OC interview issue

1/25/2011: The Oregon Commentator provides excellent interviews with campus notables in its latest issue. Mostly campus notables who haven’t been on campus long enough to know that they will regret it. Our new Dean of Students, Paul Shang, for example:

OC: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has listed the UO as a Red Light school for its speech code policy (see box for an explanation of what this means). How do you juggle the responsibility of providing free expression and student safety?

PS: That’s kind of a conversation that evolves. Depending on what the issue is and how something is stated, you can get different kinds of perspectives on what sorts of infringements are occurring. FIRE looks at things from just the free speech perspective. There are, in my opinion, a lot of issues having to do with free speech that people need to be thoughtful about. The fact that we are the only democratic society in the world that has these notions of unbridled speech is something that we need to think about. Canada has limitations of speech. England, Israel, all kinds of democratic countries have different perspectives on unbridled speech. That is something that may become more of an issue as our country evolves.

Ok, I thought about it Paul. And to quote first amendment author James Madison, “fuck off”.

Meanwhile President Lariviere refused to be interviewed, leading to this exchange between his spokesperson and reporter Alex Tomchak Scott:

Lariviere only to consent to an interview with pre-screened questions and responses.January 18th, 2011 by Alex Tomchak Scott

Here’s an e-mail I got from the UO’s spokesperson Julie Brown this morning.

    Hi Alex,

    I hope you’re well.  I’m following up about your request to interview President Lariviere.  It’s disappointing that you chose to write about your conversation with Staci, but I want to help you get the information you’re requesting. You can always contact me with requests for leaders on campus in the same way you did when working for the ODE.

    The president wants students to be informed about how the legislative action this winter and spring may change the short-term and long-term access and affordability of education. As I understand your request, this will be the topic of your Q&A. Please send your questions to me and I will facilitate getting the president’s answers for you. Deadline information would be helpful too.

    Thanks,

    Julie

Let me say this about Julie Brown: I worked for the Emerald for two years and dealt with her on a regular basis, so I have ample experience working with her. Spokespeople get a lot of criticism from journalists, but I never found her to be anything other than helpful and honest to the greatest degree possible, professional even when, as in my wayward early days, I was not. If I lived in a circle of hell where I could only conduct interviews through questions relayed by a public relations professional, I’d want Julie Brown to be that professional.

However, that’s not where I live. If given the choice between questioning someone in a position of power through a public relations professional and not questioning him or her at all, when the object is a question-and-answer transcript, I think any journalist who truly values the difficult, precise questions and spontaneous, unrehearsed responses that such a situation requires would choose the latter option.

In fairness to Lariviere, the OC’s previous issue was on “Big Balls”.