Press "Enter" to skip to content

Gottfredson’s homework is 4 weeks late, still doesn’t address the issues.

6/17/2013: Today I got this email:

From: President Gottfredson Subject: RE: Protect and Preserve Shared Governance at UO
Date: June 17, 2013 3:03:25 PM PDT
To: William Harbaugh  

Dear Colleague, 

Thank you for your email about the ongoing faculty contract negotiations. I agree that this first-ever collective bargaining agreement is critical as it will become part of the foundation upon which we will build the university’s future. I believe both sides have taken great care and have been thoughtful and deliberate in their negotiations. We are all concerned that the university have outstanding compensation in order to recruit and retain the best faculty in the world. At this point, all proposals to be discussed are on the table and I’m optimistic that a sound, fiscally responsible and fair agreement will be reached soon. 

I appreciate your concern and want you to know that I am proud to be a part of this great university. 

Regards,
Michael Gottfredson
President

It’s not like I was expecting a personal response to the email below, sent almost a month ago, but these platitudes are just insulting. “best faculty in the world” “proud to be part of this great university”? If I got this from a student I’d tell them they’d be better off just taking a zero.

From: Professor Bill Harbaugh [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 8:38 AM
To: President Gottfredson
Subject: Protect and Preserve Shared Governance at UO

Dear President Gottfredson: 

I am very concerned about the lack of explicit protections for faculty governance in SB270 bill, and by your continuing refusal to consider inclusion of the UO Constitution in the faculty CBA. 

I think the bill should be amended to include these protections, and also to add 2 faculty members to the independent boards, with these members to be selected by the faculty senates. I also think you should aquiesce to the almost unanimous vote of the UO Senate and agree to put the Constitution in the faculty union CBA. Your arguments against this are very weak. 

I’ve been disappointed by your lack of communication with the faculty over the progress and content of this bill. I understand that it has been a difficult process to get this legislation as far as it has gone, and that transparency is not always helpful to legislation. 

But you have been on campus less than a year. Many faculty have been here 10,20,30 years. We have a large stake in the operation and success of the university. You need to talk to us about matters that are this important, and you need to do it before the last minute, when it’s too late for us to have any effective input. 

Sincerely
Professor Bill Harbaugh 

34 Comments

  1. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    Wow.

    Why am I getting flashbacks from “Being There” ?

  2. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    Amazing! I got the exact same email!

    You don’t suppose our President, who is so supportive of shared governance and transparency, sent out a form email containing empty platitudes do you?

    Insulting.

  3. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    Not just empty platitudes, but empty platitudes that don’t actually address the subject of the email. Did he get his “platitudinous response to concerns about shared governance” confused with his “platitudinous response to demands for a raise” all mixed up?

  4. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    This is the easy stuff for a president’s office. That he/they fail at this type of communication makes me fear their actual decisions even more.

    Hey Hubin,
    Please tell Gottfredson that his world-class faculty would like to can his ass in exchange for one of them there “best in the world” presidents. I hear they’re pretty cheap, too.

  5. Anas clypeata 06/18/2013

    A. “Dear Colleague”? Why not “Dear Bill” or “Dear Professor Harbaugh”? Tone deaf.

    B. Compensation? The question was not about compensation. The question was about faculty governance. Perhaps the president considers the faculty governance question “asked and answered”.

    C. “The best faculty in the world”??!? This is the University of Oregon, a public university with limited resources. It should not be the stated goal of any person at this university to recruit and retain the best faculty in the world. That goal would be simply delusional. We *might* be able to get the best faculty in Oregon. Eugene is a wonderful city, and to live here many people are willing to sacrifice some compensation, but the best faculty in the world will have needs that we will simply be unable to satisfy.

    On the other hand, the best college football coach in the world….

  6. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    wow, you mean an admin sent a form response to a known tinhat and muckraker? Im shocked and surprised. I mean, the Larson post worked so well when admins speak there minds. Which displays less intelligence, his form email or your expectation that someone would take you seriously?

    • The Truth 06/18/2013

      Looks like the HLGR interns decided to show up.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      No, he sent a form response to everyone that contacted him on that matter.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      ^^ Whoever wrote this response makes the President look even worse than whoever wrote that horrendous email from him. Being a muckraker has always been considered a valuable thing at the UO. What displays the least intelligence is this person’s use of “there” instead of “their.” Please. The President is going to have to meet with students and be more honest and direct with faculty. He can’t hide behind witless PR hacks forever, especially when they lack basic grammar skills. Shameful.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      hey, grammar nazi, what are the ^^’s in front of your comment, some
      new type of punctuation?

