Last updated on 08/10/2014
At the University of Nike campus store:
Rumor central 8/9/2014: Last night’s faculty parties were the happiest we’ve seen since Jim Bean was forced out. Lots of rumors about what Coltrane will do to clean out Johnson Hall. I’ll start things off with the reports that VP for Life Student Life Robin Holmes and Chief Strategic Communicator Tim Clevenger won’t last long. Also lots of talk that the Law School is in deep financial trouble, and received a secret emergency bailout promise from VPFA Jamie Moffitt’s office a few months ago.
The comments are open.
No one needs UOMatters to drive people out. A revolving door for its own sake isn’t a good thing. Please be constructive going forward and let the chips fall where they may with regard to personnel.
Constructive? I’ve tried to get the administration to conduct open 360 degree reviews of administrators. They won’t do it, but they take their raises and parachutes anyway. Sorry, but this blog is the only way we have influence.
No one ever accused you of narcissism, did they. I guess the University Senate doesn’t matter, only your blog?!
Haven’t you graduated? Go away please with your sanctimonious bullshit. And no, this isn’t uomatters.
Tim Clevenger has a new blog. You can get to it from a link in his last column for the UOAA News, July edition.
http://uoalumni.com/s/1540/uoaa/index.aspx?sid=1540&gid=3&pgid=2813
Yikes. Let’s not advertise that fluff. The guy can’t see straight for all his love Duck love.
Kees de Kluyver……please.
It will be sadly ironic if the Law school, not in the union, gets bailed out by Moffit who then claims there is no money for raises for union faculty.
Isn’t there a conflict of interest in Moffitt’s bailing out Moffitt?
Something bright and alien flashed across the sky (it was the UO Board) …and for a moment UO faculty from every school and department set down their beakers, violins, and books, and closed their laptops, and thought of their old best dreams. Thank you, Chuck Lillis!
Pynchon is also relevant:
A screaming comes across the sky (a President is fired). It has happened before (just a few years ago, in fact), but there is nothing to compare it to now.
If these two admins don’t last long that would be a huge boost to morale. Sure hope that pans out.
What’s next? Actual support for graduate research? All nations live in peace and harmony?
I tried to call but this party is way loud he’s waffling about the $940K. No sig yet WTF? This Sharon chick keeps telling me the alums are tapped out and its the profs turn they bettr kick in another 60 large or else and some shit about her fee too She seems wasted but is the union good for it? Hope yur still up this is important she sez her paypal is sharu at goducks.con
LOL
“this Sharon chick”… !!
Sorry kids, anything that this Board does is nothing but rear guard action. The real battle should have been fought years ago, it’s far too late to try to remedy the rot now. Redoing the flow chart is going to rectify the massive waste which U of Owe is burdened with, the ridiculous PERS obligations for the folks who did nothing to make the school a better academic institution. Damn it, you’re paying millions to a retired football coach, you paid nearly a million to get rid of an incompetent pres, you’re paying millions to an outside law firm for work which should be part of the in house counsel’s job description, a firm connected to a former pres, which saddled you with The White Elephant. That’s before all of the debt service for buildings that are nothing more than vanity projects.
Face it, the institution has failed, failed to position itself to deal with a failing economy, failed to realize the stupidity of thinking that increasing debt, whether student or public, is a sustainable business plan. The only solace you can have is that you aren’t alone, nearly every other public uni followed the same “bigger fool’ model. Good luck, you’re going to need every bit of it…..
Sure, UO is in a hole, and yes the last few years of UO leadership have have been even more problematic than Frohnmayer, Moseley, and Kilkenny were.
But we’ve got an excellent new board that recognizes the problems and just showed it’s not afraid to deal with them. We’ve got Chuck Lillis on our side, instead of George Pernsteiner and Matt Donegan.
We’ve got a new union that has already made progress dealing with the salary problems, made it easier to hire and retain top faculty (at least in my department), is giving the non-tenure track faculty some well-deserved job security, and is slowing giving the faculty some actual voice in running our university.
There’s “a lot of ruin” in an institution like UO. Anyplace that can get through the crap we’ve had to deal with has something solid at its core. Yes there’s been a lot of misfeasance and malfeasance, but we’ve survived despite all the problems you lay out, and I think that we’ve got past the worst of it. I sure as hell hope so, anyway!
We need to significantly lower our TTF to student ratio if we
going to slowly climb out of the “lot of ruin ; the current
ratio of 35:1 is extremely high and really provides an obstacle
to various academic innovations, new programs, better student
advising, you name it …
To me this is the central challenge, independent of who the admin is.
As a high school teacher, I still receive calls from former students, who graduated college and cannot find jobs. They’re asking for help finding any job, the reality of what is occurring in the economy cannot be reconciled with the happy talk of their college’s PR departments. Fact is, I can no longer help them, the HR departments of the companies I had contacts with no longer respond.
