Requiring the students to “buy something” as a gateway for sitting in another space for class I think is ethically wrong.

  107. anon 04/18/2010

    I agree it’s not OK to tell them they need to buy something, or hold class somewhere they feel they should. Not a firing offense though.

  108. Anonymous 04/19/2010

    I’ll admit it, the DeBevoise story makes me jealous. I wonder if my students would fight for me like this if I was fired?

  109. Anonymous 04/19/2010

    Depends – do your courses (the content, format, and the manner in which you lead them) inspire and encourage passionate intellectual debate, every single session? Do your courses challenge students to such an extent that once they have completed one, they no longer believe in the methods of 99% of the other professors on campus, nor in the value of their tuition dollars?

    That Skalnes and the PS department can’t find a way to keep somebody so well respected by such bright and passionate students and alumni is pathetic. There has, for many years now, been a ken “cult” within the PS majors, and for very good reason.

  110. Anonymous 04/20/2010

    Dog Comments on Rumors, etc

    1. The “Shelton” model indeed has increased some department’s annual budgets but this is just a reflection of significantly increased enrollment over the last 2 years. Those tuition dollars are, perhaps, being allocated to schools and colleges now in a more rationale way than in the past. But the effectiveness in the long run of this approach is unclear as it steals initiative dollars away from the central system (however, it doesn’t seem we have any academic initiative whatsoever so maybe this is a moot point).

    2. In theory, there is significant money for “raises”. At the moment, the raise strategy appears to be mostly in the hands of Russ Tomlin so who knows how that strategy will pan out in terms of real implementation. One initial target, which I actually agree with, is to pay attention to average departmental equity compared to some peer indicators. Whether such a strategy can be implemented in a fair and non-cumbersome matter remains to be seen.

    Personally, I would rather see these increased tuition dollars go to build a new classroom building, with classroom sizes in the area of 90-150 students (we have an extreme dearth of those at present) to better accommodate the butts in seats that are increasingly paying our salaries …

  111. Anonymous 04/20/2010

    Lariv says

    “The quality of a university is determined by its faculty.”

    and UO Matters notes

    “In my experience, good students don’t hurt either.”

    So, UO Matters, while you confessedly are no economist, let me ask: in a situation of finite “resources” i.e. money, should Lariv take money from the pool for increased faculty salaries, and instead use it for merit scholarships to attract better students?

  112. UO Matters 04/21/2010

    Well, hmm, that’s indeed a complicated question. I believe that it was covered in the required readings – you’ve looked, I assume? Regardless, clearly a normative issue. I’m not sure that there would be anything gained by discussing it here. Right, well, I think that’s it for today, see you Monday. Class dismissed.

  113. Anonymous 04/21/2010

    Rumors, rumors: Rumor control reports that Brad Shelton’s new budget model has already translated into new money for some academic departments for next year, and that Pres Lariviere has developed a 5 year plan to raise UO faculty salaries to the average of UO’s “peer” institutions, with the first round of raises starting in Sept.

    Anyone ever ask where they come from, and who is making this stuff up OR… leaking info? Do we have to live on rumors?!?

  114. Anonymous 04/21/2010

    Well, UO Matters, splendid, brilliant response to my query about the student/faculty tradeoff! One of the great teachers, like that guy in polysci. We’ll remember this when it comes time to renew your contract!

  115. Anonymous 04/21/2010

    Dog on Rumors:

    You readers can believe this or not but at the CAS Department Heads meeting on Monday April 19th the results of the Shelton model were essentially unveiled and later that afternoon preliminary budgets were sent to various CAS departments – most of them received increases in their basic operating budgets that are commensurate with the simple fact of enrollment growth. So yes, that did happen.

    What will happen in the realm of faculty raises is still unclear -there are a lot of rumors floating around on that one and none are credible enough to report.

  116. Anonymous 04/21/2010

    Maybe those fat cat professor raises rumored for September will be just big enough to pay the increased fees for the Arena parking! That is, if they’re not scotched by the legislature or the state board.

    That empty jock parking lot will look more and more interesting. Perhaps the athletic department can “donate” some of that space to help alleviate parking!

  117. Anonymous 04/21/2010

    Dog woofs: wow, I love fat cats! This will be good.

    Now before anyone gets super excited that the new budget model has instantaneously transformed the UO into a decent institution, let’s back up a moment and consider it.

    The Budget in a Nutshell document by Shelton is useful, but the allocations to SHC, majors and degrees are already part of the way that college base budgets are determined. This just specifies a 50/30/20 breakdown so it becomes more formulaic.

    However, this 50/30/20 is only aggregated at the College level and not passed on to individual departments who vary greatly on the 50/30/20 breakdown. Hence, one department will be subsidizing another department, as usual.

    So my prediction is that a) yes extra money is now available due to increased enrollment, b) some of that money could be spent to scale up instructional resource to meet that but c) the equivalent of redirecting funds to “Johnson Hall” like projects will occur at the School/College level because, hey, its now their money to be responsible with. So I personally anticipate business as usual and since I am not a fat cat (because I am a dog), I personally will see a marginal increase in my salary in September (I predict 3.5%) and life will go one as usual.

    1. Over crowded classrooms in shit spaces
    2. Inadequate parking
    3. Same old curriculum year in and year out.
    4. Continued appalling lack of graduate students at a “research University”
    5. The UOmatters blog will not become insignificant as predicted by its author
    6. But we might have a basketball coach by then …

  118. Anonymous 04/22/2010

    This fat cat loves to rip the sniffers off of dumb, noisy dogs! But I digress.

    It’s interesting that none of the articles about the recent UO athletic scandals (or “scandals”) make much mention of Dave F. It’s always the fault of Grier, or Bellotti, or Kilkenny, or Lariviere. But it all goes back to Dave.

    Does the press really have that short a memory or are they covering for this Oregon “icon”?

    Personally, I never got it about Dave. I’ll leave it at that.

  119. Anonymous 04/22/2010

    UOMatters, I think you definitely deserve a lot of credit in keeping people informed and in acting as a needed gadfly. This is really good news. Change was needed, in a big, big way. Thanks for your efforts.

    A dedicated reader

  120. UO Matters 04/22/2010

    Thanks President Larviere, that means a lot to me.

    UO Matters

  121. Anonymous 04/22/2010

    We all need to keep up the pressure to make sure that Dave F is included in this scandal. Also we need not forget what the rest of the administration has been doing without legislative approval…raises, reorganizations, promotions of their own. If you think our house is clean getting rid of a lawyer…think again and keep cleaning until their all gone. Bring education back as the reason we all put in a days work.

  122. Anonymous 04/23/2010

    The lowest grade he can get is an A- ? I know you’re not an economist, but isn’t there some grade inflation going on here?

    Seriously, he hasn’t done much yet. He inherited a mess and didn’t really do anything about it until it broke out in the press as a scandal. He fired the obvious scapegoat. For this, he’s very well paid indeed. It’s a good thing to have an apparently capable outsider after 15 years of growing insider corruption/incompetence. But this is nothing to put him on the A+/A/A- curve. Not in my department, anyhow.

    When he really shows evidence of coming to grips with UO’s problems — basically, its sliding academic stature, both in reality and perception — and shows how something can be done about it — then it will be time to give him a good grade. But on the regular curve, please.

  123. Anonymous 04/23/2010

    I hope that President Lariviere has taken steps to lock up Melinda’s office, email, files, and access so that he can have investigators go through everything. She had her hands in a whole lot more than just athletics. If this change to transparency is going to happen, he should start out in compliance with state laws. He will find out just what the administration has been up to through Melinda’s documents. In fact if he wanted to do the job proper he should lock up all the administration including AAEO and have it all investigated. It may surprise him to find out what they have been doing. Clean up properly and he would be nationally known for his actions toward transparency. We would be known for our turn toward education being our priority instead of being a money making machine for athletics and administrators. Ya can’t argue with that.

  124. Anonymous 04/25/2010

    Have you guys seen today’s buried email from HR regarding the immediate reassignment of the law school’s associate dean for finances to the athletic department?

  125. budgeting person 04/25/2010

    The adults take charge. Melinda is not the only one who will be getting a time-out.

    From: Human Resources
    Date: Apr 25, 2010 10:29:42 PDT
    Subject: [HR] Moffitt selected to manage athletics department’s business operations
    Reply-To: [email protected]

    TO: University of Oregon faculty and staff

    FROM: Lorraine Davis, Interim Director of Intercollegiate Athletics

    I am pleased to announce that Jamie Moffitt of the University of Oregon School of Law has accepted an appointment to become Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration within the UO Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.

    Jamie is currently the associate dean for finance and operations at the law school, where she has served since 2003. During her time at the law school, she reorganized the school’s financial structure, implemented new annual budgeting processes, designed new financial reporting practices, and improved the school’s human resource and contracting processes to conform to campus best practices. Prior to joining the university, Jamie held private sector leadership positions as a senior executive at a venture-backed technology company in Boston and as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm.

    Jamie’s appointment to the new position in the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics will begin May 1.

    She will direct all aspects of the department’s business operations. A key element of her role will be assessing the department’s ongoing needs. She and her team of financial and human resource professionals will ensure that the organizational structure, staffing, and financial resources are in place to achieve department priorities.

    As interim director of intercollegiate athletics, I sought creation of this new role as a means of attending to ongoing issues and long-term goals within the department. The Department of Intercollegiate Athletics has experienced a period of rapid growth and success. This new position will help the department to develop and implement the necessary budgeting, financial, human resource, and contractual practices to support this expansion.

    I am grateful to Jamie for her willingness to accept this vitally important position. Her experience in finance and operations at the school of law, combined with her personal background in athletics, make her the ideal person to fill this new role. As an undergraduate at Harvard University she served from 1989 to 1991 as captain of the women’s tennis team. She also competed for a year on the Women’s Professional Tennis Circuit.

    Jamie received her A.B. (economics) from Harvard, her M.A.L.D. (international business) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She currently teaches classes in accounting and negotiation.

    Please join me in welcoming Jamie Moffitt in her new role to the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.

  126. UO Matters 04/25/2010

    What’s the deal about that title though –

    Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration

    I assume they’ll give her posters to hand out instead of business cards.

  127. Anonymous 04/25/2010

    So with Dave F “teaching” a course at the law school in leadership I wonder if Melinda will be teaching a course in Ethics and compliance with law.

  128. ZStarMac 04/25/2010

    By the logic of “denying” workers the ability to work for Nike, should we repeal our child labor laws? Why should we deny children the ability to help support their families?

  129. UO Matters 04/25/2010

    The evidence from developing countries is mixed. The combination of a bad public school system and a ban on child labor is obviously problematic. Many families have some children working and use the money to pay the school fees of the others. You think taking away that choice will make them better off? Maybe, maybe not. If it’s illegal for a Nike factory to hire teenage girls, who do you think *will* hire them? When you are dealing with people’s lives, you owe it to them to be realistic.

    When did the US ban child labor? Not until we had decent free public schools.

    But I’m touchy about this, having started my first job at age 13, illegally, and at less than the minimum wage too. You think kids don’t learn anything important working?

  130. Anonymous 04/26/2010

    It’s kind of silly, and also extremely condescending, to think that developing countries should have our laws imposed on them (by whom? us?).

    We are always hearing, mainly from people on the left, that the United States tries too hard to impose its values on the rest of the world.

    But these same people, when they get the chance, do exactly that. By somewhat different means, perhaps. For example, by shackling corporations rather than the military or the government. But the result is very similar.

    Maybe Lariviere, having some actual experience of business in the developing world, will have a more constructive relationship with Nike and the like. If, that is, he isn’t derailed by our many groups of local activists, including the UO faculty, student body, and the ever-ready Eugene radicals.

    I haven’t forgotten that it wasn’t Dave F. alone who ruined relations with Phil Knight, at least with the “academic side” of the University.

    He had plenty of help, he was encouraged and pushed, by the dear faculty and students.

  131. UO Matters 04/26/2010

    The comment above is right on. The moderate faculty and students cannot keep quiet and let this happen again.

  132. Anonymous 04/26/2010

    I hope I am not going to be the only one working to undermine the vacating of Moss Street for parking lots….but I suspect I am.

  133. Anonymous 04/27/2010

    UOMatters said: “The moderate faculty and students cannot keep quiet and let this happen again.” Could UOMatters please tell us what the pronoun “this” refers to?

  134. Anonymous 04/27/2010

    ON your latest non-scientific poll because you not economist, the dog says

    what does “Right Direction” mean?

    if we vote no does that mean the UO is moving in the “wrong direction”

    a physicist told me once that all motion is relative

    dog is confused

  135. UO Matters 04/27/2010

    Sorry Dog, I should have included “it depends”.

  136. Anonymous 04/28/2010

    Ok now your saying that the athletes get the parking next to the cube, on 15th street and under the silver space ship? Come on…do they study that much? It looks to me that the lots are empty most of the time. Does the administration “hope” that more athletic students will decide to use the cube and start parking? I stopped driving to campus. I park in a lot and take the bus to campus. How many of us would it take to make a point of the unfairness of this parking issue? If a good sum of us took the bus then it may force the administration to raise their parking fees to cover for the athletes. I think its time to call in the auditors and investigators to clean this place up.

  137. Anonymous 04/28/2010

    The only way to top what’s happened so far would be for Frohnmayer to get the interim Pres gig at Univ of Washington.

  138. JB 08/23/2010

    So wait, the Financial Transparency Tool is available… via Duckweb? So only students, faculty and staff get access? To this alumnus, that’s not very transparent at all.

