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Posts published by “uomatters”

Admins back off veiled threats to international grad students about visas

11/14/2014: Senate to vote on admin efforts to “dilute and degrade” academic standards Here’s hoping Scott Coltrane will reign in Gottfredson’s $300 an hour lawyers and settle with our grad students. If not, the Senate will be taking up legislation next Wednesday: One well spoken UO faculty member sent out…

Coltrane to stop redacting public records. Instead, he’s going to hide all of them.

Dave Hubin writes a glowing report on Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office, for UO’s official “Around the 0” blog: “The UO is open with its information, much of which is available in many places, and our hope is to consolidate some of the existing information and make it more accessible for public records requesters,”…

Lincoln Center buys back naming rights from donor, will flip them for more cash

Many gifts for academic or cultural buildings include contracts with “naming rights” in return for the donation. These are usually carefully negotiated – universities will offer bigger letters for more money and so on. Presumably the contracts for the Matthew Knight Arena, for example, include many such details. Non-profits occasionally get sued…

Connie and Steve Ballmer donate $50M to UO for academics and branding

“Around the 0” has the good news, here. Money for low-SES student scholarships, research, and $5M in spare change for UO’s branding team. Enrollments and GPA dipped this year – small but terrifying. Maybe this will help move the UO brand away from big-time sports insanity, towards something more academic,…

University in Oregon works cooperatively with police to end sexual violence

11/12/2014 update: No, of course I’m not talking about UO. The UO administration wouldn’t even share the Eugene Police investigation of the basketball rape allegations with it’s own UO Police. I’m talking about Southern Oregon University in Ashland. New York Magazine has the very powerful story by Katie Van Syckle, here:…

GTFF strike rally 11:30 Wed, at Johnson Hall Admin building

Update: UO’s undergrad student government supports the grad students. In the Emerald:

Given this history, we were deeply disappointed to see that university administration is not interested in similarly striving to meet the needs of our GTFs. The paltry offers handed down to our GTFs have been thoroughly insufficient. Although it has been suggested that there are simply not enough funds, in the wake of former President Gottfredson’s million-dollar severance package, those words ring hollow. To state that this university does not have the funds to provide paid medical and parental leave to its GTFs is utterly unacceptable and suggests that there is a dire need to reassess our university’s priorities.

And what are those UO’s priorities? Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office is doing its best to stall release of the new data until after the mediation sessions with the GTFF later this week, but judging from last year’s numbers, lining the pockets of the Johnson Hall administration seems to be job #1:

11/11/2014:

Screen Shot 2014-11-11 at 3.21.28 PM

The UO administration’s rather pandering response is below the break. I’m guessing the upcoming mediation session the email mentions is the reason the Public Records Office is hiding the contracts showing current pay for top Johnson Hall administrators.

Hubin wants $475 to release Shelton and Moffitt’s tuition increase docs

UO’s Tuition and Fee Advisory Board has been meeting to develop new tuition and fee proposals to take to the UO Board of Governors (sic) for 2015-16. In March, the UO Board of Trustees relied on the TFAB when making its recommendation on tuition to for 2014-15 to the Oregon legislature, according to…

University pays prof $120K in damages for denying him leadership roles on committees, etc.

11/7/2014: The ACLU has the good news here: Washington State University is paying former journalism professor David Demers $120,000 to drop his five-year-old federal free-speech lawsuit against four WSU administrators. “I am extremely pleased with the settlement,” Demers said. “It sends a strong message to university administrators that those who…