Update: The union is reporting that Gottfredson’s team has committed to present their counter on raises at 8AM Thursday. No explanation for the HLGR donut delivery problems, but the UO Matters catering division will be ready with coffee and backup voodoo.
4/23/2013: At 9:30 VPFA Jamie Moffitt will deliver President Gottfredson’s counter to the union’s raise proposal. 8-12AM, Room 122 Knight Library. I’ll bring coffee and waive the usual $5 cover charge. Rudnick has assigned a team of HLGR associate attorneys and consultants to bring donuts.
Synopsis:
- Note to President Gottfredson: If you have any regard for what the faculty think of you, never again let Sharon Rudnick speak for you. (See comments).
- The union presented its raise proposal 5 weeks ago. The administration has been stalling on a response ever since. Today, about 30 faculty showed up to hear what it was going to be. Rudnick and Moffitt dragged out the meeting as long as they could, then announced at 11:50 that there wasn’t enough time to present Gottfredson’s proposal. Pretty damn rude. Show up at 8AM tomorrow to see what cheap stunt they pull next.
Prologue: Some readers have noticed the administration’s “Fact Check” site, linked at the top. I wrote the response to it below last Monday. Rudnick and Geller haven’t answered it – they don’t want me to know who wrote an open letter to me? It’s a secret open letter?
Admin Team Fact Check Letter:
My Response:
From: Bill Harbaugh
Subject: your Feb 28 open letter about Professor Bill Harbaugh
Date: April 12, 2013 6:22:40 PM PDT
To: Sharon Rudnick, Randy Geller
Cc: James Bean, doug park , Barbara Altmann , Timothy Gleason , Doug Blandy , [email protected], William F GARY , [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Bruce Blonigen , “[email protected] Coltrane” , President Gottfredson , “[email protected]” , Ryan Hagemann , Robert Kyr , Margaret Paris
Dear Ms Rudnick and Mr. Geller:
I’m writing you in regard to the Feb 28 “Open letter from the UO Bargaining Team” which is attached, and which is posted on the official University of Oregon website for faculty contract negotiations, at http://uo-ua.uoregon.edu/fact-check/
A colleague came across this website a week or so after the letter had apparently been posted, and alerted me to it. I thought it was pretty hilarious, particularly in its discussion of the UO Matters blog at https://uomatters.com, which I edit, and in regard to the claims that I am “indelibly associated” with the faculty union.
In truth I fought long and hard against faculty unionization. I signed the membership card only at the end, because I wanted to be on the winning side, where I could make a difference. I have made it very clear on my blog and in conversations with many UO administrators that I am still quite skeptical of faculty unions and that my ultimate loyalty is to the University of Oregon and to the principle of public education for which it stands. I regularly tell the union organizers I will turn on the union the moment it starts doing more harm than good to this principle, and I’m pretty sure they believe me.
But I digress. Many UO faculty have now told me that I should be outraged by your letter, that it is harmful to my professional reputation, and even that it constitutes “defamation per se”, whatever that means.
While I’m no lawyer, on closer reading I think they may have a point. The letter is on UO letterhead, is posted on an official UO website, is addressed to my academic colleagues in my university community, and it even uses my professional title:
“We write this letter to our University community because we believe it is both necessary and appropriate to inform you of … the continued reporting of biased, erroneous and inflammatory reports from the bargaining table by Professor Bill Harbaugh …”
The letter and the website also make some damaging accusations about my actions and intentions, stating them as if they were facts. I note in particular the statement that my blog is “consistently anti-university”, and “He has also filed frivolous and repeated records requests for information directly related to bargaining.” I’m thinking maybe that was supposed to say “not directly related to bargaining” but regardless, I am not the sort of person who takes accusations of frivolity lightly, even confused ones. Economics is a serious subject, and no potential employer would want to hire a professor with a reputation for joking around.
However the strangest part of this open letter is that a group of UO administrators and attorneys would write something like this, put it on official UO letterhead, post it on an official UO website, and then not sign their names to it.
So, I am writing to ask Ms Rudnick, who is apparently the leader of this team, or perhaps more appropriately Mr. Geller, her immediate supervisor at UO, to send me the names of the people on the “UO Bargaining Team”.
I’m ccing all the people I’ve been able to identify as potential members of the UO Bargaining Team, from the website, the HLGR invoices, and a few other sources. I’ve also cced my department chair, CAS Dean Coltrane, President Gottfredson, OUS Chancellor Rose, OUS General Counsel Ryan Hagemann, current UO Senate President Kyr and incoming Senate President Paris.
I’d appreciate a prompt response, listing the names of the people on the UO Bargaining Team. If any of the team members want to disavow the letter, I’d appreciate it this would be posted on the website where the letter appears. Feel free to also post this letter if you’d like, and let me know if you’d like a signed copy on UO economics department letterhead.
Thanks,
Bill Harbaugh
Professor of Economics
1285 University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon 97403
10 days with no response, so I’m asking Gottfredson:
From: Bill Harbaugh
Subject: Feb 28 open letter about Professor Bill Harbaugh
Date: April 24, 2013 2:28:56 PM PDT
To: President Gottfredson, Michael Gottfredson
Dear President Gottfredson:
I am writing to request that you instruct your General Counsel, Randy Geller, to respond to the email below and provide a list of the members of the “UO Bargaining Team” that wrote the 2/28/13 open letter to me and posted it on the UO website at http://uo-ua.uoregon.edu/fact-check/
Bill Harbaugh
UO Prof. of Economics
http://harbaugh.org
Liveblog Disclaimer: This is my opinion of what people said, should have said, or should have wanted to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. For the union’s view of things see Luebke’s blog.
Harbaugh: There’s coffee if anyone would like some. Rudnick: I assigned Bill Gary and Randy Geller to bring donuts. I don’t know why they are not here. Tension in room rises. Underpaid assistant professor, obviously hoping to buy off the administrative team, enters with a box of Voodoo, just before things get ugly. Come on down and get yours.
Mauer notices a typo.
Rudnick: I think we are close on these too.
Art 18: Discipline and termination for cause. Gleason’s favorite. What crazy shit will he bring up this time? Rudnick: We dropped a lot. We drop attempts to define “just cause” and leave it up to common wisdom (as Mauer had proposed they do.) Sec 9: Job abandonment. We try to take a middle position. 21 consecutive days, university now has to try and contact the faculty before kicking them off.
Art 43: Drug and alcohol testing
Note that this applies to alcohol and “controlled substances”:
Schedule V Controlled Substances
Substances in this schedule have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics. Examples of Schedule V substances include: cough preparations containing not more than 200 milligrams of codeine per 100 milliliters or per 100 grams (Robitussin AC®, Phenergan with Codeine®), and ezogabine.
Rudnick: Adopted standard language for reasonable suspicion. You can get drunk at a party with your department chair, that’s OK, not part of job performance. Beers at lunch, come back to campus, interact with students, that would trigger a test. Cecil: tries to pin her down. Sitting in your office writing a paper? Anderson: You’re at a restaurant, entertaining a speaker, drinking to dull the pain. Students at next table notice, report you. Cecil: Dean hear’s the laughter, gets jealous, demands a test? Gleason: (I have no idea what he is trying to say here. Spit it out Tim.) Rudnick tries to explain. Confession: I spent many happy and productive hours on the UW Terrace with my PhD advisor heavily under the influence, working out proofs. Green: In the President’s box with donors – problem, or is this just about being in front of students. Rudnick: No just students. Mauer: We’ll rewrite this for you.
About 30 faculty are now packing the room. Still a few donuts left. Moffitt is on call in the green room, but first:
Art 42: Criminal Records Checks: Admin counter.
Sec 6: New language, have to tell provost if you are charged with any crime involving “moral turpitude, official misconduct or dishonesty, or with a felony under state or federal law.” Check wikipedia – you’ll be amazed at what counts as moral turpitude:
Art 39: Distribution: admin counter.
Art 28: Faculty Handbook.
Admin finally agrees to print the damn thing out. Rudnick’s probably billed $5000 arguing this.
Art 29: Rights reserved to the university.
Mauer: You took out a lot of our specific language about rights derived from constitution, law and replaced it with “customary”. Why? Rudnick: We don’t want to give up anything even if we don’t know if we have it. Mauer: Our proposal shows were to look for admin rights. Your counter doesn’t explain where admin rights come from. Rudnick: Exactly, that’s our point. Mauer: Does this open the door to Pres claiming he has authority that is not in constitution, law, case law. Rudnick: Yes. Mauer: Come on, why not tell us where you think your admin authority comes from? Rudnick: We don’t want to accept any limiting language. Period. “The university’s authority is what it is and it is not necessary to define it.” WTF? “We’re not going to stage a coup”.
