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If Dana Altman, Rob Mullens, and Mike Gottfredson had succeeded in their efforts to keep the basketball rape allegations secret, the Ducks might still be trying to sell tickets with messages like this:
Fortunately the press found out, the athletic department caught hell in the sort of way that might affect their future salaries, and now the Ducks have a different, and much better message:
I want a better University: one where students do not just gawk or worse yet take part in really bad really stupid shit; one where professors and administrators do not cross the street when they see something they do not want to deal with or never walk the streets in fear of demanding situations; one where a snowball fight is just fun for all; one where the cops are on foot, interacting with people not in their big black SUV out in empty parking lot with the windows rolled up smoking and texting about the BOD.
This message is not just for ducks and not just the community. Hopefully, Johnson Hall will adopt this mantra as well.
one where the football coaches and administrators do not cheat
I want a uni that doesn’t require decades to pay off student loan debt….
and one where those in positions of power are not constantly protected and cosseted by the sycophants surrounding them, breeding a new generation of abuse and institutional betrayal.
a university where the campus police don’t give athletes better treatment than the students.
I don’t know… the male athletes come across differently in this video. Were they told to do this? Offered the opportunity to do this? How extensively were they coerced?
This video borders on child abuse. What tools. Why are student-athletes cooperating in such patent nonsense?
They get perks for cooperating – like money to bring their parents to games.
Once again, the moral leadership of UO must come from student activists, not from the grown-ups who are paid HANDSOMELY to uphold a public trust by protecting students and contributing to their formation as FUTURE leaders.
Yet the video also misses the mark in this much: It’s long past time for student sit-ins at Johnson Hall, Oregon Hall, the Jock Box, and every other site of bloated administrative complacency.
Bystander intervention (aka peer pressure) to improve student conduct is a misdirection, kids. Hold the fatcats’ feet to the fire for their failures to serve you, the entire UO community, and the State of Oregon!
I do not think this video misses the mark. We have 20,000 plus students on this campus, another 5,000 or so GTF, a slew of professors, and yes the fatcats whos feet you want to burn off.
Blame JH if you like but students creating norms that it is not cool to watch or participate in pulling a train in the bathroom with a first year who had one two many, is a good thing by my standards. If I were there I would have stepped in and told everyone to go home and if they still feel the same in the morning to resume what they were doing.
If the general ethics change a little that would be one tiny step, and the next one may well be a mass walkout on the football team (heard MAC court was already empty), to say it is not cool when athletic administrators, bend rules, break rules, and do not protect our student athletes like guaranteed four year scholarships instead of abuse, extortion, and lies (according the the Lyerla story). Then on to the rest of JH. And why just the students are there not adults on campus, perhaps a few ethical people in JH. Of course this will never happen, but if this weekend one student opens a door at a party and sees something amiss and instead of closing the door steps in and makes sure everyone get home safe, I think the the high production value of the film was worth it. Bystanders who do not intervene and pump their fist at the Presidents office and bitch about how shitty our state has become are the problem.
… asks WTF?
If you want to get to the source of this cluster, then raise your hand at the PARENTS who raised students who lend themselves to this cycle of abuse, victimization and shame — not the State or the University President. Apparently THEY were the real bystanders.
OK, I get the outrage…but the parents aren’t here and blaming “the parents”, which is a specious argument, doesn’t point to a solution on our campus. Students and faculty are here. What can they do now? As “UsAndThem” points out, the video at least addresses one important aspect of the solution – bystander intervention. In limited research on preventing sexual assault among young people, two approaches stand out as having the most impact – bystander involvement and engaging males in the solution.
I agree that faculty and administrators, especially males, need to be more visible around this issue. What can we do besides sit behind long tables and have press conferences? I’m ready.
A specious argument? You really haven’t thought this through. You are not going to “have a solution on our campus”. You will have a positive affect, hopefully.
Do you actually think any university is going to fully develop moral and ethical behavior and somehow launch it into existence if there wasn’t first sufficient parenting at home? This isn’t to say the video isn’t a way to address it along with other education measures.
People can do all the videos, surveys, gender rants and administration blaming they want but the culture will only begin to change (and it will take a while) when society embraces this from a deeper level of personal commitment.
2Legit
Rather than pumping your fist and bitching about parents, I direct you to the reason we and the students are here for four year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_education
“a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement…”
http://www.d.umn.edu/~clasa/cla1001/SA/purposeofLAEd.htm
“You will be able to think for yourself. The diverse body of knowledge you will gain from a liberal arts education, together with the tools of examination and analysis that you will learn to use, will enable you to develop your own opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs, based not upon the authority of parents, peers, or professors, and not upon ignorance, whim, or prejudice…”
Or.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/whats-a-liberal-arts-educ_b_147584.html
“The habits of mind developed in a liberal arts context often result in combinations of focus and flexibility that make for intelligent, and sometimes courageous risk taking for critical assessment of those risks.”
And if we are not here for the greater good, then everyone should just go home because, the only thing humanity needs is a video to train the individual to be “ready to work” “Day one”.
http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/180
“I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.”
The reason students are on campus for four (plus) years is for the greater good? If that’s the case, the cost per term should go down significantly. Nice grandstanding material.
