Author Archives: UO Matters

CAS wants building inscriptions for Tykeson Hall

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Dear CAS faculty and Staff,

As you’re aware if you’ve walked down 13th Street between Chapman and Johnson, Tykeson Hall, the new home for CAS and a building that will offer integrated academic and career advising to UO students, is quickly rising.  We expect Tykeson to open for classes in Winter 2019, and we’re now working on the details of the building: interiors, furniture, finishing details, artwork, etc.

We will soon be choosing quotations to be incorporated into Tykeson’s design and become part of the building’s message to students, faculty, and staff.  We invite you to submit ideas for building inscriptions, and we are seeking passages from a diverse array of cultures, regions, and time periods.  We will have to choose only two or three in the end, and we hope you will help make it a difficult choice by sending us words of wisdom, illumination, guidance, and good sense from your favorite authors.

We’ve been guided thus far in our planning by a stanza of a Robert Frost poem, “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/two-tramps-in-mud-time/), a poem that weighs the need to work with the love of work and concludes that we should choose work that speaks to both the necessity and pleasure of the jobs we do, that is, to both vocation and avocation. Three years ago we took Frost’s stanza for our working motto:

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.

We welcome your suggestions for quotations that might become inscriptions about education and careers in Tykeson Hall.  Our teaching and advising in Tykeson will emphasize

  1. The importance of advising and mentoring
  2. The interconnection between academics and professional pursuits
  3. The value of a liberal arts education.

To read about the Tykeson vision and see the building plans, please go to the Tykeson Hall website (https://tykeson.uoregon.edu).

Please submit brief quotations with attributions to Jules Jones ([email protected]) by Friday, July 27, 2018.

Thank you for your ideas.

CAS Dean’s Office

Andrew, Bruce, Carol, Hal, Karen, and Philip

Temperature and High-Stakes Cognitive Performance

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Temperature and High-Stakes Cognitive Performance: Evidence from the National College Entrance Examination in China

Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Yingquan Song, Qu Tang, Peng Zhang
NBER Working Paper No. 24821. Issued in July 2018
NBER Program(s):Children, Development Economics, Environment and Energy Economics, Health Economics, Public Economics

We provide the first nation-wide estimates on temperature effects on high-stakes cognitive performance in a developing country using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in China. The NCEE is one of the most important institutions in China and affects hundreds of millions of families. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in temperature (3.29° C) decreases the total test score by 1.12% (9.62% of a standard deviation) and decreases the probability of getting into first-tier universities by 1.97% (4.38% of a standard deviation). This suggests that temperature plays an important role in high-stakes cognitive performance and has potentially far-reaching impacts for the careers and lifetime earnings of students.

 

HR Director Nancy Resnick leaves for UCSD, UO will hold open search for replacement

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From around the o:

Going forward, I have asked Kaia Rogers, Senior Director of Human Resources Programs, Services and Strategic Initiatives, and Missy Matella, Senior Director of Employee and Labor Relations to jointly assume leadership of the Human Resources department. Kaia will be overseeing operations in HR programs and services, as well as HR operations and talent acquisition, while Missy will continue to oversee all employee and labor relations issues and initiatives. Nancy will be actively working with Kaia, Missy and the entire HR team through June to ensure a smooth leadership transition. In the coming months, we will launch a national search for a new Chief Human Resources Officer.

“We have taken great care to engage important stakeholders in the development of the plans,” Klinger says.

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Just in case any UO students, faculty, community members, the UO Senate, ASUO, the Eugene City Council, the Mayor, the Campus Planning Committee, or most longtime Eugene track and field fans had any illusions about what JH and the UO Foundation think of their importance.

More in Meerah Powell’s Eugene Weekly story here:

… The demolition of Hayward Field’s East Grandstand was proposed to make room for a new stadium to house the 2021 World Outdoor Track and Field Championships — the same event under investigation by the Department of Justice for possible racketeering, money laundering and fraud charges, according to The New York Times.

There has been no update on the investigation since late January, when the NYT reported that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had been of particular interest to the Department of Justice after awarding the championships to Eugene with no bidding process. …

Chronicle of Higher Ed asks why UO General Counsel Kevin Reed wants faculty emails with reporters

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Thought I’d repost this classic from last year. More related info soon.

