No of course I’m not talking about UO Interim President Scott Coltrane. I’m talking about Oregon State President Ed Ray. Story here.
It’s odd how UO was so eager to hire a law firm to investigate the release of the Presidential Archives, but not to investigate the handling of the basketball rape allegations.
I’m not sure that this is the glowing example you want to hold up for UO to emulate. Really, it only took 16 years?
As stated ad naseum elsewhere:
-This kind of incident is universally handled much differently than in the late 90s. You are committing the sin of revisionist history if you pretend that the attention received today would have been culturally appropriate in the late 90s. Yes, this is a “glowing example” of how a university today should address a problem, whether it occurred yesterday or a couple decades ago. Pretending that UO Matters is advocating a 16-year break is beyond stupid.
-Unlike today, in the late 90s there were no transparency blogs, no social media to highlight faults in the system, and at times, quieter victims, who rightly did not feel that culture allowed them to cry out. Now that all of those things exist, things like this will come out.
So yes, this is most definitely the glowing example UO should emulate. OSU made mistakes in 1998 and 1999, and rather than cowering behind unethical practices in avoiding or obstructing public records requests and trying to bury it, they are acting on it, publicly.
It seems to me that OSU engaged in the same kind of cover up behavior then that the UO has engaged in more recently. To simply call it a “mistake” does not do justice to the active roll that OSU administrators, football coaches and the police did to minimize crimes committed against Brenda Tracy. The problem wasn’t that there weren’t “blogs” or social media at the time but rather the problem was the same bullshit story–attitudes that presume that crimes committed against women don’t matter.
The problem was that across the board, in a strictly cultural context, it was not seen as that big of a deal across the nation. Stop being a revisionist historian, it is irresponsible.
I’m sorry if I seem pedantic about this. As a rape survivor from my time in the army, I’m just glad to see some justice for the victim.
This little blurb shows two important things. First, the difference in effort by the UofO in protecting themselves vs their students. Second, the difference between how OSU handles a similar situation vs the UofO. In both cases the Administration in Eugene comes out looking bad (again).