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      ^^^ means s/he is replying to the post above. Pretty common on comment pages and Internet forums.

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      Is it two or three ^’s??? Does the “replies” mean you are replying?? I can’t understand you unless you follow Strunk&White exactly! Is that Internet with a capital ‘I’????

  7. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    Personally, I like the line about “outstanding compensation.”

    I just don’t believe it. Someone should tell the pr guy who writes this stuff that the faculty hasn’t had a merit increase since the Bush administration.

  8. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    Did you expect him to comment on proposals outside of bargaining? Are you kidding? By really getting into and addressing the issues he might walk the University right into an unfair labor practice. He CAN’T talk about bargaining proposals off the table with you. Get used to canned responses while bargaining is ongoing. Management/Administration simply can’t afford to discuss their positions and proposals away from the table.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      That’s the easy answer but he has taken the same tactic on every topic I have seen him address with faculty – whether in a Senate meeting, email or town hall. Vague, noncommittal and dismissive.

      He has failed to engage faculty in any meaningful way on any meaningful topic – I challenge anyone to argue that point with evidence.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      You can call it an easy answer but in this case it is true. I understand the criticism about his other communications and some of it is probably justified, but to hold this as another example of that is a fallacy. The G Man, nor any other member of management, can engage in discussion around bargaining proposals outside of bargaining.

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      Dog says

      Anon above posted this essential comment:

      He (MG) has failed to engage faculty in any meaningful way on any meaningful topic – I challenge anyone to argue that point with evidence.

      I can support this comment with some very recent empirical evidence where
      indeed MG’s ability to engage was simply not there.

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      I agree with the point above, but this example is not useful for that argument. This example is clearly something that was written in a way to not walk into an Unfair Labor Practice and avoid bargaining away from the table. It is not the right email to use as evidence of further disengagement from faculty.

  9. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    To Anonymous “Known Tinhat and Muckraker”:

    Your comment is revealing of how UO administrative culture treats criticism and dissent. The author of UO Matters is a senior professor who deserves a direct response to his query; it doesn’t matter whether he maintains a critical blog. Strong leaders in the academy engage their critics even more than their supporters.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      Criticism and dissent is one thing, an often complete disregard for the truth is another.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      The ‘truth’ is that at this point the president of the university has consistently failed to communicate with the faculty about important matters over the course of a full academic year. There is no way that anyone can argue otherwise. The ‘form letter’ email, full of trite banalities, is just indicative of a bigger problem and people increasingly get that.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      Oh, wow, a senior professor, let me bow out of the way. “Critical blog”, perhaps you have not been reading UOMatters much. It lacks any regard for academic objectivity. It is pure comedy that strokes Harbaugh’s ego. It would be nice to have a critical blog to balance the administrative culture. This blog is not it, and Harbaugh bends the facts to fit his insults.

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      Jim Bean. Love him.

  10. Anonymous 06/18/2013

    It’s bullshit that the good ones are the ones who leave us.

    Fuck all of the self-serving administrators at this campus who don’t care about education, research, or public service.

    • Anonymous 06/18/2013

      Oh poop. I cussed twice by accident.

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      But given the news today, I think that two expletives are pretty conservative.

  11. Anonymous 06/19/2013

    Bill, the taxpayers pay part of your salary and the students or their parents pay for your salary as well. Is this how they want you to spend your time?

    • Anonymous 06/19/2013

      Well, you have raised an interesting question. Do we want taxpayers, students, parents…or an independent board deciding how faculty “spend their time”? Presuming that those faculty undergo the regular review processes a University should be conducting, I say no.

    • Anonymous 06/20/2013

      I think the faculty gets to spend their time doing whatever they please, with little oversight.

    • Anonymous 06/20/2013

      Dog says

      well I do find that some faculty forget they are at a State University
      and the small set of obligations that goes with that position. I would
      say there is some level of oversight on what the faculty do but a) its
      pretty low level and b) there are no penalties for “violations”. Faculty
      do undergo performance reviews (usually every 3 years) but those are
      basically pro-forma and all the faculty are way above average, really, all
      of them. Hell even dogs are average on that scale …

    • Anonymous 06/20/2013

      All good points but that doesn’t mean I want students, parents, politicians or board members coming anywhere near a faculty member’s academic freedom and freedom of speech. To prevent that, we probably do need to do a much better job holding each other accountable.

    • Old Grey Mare 06/20/2013

      Every three years…which is more often than the administrators are evaulated.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *