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Posts published by “uomatters”

Journalism prof & students challenge university’s overpaid PR flacks

That would be at the University of Maryland. The Washington Post reports: While most of the facts contained in Maryland Today’s posts may be accurate, some articles omit negative facts necessary to understand what actually happened. … In “University Commits to Follow McNair Report Recommendations,” the author discusses the report’s…

Duck’s Vin Lananna sings to feds, Tracktown gets $10M for IAAF 2021

Lananna, who’s on the UO payroll for several hundred large, asked the Governor for $40M in state subsidies. He’s now got $10M. If you think that’s the end of it you haven’t read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, or Ken Goe’s update in the Oregonian here.

The Oregon DOJ held up Tracktown’s $10M grant from Travel Oregon for a full year by requiring that they provide a budget and a disclaimer that there were no legal issues, despite the FBI investigation. UO and Tracktown told the press that the Feds hadn’t contacted them. Lananna didn’t tell GC Kevin Reed?

The budget and reporting requirements are now hilariously out of date, and Lananna and Reilly’s admission is scrawled out in pen:

What could go wrong? Rumor has it that UO has now appointed an administrator to deal with it all. I wonder who is paying their salary.

The full grant of $10M in state funds is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/OR212018_FE.pdf.

10/8/2018 – Tracktown / Oregon21 replaces Vin Lananna with Niels De Vos as head of IAAF 2021 championship

UO administration removes CO2 Divest banner from Johnson Hall bush

10/10/2018: Reposted for the historical record.

When you’re running down our First Amendment, you’re walking on the fightin side of me:

4/6/2016 update: The day Merle Haggard died? Have our administrators no sense of patriotism? Or irony? More on the troubling response from the UO Foundation CIO here.

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3/29/2016 update: Press Conference on the Johnson Hall steps, Facebook event page here.

Our students have been conducting a quiet CO2 Divestment sit-in the Johnson Hall lobby for months. The administration has banned their banner from the bush outside JH, and now the students are apparently going to reassert their free-speech rights.

Do they have the right to put up the banner? I’m no lawyer, but here’s some UO history. Back in 2010, former UO GC Randy Geller wanted to change UO policy to implement “Free Speech Zones”, outside of which First Amendment rights would be tightly controlled. This was in reaction to the Pacifica Forum incidents. Geller’s policy starts on page 13 here. It’s funnier than Animal Farm.

Free speech is indispensable, but:

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UO will restrict Free Speech, except inside the Free Speech Zones, and even then you’ll need insurance and maybe a reservation:

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No unapproved banners outside free speech zones – and don’t even think about posting the video on the internets:

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Oh yeah, no camping or chalk either. Chalk? What’s that about?

All of Geller’s silly language above was rejected by the UO Senate and it is not UO policy. 

The Facilities Use Policy that was adopted instead is at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/04-facilities/facilities-scheduling. It turned Geller’s policy on its ass, by limiting the areas UO can control to buildings and “scheduled outdoor spaces” i.e. the EMU amphitheater. The Senate rejected all of Geller’s anti-free speech, anti-banner, and anti-chalk language.

The Facilities Use policy is paired with the powerful Free Speech and Inquiry policy, at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/01-administration-and-governance/freedom-inquiry-and-free-speech:

Free speech is central to the academic mission and is the central tenet of a free and democratic society. The University encourages and supports open, vigorous, and challenging debate across the full spectrum of human issues as they present themselves to this community. Further, as a public institution, the University will sustain a higher and more open standard for freedom of inquiry and free speech than may be expected or preferred in private settings.

How much clearer could this be? It’s not like the CO2 Divestment students are doing anything reprehensible, like using chalk.

3/13/2016: UO bans students’ fossil fuel divestment banner from a bush?

Faculty Club Week II

Dear Colleagues, Come on out to the Faculty Club this week–we’re open Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 8:00. It’s always fun & easy to pair JSMA events with a visit to the Faculty Club.  Wednesday our colleague Ina Asim (History) is giving a 5:30 talk right upstairs in the…

Heavily subsidized Duck Athletic program paid $3M for body-bag games

Henry Houston has the report in the Eugene Weekly: UO spent more than any other Pac-12 college team this year for its nonconference schedule — sometimes scornfully called “body-bag” games because of the mismatch between teams. Bowling Green received $900,000, Portland State received $500,000 and San José State received $1.6…

UO Senate Agenda for Oct 3

DRAFT Location: EMU 145 & 146 (Crater Lake rooms) 3:00 – 5:00 P.M. 3:00 P.M.   Call to Order Introductory Remarks; Senate President Bill Harbaugh Remarks; Senate Vice President Elizabeth Skowron Remarks; Provost Banavar Remarks; Bob Guldberg (Knight Campus) 3:40 P.M.  Votes Approval of Minutes, May 23, 2018 & June 6, 2018 Summer 2018…

Good for Dana Altman! Federal prosecutors say Oregon, Creighton basketball programs may have paid recruits

Finally! I for one have been disturbed by the fact that he hasn’t come up in this investigation earlier. Surely a successful recruiter and coach like Dana Altman has figured out a way to pass at least a dribble of the millions UO pays him on to his volunteer “student-athletes”.…