  139. Anonymous 08/30/2010

    Kinda surprised this blog has not covered the DPS’s recent story in the register Guard about becoming a police department. Where is that place getting all that money? I have heard DPS has hired many supervisors and has openings for many more. I also heard DPS has bought a bunch of cars and an ATV and has also bought some big screen televisions for their new office. Aren’t we in a recession right now with cuts across the boards? Think I will look into some salary information to see how much this is costing students. How much will becoming a police department cost? We do not need this sort of thing on our campus and never have.

  140. Anonymous 08/30/2010

    Do Intercollegiate Athletics staff and administrators pay for their own parking? I doubt it.

  141. Anonymous 08/31/2010

    Hey, wassa matter with those big bucks for public safety? Ya want all that money going to the library? Waste all that dough on books and stuff? After, all this is a public university! Next you’ll be criticizin the athletic program!

    As for the new armed cops, one thing I’ll say for that guy Larry Riviera: he got his head screwed on straight, better than that old guy Dave.

  142. Anonymous 08/31/2010

    On raises… Have worked for UO 12 years.. am topped out so will NEVER get a pay raise unless it comes in a cost of living increase.. Even if I did it still would not make up for the $150 bucks a month I have been losing for 2 years due to Furlough days…
    Please remember: NOT all state employees are getting raises..

  143. Ted 09/03/2010

    About the possible (grant-dependent) 13th redesign; Not only is it going to be better and safer for everyone (bikes, peds, and cars), the 13th section isn’t even the important part of the project. The rest of it is a redesign of Alder between Franklin and 19th, creating a two way “cycle track” on one side of the road. 13th between Alder and Kincaid is actually being used to pick up on-street parking that is being moved off of Alder (North of 13th). The fact that parking on 13th is being increased and we are STILL calling it a nice, safety-focused redesign is a testament to the hard work of the bike/ped planners working for the city. This project deserves the support of the UO community.

  144. Anonymous 09/03/2010

    UO Matters:

    “This is so not my area of expertise”

    Uh, I know you’re not an economist, and not an attorney, you’re obviously never going to be an administrator … just what is your area of expertise?

  145. Anonymous 09/04/2010

    The advantage of the scholarships to top students — I think the bar should be higher — is the hope that it would keep more of them in Oregon, and at OUS schools; we disportionately (compared to other states) lose top students to out of state schools.

    Economists can argue all they want about whether financial aid (including loans) ends up in increased access or higher tuition. Probably some of both, is my non-economist guess. Are the economists that much better at figuring these things out? Not judging by how little they agree on anything.

    The male/female disparity could easily be cured by taking into SATs, where males have an advantage, as well as grades.

    The Dudley plan is different than the Lariviere plan, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t both happen.

    At least, it’s good to see a candidate who at least is mouthing serious positive things for higher education.

    Kitzhaber, what say you?

  146. Anonymous 09/05/2010

    I am thinking that we should find out who Dudley’s puppet masters are. I haven’t seen anything that tells me he can balance a check book let alone run our state. He might be a good person and that is a start but really who runs his reins. Yes there is a trust factor here, Dudley is from the same “party” as Dave F and look what Dave did to the University will we get the same kind of treatment for our whole state? I for one have paid the ultimate price for Dave’s actions, a price I wouldn’t want for our entire state. I’m saying an elitist problem on campus is one thing an elitist problem state wide would be a huge problem. Especially for the have nots.

  147. UO Law Student 09/06/2010

    Regarding those horrible combo ID/student account/debit cards, the UO doesn’t have them. We have plain old student IDs for checking out books and getting discounts on movie tickets, a nice website and Oregon Hall for taking care of our tuition/financial aid, and the ability to choose our own banks.

    It’s a great system.

  148. Anonymous 09/07/2010

    The snide little rant about Dudley’s “puppet masters”, his party, Dave F etc. is typical academic anti-Republican prejudice that has gotten academia in trouble with, oh, close to half the public. (The other half may be angrier than you think, too, but about somewhat different things.)

    Look, he graduated from Yale, even if he might have been a “legacy” like Bush or Gore or Kerry — I have no way of knowing — he’s probably better at his checkbook than 2/3 of Oregon legislators and 4/5 of UO grads. (And I daresay, a good fraction of the UO faculty, who are completely in the dark about university finances.) Oh, he was also an apparently successful investment counselor, that might count a bit too in the checkbook balancing department.

    Look at what Dave F did to the University? I’ve looked a lot. But I also remember when Kitz was Gov and what was happening to the University then. A lot of what Dave did, in fact, was a response to what the state was doing to the University.

    Dudley at least has come up with a positive scholarship vision, even if it’s not a plan (because there’s no money). He’s in favor of some kind of decoupling of higher education from state shackles, not inconsistent with the Lariviere ideas.

    I’m undecided about whom to vote for, if anyone. So I’d like to see Kitzhaber come up with something on higher education. I really would. Something other than “weatherizing” the buildings to save energy costs. I’m waiting.

    And by the way, who are Kitzhaber’s “puppet masters”? Will they SEIU soon?

  149. Anonymous 09/08/2010

    More on politics and higher education — Kitzhaber’s education plan is a unified super-board of education encompassing K-12 through graduate school. This seems to be the opposite of Dudley’s decentralization notions, and completely at odds (from what is known so far) with the Lariviere plan for UO.

    Too bad, since there are other things from Kitzhaber that I like. From Dudley too. It may be a tough choice in November.

  150. Anonymous 09/08/2010

    dog on research expenditures:

    Research expenditures are generally misleading and, as UO matters implied, the distribution (like the distribution of US household income) is highly negatively skewed with a very long tail towards a few “conglomerate grants”.

    A few years ago, I had a small scale “conglomerate grant” with a total value of 800K over 3 years. This grant was with 3 other institutions and I/UO was lead – nonetheless – all grant expenditures were reported as total, not just the UO share – so that’s why grant expenditures can be very misleading.

    A very good indicator, of research activity, however, is the amount or percentage of total graduate students at your research University that are directly supported on External Grants. I am quite sure that the UO would not look very good in that comparative light.

  151. Anonymous 09/09/2010

    The Bellamy exchange with the AD implies that annual giving to athletics is $30 million last time around. The UO Foundation report has $78.5 million in gifts total in the most recent year reported.

    Is that really correct, 3/8 or so of total giving going to athletics?

    Does this not say something interesting about priorities of the University’s boosters? Or does it reflect on the fund-raising operation?

  152. Anonymous 09/13/2010

    Dog requests

    gee classes start in just two weeks
    does any have any enthusiasm that
    I could borrow?

    I seem to have lost all of mine over the past year of constantly being reminded that I teach beans and not ideas …

  153. Anonymous 09/15/2010

    Dog on police

    Cause Dogs love chasing cops …

    Part of the agenda here is Arena Coverage. Remember why the Eugene Celebration got moved – not enough cops to cover both UO football game
    and celebration.

    There is some concern that the required Arena security (not that its gonna sell out for basketball given the non-competitiveness of both our teams at the moment) will require more “UO police”.

    Still, this is all stupid – on the other hand, maybe Dog trades their tenure in for a badge and a gun so that I can accidentally shoot UO administrators at Arena games – now
    that’s a plan ….

  154. Anonymous 09/15/2010

    You seem to put the onus for the move toward a regular police department on Frances Dyke, but surely such a major change in policy would not be in the works without the backing of Lariviere.

    I wonder if they had a setup like this at the University of Kansas, where Lariviere was provost before he came here? Or Texas, where he was dean, as I recall?

  155. Anonymous 09/15/2010

    A UO Police Department has been a priority for Frances for years. It drove her decisions to hire Turkiewicz and Kevin Williams – both with police experience, both disasters. But Anonymous is right that ultimately Lariviere’s approval is behind this.

  156. Anonymous 09/15/2010

    VP OIED: Amen is all that is needed

  157. Anonymous 09/15/2010

    Need to update this info promptly

    Charles Martinez Jr., Ph.D.
    Research Scientist
    Oregon Social Learning Center
    e-mail

    Active research projects
    • Adolescent Latino Acculturation Study (NIDA, PI)
    • Latino Youth and Family Empowerment Project – II (NIDA, PI)
    • Linking the Interests of Famliies and Teachers (NIMH, Co-I)
    • Parent Child Study (NIMH, Co-I)

    Primary research and clinical interests
    Dr. Charles R. Martinez, Jr. is a clinical psychologist and research scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Oregon and directs the OSLC Latino Research Team. He is the principal investigator on National Institutes of Health research projects designed to examine risk and protective factors involved in linking acculturation to behavioral health outcomes for Latino families and to develop and test culturally specific interventions for Latino families with youngsters at risk of behavioral health problems. His general substantive interest’s center on identifying factors that promote healthy adjustment for families and children following stressful life events, (e.g. changes in family structure, socioeconomic status, physical and/or emotional health, acculturation, and immigration status), taking into consideration the cultural contexts in which families operate. Dr. Martinez has served on the Oregon Governor’s Ethnic and Racial Task Force, the Governor’s Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs, and
    (is a publicly elected member of the Eugene, District 4J School Board) incorrect since 2009.
    (He currently serves as the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity at the University of Oregon) will be incorrect 8/11
    and teaches graduate courses in multiculturalism and diversity in his role as an Associate Professor in the College of Education. He has published many scientific papers related to basic and applied cross-cultural prevention research, minority health disparities, and Latino behavioral health. He is a nationally known consultant on organizational diversity issues, cross-cultural research, and community engagement. Dr. Martinez has received numerous national, state, and local awards for his work, including the ‘2003 Community, Culture, and Prevention Science Award’ from the Society for Prevention Research.

  158. Anonymous 09/16/2010

    I think this move of Charles is the smartest move yet…it could only get better if he were gone, I mean gone, gone… from campus gone. The University has paid enough for his time on the blackberry.

  159. Anonymous 09/16/2010

    I wonder if Mike Bullis is going to approve Martinez’s Conflict of Commitment reports? If not he is going to take a hell of a pay cut.

  160. Anonymous 09/16/2010

    Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. At least Martinez was largely ineffectual; while writing Strategic Actions Plans is an exercise in paper pushing and a waste of time, think of what it would be like if OIED could actually implement some of its bad ideas. Remember “cultural competency”? We could have even more illegal programs like UMRP (Despite what the University claims, unequal pay for equal work is against the law. By the way, I think that program was vetted through the expert legal council of Grier.)

  161. UO Matters 09/16/2010

    I think you are right. Charles was hired precisely because he convinced Moseley he was an ineffectual paper pusher. And with his ridiculous Diversity Action Plans, he delivered. All the potential troublemakers spent all their energy drafting and revising silly plans – it was brilliantly ineffectual.

    It was also a cynical soul destroying waste of good people’s energy and spirit, and a million or so a year in cash. All so Moseley could get bailed out of the lawsuit and Martinez could pad his paycheck.

    Fuck them both.

  162. Anonymous 09/16/2010

    OIED – VP

    I guess it would be difficult in the future to take vacations. Walking back into a terminal contract is never fun.

  163. Anonymous 09/17/2010

    So now that Charles is going back to teaching is he going to oppress and harass his students like he does the people he supervises? The college of Ed should give him only non credit courses so he has no power to ruin someones life like he has done as a VP. With his track record up to now…he can’t be trusted to be a teacher. The College of Ed needs to keep an eye on him…he clearly can’t be trusted.

  164. Anonymous 09/19/2010

    Any scuttlebutt on raises this Fall? I keep hearing rumors Lariviere will grant ~6%. But no word from Johnson Hall. I think it would go over like poison in the state. But maybe that’s OK with UO?

  165. Anonymous 09/20/2010

    dog says

    at the moment, no one in J-hall can figure out how to implement a pay raise (funds are available but various strategies are at an impasse)

    obviously nothing has happened yet
    and our last pay raise was November 2008.

  166. Anonymous 09/21/2010

    dog barks

    Its good to know that in all this parking chaos we will end up with more energy efficient parking paved parking lots. Now that’s progress ….

  167. Anonymous 09/21/2010

    Another thing about parking this year — they make you pick up the permit at the public safety office — supposedly because last year, some of the permits didn’t make it through campus mail.

    I guess if it was a pizza business, and there was a problem with the home delivery service, they’d cancel that and make you pick it up.

    Or think about the post office …

  168. Anonymous 09/21/2010

    It would probably be a good idea to have armed cops on campus. Guns illegal on campus, so right now we’re sitting ducks for a Virginia Tech type event. How long would it take for the Eugene cops to get here, after they became aware that something was going on? Even with armed campus cops, I would feel safer with concealed carry by civilians on campus.

    To repeat, right now the University is about the best target possible for an armed lunatic or a terrorist to carry out a mass slaughter, because there’s nothing to stop them.

  169. Anonymous 09/22/2010

    THE NCAA’s CORE PURPOSE IS TO govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.

    And this dear folks is right off their web site. Here is their core values…

    The Association – through its member institutions, conferences and national office staff – shares a belief in and commitment to:

    • The collegiate model of athletics in which students participate as an avocation, balancing their academic, social and athletics experiences.

    • The highest levels of integrity and sportsmanship.

    • The pursuit of excellence in both academics and athletics.

    • The supporting role that intercollegiate athletics plays in the higher education mission and in enhancing the sense of community and strengthening the identity of member institutions.

    • An inclusive culture that fosters equitable participation for student-athletes and career opportunities for coaches and administrators from diverse backgrounds.

    • Respect for institutional autonomy and philosophical differences.

    • Presidential leadership of intercollegiate athletics at the campus, conference and national levels.

    It must be true..its on their web site.

  170. Anonymous 09/22/2010

    What kind of screwball logic is that?

    By that reasoning, why don’t they issue guns to all the classified staff, since they have the greatest distribution across campus at any given time and can be ready to disarm or “disable” any gunman or “lunatic” who storm the campus…. and the extra authority might compensate for all those furlough days!

