Jeff Wright has the story in the RG, here.
Posts published by “uomatters”
UO Matters: Because of the importance of Thursday’s July 24th meeting of the Senate Task force on Sexual Violence to the UO community and beyond, I hired reporter Dash Paulson as a freelancer to cover it. Mr. Paulson wrote several excellent stories as an Emerald reporter, including the first substantive interview with President Gottfredson, in January 2013, here, and he previously reported for UO Matters on the June Trustees meetings, here and here. His summary is below, followed by a detailed report on the meeting. As usual, quotes are in quotes, otherwise it’s the gist of the discussion.
The Task Force’s Official website is here, prior UO Matters posts are here. President Gottfredson’s self-appointed “External Review Panel” is scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday, still no word on whether their meetings will be open or closed.
Mr. Paulson’s report:
Last Thursday, the new Task Force to Address Sexual Assault and Survivor Support, created by a motion in the faculty senate, met to elect a chair and clarify the goals and mission of the new group.
Professor Carol Stabile and Randy Sullivan volunteered to co-chair the task force. Stabile wanted to focus on facilitating the task force meetings while Sullivan leads development of a tentative new course to educate students and to some extent UO employees on sexual violence. After unanimously electing Sullivan and Stabile as co-chairs, the group had a lengthy discussion on the charge of the task force. It was widely agreed that the task force should begin by gathering as much information as possible about the UO’s process and policies on sexual assault cases. Task Force members Sandy Weintraub, director of student conduct & community standards, and Renae DeSautel, sexual violence response coordinator, volunteered to give a presentation on the UO’s policy on handling sexual assault incidents. Some members said that the procedure appeared from the outside to be “broken” in light of the March 8th incident of alleged sexual assault, and they felt part of the group’s charge would be to identify problems and recommend improvements.
The group also discussed the upcoming Campus Climate Survey. Stabile said the task force should endorse the University’s proposed survey along with others, like one conducted by Professor of Psychology, Jennifer Freyd, who has been developing a survey on campus sexual violence for two years.
Several members wanted to understand better what the panel initiated by President Gottfredson will be doing. Senate President Robert Kyr, who called in for the first half hour of the meeting, told the Task Force the President’s Chief of Staff, Gregory Rikhoff, would be contacting them. There was discussion of liaisons between the groups. By the end of the meeting, the task force agreed to meet again in two weeks and in the meantime make contact with other groups on campus that deal with sexual violence. Talking points next time will include the presentation by Weintraub and DeSautel, the role of alcohol in “party culture”, and more about a possible course on the nature of sexual violence.
The full, updated committee membership, which now includes US Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall, is on the committee website, here. Senate President Rob Kyr and Andrew Lubash showed up via conference call.
3:06 p.m. Introductions
Lisa Mick Shimizu: Thanks everyone for coming. Welcomes two new members, Andrew Lubash who will join via a conference call and Cheney Ryan (Law). UO Ombudsman Bruce McCalister has also joined the committee, but he’s on a plane at the moment.
3:10 Confirmation of Chair
7/26/2014 update: The scandal about Bob Berdahl’s 2005 UC-Berkeley retirement payoff led to substantial UC-system reforms. Berdahl moved on to the Association of American Universities, at a healthy salary. He retired in June 2011 as AAU president, and in October 2011 The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported that UO President Lariviere had hired Berdahl as a “special advisor”…
From former UO journalism student CJ Ciaramella’s excellent FOIA newsletter: ‘The 31 suspicious emails buried by Ole Miss.’ Another case of FERPA abuse. New York Times appeals University of Oregon redactions in sexual assault case involving UO basketball players Meanwhile Dave Hubin’s UO Public Records is still stalling the release…
Here’s an interesting speech from the NCAA Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby [sic]: http://newsok.com/bowlsby-gets-serious-with-cheating-pays-pronouncement/article/5011747 “Enforcement is broken,” said Bowlsby, one of the most respected men in collegiate sports. “The infractions committee hasn’t had a hearing in almost a year, and I think it’s not an understatement to say that cheating pays…
http://www.statesman.com/weblogs/bevo-beat/2014/jul/24/two-texas-players-charged-sexual-assault/ The Onion has more, here.
7/23/2014: I thought I’d repost this classic on the meetings of Dave Hubin’s working group to hide public records. From what I can tell this group has now accomplished its mission and is defunct.
6/5/2013 meeting, page down for 3/7/2013 meeting.
Prologue:
- Last meeting (see below) was a disaster for Hubin and Thornton, who got raked over the coals and revealed that there were serious problems with the office’s decisions about fee-waivers, bad software, refusal or complete inability to answer questions about policies, inconsistent statements, no decision on the STC recommendation for fee-waivers for student journalists.
Synopsis:
- Dave didn’t even tell UO’s student-journalists that the meeting was being held, they found out about it from UO Matters.
- Faculty and students not allowed to ask questions.
- Thornton killed a bunch of committee time with irrelevant numbers, worked well.
- No progress on public-interest fee waiver policies. Still a black hole. Thornton’s statements just added to the mystery of what current policy is. Still seems like she has *never* given a full fee-waiver.
- In Feb the STC voted unanimously to recommend Gottfredson waive fees for student-journalists, up to some reasonable limit, with Hubin to determine what’s reasonable. Gottfredson won’t do it, claims he’s studying the issue. He was provost at UC-I, where there are no fees for anyone (except for computer programming time, if that’s required.) So Gottfredson already knows how well this would work, and he just doesn’t want the students to be able to get information on how UO is spending their money.
Live-blog disclaimer: My opinions on what people said or would have said, if they only had a spine.
Former RG reporter Greg Bolt has the story in “Around the 0”, here. Pretty cool. I’m having a hard time maintaining my usual cynicism on this one, which certainly raises the bar for Gottfredson’s hand-picked IAC-lite replacement committee. Check out Professor McWhorter’s youtube videos here. Mostly safe for work, except the…
That would be Auburn University. Documents here, story here. Here at Oregon, reporters requested the Duck infractions data on June 18 (here) and June 27 (here). UO’s public record’s office still has not released anything, despite this 1981 opinion from the Oregon DOJ making clear these reports are public records. I wonder…
7/20/2014: In the RG, here. This is silly, the idea has been around forever. OSU does seem to be ahead on implementing it though. But hey, the Beavers can’t beat the Ducks at spending money on sports! 6/28/2014: RG reports on surreal mismanagement of UO research efforts I’m no humanities…
7/20/2014 update: Kansas community college refuses to hire UO’s disgraced coach Dana Altman Tyson Alger has the story in the Oregonian, here. Oh wait, this is about the *player* Dana Altman brought to campus. Oh well, at least the players get to keep their NCAA tournament bonuses. Wait, those only…
Mostly for assaults involving athletes. Jake New has the report in Inside Higher Ed, here.
Maybe, maybe not. President Ed Ray was a little smarter than Berdahl and Gottfredson. Instead of paying Sharon Rudnick $1M to fight with his faculty, he gave them a big round of raises last year. And today he announced he’s brought in the goats. Fishwrapper sends a link to the awesome time lapse-video of…
Josephine Woolington in the RG: Former University of Oregon basketball player Brandon Austin will not face criminal charges for an alleged sexual assault at Providence College in Rhode Island, his attorney said this morning. Austin’s case was not presented to a grand jury due to what Rhode Island’s attorney general’s…