2Legit
Already answered. If the only purpose of a postsecondary education is to be ready for work on day one, then the taxpayers of Oregon through our legislature should just close the university and sell the assets at auction as you are correct we pay to dam much for work training, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks only need a couple of web videos to be work ready and they probably already have harassment and other workplace norm training videos as well.
The greater good, high quality research, and a rigorous postsecondary education cost more not less than work training. That said I will not argue as to the value or even cost structure or basis of the Oregon education where an underpaid GTF or temp is paid about $4,000 to lectures to a hall of 1500 students who along with the state pay about $3,000 each for 120 minutes of lecture a week for 9 weeks.
U&T … calm down!
Though dramatically put, there’s a huge stretch of space between going to university “for the greater good” and university as “job training”. While I agree that classical university education *should* reflect what you aspire the UO to be, it mostly doesn’t and won’t unless the new owners want it to become an elite private institution that doesn’t primarily serve Oregonians.
Any chance under the new regime the new video was meant to be played on Saturdays on the jumbotron right before or right after Kenny Wheaton is going to score? That would justify the production value.
Does anybody know about the effectiveness of such videos as “It’s on Us?” Will it run on a loop in EMU? Do student norms really bend as a result? I can’t believe that the video project is anything other than the product of the message management team in JH interested only in the public relations effect the video will have on the public and parents.
Real change will only come (and a real message will be delivered) when athletics is visibly knocked down a few pegs. Anything less is a cynical ploy to continue business as usual.
Precisely! This is nothing but a not so clever marketing scheme, one that pro teams have been using for decades. We care, of course we do, why else would we produce this vid, telling you how much we care?
Charlie:
Change has to start somewhere. I will give them the befit of the doubt. Change is achieved one small step at a time. In comparing this to the other “assault and violence prevention” schemes UOM has blogged about here, this, although small, perhaps very small, seems to be more correct than previous administrations. I am not being optimistic, I am saying “good, now take the next step.” Do not worry, I do not think those of us on campus who care about these issues are going to take this and say. OK, Job done as the rest of society is apt to do.
On the contrary, like the message and why it resonates, we all need to internalize… so say it with me: “This is my problem. I am a responsible part of this community and society. I will be the change I want to see. It is on me to fix.”
U&T, if schools such as U of Owe are seriously going to tackle on campus violence, then they’re going to have to get admits with entirely different expectations. That would mean those potential undergrads would say things such as, we don’t care about athletics, we don’t care about the social life, your multimillion dollar SRC and basketball arenas don’t impress us, nor do we want sushi availability and gourmet cafes. What we need is academic rigor and outstanding scholarship. But you don’t have as many of those guys/gals as you do the ones who favor the current university model, namely, a young adult theme park with a minor league sports franchise appendage, despite the alcohol fueled violence and debauchery.
But if change is what you want, then you’ll have to demand that the school throw away the millions they’ve spent on marketing, tighten up admission standards, pay for it by getting rid of a whole lot of admins and using that money to recruit and keep outstanding profs. Do you think that this vid is a step in that direction? Does it address the massive disconnect between university functionaries, who are far more interested in selling a product to as many people as possible, whether capable of doing the work or not, rather than increasing the quality of that product? Reality is, the folks who run this school have no intention of doing any of that because it would mean the end of the current model U of Owe.
Former UC Chancellor Clark Kerr was asked sometime in the 60’s what were the issues he had to deal with. He responded, “For the undergrads, it’s sex. For the alumni, it’s sports. For the professors, it’s parking.” Pretty much underscores that nothing has changed in half a century, but the current crop of admins still have no answer, despite tens of thousands more of them, getting huge money, not to be able to do their jobs. Just as pro sports franchises refuse to do anything more than PR/marketing schemes to cover up the fact they’re incapable of ending player violence, this vid is very much the same….
Athletics in general isn’t the problem, although you could argue certain teams and certain players have definitely been pampered leading to the conclusion they think they can do anything they want to do.
How is “knocking them down a few pegs” going to change their behavior?
I imagine what that translates to is that the University administration will no longer help cover up athletic scandals or tolerate lies. When even the Mayor and the Eugene police come out and say the admin response was incomprehensible or wrong, it seems like some publicized change coming from the top would do some good. The old president made sure that the top priority was letting the coach know publicly that his job was safe no matter what the fallout from the scandal was. The new president has room to set a new expectation.
What he said.
Good suggestions.
FYI — an interesting UO player follow-up as he uses his university skills to navigate the NFL. Oh .. and one of Chip’s favorites:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/broncos-release-player-who-told-arresting-officer-to–contact-my-boss–john-elway-010826571.html
The video produced by UO Athletics is not an initiative of our admittedly hopeful UO President. Nor is it an “initiative” of UO Athletics. They obviously received an email from someone organizing these things and agreed to do what they were asked to do.
Athletic Departments across the country are producing these videos using athletes (and some universities eschew the athletes-only approach, perhaps because they allocate money to these things instead of depending on Athletics to pick up the tab). Just Google “It’s on us” in the “edu” domains and you find those of other schools.