Caucus time, back at 10:10 with Moffitt.
They’re back:
Rudnick: Moffitt, Shelton, Wolff are here to discuss costing.
Moffitt: I’ll talk about 4 topics:
Huge increases in tuition for years, but not in faculty pay or hiring. Where has that money gone? Green asks simple Q about tuition, Rudnick jumps all over her. Moffitt there’s a lot of uncertainty, lots of moving parts, lots of balancing.
Moffitt: State appropriation uncertainty. State will allocate money to OUS in June. We won’t know what board will give UO until October. We need to make commitments now though. Perhaps 3% increase, if passed through that would only be $1.3M. (So chump change out of a $800 million budget, But Moffitt is going to run out the clock talking about it.) She goes on and on. Grants: awards are down, $6 million hit. Of course it’s also an expenditure reduction, but she’s not going to talk about that. Now she’s onto F and A recovery, also down about $1M – almost as much as we’re paying for the mortgage on the underground parking at Matt Court. Again, no discussion of associated cuts to expenses. Drags out the sequestration boogyman.
Cecil: So, after years of growth we’re now looking at a small decline. Moffitt: Increases in auxiliary revenue, $7m or so, athletics revenue. Cecil: Going to use that athletics money for academics? Moffitt: bullshits for a while, main worry is that they don’t take any more new money from the academic side.
Moffitt: Add all that up, about $11M in new recurring revenue, plus about $14M in new other revenue, $25M for 13-14, and another $14M for 14-15. Braun: Any new non-recurring revenue expected? Moffitt: We’ll get gifts, can’t predict, probably mostly for athletics anyway.
Expenses:
Moffitt: PERS – we projected based on 30% increase. We’ve now got more specific increase info. She quotes old numbers that don’t match with SB 822. Gets a $10.5M number for entire institution – about 1.3% of total UO budget. Health care: Doesn’t believe Kitz, projects 5% increase. Staff – $5 million or so for raises, ~3.5%. TTF faculty is growing at about 15 per year. Hard to cost, especially start-ups. Fortunately Espy has dealt with that by chasing them off. ~$2 million a year.
11:15, and no counterproposal for raises yet. She’s going to get to that today, right?
(I have to say that as annoying as Jamie is, she’s an infinite improvement over the relentless hostility we get from Rudnick and Gleason. She’s hiding a lot, but she’s giving out some information too, and she’s not acting like she hates the faculty.)
Talks about library costs, wifi, leasing, bond payments, building classrooms, Straub bonds. “I don’t want to scare people, but we might have tunnel issues ….” Onto overhead rates. No mention of the $1.5M she took from academics for athletics.
11:32, and no counterproposal for raises yet. She’s going to get to that today, right?
Unrestricted net assets:
Doesn’t want to commit to recurring expenses from one-time funds. Need these for emergencies: hurricanes, etc.
11:41, and no counterproposal for raises yet. She’s going to get to that today, right?
Q and A about costing your proposals.
Moffitt’s bottom line. There are a million things that are more important than paying faculty. Sorry. Any questions?
11:50, and no counterproposal for raises yet. She’s going to get to that today, right?
Mauer: Where is your economic proposal?
Rudnick: Jamie ran out the clock, we don’t have time to present them.
Mauer: Give them to us and present your talking points tomorrow.
Rudnick: No. I don’t know why people are laughing at me!
Mauer: How far out do your projections go? Moffitt 2015. (Huh? What about the secret slides?)
Cecil: How much Foundation money are you keeping off your books?
Meeting ends. Still no raise proposal from Gottfredson. Apparently it will be presented at 8:00 AM tomorrow. We’ll be here.
I can stop by voo doo tonight. Orders?
Fact Check.
Mr. Harbaugh claims that Rudnick has assigned a team of HLGR associate attorneys and consultants to bring donuts.
This is absolutely NOT true.
Well, crap. I was thinking that was a great way for HLGR to thank the UAUO for the lucrative commission they brought them.
Fact Check?!
I’m shocked at the suggestion that I have knowingly published a maliciously false statement about Ms Rudnick. That would be defamation on my part!
My claim is well founded in behavioral economics. I brought the coffee last time, and I’m doing it again. Reciprocation is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Ms Rudnick is a human. Coffee and donuts are complementary goods. Therefore Ms Rudnick will bring donuts this time. If there are no donuts, it will be because we ate them all before you got there. Fact!
Jamie is coming? Someone bring the Kleenex.
Frohnmayer too?
So are all schedule I-V drugs things we’ll test for?
Vicodin, percocet etc.? Robotussen?
What defines a positive test? Presence of the drug (past 30 days) vs. impairment of the drug?
I don’t see how this works without a new UOPD Emergency Booze Flag Squad
We all came to Eugene to smoke pot, and now they are going to do drug tests? Strike!!!
Regarding vicodin abuse
Inability to perform job tasks
Extreme anxiety and paranoia
severe mood swings
Makes you wonder how many on the admin bargaining team are oxy-poppers
I have an easy solution to this. Install portable BAC tests (like ignition tests) on the computers in all of the classrooms. Only way to be safe!
Are really worried about UO students exposure to people using alcohol?
Has anyone seen the parties south of campus??
Sharon is right. Our students consistently report all drug abuse. We can absolutely rely on them to be the snitches. Its practically like BYU here.
Alcohol testing doesn’t work unless it’s carried out within hours of the incriminating swig, doesn’t it? So what does the future hold: UOPD equipped with breathalizers, ready at a moment’s notice to charge into the lecture hall? Here comes the UO Booze Flag Squad!
Portable breath tests are very noisy and aren’t admissible in courts. In Oregon there is no precise BAC limit. Are we going to have one for the UO?
Time to the admins when they go the BCS games and represent the university. I believe they actually were actually performing job duties…
Time to test….
Sharon, now you just look silly.
There aren’t urine tests for alcohol.
Also urine test for drugs detect usage, not impairment.
As such, any urine test is inappropriate to detect impairment.
Is there a test for skull-cracking hangovers?
But there are urine tests for many other substances, including pot. You may not get zinged on the alcohol, but you’ll certainly be taken to school for anything else.
But urine tests for pot or any other drug don’t detect impairment, only past usage. In fact if you were high right now, but had never smoked before, it might not yet show up in your urine. The only way to detect impairment is a blood test, which is more invasive and requires a warrant in cases for driving under the influence.
Unless when the admin asks you to give a sample you drop trow then and there and give it on the spot, as the students are wont to do in the neighborhoods around campus. That might be a sign of impairment.
RE: “Gottfredson is upset about a group of faculty trying to meet with him regarding the slow pace of bargaining…” In mid-March, on behalf of a delegation of six faculty members, a faculty member requested a meeting with President Gottfredson, which would be attended by all six faculty (none of whom are on the UAUO bargaining team). After several phone calls to the President’s office, an email request, and then filling out an ‘official’ meeting request form, which was also submitted to the President’s office, the group of faculty received no response. It was decided that on April 17, the delegation of 6 would personally deliver a letter requesting the President to: respond to the Senate resolution adopted on April 10, (http://senate.uoregon.edu/content/regarding-shared-governance-university-oregon); to instruct his Administration’s bargaining team to make room in their calendar to add all Wednesdays of each bargaining week as a third bargaining day so that we can finalize a contract this academic year (which was also requested by the UAUO Bargaining team several times this academic year); to consider (again) that the parties agree to binding fact-finding for the areas of the contract we are unable to reach an agreement on by early June; and to submit additional suggestions for expediting negotiations to any member of the UAUO Organizing Committee. The last three of these requests have been made at the bargaining table, several times, beginning as early as Oct. 2012. The first request concerns a Senate resolution. The letter making those requests was delivered to Randy Geller and Doug Blandy while Gottfredson remained in his office.
Rudnick and your President presented the truth though, and we’re supposed to trust them because they’ve never steered us wrong before. You just showed up, unannounced, broke through the door and demanded his ear. In fact, I think they said you were on horseback, too. How ridiculous.
Interesting mix of spectators in the room. Given Jamie’s time-sink presentation, I suppose I understand. Why are there no anti-union folk anymore, though? Does anyone have the link to their webpage? (Is it still up? I can’t imagine what they’re posting, mind you.)
I just read the open letter from the “UO Bargaining Team” to Prof. Harbaugh. I’m no lawyer, but it certainly sounds like defamation. I am utterly disgusted by the lengths to which the administration seems to be willing to go to shut down free speech and critical discourse. If Prof. Harbaugh requires a legal fund, I will be the first to contribute.