2/15/2017 update:

Here (gated if off campus). A snippet:

The dust-up at the university began in November when Kenneth Jacoby, a reporter for the Daily Emerald student newspaper, filed two public-records requests for emails exchanged between several coaches and officials associated with the football team. Mr. Jacoby asked for fee waivers for both requests based on his belief that the records were in the public interest.

Nearly three weeks later, he was told it would cost over $700 to fulfill his request. He then got in touch with Mr. Harbaugh and in December filed a complaint over the cost with the Transparency Committee, which was established in 2010 to review university procedures for processing and fulfilling public-records requests.

In an email to the committee on January 22, Mr. Harbaugh told members that they would be hearing Mr. Jacoby’s complaint the following day and discussing a response. The email, which was obtained by The Chronicle, included an attachment with Mr. Jacoby’s complaint letter.

Mr. Harbaugh, a transparency advocate, files significant numbers of public-records requests in most years. In fact, according to the public-records office, he files more requests than any media outlet. The professor operates a blog, UOMatters, aimed at uncovering misdeeds at the university. In a 2015 profile by The Chronicle, Mr. Harbaugh said he hopes to make the university a “better place” through his transparency activities.

Mr. Reed, however, said in an interview that he began to fear that the Transparency Committee was not, itself, being transparent, and that he was concerned about conversations he was being excluded from.

So he filed a formal request for Mr. Harbaugh’s emails regarding the Senate Transparency Committee that evening, including those sent to media outlets. Mr. Reed specifically asked for emails sent to The Register-Guard, The Oregonian, the Oregon Daily Emerald, The Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed. …

In related news, GC Reed’s report on the Duck Athletic Department’s alleged efforts to stifle free speech by threatening to take away Jacoby’s press pass should be out in a week or two.

Note: Just to be clear, I turned over all the emails that were covered by GC Kevin Reed’s request, and I did so at no charge to him. I’m still hoping he’ll take the high road w.r.t. our student-journalists public records request’s, someday. A university that spends millions of dollars on public relations ought to be able to find a few thousand for public records.

2/8/2017: UO Pres Mike Schill’s lawyer wants to read professor’s emails with reporters

UO general counsel Kevin Reed is apparently the first university lawyer in US history – not just UO history – to use the public records laws to get a professor’s emails with reporters and free speech and academic freedom advocacy groups such as FIRE and SPLC.

Full disclosure, I am the professor that Mr. Reed is after. The Register Guard’s Diane Dietz has the story here:

The University of ­Oregon’s top lawyer is using public ­records law to get a professor’s emails to and from reporters and editors of The Register-­Guard, The ­Oregonian, the ­Oregon Daily ­Emerald, The ­Chronicle of Higher ­Education and Inside Higher Ed.

The lawyer, UO General Counsel Kevin Reed, sought any emails exchanged with those publications related to the University Senate’s transparency committee during the past year.

Read it all.

Here are some emails about this, starting with General Counsel Reed’s request:

From: Kevin S Reed <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Transparency Committee meeting, Monday 10AM, 412PLC
Date: January 22, 2017 at 8:52:29 PM PST
To: Senate President <[email protected]>, Chris D Sinclair <[email protected]>, Brent D Walth <[email protected]>, Zane A Karimi <[email protected]>
Cc: Julia S Cohalan <[email protected]>, Kenny Jacoby <[email protected]>, Greg J Stripp <[email protected]>

I will be at the meeting, but note the following:

I was unaware that Prof. Harbaugh was elected chair by email. I am unaware of any such vote taking place, though I was under the impression I am a member of this committee. This follows what appears to have been my exclusion from communication in recent weeks concerning Mr. Jacoby’s complaint regarding the PRO’s decision to follow its policy and not waive fees in responding to a request from the Emerald for student records. I understood that I was a non-voting member of the STC. It seems clear, though, that I am being left out of communications involving the core of the committee’s work. This scarcely seems consistent with the “transparency” part of the committee’s title. If I am not to be included in the communications of the committee, I decline to participate as a member.

Please consider this a request, under the Oregon Public Records Law, of all communications made in in the past 12 months, between the current chair of the Senate Transparency Committee and members of the committee concerning the business of this committee, as well as all communications between the Chair of the STC and any members of the media concerning or mentioning the committee.