  171. Anonymous 09/22/2010

    What is screwball about it? There’s a body of social science literature to support it. Controversial, to be sure, as one would expect. I suggest you read up on John Lott’s research, and the trouble it has caused him in his social science career.

    If the idea of being locked in a classroom with a lunatic with an arsenal, or a terrorist, with no other guns anywhere nearby, is reassuring to you, my hat is off to your powers of logical reasoning, you’re mega light years ahead of me.

    Issue guns to all the classified staff? No, only to those trained to use them. It’s called the “police”.

    I don’t especially want to be armed when I go about my duties on campus. For one thing, I don’t want the responsibility of saving everyone in case of an attack.

    But I would feel more secure with an armed police presence on campus, and I think I’d feel better with concealed carry allowed on campus, just as it is most other places.

    And I certainly don’t feel especially threatened when I step off campus onto Thirteenth Street.

    It’s nice to live in a pretend world where one can be safe in a world where only the bad guys have guns. But it can also be dangerous.

  172. Anonymous 09/23/2010

    If the Joe Romania showroom gets a successful nomination as a historic landmark at the Historic Review Board meeting tommorrow morning I bet the parking lot loving UO Foundation (they own the Romania showroom)is going to be historically pissed off. The issue was on the front page of the Register Guard a few days ago.

  173. Anonymous 09/23/2010

    I would suggest that UO MATTERS stick to UO MATTERS and leave to others the social commentary on the New York mosque, on policy toward illegal immigrants, etc.

    Ditto for Wim Wievel, he’s employed to run Portland State, not to be delivering social commentary.

  174. Anonymous 09/23/2010

    I think UOMatters should write whatever they want. It’s their blog.

  175. Anonymous 09/23/2010

    Ditto. UO Matters performs a very valuable service and is free to discuss what it thinks is important. Furthermore, anyone who teaches, teaches kids who may be in the situation of young Mr. Lopez. That makes the DREAM act a UO matter, indeed, and a matter for almost any educator. And since educators must be informed and aware of current topics in the news, these too are within the purview of UO matters.

  176. UO Matters 09/23/2010

    You bet I am free to discuss whatever I want. But I also appreciate comments on my choices and on what I say.

  177. Anonymous 09/27/2010

    Dog is Delighted to see that
    the UO is getting still more tuition dollars without any commensurate increase in instructional support (or pay raises).

    Way to go Provost Bean

    From the budgetmodel web site:

    As of late Friday afternoon, enrollment numbers look very good. The number of students enrolled on Friday was 22,464, a 7.6% increase over the same date last year. The total Student Credit Hour enrollment was 318,385, a 7.1% increase over the same time last year. Based on the past few years, we expect both the head count and the SCH count to increase substantially over the next couple of weeks.

  178. Anonymous 09/28/2010

    What utterly stupid rankings the NRC has come up with. Nobody in their right mind will pay attention. (A lot of lunacy in higher education these days, however.) The U.S. News rankings of Ph.D. programs are far better (and more like the old NRC rankings). I know you’re not an economist, but only an economist could think that this idiotic methodology makes any sense.

    In the first place, no score (UO Physics Department #N in the country), but only a range, a very wide range.

    Second, an abundance of irrelevant criteria. How many female faculty in the department? How many female students? How many non-Asian grad students. (Hard to believe that! It’s as if back in the 50’s, they were ranking Ivy League schools on how many non-Jewish grad students they had, LOL! Are we on our way to Asian (or Jewish or male) quotas? Probably LOL!

    Then things like how much interdisciplinarity. I haven’t looked if they rate departments on sustainability yet!

    These rankings are just trash. If the state makes us “accountable” on how we do on this nonsense, things will just become more of a shambles than they already are.

    This is such a decline from the old NRC rankings. It really shows how the graduate education, the research enterprise in this country is going down the drain.

    This is not how a country keeps its place in the London or Shanghai or Beijing rankings of universities!

  179. Anonymous 09/28/2010

    I think the rankings are weighted functions of the variables, with weights determined by discipline. So if the dogs in the field don’t care about the number of non-asian minority faculty in the field, the NRC ranking ignores it.

  180. Anonymous 09/29/2010

    Dog on Rankings:

    Of course there is much to criticize and react in these rankings. But they are a form of relative comparison done in a consistent way. For me, the ranking column that makes the most sense is the one based on faculty productivity and titled Research Ranking.

    The dog’s department did fairly well there and okay on overall ranking but did poorly in the student support ranking. This is because of low student stipends integrated over the last 15 years – not because of low percentage of students supported (we support about 90% of our grad students).

    So if you take some time to read the criterion, and think about what is fair and not fair to your own department’s situation with respect to the host University, you can glean good comparative data.

    This is precisely the reason that there are 5 different kind of index scores available to form relative rankings. Collapsing this in to a weighted single number would contain no information. What my department now knows is:

    a) we did better than we thought
    b) we did much better in research than we thought (and rate very high on the publications per faculty index)
    c) our grad student stipends are low.

    And its that last point c that is relevant to the UOmatters position on 63% research expenditures compare to our AAU peers.

    I do agree, however, with one of the previous posters is that the diversity rankings are not useful at all for many graduate programs, especially those in engineering or physics or math or computer science.

    But all in all, this extensive NRC study is definitely not worthless.

    But, in the context of the current budget model, one’s departmental standing as a graduate program is worthless.

    We don’t need to stinkin’ PHDs – we only need to put as many beans as we can inside 4 classroom walls. Now that’s truly worthless –
    rank that Bean ….

  181. Anonymous 09/29/2010

    So the athletic department is going to have to take an unanticipated $8 million out of the legacy fund to make the arena payments.

    I guess maybe those perfessers on the senate budget committee at the time of the build/no build decision, who said that the athletic department’s expensive outside financial consultants were making wildly overoptimistic revenue projections, were not as dumb as the athletic people and the UO administration were saying at the time.

  182. Anonymous 09/29/2010

    Regarding transparency: Elizabeth Denecke appears to be qualified in several respects for the post of permanent director of the public records office. However, one of her contributions regarding the applicability of the Oregon Public Meetings Law to UO Governance was way off the mark.
    In 2003, while employed as Assistant Attorney General, Ms Denecke generated a MEMORANDUM (14 Nov. 2003) to then UO General Counsel Melinda Grier that had serious consequences for the operation of the University governance system. The existence of this document was not generally known among those active in faculty governance until it was delivered to them by Ms Grier less than an hour prior to the Senate meeting (28 Nov 2007) dealing with quorum issues. This untimely delivery was despite repeated faculty efforts, over a period of eight months, to obtain from Ms Grier any documents that her office might hold regarding this issue. Ms Grier’s office was noted for its inability to deliver requested documents in a timely fashion.
    Ms Denecke’s MEMORANDUM appeared to settle the issue. It declared that the UO ASSEMBLY has a quorum requirement (50% plus one of its members) that was mandated by statute. This opinion unsettled the UO Senate, since it implied that the Senate Charter, which was ratified at a meeting of a minority of the Assembly members, was not properly esablished. Furthermore, assertions by then President Frohnmayer that a majority of the Assembly members (members, not attendees) must vote in the affirmative in order for the Assembly to act, appeared to freeze Faculty Governance out of the picture for all time. Such an impediment to Faculty Governance, as well as the shadow cast over the legitimacy of all Senate actions taken during Dr. Frohnmayer’s presidency, impelled the Senate to seek another opinion from the DoJ. The shallow reasoning apparent in Ms Denecke’s document encouraged some observers to think that, in fact, she may have gotten it wrong. In November, 2008, the Senate President received a well-reasoned 19 page analysis of quorum issues at the UO from the Office of the General Counsel in Salem, at a cost of $21,081.12. The conclusion of the DoJ was that the UO Faculty has no legally mandated quorum requirement for any of its meetings — it is free to set whatever requirements it chooses within the framework of its self-created constitution.
    Old Man expects that, in her new position, Ms Denecke will not be required to interpret Oregon Law. He also hopes that Ms Denecke will, indeed, increase transparency by delivering requested documents in a more timely fashion than we have been subjected to. We hold this hope despite the Emerald’s assertion that, “With the creation of Denecke’s new position, administrators believe the turnaround time for requests will be significantly increased.”

  183. Anonymous 10/02/2010

    A Modest Proposal: 16% More Freedom and Administrator Gladiator Contests

    By Diogenes Duck

    As long as UO faculty salaries remain at the bottom of our peer group at 84% of AAUP averages (and administrators’ salaries remain at the top of theirs), we should take the initiative to reduce our own workloads by 16%. How would this be accomplished in practical terms? Here are some concrete suggestions that could be easily implemented on an individual basis:

    1. Teach 16% less each quarter by taking a few more sick days each term (or roughly the equivalent of about a week-and-a-half fewer classes per term). By the time you retire, that accumulation of sick days isn’t going to be worth shit. Use them now.

    2. Perform 16% less service. University committee work? Forget it. What about Department committee work? Only if it doesn’t conflict with yoga, that doctor’s appointment next week, or aroma therapy the week after….

    3. After tenure, instead of writing that next article or monograph, do what countless tenured professors have done for decades: take up a new hobby. If you don’t like golf, then how about painting? Why not write that novel you’ve always wanted to?

    In other words, we can choose to look at the glass as half empty or half full. Rather than viewing our jobs as professors as woefully undervalued by the university while the jobs of administrators and coaches are grossly overvalued, it would be much more constructive to view the less competitive salaries we receive as the freedom to do 16% less work!

    If this doesn’t get the administrators’ attention, we could always resort to something more dramatic, such as demanding that the university pay off its debt on the Matthew Knight Arena by arranging events guaranteed to fill more seats than the currently scheduled basketball and wrestling events. How about Gladiator Contests at Autzen and Matt Court!?! Overpaid upper administrators and coaches could combine their fetishization of athletics with their love of bloated salaries. Imagine the thrill of seeing Jim Bean take on Chip Kelly in a gladiator contest to the death. The winner would get to double his salary and claim the titles of both Head Football Coach and Provost of the University. What a crowd pleaser! Would it be thumbs up or down for the Provost? That would be up to the Duck Godfather (no, not President Lariviere, you dummy) to decide in response to the crowd’s reaction. Or how about the Battle of the Old Administrators: Lorraine Davis vs. Frances Dyke! Or The Battle of the Donor Kiss-ups: Dave Frohnmayer vs. ??? (come to think of it, Dave would probably win that one with his hands tied behind his back.) Sponsored by P.K. Productions.

  184. Diogenes Duck 10/02/2010

    A Modest Proposal: 16% More Freedom and Administrator Gladiator Contests, Pt. 1

    As long as UO faculty salaries remain at the bottom of our peer group at 84% of AAUP averages (and administrators’ salaries remain at the top of theirs), we should take the initiative to reduce our own workloads by 16%. How would this be accomplished in practical terms? Here are some concrete suggestions that could be easily implemented on an individual basis:

    1. Teach 16% less each quarter by taking a few more sick days each term (or roughly the equivalent of about a week-and-a-half fewer classes per term). By the time you retire, that accumulation of sick days isn’t going to be worth shit. Use them now.

    2. Perform 16% less service. University committee work? Forget it. What about Department committee work? Only if it doesn’t conflict with yoga, that doctor’s appointment next week, or aroma therapy the week after….

    3. After tenure, instead of writing that next article or monograph, do what countless tenured professors have done for decades: take up a new hobby. If you don’t like golf, then how about painting? Why not write that novel you’ve always wanted to?

    In other words, we can choose to look at the glass as half empty or half full. Rather than viewing our jobs as professors as woefully undervalued by the university while the jobs of administrators and coaches are grossly overvalued, it would be much more constructive to view the less competitive salaries we receive as the freedom to do 16% less work!

  185. Diogenes Duck 10/02/2010

    A Modest Proposal: 16% More Freedom and Administrator Gladiator Contests, Pt. 2

    If this doesn’t get the administrators’ attention, we could always resort to something more dramatic, such as demanding that the university pay off its debt on the Matthew Knight Arena by arranging events guaranteed to fill more seats than the currently scheduled basketball and wrestling events. How about Gladiator Contests at Autzen and Matt Court!?! Overpaid upper administrators and coaches could combine their fetishization of athletics with their love of bloated salaries.

    Imagine the thrill of seeing Jim Bean take on Chip Kelly in a gladiator contest to the death. The winner would get to double his salary and claim the titles of both Head Football Coach and Provost of the University. What a crowd pleaser! Would it be thumbs up or down for the Provost? That would be up to the Duck Godfather (no, not President Lariviere, you dummy) to decide in response to the crowd’s reaction.

    Or how about the Battle of the Old Administrators: Lorraine Davis vs. Frances Dyke! Or The Battle of the Donor Kiss-ups: Dave Frohnmayer vs. ??? (come to think of it, Dave would probably win that one with his hands tied behind his back.) Sponsored by P.K. Productions.

  186. Anonymous 10/07/2010

    There is no way the Dog can leave the Provost’s letter to the faculty alone:

    Below is the Dog Re-write: )note: blogger limitations require this be done in two parts.

