The UO Senate voted 2 weeks ago for an open search for the FAR, for faculty participation in reviews, and against letting current FAR Jim O’Fallon to stay on any longer unless he gets reviewed. Today President Gottfredson sent the Senate this non-response: From: President Gottfredson To: Margaret Paris Date: April…
Posts published by “uomatters”
Update: Today, in an open meeting, the UO Senate voted to make Senate committee meetings open.
Meetings of the UO Board and its committees are already open. For example the UO Board Finance Committee has posted notice of a public meeting on May 6, here. The Senate Budget Committee, on the other hand, holds its meetings in secret, and UO VP Brad Shelton has said he will not share important information with the SBC, if they hold public meetings. Weird.
The Senate open meetings motion was proposed in November, and was presented to Dave Hubin and the Committee on Committees several months ago. It was discussed at the February Senate meeting. Extensive comments have been posted on the Senate website, here. The Senate spent about 45 minutes today debating the motion, starting with an eloquent and passionate speech in favor by Jennifer Freyd, one of the sponsors. Rob Kyr proposed a significant amendment to provide a mechanism by which the Senate could address the reasonable confidentiality concerns that have been raised. After discussion, this passed.
The motion then passed, with all but one present voting in favor.
In the ODE, and https://twitter.com/search?q=%23UOBikeProgram&src=hash
4/22/2014: The UA student paper has a bit on Espy’s hiring, here: The criteria for candidates was that they be leaders with the vision and capability to meet the priorities established by the “Never Settle” strategic plan, according to Nikolich-Žugich. The plan’s goal regarding research and development is to double…
Great news – the Daily Emerald has the story, here. Not clear how much of this is for athletics, e.g. Knight’s ~$125M “Legacy Fund” or the $5M Robin Jaqua endowment that Johnson Hall let the jocks hijack. The recent OUS audit of the Foundation – with a weird $7M exception…
Pdf here. It summarizes the Retention and Delegation of Authority policy – more on that later. This is also of note: Applying the assumptions given in the HECC request, Moffitt reported that the UO would require an additional $7.4 million in FY 2016 and an additional $7.7 million in FY 2017 to…
More here. Open Presentation/public forum: April 21, 4:45 pm – 5:45 pm, Jock Box Auditorium. Reception following.
This motion was introduced in November and has been presented to Dave Hubin and the Committee on Committees. It was discussed at the February Senate meeting and was scheduled for a vote in March, but delayed because of the important Academic Freedom policy legislation. So there’s been plenty of debate,…
Just kidding, the meetings Provost Coltrane announces below are about a new UO mission statement – basically a PR fluff piece of one or two paragraphs. All unnecessary, I’ve simply run President Gottfredson’s first speech to the Senate through an algorithm, and here’s our new mission statement: So how about…
4/18/2014: Ted Sickinger has the story in the Oregonian: Aliotti is 59 years old. If he lives another 26.5 years, as PERS’ actuarial tables predict, the state pension system will pay him about $6.6 million in retirement, plus cost of living increases. Where will that $6.6M come from? As Sickinger…
4/16/2014 update: It’s been a week now, no signing ceremony. The rumor is that President Gottfredson has stuck Dave Hubin with the job of finding some explanation – plausible or not, doesn’t really matter – for why although he would personally love to sign this policy, it would be a violation of his fiduciary responsibility as “The University”.
4/10/2014 updates: Senate passes academic freedom motion unanimously
InsiderHigherEd has a report on the “months of contentious negotiation” between the Senate, the union, and Gottfredson over academic freedom, and Betsy Hammond has a story on this in the Oregonian here:
Gottfredson, in an emailed response to The Oregonian, said, “I look forward to closely reviewing (it) …I fully support the strongest policy on academic freedom possible. Academic freedom is central to our mission and underlies everything we do as a university.”
This is our passive-aggressive president’s typical non-response. “Asked and answered.” “I’ll take that under advisement”. ” “I look forward to reviewing it”. Then nothing.
Here’s some more history, with his Randy Geller’s redlines of an earlier Senate draft. And here’s Gleason and Rudnick’s restrictive proposal on academic freedom, from 2/17/2013 during the union bargaining. All about the limitations, authority, and of course that easily abused requirement for “civil dialogue” – and if The University thinks it’s not, then discipline!
4/17/2014 update: And now the ABA Journal.
