6/3/2013 update: Here’s the mic check video, from a helpful commenter. The guy in the middle is Frog, or maybe Bean, after an administrative sabbatical paid for with student tuition increases. Say, what is Bean going to teach next year?
5/31/2013. The ODE reports from the investiture:
Another concern that [UO Student Jeremy Hedlund] mentioned was that UO faculty members are one of the lowest paid university members in the American Association of Universities, with some of the faculty not even getting a raise in pay since 2008.
“The money that they’ve been charging us has clearly not been going to the faculty members,” Hedlund said.
No shit. The total wage bill for bargaining unit faculty is about $96M. UO’s tuition revenue increased $29M last year. Average salaries for assistant and associate professors *fell*.
The RG reports on what seems to have been a remarkably respectful protest:
During Thursday’s ceremony, about 50 students gathered on the arena steps to protest tuition hikes for next school year. Fifteen went inside and briefly disrupted the ceremony, asking Gottfredson to freeze tuition; meet with students; and be a leader, “not a bureaucrat pushing Phil Knight’s agenda.” The students said Gottfredson had turned down their requests for face-to-face meetings three times.
The students then apologized for disrupting the ceremony before a campus policeman walked along with them as they left the building.
I like that apology. “Sorry. But how did you expect us to react to being ignored?”
I was one of the ~ 50 students protesting the proposed 5.8% tuition hike at President Gottfredson’s Investiture Ceremony today. After being removed from the Arena following the mic check, we decided that we should march to Johnson Hall and, once again, give our groups’ letter to Gottfredson’s staff. I say once again because he has been consistently ducking/avoiding talking to our group about the proposed tuition hike. Following that, some of us marched back to Matt Knight, as the ceremony was just about finished, to re-establish our protest by lining (not across mind you) the steps of Matt Knight. It was at this point that we were confronted by an official identifying herself as being from the Office of Student Conduct. She proceeded to tell us that there are “free-speech zones” around campus from which students can engage in their first amendment right to protest, telling us that we would have to do so from across 13th Ave. instead of on the stairs due to the “time, place and manner” clause in the school’s student conduct code. This, despite the fact that we would have neither blocked anyone in, prevented anyone from leaving, or obstructed anyone’s progress in anyway by staging our protest where we did. Does anyone else know anything about where these “free-speech zones” are around campus? Because I’d like to know where, on a public university, I’m forbidden from exercising my Constitutional rights.
Well clearly they are anywhere that the administration won’t be embarrassed by your presence.
Thank you for exercising those rights and making yourselves heard. It says alot that our “leaders” are unwilling to engage in open and honest dialogue with the very people we are all here to serve.
The entire United States is a free speech zone.
The Foundation for Individual Rights has won many cases against universities that have tried to restrict free speech to specific parts of campus. Contact them at thefire.org
http://journalism.uoregon.edu/~tgleason/j385/forum.htm
Our own Journalism Dean Tim Gleason has some references to “time,place and manner” on his UO website.
And here: http://journalism.uoregon.edu/~tgleason/j385/Mid1w99K.html
I see no “time place and manner” clause in the Student Conduct Code though it does appear to be a commonly applied standard.
I thought the Senate stopped efforts to create such zones some years ago, the argument being that to establish such a zone was effectively a restriction on speech.
Someone got a cell phone video, I hope.
Thank you sir. I was recommended to your blog by my Con. Law professor when I told him about what happened. I contacted thefire.org per your recommendation. If anyone could link me to some articles about the ASUO previously dealing with this issue, I would be grateful.
No cell phone video, but the photographer for The Student Insurgent was there and got plenty of still pictures.
I have always thought, the most potentially potent allegiance in higher education is between the students and faculty. I fully support efforts to lower costs for students at my alma mater. I hope that the faculty offer their guidance and expertise to organizing students, such as these 50. There may be more like them. Even if they fail, Oregon needs to learn a lesson that this cannot continue; the tuition is too darn high.
“we were confronted by an official identifying herself as being from the Office of Student Conduct. She proceeded to tell us that there are “free-speech zones” around campus from which students can engage in their first amendment right to protest, telling us that we would have to do so from across 13th Ave. instead of on the stairs due to the “time, place and manner” clause in the school’s student conduct code. This, despite the fact that we would have neither blocked anyone in, prevented anyone from leaving, or obstructed anyone’s progress in anyway by staging our protest where we did. Does anyone else know anything about where these “free-speech zones” are around campus? Because I’d like to know where, on a public university, I’m forbidden from exercising my Constitutional rights.”
There are no “free speech zones” (and therefore no speech-prohibited zones) on the campus.
The General Counsel proposed such a regulation a couple of years ago, it was protested, and it did not get enacted. The policy that did get enacted by the Senate can be found at http://senate.uoregon.edu/content/academic-freedom-freedom-speech. It apparently has not been signed by the University President, however.
There is no reference to “time, place, and manner” in the Student Conduct code. There are also no time, place, and manner restrictions in the policy adopted by the Senate on academic freedom and freedom of speech.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has sometimes allowed legislation or court injunctions to impose restrictions on time, place, and manner, this is NOT a matter for an employee of the Office of Student Conduct to legislate. That kind of case-by-case, arbitrary restriction would certainly be unconstitutional.
I suggest that the students who protested and were told by an official of the Office of Student Conduct that their protest violated a time, place, and manner restriction should turn themselves in, via the form at this site: https://oregon-advocate.symplicity.com/public_report/index.php/pid929461?. This form is used to inform the Office of Student Conduct of a violation. By reporting themselves and demanding to know by what authority an official from the office informed them of a violation, and the name of that official, the students may be able to embarrass that person into backing down (publicly) and persuade the Office to discipline the official who seems to have wielded power without authority. This could all be done with publicity, of course.
They could also contact the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has done a pretty good job of fighting this illegal stuff at many different campuses.
In the past, they have definitely singled out UO (among many others) as a place where free speech is problematic.
The group mentioned by this other Anonymous is, of course, a right-wing organization.
The UOMatters chart on hiring in various work groups, nearby, was pretty damning.
Faculty hiring, especially tenure track, lags administrative hiring badly.
Contrary to some administration claims, this has not changed since Frohnmayer left, it continues to 2012, the latest figures.
This is something the students, the senate, the faculty union, the senate budget committee, the papers — if they were so obsessed with screwing PERS — should all be jumping on.
But as usual, the silence is deafening.
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlf5lo_p0Qk&feature=youtu.be
These people don’t really understand protesting, do they? Bean says, “That isn’t the purpose of this event.” Well, duh, that is the whole point.