    Colleagues (you too dog):

    Welcome back. The University is friggin’ great. We have strong enrollments thanks to a huge incoming class of California beans, er, I mean students, stu-dents; strong grant funding (last year was a record) and strong fundraising, especially in the area of athletic facilities. The only weak spot is state support, but screw them. Since mid spring we have taken two rescissions (taking back money they had already allocated) totaling about $10.5M and expect more to come. So far they have all been absorbed centrally in a sufficiently opaque manner such that no one will ever figure out the absorption actually came out of the faculty salary increase budget. The new budget model pumped about $24M additional tuition dollars out to the schools and colleges. This is particularly remarkable since we only actually gained about $6M in additional tuition revenue – I will leave it up to the investigative arm of UOmatters to figured out where the missing 18M from last year really went; at least that will give them something to do. However, in order to fund some my pet er, I mean, strategic, yeah that’s it, strategic initiatives we had to ask for about $3M back and we thank your The rescissions had depleted the central strategic fund, even though such a fund is a mythical concept at the UO.

    The governor announced a raise freeze at the time of the spring rescission. This is really friggin’ great because now I have a reason not to give faculty raises! Life is bliss. For the time being there will be no across the board merit or COLA increases. We are able to do limited equity and retention adjustments but only to people that have been nice to me. If I can ever figure out who UOmatters, Old Man, Roasted Duck and that damn dog are, you can bet I will invent the non-retention raise.

    On another note, new National Research Council (NRC) ratings of our research doctoral programs are strong, reaffirming UO’s competitiveness with other top research institutions across the country. This is mega friggin’ great because the UO has no graduate students any more and we haven’t been a Tier I research University for about 10 years now. The NRC data were from five years ago, and I am confident that UO is in an even better position now based on our continued success in faculty hiring, major increases in research grant expenditures, and recent growth in graduate applications and enrollment – note, I can also say I am confident when there is no data to support my assertions – I learned that in Business School.

    Our discussion of the New Partnership is getting a great deal of attention in Salem and it will be a very interesting legislative session. The system has a proposal to take the entire system out of state agency and make it a state university system. That sounds like semantics, but results in huge changes in legal and administrative red tape (but in reality, its just a bunch of semantics). The OUS proposal also enables local boards – I am making mine out of the oak tree that fell over in a wind storm at my house last year.

  187. Anonymous 10/07/2010

    There is no way the Dog can leave the Provost’s letter to the faculty alone:

    Below is the Dog Re-write:

    Colleagues (you too dog):

    Welcome back. The University is friggin’ great. We have strong enrollments thanks to a huge incoming class of California beans, er, I mean students, stu-dents; strong grant funding (last year was a record) and strong fundraising, especially in the area of athletic facilities. The only weak spot is state support, but screw them. Since mid spring we have taken two rescissions (taking back money they had already allocated) totaling about $10.5M and expect more to come. So far they have all been absorbed centrally in a sufficiently opaque manner such that no one will ever figure out the absorption actually came out of the faculty salary increase budget. The new budget model pumped about $24M additional tuition dollars out to the schools and colleges. This is particularly remarkable since we only actually gained about $6M in additional tuition revenue – I will leave it up to the investigative arm of UOmatters to figured out where the missing 18M from last year really went; at least that will give them something to do. However, in order to fund some my pet er, I mean, strategic, yeah that’s it, strategic initiatives we had to ask for about $3M back and we thank your The rescissions had depleted the central strategic fund, even though such a fund is a mythical concept at the UO.

    The governor announced a raise freeze at the time of the spring rescission. This is really friggin’ great because now I have a reason not to give faculty raises! Life is bliss. For the time being there will be no across the board merit or COLA increases. We are able to do limited equity and retention adjustments but only to people that have been nice to me. If I can ever figure out who UOmatters, Old Man, Roasted Duck and that damn dog are, you can bet I will invent the non-retention raise.

    On another note, new National Research Council (NRC) ratings of our research doctoral programs are strong, reaffirming UO’s competitiveness with other top research institutions across the country. This is mega friggin’ great because the UO has no graduate students any more and we haven’t been a Tier I research University for about 10 years now. The NRC data were from five years ago, and I am confident that UO is in an even better position now based on our continued success in faculty hiring, major increases in research grant expenditures, and recent growth in graduate applications and enrollment – note, I can also say I am confident when there is no data to support my assertions – I learned that in Business School.

  188. Anonymous 10/07/2010

    Part 2:

    On another note, new National Research Council (NRC) ratings of our research doctoral programs are strong, reaffirming UO’s competitiveness with other top research institutions across the country. This is mega friggin’ great because the UO has no graduate students any more and we haven’t been a Tier I research University for about 10 years now. The NRC data were from five years ago, and I am confident that UO is in an even better position now based on our continued success in faculty hiring, major increases in research grant expenditures, and recent growth in graduate applications and enrollment – note, I can also say I am confident when there is no data to support my assertions – I learned that in Business School.

    Our discussion of the New Partnership is getting a great deal of attention in Salem and it will be a very interesting legislative session. The system has a proposal to take the entire system out of state agency and make it a state university system. That sounds like semantics, but results in huge changes in legal and administrative red tape (but in reality, its just a bunch of semantics). The OUS proposal also enables local boards – I am making mine out of the oak tree that fell over in a wind storm at my house last year.

    The UO plan is consistent with the OUS plan in most ways, but specifies how the local board would be constructed (i.e. using a hammer and some nails), and proposes an innovative funding model (because, let’s face it, who wants a non-innovative funding model – I learned that in Business school as well) that would not bring us more money in the short run (since we are now getting money from the California beans- god damnit I mean stu-dents), but would greatly reduce the year-to-year variance (in Business school I heard a lot of variance but still don’t know what it means; reducing it is probably good because variance is probably bad). That would enable long term planning and tuition stability that is very hard to do now. It would bring substantially more money in the long run and as long as I don’t have to worry about graduate students of faculty raises, I know I can grow enough beans to fund even more of my per, er I mean strategic initiatives.

    Note that in Oregon we enjoy our summer whenever it comes. I have no idea why I closed this letter to the faculty in this manner, it just came to me. I guess I should have said – Yo, Everything is friggin’ great, keep processing those beans!

  189. Anonymous 10/07/2010

    I would have preferred Uri Geller….

  190. Anonymous 10/09/2010

    Of course the AD should foot the bill for academic support for athletes. Old Man respectfully suggests that they could stretch their support fund by hiring football coaches who have mastered the uses of personal pronouns.

  191. UO Matters 10/10/2010

    Dear Readers – I have accidentally deleted all the comments since 9/29/2010. My apologies!

  192. Anonymous 10/11/2010

    FYI– UO DPS Capt. Ed Rinne attended the Fairmount Neighbors general meeting on 9.29.10, and when a neighbor asked him if the DPS got new authority from the state, would the new force be armed, Capt. Rinne said yes, that that’s what they’d try to do.

  193. Anonymous 10/12/2010

    I love it when parking rates increase for university employees and the athletics department parks for free. I paid a ridiculous $400.00 this year for a parking permit that does not guarantee me a space but the intercollegiate athletics department pays nothing to park. They also get PERS retirement. Since when does intercollegiate athletics provide a public service? They don’t. Must be nice.

  194. Anonymous 10/12/2010

    Rumor has it that public safety is being investigated by board of labor and industry for firing someone after they filed a sexual harassment complaint. oh oh

  195. Anonymous 10/12/2010

    About those parking fee increases by DPS they do do do need the money since athletics screwed everyone by sticking DPS with the bill for the arena parking spaces. You can thank athletics for the rising cost of parking on campus. Thanks for nothing again athletics.

  196. Anonymous 10/12/2010

    OUS has taken a $52,000,000 hit to its budget. But what the heck, let’s just keep giving public safety and athletics money because that makes no sense whatsoever.

  197. Anonymous 10/13/2010

    UO only has about 4000 employees, not 20,000. ~1500 are classified.

  198. Anonymous 10/14/2010

    Geller as AG, not a good idea but apparently they couldn’t get anyone else to apply. Can we get the details about the search?

  199. Anonymous 10/15/2010

    Dog Barks Science and Numbers

    1) Correct, the UO employs about
    4000 people. Just go to ir.uoregon.edu/alpha and count
    the unclassified and classified lists

    2) On football head injuries.

    Yes its a problem but no its not 20 G’s involved. I tried to find the “studies” that showed this and couldn’t.

    The analogy with a 20 mph car crash shows how little basic science is understood these days.

    what’s the energy of a car moving
    20 mph:

    1/2 mv^2

    let’s assume at impact, a swift 200 lb corner back has a velocity of 20 mph. This is 15 times lower than the mass of a typical car so how could the energy impact be the same …?

    What’s really going on is a blow to the head is a pressure wave.
    Pressure is force per unit area.

    So if I jump on you UOmatters I am exerting mg lbs of force but that is impacting UO matters over the size of my footprint (which maybe is 5% the area of UOmatters) so
    the pressure is a lot and I can break ribs that way.

    Its force per unit area that matters in contact sports – not force itself. This is why boxing hurts a lot …

  200. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    Dog could be right about the relative consequences of a blow on the head in football and one sustained in a car crash. But Old Man, who is neither a physicist nor an economist, suspects he is wrong. In the car crash referred to, the weight of the car is usually irrelevant. It is the sudden deceleration (which physicists calculate as negative acceleration) of the head that counts as it collides with the dash or the window. Sound like a football collision to me.

  201. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    dog says oh boy a physics flame war – not really appropriate for UOmatters so I will only do one rebuttal

    In fact, Old Man’s biological view
    is mostly correct. Sudden deceleration is a manifestation of
    the force applied and indeed if the
    article had talked about “car crashes” in that way, rather than in just bulk energy, it would have been better.

    Still when the head contacts the window its force per unit area that’s going to determine the extent of biological damage.

    PS – dog’s can be females as well

  202. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    Dog final comment on this

    However, if we are gonna consider
    impulse then its possible that the
    G-force can be as high as 100Gs for
    a few milliseconds.

    This is different than a pilot that would pull say 9Gs for a continuous time (of a few seconds).

    Meanwhile, back to our regular discussions about what matters at the UO?

  203. UO Matters 10/16/2010

    I’m not a physics professor, but I declare this thread over.

  204. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    Recently I noticed some heavy equipment working at both the North and South ends of the land parcel near the river where UO admin. hope the ORI building is going to be built. Someone told me that they have installed a sewer line that was put in for development (like ORI) that will be North of the RR tracks.

  205. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    Dog on Bean op-ed

    Intellectually he is correct on
    some of this, but he never, as typical, addressed the real world.

    In the comments there is a post by
    Salemduck claiming that, since 1995, the UO has taken in 2.1 billion external dollars. There is no justification for this claim. I imagine if we really did have 2.1 billion real dollars, faculty might have gotten say a 1% raise.

    This entire situation remains one of balance and we are too busy defending what we do and therefore we (i.e. Bean and his predecessors) choose not to aggressively pursue new educational directions in the same fervor that we support athletic infrastructure and subserviently defend ourselves.

    Touting the Jock Box as an “academic facility” is disingenuous at best since there is no (and not even close) similar facility for just ordinary students, you know, those beans we keep counting.

  206. Anonymous 10/16/2010

    Yes, what if we had asked for a building that facilitated student learning for all students, with a relatively modest part of it dedicated to student-athletes or perhaps just more easily reserved for them on a reservation schedule available to all. That would have been a win-win scenario.

  207. UO Matters 10/17/2010

    Our Comment Policy

    UO Matters posts almost all comments that make it through the blogger spam checks. We occasionally delete comments that include personal attacks. Attacks on policies, on the other hand, are pretty much the point of our blog.

    So, while we might delete a comment that described a person as a cretin we would leave up a comment describing a policy as cretinous.

    fwiw, people might want to check the interesting history of the words cretin and cretinous before using them!

  208. Anonymous 10/18/2010

    OK, Lariviere is not a cretin, and that’s not what I called him, but he bungled big-time with the overtime for the classified staff. Call it a “policy misstep” if “bungled” is too indelicate. The Oregonian has an editorial this morning October 18. Basically, he tried to pull one on the state, and he got caught, and he’s been called on it by the Governor and the press. You might argue that UO needed the employees to work overtime to handle the surge of students. But the other campuses somehow apparently managed to handle similar influxes without flouting the will of the state.

    This is not going to help get the Lariviere plan adopted, especially with the revenue shortfalls on the arena bonds. The latter not Lariviere’s fault, but there’s now a pattern of recklessness and defiance of the public will, if not the law, in which he is implicated, perhpas more than his predecessor!

    With the public spat between Pernsteiner and Lariviere out in the open, and now “Overtimegate”, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Lariviere is given his discharge papers soon, McChrystal style. Who will play Petraeus? Jim Bean? Or will he be gone too? Then Russ Tomlin? Maybe a fill-in from another, more reliable state campus? A real mind-boggler!

  209. Anonymous 10/20/2010

    I find the rationalizations for “Overtimegate” to be somewhat self-serving, arrogant, and, well, “clueless.” The overtime has been justified, sort of, on the grounds that it was necessary to get the job done. Plausible, but I still wonder how the other campuses managed, without, apparently, flouting the will of the Governor? But mainly, the justification for the overtime has been linked to the staff in question being “our most vulnerable colleagues” (Lariviere) and “lowest-paid employees” (politically experienced reader). Which is it, sympathy for our supposedly underpaid union staff – try selling that to the public! – or the need to get the job done?

    In any case, however justified or unjustified the overtime was, the Governor did order the furloughs. Perhaps “the [G]overnor and his aides missed an opportunity to distinguish budget tricks from real decisions and effective leadership.” But Kulongoski is, well, the elected Governor. Unlike our reader or even Dr. Lariviere. If the latter think they are so much better qualified, perhaps they should be running this election cycle?

    At the very least, Lariviere chose to pull an end-run around the governance of the state. If he believed the overtime to be so essential and well-justified, why didn’t he just announce what he was doing up front? Now it appears, because it very likely is true, that he chose to try to pull a fast one on the state. And now, not surprisingly, he has been found out, it must be said, UO Matters style.

    It will be interesting to see how this plays in public opinion, and not just on campus, where we are called upon to support “our President.” (And telling that our President merits a cap while our governor does not.) I hope this doesn’t cause major trouble for UO, for the autonomy plan, and I hope it doesn’t result in Lariviere’s departure. But I think things stand on slightly shaky ground right now.

  210. Anonymous 10/20/2010

    As a UO classified staff member who was, shall we say, close to the bargaining process last year, I’d like to point out some things that apparently are not known, or perhaps conveniently forgotten, by those who are critical of Lariviere’s decision and the negative feedback the “outing” has drawn.

    This was never about overtime, or doing an end run around the governor. This overtime plan was all about trying to mitigate a gross inequity that developed when, as a result of the SEIU bargaining agreement, the classified staff was the only group of employees who were obligated to take furlough time at UO. Those invoking the “will of the governor” are conveniently forgetting that he ordered furloughs for ALL state employees. So how come there’s been no complaining that Lariviere flaunted the will of the governor by not imposing furlough days on faculty and administrators? As a matter of fact, the governor had no authority to “order” furlough days for union-represented staff – that had to be bargained. The union agreed to the furloughs in the spirit of the shared sacrifice called for by tbe governor – even though we were thoroughly convinced ahead of time that there would be no such shared sacrifice at UO.

    As you can imagine, this bothered the hell out of your classified staff members, but it also troubled Lariviere. He’s no fool – he knew any attempt to circumvent the furloughs would be political dynamite, but then again he also recognized how explosive an issue it could be for campus staff if such an inequity was left to stand. The overtime “solution” was seen as the only viable way to potentially mitigate the inequitable situation on this campus without violating the union contract. It’s a far from perfect solution for a no-win situation, and maybe Lariviere’s rationalization for the overtime seems clumsy and unjustifiable, but the bottom line is he saw an injustice and had the integrity and guts to try to do something about it. It’s true he didn’t broadcast this policy far and wide, but it’s been no secret; we were never told to keep it quiet.

    Oh, and those other campuses, how are they getting by without this policy? Well, there IS overtime being worked by some classified staff, just not as a result of a semi-formal policy. And except for at SOU, the other campuses are now co-conspirators in thumbing their noses at the will of the governor. While most (but not all) campuses did mandate furlough days or pay reductions for faculty (where not unionized) and for administrators, except for at SOU those have now been rescinded. Not for classified staff, however. (Or the campus presidents, I should add.) The union recently asked OUS to reopen the contract to renegotiate the furlough days in light of this development, but OUS refused. For political reasons, no doubt.

    For certain, this flap will not be helpful in advancing Lariviere’s new governance plan. But I also have to concede that it’s a great argument for the need for it.

  211. Anonymous 10/20/2010

    It appears from comments here and on other websites that perhaps other campuses did something similar? I wonder then if somebody “leaked” the information on UO and Lariviere to make him look bad? Given the enmity between OUS/Pernsteiner and UO/Lariviere, this does not seem out of the question. Anybody know anything? Seems like a mission for the RG and Oregonian higher ed aces. Or maybe for Willamette Week? Or even Eugene Weekly or the Emerald? With all this journalistic talent, surely the truth will come out soon!

  212. Anonymous 10/21/2010

    Who better for UO? No opinion, but I do note that a big UO donor is supporting Dudley. Would a Dudley victory bode well for the Lariviere plan?

  213. Anonymous 10/22/2010

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

  214. UO Matters 10/22/2010

    Overtimegate leak:

    I’ve had a few comments with very specific information, and names, about the possible source of the “leak” regarding overtime. I don’t think I’m going to post these, at least not just yet, without corroboration or documentation.

    If you know more, please start your comment with DO NOT POST or email [email protected].

  215. Anonymous 10/23/2010

    I have data on reporting grades “more than Parental Oversight”

    10 years of big intro courses, 300+ student athletes. Of the fraction that are failing at the time of the request for grades, *all* failed the course. Some small fraction of those passing at the time of requested reports also failed.

    Therefore, the reporting of grades did not prevent those who were failing from failing. And, without knowing the source of causation, some more failed. So I stopped reporting grades, maybe my report were the cause for that small fraction to fail. Certainly, it did not change the course of those who were failing.

  216. Anonymous 10/26/2010

    i just bounced the request. I agree that the monitoring should be for all students or none.

  217. UO Matters 10/27/2010

    A reader posts this comment on the closing of the EMU Post Office. I agree that the international students will suffer the most. And of course, they can only vote with their $. Not enough, apparently.

    Attached: A memo from the Postmaster re the closing of the EMU post office.

    It’s been a good 11-year run for my on-campus PO Box.  Now I have to drive to get my mail, or change everything to use my home address.  It’s no real hardship for me — heck, I have a good-paying job with benefits, and I have a car that I can use to pick up my mail, so I’m not going to be the first to complain.  The students who use the EMU post office, especially international students who got friendly, helpful services in multiple languages (thanks, Greg!), will be ill-served by this change.

  218. Anonymous 10/27/2010

    What’s happening to the post office could never happen in higher education, right? I mean like closing down a bunch of departments? Oh, that’s right, they did that at Albany/SUNY. Could anything like that happen here?

  219. Anonymous 10/28/2010

    DO NOT POST

    Can you please put what email to email you at? I want to send you some information but do not want to post on here. I can email you though. I can’t remember if it is [email protected] or something else. Help please.

  220. Anonymous 10/28/2010

    Re: waiting for General Counsel finalist resumes: I think you’ll be waiting a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Geller was the only remotely viable applicant.

  221. Anonymous 10/28/2010

    Note: along with a big promotional pay increase,Randy Geller was given an “A” contract which carries timely notice. Contrast this to Officers of Administration who are either hired or promoted in the VPFA division who are given “F” contracts which do not carry timely notice and are told that “A” contracts are being phased out. In the absence of written personnel policies Human Resources will rubber stamp the actions of the most powerful – any wonder their brand of inconsistency breeds unionization.

  222. Anonymous 10/29/2010

    And the man hired as the new general counsel receives a significantly higher salary from the get-go than did Grier after her, what, 16 years on the job? (Not that I am saying that either of them are/were not ridiculously overpaid in the Eugene legal market.) I’m sure it’s because he will do a TOTALLY better job, her having basically trained him and all.

  223. Anonymous 10/29/2010

    Or perhaps because she is a woman and he is a man.

  224. Anonymous 10/29/2010

    Or perhaps he’s a good enough lawyer to negotiate a good deal for himself. Or maybe he’s learned from Frances, Richard, Jim et al.

  225. Anonymous 10/29/2010

    To above – Yes, that must be it. He’s a good lawyer. Thanks for contributing to the discussion Randy!

  226. Anonymous 10/29/2010

    Of course the new lawyer was the best qualified…they wrote the position description and announcement and desired qualifications off of his resume. That kind of writing has been going on for years. It seals the deal while meeting the rules of holding a search to fill the position.

  227. Anonymous 10/30/2010

    I am the 9:52 a.m. poster. Anybody savoring the irony of the fact that Melinda Grier now teaches employment discrimination? Well, to 4 or 5 law students, anyway.

  228. Anonymous 10/30/2010

    Or maybe that Dave F is teaching An introduction to state administrative law, including its constitutional foundations in separations of powers and Due Process. A subject he knows well…considering his record as president.

  229. Anonymous 10/31/2010

    Sounds like the honeymoon is about over for the new, open, transparent Obama oops I mean Lariviere UO adminstration!

  230. UO Matters 10/31/2010

    I’m no psychologist, but it’s like most relationships. Both sides need to keep working at it. And hiding stuff from your partner – well, that can lead to trouble. Or so I hear.

  231. Anonymous 11/02/2010

    Denecke and Geller:
    Both Denecke and Geller may have been hired, without proper searches, as hard luck cases. It appears to this Old Man that both may have ruined their careers in the outside world by a slavish willingness to do whatever the previous UO Administration asked of them. For Randy, it may have been sitting on records requests; for Elizabeth it may have been delivering a quorum opinion to fit the desires of that Administration. Who knows — just guessing. But, if that speculation is right, release of the documents regarding their hiring might embarrass a lot of people.

  232. Anonymous 11/05/2010

    Word is that faculty “equity raises” are off the table for this year — Lariviere has pissed off the authorities too often (at least twice) and it would be political dynamite to try to go ahead, given the looming state budget crisis.

    So, it looks like faculty pay cuts are coming — in the form of reduction or elimination of the 6% pension “pickup” and forcing state employees to pay for part of their medical insurance.

    Of course, the Tier 1 and Tier 2 (pension) employees will be getting about a 6% bump in that form of compensation, probably enough to basically even out the score.

    The more recent hires will be the real losers.

    It will be interesting to see if the UO administration can figure out a way around this.

    Probably it will take a a couple of years, and then they’ll use it as an opportunity to reward the favored ones.

  233. Anonymous 11/06/2010

    Amen to the speedy recovery for President Lariviere. And all the best to Jim Bean while he is filling in. I haven’t always agreed with their leadership, but I wish them well, both personally and as UO officials.

  234. Anonymous 11/10/2010

    When UOMATTERS says “I think they are turning the perfect into the enemy of the good. Let’s just build it”, he/she is saying that governmental process is less important than an office building. This Old Man won’t buy that.

  235. Anonymous 11/10/2010

    You may not be an economist, an economics professor, a physicist, or an English professor but it is my feeling that you are wrong in thanking Scott Woodward for shedding light on the imbalance between athletics and academics at the UO. His comments didn’t do any of us any favors.

    He stated FIRST that the academic institution was an embarrassment. With that he implied that all economists, economics professors, physicists, Dogs, Ducks, English professors, students, alumni, faculty and staff are an embarrassment. I would be willing to bet there are those in all areas of this university who would stand up and object to being characterized in this manner.

    Is the state’s funding of higher education an embarrassment? Yes. Did he lead with that? No. Is there an imbalance in support (fiscal or otherwise) for things non academic? Probably. Did he lead with that? No. He attacked our people, our degrees, our research, our programs, and our reputation FIRST. That Woodward added those notes about state support and deterioration of academics at the expense of athletics is due to the fact that he probably had just realized what a giant pile of shit he’d stepped in.

    I am disappointed that high profile figures at the UO like Dave Williford and Chip Kelly won’t take Woodward to task but I will be embarrassed if our administration rolls over on this one too. I am sick of our administration not taking a strong public stance on garbage like this.

  236. UO Matters 11/10/2010

    Kelly I’ve heard of. Who is Dave Williford?

  237. Anonymous 11/10/2010

    Well, let’s look at it. The UW athletic director was impolitic, he said

    “it’s an embarrassment what their academic institution is, and what’s happened to them as far as their state funding has gone.”

    On the second point, we can all probably agree. On the first point, maybe it’s an exaggeration to call UO and “embarrassment” academically, but isn’t it kind of embarrassing what has happened to the overall UO academic reputation over the decades? Some people would point to the recent NRC report on graduate programs to show UO’s academic health, but (1) it is next to impossible to decipher what the rankings of the UO graduate programs really are; (2) in any case, what evidence there is indicates there is very little that is outstanding here; and (3) there is no analysis of what the trend over time is, i.e. are the UO graduate programs of higher or lower standing, overall, than 15 or 20 or 30 years ago?

    And re the last, consider that

    [UW Pres] Wise also wrote: “The University of Oregon has a long tradition as one of America’s top public universities. It is an excellent public institution of higher education that continues to serve the citizens of Oregon well, particularly in light of diminishing state support.”

    Now if UO is so excellent, is really one of America’s top public universities, why all the moaning and groaning about the need for more financial support, higher faculty salaries, etc. etc.? Things seem to be going swell academically, so why the fuss? Of course, the University president could also reply that UO is great, but without more money, things will slide downhill into oblivion. But UO presidents have been saying that for decades. Why should anyone believe it now?

  238. Anonymous 11/10/2010

    UW President Phyllis Wise is on the Nike board. Priceless.

  239. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    Dave Williford is essentially Phil Weiler’s counterpart in the AD.

  240. hitch 11/11/2010

    The co-author of the intergovernmental agreement is the current Director of the Riverfront Research Park, Diane Wiley. Maybe she can tell you where her 1986 memo has been.

  241. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    Ms. Daugherty where can one begin. She wasn’t hired to do the plans. That fight with the feds is an old one and an easy fight to end when started. It goes like this….the UO will convince the FEDS that the UO will follow the rules and beg forgiveness for “not understanding“ the rules. Then the UO will carry as usual until the next fight. The AAEO office has done that for years well at least since 1995. Been there seen that.

    After all, as proved over and over the UO only follows law when its to their favor. Well, its more like the administration will do what they want and claim no knowledge when they get caught…but first they will do what they want no matter what laws are broken, bent or ignored. Been there seen that.

    Bringing attention to the lack of plans is a good smoke screen to what the administration is really up to these days.

    Penny was hired to put her signature on all the Administration promotions and give her approval on all the reorganizations so the Administration could call it legal. And when everyone wakes up and notices that there may be a problem the administration will claim…”What! Our AAEO director signed the documents…what do you mean there‘s a problem?????” (anyone catching on here) Penny will hold the entire basket of blame (and she thought her ass kissing was getting her somewhere)….LOL!!!!

    Penny’s history shows a pattern of ass kissing and bending rules. That’s why she was hired…to take the heat so “other issues” can be taken care of that strictly benefit the administration side of this campus.

    As far as her pay…she isn’t making anything near what the administration is giving out in this “promotions and reorganization plan” to other people. If you notice Penny isn’t a VP like other people have been promoted to lately…like Linda King went from Director to VP. (how does that happen???) Penny is still a lowly little director with no promotion or new title. Boo Hoo :( Even though I think she is probably making more that she ever made in her entire career…she hasn’t been “promoted” like the rest of the “new administration” the University has now. (Like how many VP’s does it take to run a University anyway???) Her only job was to approve the promotions.

    So to keep the faculty and others eye on the AAEO plans and the fact there may be a violation there….diverts attention from the constant reorganization of the administrative side of campus into a corporation like administration. Which by the time people wake up…the University will be looking and acting like a corporation so…they will be a corporation. Simple tactic…works well for them.

    But to keep the heat on Penny for not doing her job is well worth the effort. The more heat the better…She deserves everything coming her way.

  242. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    There was university and community opposition in the 1980s. I can remember the imperious and condescending manner in which Paul Olum let it be known to the people attending public forums that UO would do as it pleased and he knew better than we.

  243. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    My thoughts on Penny Daugherty part 1.

    Ms. Daugherty where can one begin. She wasn’t hired to do the plans. That fight with the feds is an old one and an easy fight to end when started. It goes like this….the UO will convince the FEDS that the UO will follow the rules and beg forgiveness for “not understanding“ the rules. Then the UO will carry as usual until the next fight. The AAEO office has done that for years well at least since 1995. Been there seen that.

    After all, as proved over and over the UO only follows law when its to their favor. Well, its more like the administration will do what they want and claim no knowledge when they get caught…but first they will do what they want no matter what laws are broken, bent or ignored. Been there seen that.

    Bringing attention to the lack of plans is a good smoke screen to what the administration is really up to these days.

    Penny was hired to put her signature on all the Administration promotions and give her approval on all the reorganizations so the Administration could call it legal. And when everyone wakes up and notices that there may be a problem the administration will claim…”What! Our AAEO director signed the documents…what do you mean there‘s a problem?????” (anyone catching on here) Penny will hold the entire basket of blame (and she thought her ass kissing was getting her somewhere)….LOL!!!!

  244. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    Penny Part 2

    Penny’s history shows a pattern of ass kissing and bending rules. That’s why she was hired…to take the heat so “other issues” can be taken care of that strictly benefit the administration side of this campus.

    As far as her pay…she isn’t making anything near what the administration is giving out in this “promotions and reorganization plan” to other people. If you notice Penny isn’t a VP like other people have been promoted to lately…like Linda King went from Director to VP. (how does that happen???) Penny is still a lowly little director with no promotion or new title. Boo Hoo :( Even though I think she is probably making more that she ever made in her entire career…she hasn’t been “promoted” like the rest of the “new administration” the University has now. (Like how many VP’s does it take to run a University anyway???) Her only job was to approve the promotions.

    So to keep the faculty and others eye on the AAEO plans and the fact there may be a violation there….diverts attention from the constant reorganization of the administrative side of campus into a corporation like administration. Which by the time people wake up…the University will be looking and acting like a corporation so…they will be a corporation. Simple tactic…works well for them.

    But to keep the heat on Penny for not doing her job is well worth the effort. The more heat the better…She deserves everything coming her way.

  245. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    Among Paul Olum’s imperious assertions was that the identified (though not yet signed) contractor for the RRP was found, after a national search, to be the only one willing and able to carry out the project. With respect to “willing”, when confronted with evidence that there had been no nationwide search, Olum ran a second search that invited folks to compete against an already selected developer (no surprise, no takers). With respect to “able”, the developer of choice went bankrupt before anything was developed. A new developer was found within days. From the beginning, our Administrations have tried to keep Faculty out of Park policy; it is conventional wisdom in the Park Trade that Faculty are a big nuisance.

  246. UO Matters 11/11/2010

    I wasn’t here when Paul Olum was President. But every comment I’ve ever heard about him has been complementary. He was in charge during some very tough economic times, and he was well known for fighting the OUS board for UO’s slice of money and then spending it all on our research and teaching mission. Apparently he was a notorious tightwad when it came to the administrative side.

    I’ve always thought he was a good model for what Lariviere should be doing. Except for the part where OUS fired him!

    So it’s a bit surprising to see these “imperious” comments. I would like to hear more on both sides, if people want to comment.

  247. Anonymous 11/11/2010

    Paul Olum was, indeed, a fine president — except on the Research Park, where he clearly resented Faculty intrusion. (This old man wrote the comment directly above yours.)

  248. Anonymous 11/14/2010

    Very interesting that the target for UO resident enrollment is essentially flat in the future — unlike the other campuses.

    Evidently they realize that with limited capacity, in order to continue to siphon off UO’s surplus they need to keep the out of state enrollment high here at the expense of in-state enrollment.

    The jock box, the arena etc etc are what they are because of the insistence of the donors on getting what they are paying for.

    Hopefully, the donors for the Lariviere plan will be just as insistent on getting some real autonomy and ending the ripoffs, in dealing with the state.

    It will be very interesting to watch the donors and the state interests tussle over the terms.

    Will Oregon really be stupid enough to walk away from a huge private donation to UO?

    Don’t bet against Oregon!

  249. Anonymous 11/15/2010

    The plan. A carefully crafted document that butters over everyone’s concerns…(those that are not administrators or donors that is) to look like a plan that includes all. But its missing a few things. What happens to retirement plans, medical benefits, cost of living raises, grievance procedures, unions, salary caps on administrators, faculty senate and other committees and grant monies. I’m sure I left things out…I’m just asking. The university so far has trashed employee trust between the elite admin and the faculty, classified and OA’s. So what’s written in stone for the commoners on campus?
    Another comment: So the Chancellor gets paid less than the President, Provost and dyke, king and almost all other elitist administration at the U? That surprises me house or no house.

  250. Anonymous 11/15/2010

    The proposed UO board should also include a voting CLASSIFIED STAFF member.

  251. Amelie 11/15/2010

    I oppose the New Partnership model because OSA (Oregon Students Association) tells me what to do. Their Executive Director made a political career of blindly opposing the UO Administration when she was ASUO President, just like I have.

  252. Anonymous 11/15/2010

    Everyone knows that Universities want the oversees money and residents don’t have a prayer when it comes to being first…especially here at the UO.
    The only thing that talks here is money. Education not so much. Sorry, here its all about sports, that’s the business that brings in the money and therefore UO needs to “look good” and grab the bucks. Support for education comes second or maybe third after the administrators.

    To get the non residents here they slick down, shine up and tout education but its all about sports when they get here. When the bucks arrive the faculty and students are on their own the administration is first.

    Just look…there are private buildings for our sports programs….all shiny and new and the best private parking for the athletes and administration… great isn‘t it? The Uof O is living in Nike’s back pocket and he calls the shots. He even gets to name buildings after his family members…the UO is so bought!!! But…see how good they look! Nike made us that way…when Nike’s happy the administration is happy and everyone should be happy if your not…too bad.

    I often wonder what the past administrations would have to say about our current money grabbing elitist big headed bully administration. How would they feel to them selling out to the donors demands in sacrifice of education, research and the growth of our students minds.

    Education…they tout that on the last page of the program…right under the sport of Cheerleading.

  253. Anonymous 11/15/2010

    I’m sure when the state “asks” the public workers to “contribute more” for their health and pension benefits, the Pernsteiner story will help persuade the classified staff to be part of the team effort.

    And when they next “ask” this faculty member to take a voluntary pay cut, I will keep it in mind.

  254. Anonymous 11/16/2010

    Sometimes this old man wonders if the Administration (OUS and UO) are giving themselves raises in order to encourage faculty unionization. Why would they do that? Perhaps because a unionized faculty loses all possibility of exercising control over the budget, and (speaking generically) Administrations hate nothing more than a Stand-Up Faculty that is taking its governance responsibilities seriously.

  255. Anonymous 11/17/2010

    Dog to Dear UOmatters

    You gotta to be kidding me on that professor outburst. That’s not an outburst – that’s a mini burst on the scale of dog outbursts to classes that are generally centered on their unwillingness and inability to think independently.

    But the video, in fact, does highlight the main problem here. This is 2010 – the idea of the captive mass audience lecture should be fuckin’ dead by now. Its clear that it does not work.
    In fact, you can’t find a single study that says it does work pedagogically – its just a cheap way to deliver material. I think that is an economic argument.

    By the way, the dog does not have a pleasant side …

  256. Anonymous 11/18/2010

    Looks like a leak war between Pernsteiner (who obviously has it in for Lariviere) and whoever has it in for Pernsteiner — too many suspects to know who, I’m not saying it’s Lariviere, he seems like a nice guy, maybe too nice for a nasty place like Oregon (the state) has become.

    Whatever, all this sniping is not doing either the OUS or UO any good. The state is looking for places to cut, despite — or because of — their awful record of supporting Oregon universities, the higher education system is making itself very target rich.

  257. Anonymous 11/19/2010

    I have already started my campaign to cut state spending…starting with the UO past and present administration. I figure the new governor should get a heads up of what has been going on at the UO. I may stand alone but the numbers prove my point…we have an elitist administration and its not just their salaries that need to be cut…they need to go too and right behind them should be the Board of Higher Ed and the chancellor. We will see what happens.

  258. UO Matters 11/19/2010

    UO had nothing to do with leaking these documents. Trust me.

  259. Anonymous 11/21/2010

    Lariviere is selling the “New Partnership” (the “Lariviere Plan”) by saying that it will hold back tuition increases.

    I don’t see how this can possibly be the case. There is just not enough money in the endowment fund to come anywhere close to that.

    Is this just snake oil to get the plan accepted? It could backfire not too many years hence, when the state might hold UO to this promise.

    Has the ace Senate Budget Committee analyzed this? What do they say? Do they know something that the rest of us don’t?

  260. Anonymous 11/21/2010

    Keep it up UOMatters. I am tired of these folks asking us to take in the chin again and again when it comes to budgets, all the while they line their fat purses.

    I think we need a purge. You ought to post all provost, vice provost, vp and the like salaries and then total. And then add in the +50% for OPE. Let’s look at that grand total. Then we can brainstorm our own BIG ideas as to what we could do with that money as a means of demonstrating the opportunity cost of this gross fat.

  261. Anonymous 11/22/2010

    Is it possible that there is a connection between keeping the athletic donors happy and financing the “Lariviere plan”?

    Just asking.

  262. Anonymous 11/23/2010

    dog says

    isn’t it obvious by now that Lariviere’s distant hope, in this “New Partnerhsip” is that Phil Knight just gives the UO a billion dollars for Academics to define what the New Partnership really means?

    Since that is not likely to happen and since the state of Oregon is mostly a poor hick state (and always has been – I can say this, I am a native, most of the rest of you are not) the New Partnership is mostly intellectual masturbation.

  263. Anonymous 11/24/2010

    Maybe Lariviere should talk to an economist. I’m not an economist, but I have a question, have raised it before. Maybe an economist or our ace senate budget committee can help me see what I’m missing.

    In his op-ed piece he says:

    “Having a steady income stream through the public-private endowment will enable us to better control the rate of tuition increases.”

    Now this is probably literally true — it will probably smooth out tuition increases. But is he saying that it will substantially dampen average tuition increases? I just don’t see how, given the decades-long increase of tuition at substantially above the rate of inflation, and above the rate of growth of peoples’ real disposable incomes.

    I don’t see how the proposed private endowment, or anything likely to come of it from investment returns, can possibly be enough to accomplish this.

    If Lariviere is really saying this is what “The Plan” will accomplish, I suspect it is snake oil — either the state, or UO (if it has to adhere to such a deal) is going to get screwed.

    Are there any economists out there who can help us out?

  264. Anonymous 11/26/2010

    I want a truck like that! Of course I’ll take it out to the dirt roads. These trucks are a clear example of excess. Looks like they had some extra bucks to spend somewhere. Where did that come from? Furlough days?

    I’m thinking its time for action instead of just speaking out…I’m thinking a petition needs to be developed and have EVERYONE sign. Have the petition state clearly NO CONFIDENCE in the present administration. Include the president. Dave F’s good buddy the chancellor and don’t forget the Board of Higher Ed. List the grievances (list UO Matters page as a reading source will do) suggest and list the changes needed (like throw these greedy elitist punks out!) and deliver it to the newly elected governor and demand he take action. I wonder what would happen.

    For those of you that trust the president and believe “he’s a good guy” (because he got rid of a few incompetent deadheads). I’m saying…he is no friend of the University. His plan sucks and we are the one’s that will pay the price in the end. FLUSH! I can hear it now. All I see is… he is finishing the job that Dave F started.

    We will all be loading our stuff in back of our trucks and leaving dodge if his plan is implemented.

  265. Anonymous 11/27/2010

    Lariviere had an op-ed piece about the “New Partnership” in the Wall St. Journal, and now there are letters to the editor — very negative, and also ideologically driven and rather ignorant — from out-of-state people. You can find the letters here

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575633001930777226.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket

    with a link to the (subscriber only) piece by Lariviere. You can probably read the full piece by clipping the first sentence into a google search.

  266. Anonymous 11/27/2010

    RE: DPS uses sexual assault to justify more money

    Speaking of the truck, and for what it’s worth, ASUO Senator Erin Altman (Seat 3: PFC) brought this up when DPS came to Student Senate to talk about the proposed UO Police on Nov. 10, 2010. Her comments included “If you could speak on your fiscal responsibility, because I don’t see it.” DPS Director Tripp said the truck was for hauling stuff.

  267. Anonymous 11/27/2010

    Hauling stuff! You have got to be kidding! These so called administrators must think we are stupid. I am appalled by their behavior so far in this “grab the bucks” program they submit us to but telling us its for hauling is outrageous! Why didn’t they buy a dump truck instead?

