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Oregon Senate confirms Laura Lee McIntyre as “Faculty Trustee”, over objections of the UO Senate leadership and the UO faculty union

Last updated on 09/21/2017

9/20/2017: Around the O has the puff piece here, from PR flack Tobin Klinger. You’d think UO’s $475K budget for “Executive Communications” would buy a few more facts – maybe even a link to the letters from the Senate and Union, which McIntyre got by making a public records request to the Governor? Or at least something about how Prof McIntyre’s research is financially supported by a donation from at least one of the UO trustees, which may present some interesting potential conflicts of interest. [9/21/2017 correction: I’ve been informed by a generally reliable source that McIntyre’s research is not supported by donations from trustees.] She has of course agreed to follow Oregon law on conflicts of interest, which is not particularly strong.

McIntyre follows Trustee Susan Gary from the Law School, who served two terms during which she refused to inform the faculty of such matters as Chuck Lillis’s Delegation of Authority power grab.

We’d probably be better off abolishing the Faculty Trustee position than continuing to help the Trustees believe that they are getting the faculty’s point of view on UO issues through these sorts of appointments.

6/16/2017: Gov. Brown to nominate passionate Gottfredson defender as faculty trustee

That’s the rumor down at the faculty club. Here’s video of Professor Laura Lee McIntyre (School Psychology) taking a courageous stand in the UO Senate in defense of President Gottfredson’s handling of the basketball rape allegations. Backup to hear Gottfredson’s remarks. The Board fired paid Gottfredson $940K cash to leave town less than three months later. The official UO channel has taken this video down (perhaps because of the lawsuit against him) but it’s on youtube:

 

14 Comments

  1. Senator 06/16/2017

    I thought it was Laura Leete from PPM that was running for fac trustee? At least that’s who I voted for. What happened?

    • UO Matters Post author | 06/17/2017

      Last year people got Chris Sinclair and Chris Phillips confused. Very different people.

  2. honest Uncle Bernie 06/18/2017

    A trustee from Education? Let’s the Gov pose as K-12 advocate.

    Representative of UO academics? You be the judge.

    The joys of an “independent board.”

    • UO Matters Post author | 06/18/2017

      Actually UO’s Ed School is very research active.

      • honest Uncle Bernie 06/18/2017

        But many would say the whole field is dreck. Bottom of the barrel SAT and GRE, at least last I checked.

        I’ll tell you this, the reasearch on “school choice” appears hopeless, at least to me.

        For all this ed research, is our students learning better?

  3. The thinker 06/19/2017

    Unless the Senate supported her nomination, which only the members of the Senate and McIntyre know if that is the case (she asked for the record), it looks like the Governor made some sort of political decision. If the Senate didn’t support McIntyre, I find surprising that the Governor made a decision contrary to the vote of the Senate. This is the person that is going to represent the Faculty in the Board after all.

    • UO Matters Post author | 06/20/2017

      Prof. McIntyre made public requests to the UO Senate and to the Governor’s office for letters about her nomination from the Senate and the faculty union. Asking for copies of what amount to your letters of recommendation is rather unusual – in fact she appears to be the only candidate for any Oregon board to have done so as far as the log goes back.

      The Gov’s office has posted her request, and the responsive documents, here: https://www.oregon.gov/gov/media/Pages/Public-Records-Log.aspx

  4. no longer surprised 06/20/2017

    It’s amazing what you can get away with at the UO if you’re linked to the School Psychology department.

    • OAnonymous 06/20/2017

      say more?

  5. readthepaper 09/20/2017

    Maybe the rationale of ‘we need someone from CAS’ from a Senate composed of a lot of CAS people just didn’t seem authentic.

    • uomatters 09/20/2017

      Actually, it was the Board of Trustees who first called for the next faculty person to be from CAS. They then switched their support to McIntyre.

  6. unionletter 09/21/2017

    To be honest, Dreiling’s letter is lame. It just says McIntyre isn’t appropriate because she’s not in CAS. There might be some benefit to having a rep from CAS, but it’s hardly mandatory. Letter just makes the union faculty come off as heavily siloed.

    Actually, the more I think about this, the worse it appears. It implies it would always be better to have a sociologist (CAS and Dreiling’s home) as the trustee than a finance prof (Lundquist). Don’t agree.

  7. Dogmatic Ratios 09/21/2017

    I’m not sure it matters. Imagine if they selected a faculty trustee who cared about shared governance. We would still have an extreme minority — on the BoT — who are interested in sharing power with the campus community. We need to find a different path to democracy.

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