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14 Comments

  1. John Taylor 01/25/2022

    Has it really been five years since I filed this ULP? As I recall UO hired a rather expensive attorney out of Portland to scream at me for over an hour at arbitration over this standard info request. Ah, good times…

  2. Fly Knows Wall 01/27/2022

    Wonder. What. Was. In. The. Redactions. That. Motivated. The. U of O. To knowingly. Act. Unlawfully. Then. Spend. 55 Months. (And how many $$?) In Salem. Arguing. To keep. It. All. Under. Wraps?

  3. DTL 01/27/2022

    Judging from the remarks in this document, I seems to me it wasn’t the actual content of the document that the University was having an issue about concealing. It was more the usual intolerance of the University turning over any documents or any information. Regardless how legal and reasonable. And especially to the likes of a Union and a strong unionist Steward (as exemplified by the University attempting to PICK a different Union Steward to allow a peek). An attitude that uomatters has experienced aplenty. Then there’s the whole attempted extortion/NDA nonsense.

    • just different 01/28/2022

      It seems to be more generally true that the University would rather fight than give up any leverage ever. Assuming this behavior is rational, what are the incentives that encourage them do this instead of picking their battles?

      • CSN 01/28/2022

        I think it’s dynamics and deterrence. If you give up here, who knows how many other things can come out of the woodwork?

        • just different 01/28/2022

          OK, but that just begs the question. What are they so worried about that they figure it’s worth dragging out relatively low-stakes battles they know they’ll probably lose anyway? To say nothing of the dollar cost of paying their lawyers.

      • cdsinclair 01/28/2022

        You would think not wanting to be thought of as a bunch of liars would do the trick.

        You would think that wanting to engender trust with the people you are supposedly managing would do the trick.

        You would think wanting people to think that you are ethical and operating in good faith would do the trick.

        If those things don’t do the trick, what is the motivation? (I think it is ambition over principle. If someone at the top needs to burnish their accomplishments by obfuscating the truth they seem perfectly willing to do that, even if it means leaving this place with an even larger trust deficit with the faculty than when they arrived).

  4. cdsinclair 01/28/2022

    About two years ago, President Schill stood in front of the Senate and proclaimed that UO was the most transparent university in the country (that he knew about?). This of course was a lie, and we all knew it at the time and chuckled to ourselves at the audacity of the claim.

    As is evidenced by this ERB ruling, the UO is not even as transparent as the law demands. Moreover, not only are they mis-applying the law to hide *public* records, they are using the process to obfuscate as well: most individuals who get redacted information do not take the time or effort to appeal the decision to the appropriate state authority.

    The question is why? Why would the administration lie to us about how transparent they are? Lie to us about the need for redactions? Lie to us about how much time it takes to fulfill information requests? It’s no wonder that there is no trust with Johnson Hall. The people at the top like to lie, and the ERB just called them out on it.

    • uomatters Post author | 01/28/2022

      Maybe they do this because being dicks to their employees endears them to the kinds of business people and investors our governor appoints as university trustees and will give them bonuses and hire them for their next job?? Just a guess, of course.

      • cdsinclair 01/28/2022

        Maybe we should get a no-confidence vote in the Board of Trustees going? If they are incentivizing our administration to doing unethical things, then they should share some of the scorn. We ‘re going to need a good Senate VP candidate.

        • Dog 01/29/2022

          Its now been 10 years since we have had the BOT. Would someone much wiser than me document the benefits we have achieved that would not have happened had the BOT not been in existence. You can make the argument, which I will not believe, that the BOT was the agent that facilitated the Knight Campus, but that will remain unclear and revisionist history will triumph there.

        • Compulsory Pessimist 01/29/2022

          I hope you let the Review folks know your thoughts on the Board! (https://president.uoregon.edu/uo-feedback-oregon-governance-project “The consultants will hold virtual office hours for the University of Oregon community on January 18, 2022, from 9 a.m. to noon. If you want to participate, join the Zoom meeting any time between 9 a.m. and noon using this link**. If you are unable to participate virtually, you are invited to submit written comments by email to the consultants at [email protected] and [email protected]. Comments should be submitted by January 18.”)

          • Dog 01/31/2022

            Dogs can not (yet) do time travel to accommodate your request …

  5. Heraclitus 01/30/2022

    I guess this thread is as good a place as any to share this:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013sxq
    “As she leaves academia, Rebecca Stott says an audit culture is stifling universities.
    ‘Once universities had been turned into businesses and forced to compete with each other for students and fees, scores and league tables followed. And now we are assessed and monitored all the time too. It has eroded trust….When a seminar works you can feel the electricity crackle…You can’t bottle this or record it or give it a score or sell it because it happens in the moment and in the room.’ ”
    I suspect the UK is a good 15-20 years behind the US with this trend.

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