  268. Anonymous 11/27/2010

    The striking thing about the letters in the WSJ re the Lariviere plan is (1) neither of them addressed the actual merits or features of the plan itself; and (2) the obvious hatred of the letter-writers toward public higher education.

    The first letter-writer obviously hates faculty — how offensive that they expect to get paid, especially with skyrocketing enrollment!

    The second letter-writer obviously knows absolutely nothing about UO’s financial situation or how money is obtained and distributed here (and probably the same level of knowledge of other public universities; the guy is a research VP at a big pharmaceutical company, and graduate of a small private college).

    Wretched as these letters may be, they may be telling in that they say something about how a significant fraction of the public feels about public higher education.

  269. Anonymous 11/28/2010

    The level of hostility to professors in the online WSJ comments is pretty high. Worse than what I read in the Oregonian.

  270. hitch 12/01/2010

    Manage your personal outrage this holiday season by doing homework. Anyone is able using the salary and other payroll expense calculator, http://rm.uoregon.edu/budget_ope and click on OPE work sheet for FY11. Just find your favorite administrator’s annual salary from http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir/files/Unclassified%20060110%20to%20083110.pdf . Then follow these easy steps to disillusionment: Into cell B5 enter annual salary, for example $212,493. Then change cell B6 to 12, change cell B7 to N, change cell B9 to 5 and change B10 to 7. And stand back!
    When you divide the contents of cell I30 by 260 the results are the total compensation for one, 8 hour work day.
    That’s right kido, just $1, 047.71 per work day is what it costs the University of Oregon for a VPFA and the unintelligible holiday memo emailed from her AVP, HR well that probably only set us back $749.23.
    Who’s tree are they flocking?

  271. Anonymous 12/05/2010

    Noting the winning football team this year I was wondering…how is our cheer team doing? What is their ranking. Who will they be in competition with in the national jump offs?

  272. Anonymous 12/08/2010

    Dog Clarifies:

    CAS-IT is not necessarily new – it was started about 18 months ago as a reaction to perceived NON service being supplied to CAS by Information Services (e.g. Don Harris).

    CAS-IT is not really necessary and in my experience doesn’t really do much but nonetheless employs people.

    However, Don Harris’s management of IS is beyond atrocious (not to mention a locked down building) and has seriously hurt our pace of cyber -infrastructure build out. The fact that he remains our campus CIO is, to this tired old dog, the most egregious of any of our administrative personnel issues at the UO.

    The only explanations are that 1) no one cares about our IT enterprises or 2)no one understands how bad our IT situation is.

    Reality is probably some weighted combination of 1 and 2 above.

    “Virtualization, gee what’s that?” — Don Harris 2009

  273. UO Matters 12/09/2010

    Don Harris is less competent than Frances Dyke? I call that bold talk!

    But I have heard that his recent performance evaluation was abysmal. If Ms Dyke has ever had an evaluation, the administration is keeping it secret. More likely they are afraid to ask the people who work with her what they think.

  274. Anonymous 12/09/2010

    Interesting this contrast is brought up because it is an open secret that for the last few years Dyke has deployed her highly placed Lieutenants to spread rumors about Harris’ ineptitude. Unfortunate for Harris, his crew is lead by too many “grey beards” making tired excuses and holding back our technological infrastructure. Unfortunate too that Dyke is a gossip who used “good old boy” internal promotions to saddle the university with “peter principled” administrators in key leadership positions as Associate Vice Presidents. Dyke and Harris should both retire and take all their human speed bumps with them.

  275. hitch 12/10/2010

    Ouch! If you’re reading these comments, (and we know you do) maybe you feel gut-punched. So take stock and do the right thing for this highly complex organization. The UO has grown beyond your talents and it is just simply time to move on.

  276. Anonymous 12/10/2010

    We all know Lariviere and Bean should fire some people. But Lariviere is busy with re-imagining UO.

    Why doesn’t Bean take charge? He never wanted the Provost job anyway, he just took it out of a sense of duty. He’d hoped to have moved on to a better B-school by now. It never occurred to him he would still be dealing with Frances and Russ, 3 years later. He’s still hoping he’ll get that call, and then they will be the new guy’s problem.

  277. Anonymous 12/11/2010

    Rumor has it Pernsteiner may ask for Lariviere’s resignation. Take him down too!

    If that happens, Lariviere should say he will do whatever the new Governor wants him to do.

    That would really be something — the UO Pres getting fired after two years — that would really help UO when it wants to hire on the national market!

    Imagine — Jim Bean as Interim President and Russ Tomlin as Interim Provost!

  278. Anonymous 12/12/2010

    Got news for the person who commented about evaluations of Dyke. From what I have seen…our administrators evaluate themselves. They don’t ask for input from the people they work with. I never got asked nor did anyone else in the office get asked. How about that? Great program for the narcissistic administrators around here, works well. All’s good in the hood.

  279. Anonymous 12/14/2010

    Scott Coltrane, dean of CAS, is entering in his third year. This means he should be formally reviewed at the end of this year. Perhaps CAS faculty should ask that the review process, with faculty input, be revived for him. (Reviews of administrators were terminated by Frohnmayer.)

  280. Anonymous 12/15/2010

    Yes, Coltrane definitely needs to undergo a rigorous review. The humanities have really suffered under his management. As far as I’m concerned, it’s time for a serious change of direction.

  281. Anonymous 12/15/2010

    “A top search firm will assist us in identifying candidates and engaging the campus and larger community.” -Not the first time or the fifth.

    Here is an idea that’s time has come: outsource all of Human Resources. Administratively the department is pure overhead and when complex strategies are needed the University has to bring in “hired guns’ in addition to paying all those high salaries. And for what? HR has no written procedures. PEBB administers our benefits and OUS negotiates labor agreements.

  282. Anonymous 12/15/2010

    How have the humanities suffered under Coltrane? Please provide details.

  283. Anonymous 12/15/2010

    Yes, I am also curious to hear specifics about how humanities have suffered under Coltrane – especially given that he faces some serious constraints, given Bean’s decision to continue the subsidies to Law and Music at the expense of CAS.

  284. Anonymous 12/16/2010

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  285. Anonymous 12/16/2010

    As a senior professor in the humanities and former dept head, I can attest to Coltrane’s poor performance with respect to my own department. To some extent, his problem is that he just maintains the low priority CAS has always given to the humanities. Just look at how much money CAS, including Coltrane, have raised for the humanities–little to nothing. (We contrast unfavorably with Portland State in this regard.) Coltrane in particular seems eerily disengaged from what goes on in the humanities departments, and unconcerned that almost all of them perform poorly in the national rankings.

    But the main point is that Coltrane should be evaluated in a systematic fashion, as U of O procedures require. This would allow him to explain what he thinks he has accomplished; and allow others to assess those claims.

  286. Anonymous 12/16/2010

    The complaining here from the humanities seems rather vague. How much has Portland State raised in comparison to UO for the humanities?

    Of course, fund raising is just a minor thing compared to budget allocations. Are the humanities getting a smaller share of the pie under Coltrane? I have no way of knowing without doing some work, and then it might be difficult to get up to date information.

  287. Anonymous 12/17/2010

    Dog on Coltrane:

    Not sure this one will make it by
    the UOMatters Censor Board but will
    give it a try.

    To me, Coltrane’s only a bean counter – uninterested in matters of
    academics, academic quality, and scholarship. This is to be expected – Coltrane’s predecessor was a bean
    counter as well, he just counted the beans slightly differently.

    In my entire time at the UO I have never seen any CAS dean actually exercise initiative in the name of Academic Integrity.

    So, we get what we get. Why have
    any other expectations at all …

  288. Anonymous 12/17/2010

    Coltrane’s detachment is partly structural. His background is sociology; he knows as much about the humanities as I know about sociology, which is nothing. This makes him totally reliant on his associate dean of humanities. These associate deans have also been exceptionally weak in recent years–and they are never evaluated either, except by Coltrane, who does not know enough about their field to judge success or failure.

    All of this might be addressed if the dean’s office was ever evaluated.

  289. Anonymous 12/19/2010

    Perhaps now the Ducks will really take you seriously, and become truly self-sufficient academically as well as commercially. they could outsource their academic assistance programs, saving UO the last $2 million in subsidy, and relieving the UO “academic side” of any responsibility or control in this, thereby making Jim Bean less happy and UO Matters more happy. Who knows, they might improve their graduation rates!

  290. Anonymous 12/20/2010

    So seeing that the Athletic Department seems to be separating themselves completely from the University (except using the name and duck) and acting like a private sports business. Then I’m thinking the faculty senate should pass a motion that a fee schedule be set up to charge the Athletic Department for using university property, symbol (the duck) and the name of the University for their personal gain unrelated to education. The fees should include land rent for the jox box and their parking spaces and the huge spacey looking thing called MATT Court and even charge land rent for across the river. Then add a monthly fee for the ability to tie themselves to the University through the use of the duck and calling themselves part of the University. Maybe something around 3-10 million a year or 50% of their gain. Seems fair to me.

    After all…they act like a private business, earn like a private business they must be a private business…seems they need to pay fees like a private business.

  291. hitch 12/21/2010

    Population-wise the University is a town within a city and generally speaking, 60 – 70% of municipal budgets are expensed on policing. I wonder, does our “town” truly need to dedicate this degree of ongoing resources to staffing our own police department? This is a huge commitment, and there are other options. Funding a police force at this University will be like feeding a Grizzly in Yosemite: someone is going to get seriously hurt.

  292. Anonymous 12/22/2010

    Whoa…talk about a salary increase! What kind of justification did they give to the Board for that kind of raise? What kind of justification was given in approving that kind of raise? One thing is sure…its outrageous!

  293. Anonymous 12/22/2010

    “The committee shall be the forum where the President and other Administration officials seek faculty advice on all important decisions that affect the university before they are implemented”

    Confusing… if the FAC gives advice to the president and administration about financial issues then how is it things in that area are such a mess? It looks as though the President and the administration are going through the motions and doing what they want or the FAC members are just warming the chairs or maybe have no teeth to bite with. Whatever it may be the secret society isn’t working anymore the silence needs to be broken to bring the university back to being an institution for higher education instead of an institution for administration.

  294. Anonymous 12/22/2010

    Dog Barks

    Let’s get real.

    1. The FAC has never acted as a true Advisory committee – the FAC is simply used as a device to either vette or legitimize already made Prez/Provost decisions.

    2. Any elected committee is unlikely to contained the combined expertise and interest in the mission of the committee to do anything real. This means that true appointed committees have more expertise and more at stake. Think of you local departmental job search committee and the difference in functionality between and appointed on and an “elected” one.

    3. To this dog, this is all a reflection of the dysfunctional nature of the UO as an institution. Most all our committees here are, elected, so that we have an “inclusive” process and not an executive appointment process. While the former may somewhat defeat cronyism (I doubt it tho), it certainly produces functionless committees with no power. Really,
    is there anything more functionless than having an FPC at an institution where the recent tenure rate has been 98%.

    4. The UO is a process oriented institution; it is certainly not an outcome oriented one.

  295. Anonymous 12/24/2010

    Dog, who must be a puppy, writes, “The FAC has never acted as a true Advisory committee – the FAC is simply used as a device to either vette or legitimize already made Prez/Provost decisions.” Dog is hereby advised that the FAC did, in the past, act as a truly advisory body to Prexy. Their job, as an elected committee, was to advise Prexy on all matters, but especially on matters that were recognized to be Faculty concerns. In no way did it act to legitimize Prexy’s policy decisions. Policy decisions were made by the Faculty, via its Assembly. A smart Prexy, who recognized the importance of process, could avoid an Assembly confrontation by resolving the problem as advised by the FAC. The problem recently has not been with the system, it has been with the abuse of the system by administrators who, like all autocrats, disdained the machinery of constitutional governance.

  296. Anonymous 12/24/2010

    Dog barks

    well, since I am a puppy indeed,
    the system you describe must have
    occurred long before this puppy was born. You know, dogs are sometimes
    on advisory committees … believe it or not.

  297. Anonymous 12/26/2010

    So I am thinking. Why is it that the UO is demanding change. I can’t find any other university in the state demanding the same things that the UO wants. All other institutions of higher education seem to be happy with the way things work…so why is the UO going the other way? Wait….institution of higher education…the UO is an institution of administration…the higher education part is fouling things up for them…I got it.

  298. Anonymous 12/27/2010

    George Leef is a third-rate former teacher at something called “Northwood University” with scathing views about all aspects of higher education. Read him at his website or his incessant postings at National Review. He evidently doesn’t even understand the Lariviere plan, doesn’t get it that it would reduce state involvement and expenditure for higher education. The guy is that obtuse. I’m surprised that the Register Guard is so hard up as to run his lame piece.

  299. Anonymous 12/30/2010

    Sundt is right about the lack of evidence that the Ducks athletic succes is helping UO academically. It’s possible that it’s true, but I’d have to see real evidence. Is our enrollment increasing faster than other campuses? Are SAT scores of incoming students increasing? I would like to think so — we lag behind comparable state universities by a considerable margin that respect — but I don’t know. Does anybody else know?

  300. Anonymous 01/03/2011

    Dog (or puppy to old men) Barks

    Oh joy, another quarter begins – and this dog as well as other dogs, still haven’t received even a COLA increase since 11/2008 – in dog years that’s a long time to eat the same bargain brand dog food.

    Tuition income is up greatly from
    that of two years ago. Can’t this dog get a 2% COLA raise, please, just do I can get some gravy on my food.

    Crowded classrooms, disconnected students, traditional programs – yuch – buy hey, Matt Court is done,Elton John is coming, we are in the BCS bowl, and our basketball teams suck – well 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.

    When is the academic side of the UO gonna disappear completely?

