9/5/2013: At the Tuesday bargaining session I publicly ridiculed Journalism Tim Gleason, VP for Academic Affairs Doug Blandy, and former tobacco attorney, now lead administration negotiator Sharon Rudnick and their proposal to give every faculty member $350 as a contract signing bonus. I said this was enough money to buy a goat:
My efforts to mock this serious proposal from UO’s administrative bargaining team were disrespectful of their tireless and selfless efforts on behalf of their UO faculty, and I would like to extend a personal …. Nope, sorry, I can’t do it Tim.
What is disrespectful here, and destructive of any potential for serious civil discourse, or faculty trust in you and the administration, is the UO administration’s continued efforts to claim there is no money for faculty raises, and that we should believe their claims even though they refuse to show the faculty even the most basic information about UO’s actual financial situation:
Tim is a bigger (goat’s) ass than I thought going into this whole thing. Clearly he has not been advanced himself and is doing a penance by being on the team in the first place. I desperately hope this is not his entry into other VP position on campus.
You are offensive, Tim. Your little speech about having been offended was childish. I was sitting there hoping you were going to take up Mike’s offer to have that discussion.
Our administrators should put this simple rule on a sticky note next to their monitor: Never stand between Bill Harbaugh and a public record.
Geez. Here you have one of your own trying to serve in an important negotiation and all he gets is ridicule and insults. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and throw stones. Have any of you thought to put yourselves in Tim’s shoes? Would you like to be on the receiving end of this blog?
Gleason gets ridicule and insults because he says ridiculous things over and over. There are many other ways bargaining could have gone – they chose to obstruct, obfuscate and come to the table unprepared. That’s on them. Spare me the sympathy plea.
I’m guessing you haven’t been to any bargaining sessions. I have been to almost all of them, and I mean what I say about the administration’s team harming trust by their repeated refusal to provide the faculty with the information needed for serious civil discourse on the important matters that are being negotiated. A journalism dean, of all people, should no better.
Sorry Mr. Anonymous, but the administration’s approach, and Tim Gleason’s cooperation with it, is much more destructive than a few goat jokes.
UO Admin needs to show you the money : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA
Or the information YOU want, that you THINK is relevant. I have heard that your public records requests outnumber anyone else’s by a factor of 10, that because of them other work doesn’t get done, that you ask for conflicting reports, and that some of them are simply to harass and have nothing to do with the work at hand. Have you ever tried to run a big organization? Budget for it in hard times? Had to put up with someone questioning and harassing ever move you make? You are so sure that you have all the answers, but I don’t see the experience behind your complaints. Half the time you simply make things up based on your own interpretation of events. I know that some people think you are a hero, but you play to people’s fears and you DON’T have the experience to run this organization. You are just shouting from the sidelines and NOT HELPING. And I’m not Dave, Sharon, Randy, etc. Just a plain old person fed up with your self aggrandizing, fear mongering, inaccurate “jokes”.
^ I love it when UOM’s dissenters reveal that they are also UOM readers. Love it !!!!
“your public records requests outnumber anyone else’s by a factor of 10”
A lot of people are afraid of submitting such requests and ask the blog admin to submit them – e.g., public safety’s transformation, air quality in Oregon Hall. And this blog provides a public good. I am not an economist but I would predict a lot of free riding.
“Budget for it in hard times? Had to put up with someone questioning and harassing ever move you make?”
Do they budget? Where are the numbers? Where is all the tuition money going? Why are there so many admin pet projects (police, EMU, etc.) that have no connection to UO’s mission? Why does UO need so many VPs and special assistants?
If the administration would be transparent – see the hidden budget numbers above – or honest – statements about the predicted cost of public safety/police department or athletics, then nobody would be interested in this blog.
And obviously, if the administration is hiding some substantial records – for whatever reason – you have to fish and it’s hit-and-miss. This game could be easily ended if the army of handsomely-paid UO VPs, Special Assistants, etc. would explain their decisions and plans instead of hiding in JH. I think that you can expect accountability and transparency from people making $100+k/year and claiming leadership royalties. Budget numbers and the like are not a matter of national security.
And it’s sad that you have to make “goat jokes” in order to get attention or a response from them…
Thanks for this comment, I really appreciate it.
Anonymous doesn’t think that the revelations of the contracts that Frohnmeyer signed for Moseley, Davis, and Williams to avoid PERS reform don’t reveal a level of ethical poverty that has completely sapped the finances and morale of this university. Gleason and all the administrators, who lack the spine to oppose what has and continues to happen at this university, make enough money beyond their true worth to make them laugh in your face over your worries. If they lose sleep, it goes with their the choices that they have made.
These issues were certainly warning signs, but Frohnmayer’s giveaways to the athletic department have actually been far more costly to UO. They are still ongoing under Gottfredson, with the exception of a long overdue $500K increase in AD overhead, which he decided not to make retroactive.
Both of the above posters have to be Harbaugh. This line–“Anonymous doesn’t think that the revelations of the contracts that Frohnmeyer signed for Moseley, Davis, and Williams to avoid PERS reform don’t reveal a level of ethical poverty”–is totally false. Moseley, Davis, and Williams were all Tier 1; they avoided nothing as a result of PERS reform. Why are you making things up?