In the months that I’ve been reading your blog, what struck me is the lack of any concern for recent grads and the unmitigateable, and, in a lot of cases, criminal debt loads most grads are bearing. My students, in particular, attended a working class high school, in most cases, they’re the first in their family to graduate college. Many of them are Latinos, as I am, and they also believed the college siren song, as well. I am all for unions and solidarity and the need for collective pushback, but the fact is, that is far too late to help the millions of debt strapped grads, who are facing the possibility of a life of poverty, despite their education. THAT is the failure of a uni such as U of Owe, that the supposed bright lights, administrators and flacks, were, in truth, running a pigeon drop scheme on my kids, and millions of others. I have little faith that any board, including this one, that doesn’t acknowledge what it, and other unis, have done to their students, is of any use. Until someone has the integrity and guts to admit the current state of academia is mainly due to corruption and self interest, why should I believe anything any of you claim?
huh?
didn’t realize University of Oregon, UCSB, Nevada Reno, Gonzaga are Vocational schools
jesus does one have to explain College here?
take that back….maybe Oregon is a vocational school for the NFL
It’s not the fault of UO that our country messed up our economy, or that cuts in higher education funding made public universities much more expensive.
If your students don’t think UO (or any other particular college) is worth it, do everyone a favor and advise them to stay away.
You know, people such as you are exactly why an institution such as U of Owe is what it is. The problems with public unis have gone on for a long time, for well over twenty years, as the corporate model of administration has taken hold. Tell us, Sparky, what the cuts in public education have to do with having more administrators than faculty, with the buildouts of vanity projects, with the obsession of sports and funneling ever more money to athletics than to academics? The massive amount of public debt which most of our states have taken on hasn’t been a response to falling tax revenues, it has been to funnel money to Wall Street money temples and politically connected cronies and building contractors. And if you can’t understand that this daisy chain of corruption has been shouldered by student debt, then you have no business being anywhere near a college, you are either too stupid or too sold out.
Since you seem so blissfully unaware of your own student’s predicaments, let me fill you in on very basic, but informative, anecdote that reveals the level of rot at your school. I had several students ask me for math tutoring, knowing that I do it for free on the weekends. When I asked why they didn’t get it U of Owe, they said they were charged nearly $13/hour for help. These were kids that were taking on hella loans, which paid for a bloated administrative overhead, provided the collateral for the buildouts, etc. But your god damn school couldn’t find a way to provide tutoring as part of the tuition. These kids were paying well over twice what I paid to attend a public uni, couldn’t get academic support, which we got as part of our tuition, but somehow, the bright lights at U of Owe could hired presidents who didn’t know what his head football coach’s contract entailed.
Given all that, what makes you think I’m going to recommend anyone attend U of Owe? All I really have to do is direct current hs students to this here blog, have them read what many of you post, and they’ll come to realize the self serving corruption which is rife within your institution. That has nothing to do with falling state revenues….
The replies to charlie are appalling. Even if you disagree with his points, the snark, disrespect, and poor writing are terrible. Just in case these are from my fellow faculty, I’m embarrassed to count you as colleagues.
It’s true that college isn’t vocational school, and that the societal push for nearly everyone to go to college, for no good reason, causes a lot of problems. We could discuss where the blame lies. And we could discuss why colleges offer the things that they do. I’m always amazed that students as a whole seem to want gym facilities more than they want tutoring. Tag along with a campus tour and see if they discuss much that’s of substance. I look at campus tutoring facilities compared to the athletic tutoring palace, and I really wonder why students and their parents don’t complain, or just take over the glass cube en masse. Faculty complain about things like this, but no one above cares.
But back to the point, show some respect to someone who clearly cares about his students. It’s posts like these that make me often avoid UOMatters. The tone here, Bill, would be a good topic for a post.
Some theories I’ve heard so far:
1) Fish or cut bait: MG never relinquished his seat at UC Irvine, found that he disliked the president’s job, and decided to spend the remaining years of his career as an academic criminologist, 940K the richer for his efforts at the UO.
2) The donors dunnit: proved unable to raise money effectively, the donors grew weary of his ineptitude, donations dropped off; with the Board of Trustees at their disposal, they were able to force him out.
3) The Board asserts authority: The Board of Trustees seized the opportunity presented by the basketballer scandal to assert their authority over the presidency, at MG’s expense; the 940K payout increases the likelihood that future candidates will be willing to move to Eugene.
4) Those emails: the president’s response to the basketballer scandal exceeded mere clumsiness and exposed the university to litigation; the Trustees intervened to neutralize a potentially explosive situation, and paid MG a tidy sum to keep quiet.
5) Rank incompetence, pure and simple: MG was simply awful at the job, especially communications; he alienated everyone, and accomplished little; against its preference for stability and continuity, the Board sacked him, but could not avoid giving him a golden parachute.
Perhaps elements of all five were in play. If obliged to choose, I’d go with Theory 5. Will we ever find out?
Re commemoratives: wishful thinking dies hard
I think it’s mostly #5.
This Board is action oriented — hallelujah! I imagine that Lillis is as frustrated as so many of us on the faculty, and couldn’t wait to bring in a truly qualified president, with real academic credentials, and start the climb out of the slime. I’ve also heard that JH is bracing for a big lawsuit (by the 3 basketball players); the Board must’ve wanted to avoid Gottfredson-related litigation so they can focus on one mess and not two.
So we’ve seen how this board is handling it at the president’s level, how will they handle shelling out money to outside law firms when we supposedly have a legal team advising the school, the rape scandal, the bowl of dicks list scandal and overspending at a police department we have never needed. Then again seeing how a nearly $1,000,000 severance package was handed out when it didn’t need to be I do not have a lot of faith this board will change anything. Maybe I’m wrong but I have my doubts that much will change.
See John Canzano’s Weds Oregonian column on UO’s next president.