Irvine confuses UO Matters with OUS press office

Forwarded on to me from a few different UCI faculty:

From: “Michael V. Drake, Chancellor”
Subject: Leadership Update
Date: June 11, 2012 10:27:01 AM PDT
To: “UCI Community”: ;

Dear Colleagues,

Earlier today, the Oregon University System announced that Michael R. Gottfredson, our executive vice chancellor and provost, is the sole candidate for the position of president, University of Oregon. For more information, follow this link to Oregon’s news release: https://uomatters.com/2012/06/uo-president-michael-gottfredson.html

Mike has been an exemplary provost, and he will make a wonderful president. I will miss my friend and colleague if he decides to move on, but we know that this is an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. The board of the Oregon University System is scheduled to make a final decision on this position at the end of this week. I’m extremely happy for Mike and his wife Karol. They’ll be terrific at Oregon. We’ll miss them and wish them the very best.

Chancellor Michael Drake@uci.edu>

A few hours later they noticed that UO Matters is, well, not exactly the official voice of UO:

From: “University Communications”
Subject: Correction to Leadership Update
Date: June 11, 2012 12:31:14 PM PDT
To: “UCI Community”: ;

Dear Colleagues, @uci.edu>

Very disappointingly, the link we distributed in our earlier email regarding Michael Gottfredson’s candidacy for the position of president, University of Oregon, was erroneous and should be disregarded. Below is the statement from University of Oregon.

University Communications
Michael Gottfredson announced as finalist for University of Oregon President

Candidate to meet with campus community on June 12, 13

Note to Editors: Campus public forums schedule, media information and downloadable photo of Dr. Gottfredson are available at http://president.uoregon.edu/search

Contact: Di Saunders – Office: 503-725-5714; Cell: 971-219-6869

…

Posted Mon, 06/11/2012 – 8:53am

“erroneous and should be disregarded”? That’s defamation per se! This blog provides much more accurate information than Di Saunders or Phil Weiler – and I have the award to prove it – sort of.

But more to the point, the UCI faculty have almost entirely good things to say about Mike Gottfredson. The worst complaint, so far, is along the lines of “I wish this had gone our way but his explanation of why he decided differently made sense.”

And from Anon: “well-respected, businesslike, and cool-headed under pressure. With the UC budget crisis he has had to make a lot of tough decisions and taken some heat for it, but his reputation is as someone who’s done the best he can given the situation in front of him.”