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UO Board of Trustees denames Dunn, meets new admins, approves renovations

These are not easy to find on the Board’s website, so I’ve put them here. Schedule and links. Each link below takes you to a post with the respective committee agenda, documents, summary and sometimes some commentary. The full board agenda and materials and some live-blogging are at the bottom.

Academic and Student Affairs Committee —8:30 am – September 8, 2016, Ford Alumni Center, Giustina Ballroom 

Finance and Facilities Committee — September 8, 2016 10:00 am – September 8, 2016

Executive and Audit Committee —1:15 pm – September 8, 2016 Ford Alumni Center, Giustina Ballroom 

Meeting of the Board — September 8-9, 2016 [Materials] [Livestream]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 2:00 pm – Convene Public Meeting

– Call to order, roll call, verification of quorum – Approval of June 2016 minutes (Action) – Public comment. Those wishing to provide comment must sign up advance and review the public comment guidelines either online (http://trustees.uoregon.edu/meetings) or at the check-in table at the meeting.

Jim Igl: He has provided written documents to the board. He is skeptical of the Historians’ Report’s section on Dunn, and argues that his connection to the KKK was tenuous and short lived. He notes that Dunn was a life-long member of a Methodist church that was famous for its eucemenical nature, not anti-catholicism. He also brings up Dunn’s family connection to Abraham Lincoln.

[I don’t know Mr. Igl, but I want to thank him for stepping up to tell us more about Dunn. As President Schill later noted, the dead cannot speak for themselves, and everyone deserves an advocate. It was a brave move, which I imagine will cost Mr. Igl some grief even though there was nothing in his remarks to suggest that he has anything but disgust for the KKK, racism, or religious intolerance. Quite the opposite.

But my takeaway is that when Dunn took the job as Grand Cyclops, even if it turned out only to be for a day, and only because he was duped, he went to a place from which there is and should not be any returning.]

ASUO VP Natalie (sorry, missed last name). Supports denaming Dunn and Deady. believes majority of students do as well.

ASUO Pres Quinn Hagga: Supports denaming Dunn and Deady, calls for an investigation of the names of all other campus buildings.

1. Recommendation re Dunn Hall (Action): Michael Schill, President

Chuck Lillis: We’re here to decide about Dunn, not Dealy, or Healy, or whoever he was. Oh, Deady. OK.

Pres Schill: Serious decision, those up for denaming are not here to defend themselves. Strongly believes that racism and bigotry have no place at a university. Dunn was the Grand Cyclops of the KKK, a terrorist organization that promoting lynching. Recommends Dunn Hall be denamed today, and then renamed for someone whose life does represent our values, after an open, campus-wide process. Thanks the Black Students for raising this issue, believes that the process they started has benefited us all.

Trustee Andrew Colas gives a very effective speech on why he supports denaming Dunn now, and also Schill’s decision to delay dealing with Deady until the students are back. I’m not going to try and summarize it, I hope the Board posts the video soon.

The still very relevant demands of the 1968 Black Students are here. Read it all, here’s a snippet:

Screen Shot 2016-09-08 at 2.53.01 PM

Frederic S. Dunn is denamed by unanimous vote of the Board.

Screen Shot 2016-09-08 at 2.41.01 PM

Dunn was also a member of the YMCA and a freemason, but he is not buried in Eugene’s Masonic Cemetery with his parents, or in their fabulous Mausoleum. Someone needs to hire HLGR to work on this conspiracy.

More Dunn trivia: The YMCA sent him to Italy to work with US soldiers after WWI. What sort of classics professor comes back from a trip to Italy hating Catholics?

Screen Shot 2016-09-05 at 7.55.38 PM

2. Seconded Motions and Resolutions (Actions)
–Seconded Motion from FFC: Pacific Hall Renovation (pending September 8 committee action)
–Seconded Motion from FFC: Oregon Hall Renovation (pending September 8 committee action)

Allyn Ford recuses himself from the vote, because he’s giving the money for this. Pretty sweet, and the board cracks up.

3. New Administrator Introductions: Scott Coltrane, Senior Vice President and Provost

Sorry, I got sucked down the Dunn history hole. Provost Coltrane introduces President Schill’s many recent hires. They all sound good from where I’m sitting. Schill gives Coltrane full credit for hiring them.

4. President’s Report: Michael Schill, President

Pres Schill discusses how much UO has improved in the past year. Agreed.

He then goes on to discuss how he is meeting the remaining demands of the Black Student task force and how UO is trying to meet them. Frankly, some of this stuff sounds illegal given past court rulings, but then I’m not a lawyer.

$1.05B in fundraising so far. In the past year *80%* has been for academics. As Schill notes, this is a turnaround.

Budget: 12% of Education and General Fund budget comes from the State. [Thanks to Schill for giving this correctly, instead of using the 6% of UO’s total budget – i.e. including the Duck crap, which his predecessors always trotted out to dis the state and the taxpayers.]

Lots of uncertainty about next biennium, particularly if Measure 97 fails. If it does, we will need double digit tuition increases and spending cuts.

[Me: Vote for Measure 97! Sure it’s not perfect but what tax is. Oregon needs more money for basic services like health and education, and HLGR’s Bill Gary and Sharon Rudnick are never going to get PERS cuts through the Oregon Supreme Court when the judges are in PERS, no matter what we pay them.]

3:25PM: Lillis recesses for a private “training session” with the Board. Uh-Oh, last time this happened they decided to subsidize Tracktown’s IAAF championship bid.

Meeting Recessed

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 9:30 am – Reconvene Public Meeting [Materials] [Livestream]

[Sorry, no live-blog today. Tran Nguyen has it covered on twitter: https://twitter.com/tranngngn]

5. Presidential Assessment Report: Chuck Lillis, Chair; Ginevra Ralph, Vice Chair

6. AY16-17 Tuition and Fee Setting-Process: Scott Coltrane, Senior Vice President and Provost

7. Clusters in Focus
–Center for Genome Function: Eric Selker, Professor of Biology and Member of the Institute for Molecular Biology; Diana Libuda, Assistant Professor of Biology; Jeffrey McKnight, Assistant Professor of Biology
–Health Promotion, Obesity Prevention & Human Development: Beth Stormshak, Professor of Counseling Psychology and Human Services and Director of the Prevention Science Institute

8. Federal Funding at the UO: David Conover, Vice President for Research and Innovation; Jim
Brooks, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management and Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships

9. UO Portland – Update: Jane Gordon, Vice Provost for UO Portland

Meeting Adjourned

One Comment

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 09/02/2016

    Their finance discussion looks like it’s ignoring the big issues. Is there a plan to beef up UO academically fast enough to stay in the AAU? What are they going to do with unsustainable tuition increases that are on the edge of driving UO into a downward spiral? What is the plan to deal with PERS in the entirely possible case that the M97 tax increase does not pass (and which in any case might very well not result in much help for higher education)? I don’t get the feeling that there’s a sense of urgency on any of these. I certainly have no sense that there’s a plan.

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