These emails have gone viral, with many hundreds of comments on law blogs like Lawyers Guns and Money, Tax Law Blog, Above The Law, Professor Bainbridge, JDU, Eschaton, Leiter’s Law School Reports, something called Gawker, and Jeff Manning’s piece in the Oregonian:
This was bad viral. The University of Oregon Law School professor’s wild rant about his compensation made Illig look petty and unsympathetic at the same time. More importantly, it shined a light on the raging debate about higher education, the value of advanced degrees and the mushrooming debt encumbering a generation of students.
The official UO law school blog – which, in an admirable demonstration of transparency actually allows comments, has responded:
To The Law School Community:
We’ve been getting some questions about a resolution brought to the last faculty meeting, and we’d like to share some information. Recently the University announced across-the-board cost of living adjustments and merit pay increases to take effect later in the year. A group of law faculty came up with the idea to divert the law school’s portion of the faculty merit pay funds to a post-graduate fellowship program for new law grads, in lieu of accepting a pay increase. Last Friday, this group brought this idea as a resolution (included below) to the regularly scheduled faculty meeting. A wide majority of those present voted to approve the resolution—in addition, a majority of the full faculty support the resolution.
We brought the matter to the Provost and although he is supportive of our goals he cannot bend the University rules to make this creative idea happen. However, we remain committed to finding ways to fund post-graduate opportunities and address other employment issues facing our graduates. We invite your comments and questions on this blog or one-on-one.
(I am not the Faculty Spokesperson. To avoid the appearance of speaking for everyone on the faculty, here I will include the names of some faculty who agreed to sign this statement (and I don’t mean to imply that those not included do not support it): Stuart Chinn, Michael Fakhri, Caroline Forell, Liz Frost, Erik Girvan, Carrie Leonetti, Mohsen Manesh, Roberta Mann, Michelle McKinley, Margie Paris, Jen Reynolds, Liz Tippett.)
Here is the text of the resolution from 4/11/2014:
The faculty recommends that the dean proceed with conversations with the Provost and the President regarding: reallocating funds for proposed faculty merit raises toward student fellowships, with a focus at present on post graduate student fellowships. If this proposal is approved, the faculty will revisit this reallocation of funds after two-three years.
4/14/2014: Several members of the law school email lists (which included staff, secretaries etc.) have forwarded these two emails from professor Rob Illig (Law) about a plan apparently floated by Law Dean Michael Moffitt (paid $292,800 after a recent raise) to deal with the law school’s enrollment problems and US News ranking, which has fallen from #80 to #100 since Moffitt took over in 2011.
The plan? Cancel raises for the faculty, and use the money to fund a program to give non-profits money to hire UO law school graduates, boosting the employment numbers that go into the US News rank.
Here are UO Law salaries for 2012-13, with comparison to other AAU publics:
Associate Professor Illig is not happy with Moffitt’s plan, or with the lack of transparency in how it was presented to the law faculty (who apparently voted to approve it).
Subject: Re: law-fac-staff: What happened to Oregon Law?
From: Rob Illig <[email protected]>
To: Rob Illig <[email protected]>
Cc: Dustin Littrell <[email protected]>, law-faculty Faculty <[email protected]>, “[email protected] Staff List” <[email protected]>, Dan Miller <[email protected]>
Michael,
To my shock and amazement, I just learned – three days after the faculty
meeting – that someone (you? the faculty?) is trying to take away my
one-in-a-decade chance at a raise WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT.
Update: UO student journalist Will Rubin has an excellent report on last week’s UO symposium, here. Complete with a brief quote from De’Anthony Thomas – then his lawyer cut him off. AAD Craig Pintens keeps a tight leash on what athletes say in public, so don’t expect any uncensored comments from the Duck’s current revenue producers on unionization, rights to player likenesses, concussions, random pot testing, and so on. Notably absent from the panel were UO’s soon to be replaced FAR and NCAA cartel enforcer Jim O’Fallon (Law) and the UO Senate’s current IAC chair and wannabe sports lawyer Rob Illig.
4/11/2014: Complete with the NYT’s Joe Nocera – our Faculty Athletic Rep Jim O’Fallon’s nemesis. Many other well known speakers. No idea why this wasn’t better advertised. From http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/symposia.php
No, of course I’m not talking about UO and our B-School Dean Kees de Kluyver. This is for Eastern Michigan. Survey responses here. Seems like a constructive exercise. Will this ever happen for UO administrators? Maybe. After a secret performance review of President Gottfredson last spring – the Senate wasn’t…
$500k a year, bonuses, car, country club memberships, outside income, etc. Contract here. This is for a sport that loses millions a year. The administration was supposed to consult with the Senate’s IAC about this hire, but didn’t. In other news, Diane Dietz has a story in the RG about…