^ Jim? Missed you, dude.
^^ What a stupid response. I point out that something is objectively and demonstrably false, and you respond with this pathetic attempt at humor/ad hominem? I don’t know if you’re Harbaugh or the person who said the above, but please stop saying things that are not true.
The statement about “giveaways to the athletic department” is also bullshit. What giveaways? You don’t bother with the facts and you don’t care enough to grasp context. This is your agenda shining brightly.
I hate to have to even address it, but I’m not Jim or Dave or Sharon or Randy; I would be surprised if any of them has ever posted here. I’m just someone who’s interested in the UO’s success and who also hates lies and liars.
^^ Also, thanks so much to Anon who started with “Or the information YOU want, that you THINK is relevant. I have heard that your public records requests outnumber anyone else’s by a factor of 10.” You hit the nail on the head.
“Both of the above posters have to be Harbaugh.”
I am not the writer of this blog and my actual points were not questioned above. But I am happy to meet for coffee to discuss my viewpoint that UO has some serious issues that should concern anybody who really cares about this institution and UO’s mission statement… which can be found here:
http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosenate/UOmissionstatement.html
Interested?
RE: giveaways to athletics. Fact: ~$2 million from general fund to support Jaqua center tutoring for athletes only. This isn’t even disputed by administration – they admit it and claim it is ok because this is an “academic” program so athletes can get the “same” academic support as other students (it’s about $4000 per athlete and $250 per non-athlete).
It’s even more indicative of the priorities around here when they don’t even hide or deny the subsidy but rather provide a lame justification.
What “context” or “facts” make this ok? We are constantly told the academic budget is too lean but allow these payments to continue.
I just don’t buy that our “leaders” don’t care about the University, that they intentionally piss off the faculty, that they are not even trying to make things right, that they don’t care if great faculty leave. All of them? Not one person working on the negotiation cares? They are only out for themselves and athletics? Of course there are problems. Not every decision is the best. But to imply that they are all out to get you, that they are only interested in themselves and athletics is simply not true.
It’s the post-union, us vs them world. Might as well join in.
It’s been an administration v. faculty world at UO since 2000 or so. Maybe since Paul Olum. The difference is that the faculty now has recognized that fact, and organized to take back their traditional power to manage the university. So far the faculty union has been chalking down victory after victory. The only thing that can slow the union increasing power now would be a competent central administration, determined to work for UO’s academic goals. And that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
To the fellow showing so much joy that “detractors” read the blog. What kind of discourse would there be if only the fans read it?
I quote from the document, requested and posted by UO Matters, that was signed by Frohnmeyer on 7/7/04 “Beca u s e of changes in the Oregon Public Retirement System, Moseley has recently determined that he will be disadvantaged if he does not initiate his retirement process by July 1, 2004.” Does Anonymous believe that this would have been done for every Tier 1 member of PERS in the University of Oregon? Davis is still making over $100,000 a year from the UO 14 years after this, so I would characterize this as an ethical problem, given the current economic situation of faculty and staff. Perhaps you believe that Frohnmeyer was lying and Moseley didn’t feel that he was going to be disadvantaged by PERS changes?
Sorry, finger count wrong. 9 years after.
Moseley retired, as so many have, so as not to get less in retirement. What makes DF a liar?
The others did not continue to serve as Provost at full pay for two years, before starting their 600 hour appointment for an outrageous sum apparently doing little to advance a program in Bend, where he was planning to retire, since the program that has now been handed over entirely to OSU as a four year institution. What did the UO get for the over half a million dollars of pay to him? Does your nose not work?
I’m wondering what’s in Frohnmayer’s files regarding the Bellotti retirement scam that Sickinger exposed in the Oregonian.
But any tier one member can retire whenever they want and many faculty then work their 1800 hours. I do think it is exceedingly strange that Moseley then worked for 2 more years at full pay after retiring. Is that even legal? And yes, Bend was a disaster. And a waste of money.
I agree with your first sentence, since I know many who have done exactly that in a way that is totally appropriate to what was envisioned by the program. I was being ironic in suggesting that Frohnmeyer lied in the document. Let’s just agree that these deals within the administration are “exceedingly strange,” and also that UO Matters, while it might have its excesses, exposed something, through its document requests, that had been rumored for some time. Did these particular administrators even think about the staff who processed such documents or the faculty and staff who could never have gotten an OK to retire hurriedly to avoid a legislative actions and then draw PERS while continuing to work full-time at a salary well over competitive levels.
I don’t know about his shoes, but I certainly have pictured myself in his beamer. It was quite the ride….
The license plate is a dead giveaway, though. He cares more about being though of as owning a beamer than owning a beamer.
hmmmm. Green with envy?
The amazing thing, to me, about the admin team’s attempt to show how “serious” that offer should be taken was the fact that Sharon got all her numbers wrong by about a factor of two in claiming how much this was going to cost the University, which Cecil immediately caught. It probably was an honest mistake on her part but certainly did nothing to instill trust or even suggest basic competency.
You mean that “Trust me editor, I have spent a lot of time on this but I don’t have time to go into the details” is not the right way to address a referee’s concerns???
Shhhiiii…