10/2/2017:
Yesterday three of the students who received discipline letters (copy below) talked to the Senate about why they were going to fight the student conduct charges, rather than plead guilty and accept the administration’s rather mild punishment – a meeting with administrators and a note in their permanent record.
The first student speaker – nervous but quite well spoken – explained how after receiving the discipline letter he’d had to spend 4 hours that he’d wanted to spend on his physics homework talking to lawyers. All three explained why they thought it was worth fighting the charges. Video here:
There are also stories in the Daily Emerald here, and InsideHigherEd here.
10/31/2017: Administration presses conduct code charges against Schill protesters
Posted yesterday on the UO Student Collective facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/UOstudentcollective/posts/1709555705729615
Today, members of the University of Oregon Student Collective have been sent notices from the university administration. We have been notified that students will be charged for participating in student protest and dissent against the administration.
We have been told that we have two options: either submit to whatever guidelines they give us and silence ourselves or be formally charged by the institution of the University of Oregon.
This will lead to a criminalization of protest and dissent. Students are being punished for speaking out and using their voice. The UO Student Collective will not accept any guidelines that take away our freedom to dissent and protest.
The UO Student Collective will be contesting the allegations. The voices of the students are not a disruption to the business of a University, the voice of the students is the business of a University. Protesting is not a crime. Fighting for the students is not a crime.
If anyone else has gotten an email from the administration threatening student conduct action, please let the UO Student Collective know. We will fight for you.
The University of Oregon Student Collective is here to for the students.
Support this movement by sharing this post. Post #iamtheuostudentcollective. Come to our meetings. Make your voices heard.
TEXT OF EMAIL BELOW:
The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards at the University of Oregon has received information concerning your alleged involvement in an incident on October 6, 2017 with the following brief description:
You took the stage in the EMU Ballroom in a manner that caused a University of Oregon event (President Schill’s State of the University Address) to be suspended. You were asked on multiple occasions to cease the behavior, and failed to stop after being clearly directed to do so by Dr. Kevin Marbury, Interim Vice President for Student Life.
Based on this information, your behavior may have violated the Student Conduct Code. The UO Student Conduct Code ensures your rights as a student are protected. While you are entitled to respect and civility, you also have responsibilities to the community. The Student Conduct Code outlines these responsibilities and the university’s expectations for your behavior as a UO student. Below are the specific violations of the Student Conduct Code that may be applicable to this incident:
1. Disruption of University: Engaging in behavior that could be reasonably foreseen to cause disruption of, obstruction of, or interference with the process of instruction, research, administration, student discipline, or any other service or activity provide or sponsored by the University.
2. Failure to Comply: Failure to comply with the reasonable directions of public officials acting in performance of their duties on University Premises or at a University Sponsored Activity when such conduct poses a danger to personal safety or property or obstructs or impairs educational or other institutional activities.
I am offering you two options to resolve this matter:
OPTION ONE – Special Option for Resolution
You are invited to participate in small group dialogue with a variety of Officers of Administration who have expressed interest in meeting with you to hear your concerns and work with you to try to address them. This educational outcome will be scheduled during mid-to-late November.
By choosing this option, you are accepting responsibility for your actions and agreeing to participate in the small group dialogue noted above. As a result, rather than a sanction, you will receive written warning for your behavior.
As long as you honor this agreement and attend the group session, there will be no formal conduct process and this will not result in a student conduct record.
To choose this option, please respond to this email within 7 days of today’s date. You will receive additional information within the next few weeks about the small group dialogue session and how to RSVP.
OPTION TWO – Administrative Conference
By choosing this option, you are electing to contest the allegation. You will need to meet with me, or another decision-maker, to discuss the information we have received. This is called an administrative conference and is your opportunity to present additional information to ensure we have a full understanding of the situation. Following the meeting, a decision would be made regarding your responsibility for the violations listed above based on all available information and a “more likely than not” standard. If you are found responsible, you will be assigned an action plan (called sanctions under the Student Conduct Code).
To choose this option, please call (541)346-1140 by November 6, 2017, which is 7 days from the date of this letter, to schedule a meeting.
Additional things you should know:
– If you fail to respond to this notice within 7 days, I will make a decision based on the information I have, without your input or agreement.
– Normally, when a student is found responsible for a conduct violation, a $30 administrative fee is assessed to the student’s account. In this case, however, we have decided to waive the administrative fee. Neither option will result in an administrative fee.
– Students have the right to an advisor at any stage of the student conduct process. Your advisor may not be another student who is involved in the alleged behavior. For more information about advisors in the student conduct process, visit our website (http://dos.uoregon.edu/files/Advisors.pdf).