  301. Anonymous 01/04/2011

    To the yappy puppy: don’t you know there’s a horrendous recession going on, with a 20% state budget deficit? And you want a cost of living raise (when the cost of living index is essentially flat!) That would be utter poison for relations of UO with the state — the same UO that is pushing the “New Partnership.” And no, this has nothing to do with the new arena, Elton John, the BCS, or any of your other whining obsessions. I know, UO can afford to give you a raise — but see how that goes down when they have to jack up tuition the NEXT time.

    And get this: if you’re Tier 1 — I get the feeling you’re a puppy who’s been around that long — the contribution to your pension is going to go up by about 6% of your salary in the new biennium. Yup, it’s like you’re getting a 6% raise already! On top of your already munificent pension benefits. That’s one reason the state budget is such a shambles. And believe me, a lot of people out there deeply resent you for it. (My sincere apologies if you’re one of the newer Tier X people where X – 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever edition they’re up to. And let it be noted that the newer Tier X people don’t have such a sweet deal. On the other hand, they have higher salaries, relatively, than the Tier 1 people)

  302. Anon not dog 01/04/2011

    So last time I looked, if your business is successful and growing and you are bringing in the income that growth, that is a justification for workers to get a raise, is it not?

    It sounds to me anon that you are a bit jealous of the old dog. To assuage your jealousy, go ahead and sign up for a job at the UO so you can share the dog food.

  303. Anonymous 01/04/2011

    To not dog: did you even try to understand the point I made about PERS and the effective 6% raise for Tier 1 employees? If you’re a perfesser at UO, they must have some real doozies.

    And as for UO being a “business”, that is true in many respects, but it’s also the case that it is still a state agency, and still dependent for something like $50 million a year in state support for its basic operating budget. Without that dough, UO is sunk.

    Of course, UO could always ask for another big tuition hike on the in-state students to make up the $5o million. Maybe $3000 a year?

    And see how that would go over if the state — which still owns and controls the place — sees UO handing out raises right now.

    You know, at a number of places the states are cutting support and not allowing compensating tuition increases. With the result that departments are being eliminated. Ask the language professors at SUNY Albany how that feels, compared to a salary freeze.

    You think it couldn’t happen at UO?

  304. Anonymous 01/05/2011

    Real Dog Barks back

    This is not really a forum to carry on any extended flame war and its certainly not the place for respond to the petty whinings of random (still gravyless) dogs- but the last poster has brought up the SUNY Albany situation and asked if it could happen at the UO.

    The answer, I think, is yes and let me give specific examples.

    Academic departments usually are terminated because they are no longer cost effective to maintain. In general, this means that the student clientele is no longer interested in the academic area.

    One example at the UO is the strong migration of students away from the CIS major and to the Digital Arts major. So CIS is an example department that is on the edge of termination – that is unlikely to happen but the cost effective alternative of merging CIS and Digital ARTS into a more interdisciplinary (and useful) degree program is also not going to happen at the UO.

    A good comparative example.

    Now I am not an economist (since apparently economists are banned from posting on UOMatters) but one measure of cost effectiveness might be

    departmental budgets divided by the number of degrees granted per year.

    Naturally there will be variation around this but within CAS the variations are extreme and are the following:

    Most Expensive Degree to get: Physics

    Physics Budget: 4 Million

    Physics degrees per year: 10-20

    Cost for degree 200-400K

    Least Expensive Degree to get:

    ENVS/ESCI

    Program Budget: 800K

    Degrees per year: 80-100

    Lost per Degree 8-10K

    This variation is extreme and, if taken in isolation, would terminate the Physics department.

    This is the entire problem with treating Academia in any Business/Output model. It may be necessary but in so doing, completely removes the nature of the Academy as a place of scholarship and generation of new ideas.

  305. Anonymous 01/06/2011

    Anon

    9% that is how much this cheap state funds its state college. Did you understand that? The tax payers and legislators of this state are more than happy to allow the UO to raise tuition rather than part with their beer money to fund education.

  306. Anonymous 01/07/2011

    Does anyone have any reaction or other information related to a EXTREMELY interesting article about Kilkenny in the news section of the Eugene Weekly that came out yesterday ?

  307. Anonymous 01/10/2011

    UOMatters, sincerity is the new irony.

  308. Anonymous 01/11/2011

    Dog wonder if UOmatters allows dog comments on BCS Bowl.

    Well here goes and its basically just
    one observation.

    If you give teams 37 days off the inevitable happens and it did.

    1. The offense goes stale and both offenses did

    2. The defense has way too much time of prepare for all offensive tendencies and that showed greatly in this game as well.

    I don’t think there was a real winner. I would hope the BCS process would allow for a championship game to either be played earlier or to finally move to a 3-4 team playoff structure.

    The last time the dog had 37 days off, he forgot he was just a dog.

  309. Anonymous 01/12/2011

    Hah! They claim that UO is leasing out the land at less than 10% of fair market value. But what is the “market value” of the land? Zero! Because who would want to lease land that can’t be used for anything. Where you will spend decades farting around with a bunch of obstructionists. What a bunch of losers. Except they are winning. Contrast that with the Athletic program. No wonder so many people think academics are a bunch of weird fools.

  310. UO Matters 01/12/2011

    Great site for new track and field stadium. I’m sure Phil Knight would be willing to pay us big bucks.

    I sort of agree about all the obstruction – but if UO had played by the rules, ORI would have a new building by now.

    I wonder who advised Lariviere he could sneak this through? Melinda Grier, or Randy Geller?

  311. zstarmac 01/13/2011

    The commentator’s article about the UO Senate meeting is exactly what happened.

    Facts (such as if public meetings have been held, etc) were treated as opinions and dismissed with a “you’re entitled to your opinion” kind of response.

    If it wasn’t so bizarre and disturbing it would have been hilarious.

  312. hitch 01/14/2011

    Parking…hmmm….call DPS and they point the caller to Athletics…UO has employees who qualify for public assistance, and now our lowest paid employees will pay an additional $10 to come to work. Nice. The SEIU and GTFF need to jump into this with both feet. $10 per event night is a hardship for anyone living outside an ivory tower.

  313. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    Actually the dog got caught up in this parking shit at 5 pm today – dog wanted to park near one of dog’s favorite (and necessary) drinking establishments near campus. AttendentDroid said I had to pay $10 bucks to park in the PLC lot (even though dog had the right handtag for the dog vehicle).

    Dog hates droids and just said “fuck this” and parked at a nearby available meter.

    The situation is massively dysfunctional.

  314. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    ODE reporter Verbano describes Lariviere as “stoic” and “unsympathetic” in his dealings with the U of O senate. I assume that these are code words for “arrogant” and “dismissive”. The president says he is “not a lawyer”–as his reason for dismissing the legal issues involved. May God have mercy on our souls.

  315. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    So a series of administrators, not on the athletic side, actually approved a policy that a faculty member will have to pay $10 to park, while they grade exams in their office on the same night that Elton John plays the MAT. Please tell me these are not the present and future values of my university.

  316. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    That would be Sir Elton John, professor.

  317. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    Hopefully the dog will get his money back:

    Dear Senators:

    As you know, the new basketball arena opened last night to
    some fanfare and publicity. Although most things ran smoothly,
    the parking on campus did not. Many people arriving to campus
    for non-basketball purposes were forced to pay $10 to park
    even if they had a valid parking permit. Vice President Frances
    Dyke has agreed that this charge occurred in error and would
    like to rectify this situation with each individual who was charged
    inappropriately. This includes all faculty, staff and students.
    Please have anyone you know who came to campus yesterday
    afternoon and evening for a non-basketball activity and was
    charged $10 to write Frances Dyke directly
    ([email protected]).

    Thanks very much in advance for forwarding this message to
    your colleagues and constituency.

    Cheers,

    Nathan Tublitz

  318. Anonymous 01/14/2011

    Human Resources, like DPS reports to Frances. They know full well we have custodians working graveyard and that $10 on top of what they already pay to park hurts low wage employees.

    Another fine example of departmental collaboration under the VPFA.

  319. Anonymous 01/16/2011

    My concern about Lariviere is that he is given to fantasy, even when speaking on the public record.

    When he made the case for the next Phil Knight mega-project before the State Board, he justified handing the project over to Nike by claiming that construction of the Knight Law School had “cost overruns [of] over 30 percent, and the delays were over a year in getting the project done”. [Oregonian, 6/4/10]

    This is completely untrue, and as insult to those involved in the Law School project. When asked, the president’s office said it had no idea where he got this information. Answer: he says whatever comes to mind to avoid having substantive dialogue.

    Lariviere was hired, remember, after a secret search with no public input into the process. We are now learning who we hired.

  320. Anonymous 01/17/2011

    The University’s complaints are always framed in terms of state dollars as a percentage of UO budget. That number could decline because state support declines, or because the UO budget grows, or some combination. Which is it? Is the UO getting fat and demanding that the state feed it more, or is it getting thin and being put on a diet? I’d like to see numbers for Oregon state legislative appropriations for higher education over time in constant dollars, or as a percentage of the total state budget. Similarly, figures for growth in the UO budget over time in constant dollars, related to growth in student numbers. Anybody? Anybody?

  321. Anonymous 01/18/2011

    Brian Leiter also mentions the Inside Higher Ed article and gives his take on Lariviere.

  322. Anonymous 01/18/2011

    Dog finds:

    The State of Oregon’s allocation
    for all of higher ed since 1987 is shown here.

    http://www.ous.edu/dept/ir/reports/fb2010/pages/p111.pdf

    specifics on the UO and the other
    OUS entities can be found here

    http://www.ous.edu/dept/ir/reports/fact_book_2000/sumbudgt.pdf

    and then change in the above URL
    the year 2000 to any other year
    to see the report for that FY

    or this

    http://www.ous.edu/dept/ir/reports/fb2010/S9_Budget_and_Facilities.pdf

    and again change 2010 to some
    other year

  323. Anonymous 01/18/2011

    That is useful info, dawg.

    Especially

    http://www.ous.edu/dept/ir/reports/fb2010/S9_Budget_and_Facilities.pdf

    on p. 112. It shows that the inflation adjusted (CPI) revenue for academics per student is essentially unchanged from 1989 – present.

    That is really bad, because of course, costs have risen faster than the CPI; if you don’t believe me, consider your salary + benefits, not just salary.

    Practically all other indices of private or government revenue per person — per capita income; expenditures per K-12 student; expenditures per Oregon prison inmate, etc. etc. — have grown with the economy. Including, no doubt, revenues per student at universities outside Oregon.

    So, Oregon is truly falling behind, over decades. It’s no wonder that OUS campuses have declining reputations. The decline is real.

  324. Anonymous 01/19/2011

    Ah, more self-destructive output from the UO community, this time, the students.

    Of course there isn’t going to be a tuition cap, whether under the Lariviere plan or any other plan, because costs will keep rising and the state will keep cutting its subsidy.

    Perhaps the students think we should have larger classes at UO, or that the overpaid professors should make do with less, or that the facilities are too lavish — look at Columbia 150.

    And of course, once the private donors get into the act, the dear faculty will find reason to undermine that.

    I’ve often thought, starting back in 1999 with the WRC/Phil Knight fiasco, that UO had a death wish. I sort of thought that had passed, but maybe not.

  325. Anonymous 01/19/2011

    Dog agrees mightily with UOmatters on this one.

    To wit (assuming dog’s have wit):

    From the long list of items presented by UOmatters, my view is that whenever there was an Opportunity for the UO Admin to correct perceptions or to clarify and make transparency – they have failed leaving, to me, merely a dog, the lingering impression that a) no one really knows what is going on and b)no one is willing to take responsibility to improve perception/transparency.

    This creates the image of a totally disconnected University.

    Actually, the dog suggests this exercise as a visual manifestation of the above.

    Some morning when it is sunny, clear your mental image of the UO, get in your car (to increase your Carbon footprint) – drive in some way so as to come back so that you approach the University on Franklin from the east (for you mindful of sustainability you can get almost the same experience on the EMX) –
    now with your uncleared mind look at the UO – its all glassy and shiny, brand new buildings –> what a veneer – I hope no one scratches the surface.

  326. Anonymous 01/20/2011

    I hate to break it to Mr. Vliet but Lariviere is not the president of any of the other OUS institutions. His responsibility is to lead and advocate for the students, faculty, and staff of the UO. Regardless of your opinion on how well he is doing is job, he is not responsible for being OSU’s advocate.

    If it were a completely arrogant and self-serving proposal he would have argued the closure of at least TWO OUS institutions.

  327. Anonymous 01/20/2011

    Pardon me. It should read, “…Mr. Van Vliet…”

  328. Anonymous 01/20/2011

    Dog to UOmatters

    I think the links to the comments are broken – they no longer take you directly to the comments; instead
    you have to go to the comments archive/newest and scroll down

    or maybe Dogs don’t know how to use the internet – not sure

  329. Anonymous 01/20/2011

    If van Vliet were really looking out for the other campuses, he’d realize that the UO bond would set a long-term floor for all of them! And sure, they could go to a public/private endowment model — all they have to do is come up with donor(s) to match the public endowment, as UO apparently has.

    As for the value of the campus — keep in mind that much, perhaps most of that has come from outside sources — not the State of Oregon.

    If he thinks Phil Knight and other private donors are going to pay twice for the new arena, the law school, etc. etc. he must be smoking somethin’ up there is Corvallis.

    It’s just pure envy!

    But sure, the complete privatization idea would be a great one — really make the University of Oregon into a Stanford — I’m all for it!

    In the end, I don’t think the state is going to walk away from $800 million in private money. They’re not that dumb. And look how easily they folded on the arena bonds!

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