Yep, that’s the administration for you. Out of one side of their mouths they claim defamation. Out of the other they spew it. (You know, they should rally hire a competent lawyer.)
“I just read the open letter from the “UO Bargaining Team” to Prof. Harbaugh. I’m no lawyer, but it certainly sounds like defamation. I am utterly disgusted by the lengths to which the administration seems to be willing to go to shut down free speech and critical discourse. If Prof. Harbaugh requires a legal fund, I will be the first to contribute.”
(Example of a dumb on this site)
Thanks. I’ve retained a NYC law firm, known for its many years of work on defamation: McCallam, Ardmore and Talisker.
Contributions to my legal defense can be made through their website, here.
What goes around comes around, Harbaugh. You started it, you asked for it, so don’t act surprised now. Grow up.
I’m not surprised, I’m amused, Anonymous.
“Macallan” not “McCallam.” Makes me wonder if UOMatters need a bigger single malt fund if it can’t afford the good stuff.
Thanks, now I understand why the bartender at Meiji’s kept giggling.
^^ “What goes… ”
Jim Bean is approaching troll status. Should we ignore him?
Harbaugh is such a jackass. I literally cannot believe how stupid the commenters on this site are not to see that. Dude is wasting everyone’s time and money and has been for years, and the dumbs on this site applaud it like it’s a huge success that they’re “sticking it to the man.”
Thanks so much for the intervention, Mr. Geller! I don’t know where all of us “dumb” faculty would be without your incisive legal intellect to show us the err of our ways in reading UO Matters!
Nice to see HGLR has swindled enough of UO’s tuition money that they can afford to have a few low-paid interns devoted to trolling this blog. But I guess that’s what happens when the fox (Frohnmayer) is guarding the henhouse.
“Thanks so much for the intervention, Mr. Geller! I don’t know where all of us ‘dumb’ faculty would be without your incisive legal intellect to show us the err of our ways in reading UO Matters!”
Shut up, Bill. Posting under two different monikers in a short amount of time doesn’t fool me.
*Sees someone do a public records request specifically to find child porn on the other side’s computers despite having no evidence of child porn usage whatsoever*
*Thinks this is perfectly reasonable and normal bargaining tactic and is not alarmed by it at all; does not think it raises any red flags about the person doing the request*
*is dumb*
Journalism Dean Tim Gleason is the one who brought up faculty posting child porn on facebook, as part of his arguments during bargaining sessions for limitations on free speech. Three times, so far.
I requested emails with “child porn” and “union” because I wanted to see who else on the admin bargaining team was behind this strategy. I got a response showing there were in fact such emails, but I couldn’t see them unless I paid $650 or so.
And I, Bill Harbaugh, am not the author of any comments here except those from “UO Matters”. Who are you, Anonymous?
Keep digging UOM. Keep following their dumb-ass leads. There’s more shit to find.
Bring it to an end, but be sure to win. Please be sure to win.
Why is the journalism dean arguing for limits to free speech? Is it all politics and no principles?
Journalism pays shit compared to public relations, his last day as Dean is June 31, and he’s got to make the payments on a BMW Z4. Just a guess, of course.
That’s funny. He strikes me as the kind of guy who wants to be a Z4 kind of guy.
“Moffitt: We’ll get gifts, can’t predict”
Translation: pay-for-play money from Kilkenny’s Lucky Duck Foundation to support his baseball program (with the stadium bearing his name, of course), and other athletics ventures designed to increase the value of his adjacent real estate holdings (e.g. Courtside Apartments).
If the independent board plan goes through and building condemnation becomes a board decision, then I would imagine Mac Court will be next for the indoor track. I’m sure there are gifts in the wings.
Reading through “the official UO site for faculty contract negotiations” one can only find the name of one and a half people: Barbara Altman and some dude named “mathist”–so official he won’t sign his name to his posts. Now that’s some stand up guy.
It’s clearly NOT an official site so much as it is an attempt to thwart UOM and the union negotiations. Clearly, an embarrassment for the faculty at large.
I’m thinking about Moffitt’s handout on the moody ratings, and the ratios of reserves to operating expenses at flagship publics. Her implied argument is that we’re low relative to comparators and that, as such, she can’t spend down any of her money on faculty/staff salaries. Yet, are the comparators she points to not able to maintain higher reserves AND AT THE SAME TIME maintain higher salaries? WHat’s wrong with our administration? (I bet the other flagships all have controlled parking lots, too. Not to bring that back.)