For more information about the Student Conduct Code, please visit http://conduct.uoregon.edu, or e-mail [email protected] with any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Katy Larkin
Associate Director, Student Conduct and Community Standards
Great, this is a microcosm of what is going on, in my experience, in virtually all sectors. Over-reaction
meaning in this case, let’s follow up one stupid lapse of judgement by student protesters (there were better ways to do it) by a similar stupid lapse of judgement by JH – let it the fuck alone, it is mostly meaningless, unless you want to inflate its meaning for your own purposes.
Ugh, the doublespeak of this group. I guess it’s time for my two minutes hate:
“We have been notified that students will be charged for participating in student protest and dissent against the administration.”
No, sweetheart, you’ve been charged with:
1. Disruption of University: Engaging in behavior that could be reasonably foreseen to cause disruption of, obstruction of, or interference with the process of instruction, research, administration, student discipline, or any other service or activity provide or sponsored by the University.
2. Failure to Comply: Failure to comply with the reasonable directions of public officials acting in performance of their duties on University Premises or at a University Sponsored Activity when such conduct poses a danger to personal safety or property or obstructs or impairs educational or other institutional activities.
I think everyone agrees you have the right to protest and dissent. You don’t have the right to do so by overtaking University platforms by force. If you’re reading this, please seriously consider OPTION ONE – Special Option for Resolution. Don’t double down, choose the option with real dialogue, which is supposedly what you were after in the first place.
Your actions will speak louder than your words.
i fully agree that a dialogue is good and should have been a natural consequence of the student folly
but threatening them as a means of facilitating this dialogue seems counterproductive
“choose the option with real dialogue”
Thanks for the chuckle.
Conservative Duck, who is this sweetheart you speak of? Is this how you address people? Even in your writing you display your sexist tendencies.
Hopefully you realize that once you showed your true colors your message became garbage.
“Is this how you address people? ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1gtCRCNMrk
“Hopefully you realize that once you showed your true colors your message became garbage.”
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
“I’m not sexist, I’m just old-timey”
Seems like a completely valid defense to me. Almost like saying that you had no idea blackface has been considered deeply problematic and repulsive for the past, say, 40 years.
The student protestors were stupid. This reaction is even more stupid.
Fighting fire with fire…
Our right to prevent people we disagree with from speaking has been breached.
Thanks for posting this.
I think the comments of the first speaker (purple shirt) were quite earnest and fairly respectful – he didn’t have a lot of time and was not well prepared by to me, he imparted that these issues matter to students and the students have felt ignored on these issues.
So now we will begin the process of analysis of the right/wrong way for student groups to behave as well as broadcasting the inevitable blame-storm. Seems to me that these students have
legitimate issues (in their own mind) and we are a University, the one institution on the planet where people should feel unencumbered and the legitimacy of issues should be discussed in an open and honest manner.
It’s always like this. Once the University has targeted someone, they will double down and triple down instead of just backing down when they are wrong and putting it right like adults. I will never understand the point of this “strategy.”
This is how UO admin operates. This is so consistent, it’s ridiculous.
Agreed. The UO administration is remarkably defensive. Once they make a mistake they seem incapable of correcting their course. Everyone makes mistakes. Most reasonably healthy adults will apologize or at least pick a new route once the mistake becomes apparent. But not the UO administration. They just put their foot on the gas and go even faster on the wrong road. It seems they do that even when they are racing toward a brick wall. The question is why?
If the protesters were instead alleged rapist basketball players, Schill may have been unlikely to pursue charges, as Sports Illustrated reported (https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2017/10/25/oregon-kavell-bigby-williams-title-ix-investigation):
“the Emerald pressed Oregon president Michael Schill on whether he was aware that Bigby-Williams played the whole season while under criminal investigation for sexual assault. Schill responded: “I don’t have any awareness of that. In any event, I can’t comment on an individual student. What if I was asked by another reporter about you being obnoxious? Would you want me to tell them that?”
I hope the students fight this and get support while doing it. In one stroke the administration has undermined whatever progress they may have made towards re-establishing the basic principles and values of free speech on campus. Schill has recently been praised by FIRE on this issue, I wonder if they’ll offer a retraction. My simpleminded take on all of this is in the following bulletpoints:
-Free speech: good
-counterspeech: good
-rowdy, disruptive, attention grabbing protest: good
-full heckler’s veto or the equivalent: bad
-restrictions on time place and manner of speech: very bullshitty, use the lightest touch possible
-power creep by administrators: bad and hypocritical
-violence, coercion, threats from anyone: antithetical to free speech
How are people so anti-student? How is anyone condemning something they have zero understanding of? It blows my mind how brave people are on the internet.