I will excuse myself from any discussion by the committee regarding an expansion of the fee waiver policy, due to my belief that a discussion of the subject involving the Committee chair would involve a potential conflict of interest. Prof. Harbaugh was the most frequent requester of public records in the year just ended, and amongst those most frequently to withdraw his request for records when presented with the estimate of the costs associated with the production of those records. Since any action by the committee to demand a change in the PRO policies on fees and fee waivers, if adopted, would have direct financial impact on Prof. Harbaugh, I believe it would be a conflict of interest for him to participate in such a decision. Given Prof. Harbaugh’s participation in the matter thus far, I will refrain from participating in any discussion on the subject in the meeting unless he recuses himself, in order to avoid any appearance that I condone this conflict.

I have attached the Public Record’s Office’s SOPs, setting forth its approach to fee waivers, for the committee’s information. It is unclear to me why the committee would be asked to “make recommendations” regarding the PRO’s balanced approach to fee waivers without presenting the committee with the actual policies implemented by the PRO. So, here they are.

4. I believe the complaint presented by Mr. Jacoby is moot. In his complaint, Mr. Jacoby makes clear  that he seeks records relating to specific, identifiable students at the university. Since this “targeted” request seeks educational records of students who are identified, or are identifiable
within the context of the records and the request, his request has been denied, and any request for fees is now mooted, a decision communicated to him last week. Any records are educational records of identifiable UO students and cannot be released without their consent. The Emerald is no longer being asked to pay fees for the responsive records, since there are no responsive records that can be produced without violating the federally protected rights to privacy of the students involved.

My response:

From: Bill Harbaugh
Date: Friday, February 3, 2017 at 11:17 AM
To: Kevin Reed
Cc: Public Record Requests
Subject: Re: Public Records – Request for Documents 2017-PRR-172

Dear General Counsel Reed –

Two clarifying questions for you:

1) Does your request for
all communications between the Chair of the STC and any members of the media concerning or mentioning the committee
includes any such communications from my non-UO hosted email accounts, or texts on my personal phone?

2) When you say “any members of the media”, are you including my communications with bloggers, and organizations such as SPLC and FIRE?

Thanks,

Bill Harbaugh
Economics Prof & Senate Pres
University of Oregon
http://senate.uoregon.edu

Reed’s response:

From: Kevin Reed <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Public Records – Request for Documents 2017-PRR-172
Date: February 3, 2017 at 3:04:14 PM PST
To: William Harbaugh <[email protected]>
Cc: Public Record Requests <[email protected]>

Senate President Harbaugh:

In answer to your questions:

1) I seek all communications concerning or mentioning the STC you made in your capacity as an officer of the University Senate (Vice President, President or member or Chair of the STC), regardless of which media or device you sued for your communication.
2) No. I do not believe FIRE or SPLC qualify as “media.” If it helps in narrowing the search, please feel free to limit my request to communications with reporters, editors or other personnel associated with the Register Guard, the Oregonian, the Daily Emerald, The Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed.

But, given that you have shared that you correspond with FIRE, I will make the additional request under the Oregon Public Records Law:

Please share any communications you have had with persons associated with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in the past 12 months, made in your capacity as an officer of the University Senate or member of any of its committees, which communications relate to or concern freedom of speech or academic freedom at the University of Oregon.

Kevin S. Reed | Vice President and General Counsel
Office of the General Counsel
219 Johnson Hall | Eugene, OR 97403-1226
(541) 346-3082 | [email protected]

Oregon refunds $500 fine, DOJ lawyer begs judge to drop engineer’s lawsuit

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12/12/2017: From the Oregonian, and also in the WaPo:

Oregon’s Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying unconstitutionally applied state law governing engineering practice to Mats Järlström when he exercised his free speech about traffic lights and described himself as an engineer since he was doing so “in a noncommercial” setting and not soliciting professional business, the state Department of Justice has conceded.

“We have admitted to violating Mr. Järlström’s rights,” said Christina L. Beatty-Walters, senior assistant attorney general, in federal court Monday.

The state’s regulation of Järlström under engineering practice law “was not narrowly tailored to any compelling state interests,” she wrote in court papers.

The state has pledged the board will not pursue the Beaverton man any further when he’s not acting in a commercial or professional manner, and on Monday urged a federal judge to dismiss the case. The state also sent a $500 check to Järlström in August, reimbursing him for the state fine.

Järlström and his lawyers argued that’s not good enough. …

4/30/2017: State fines Oregon man $500 for doing math without a license – is pastry next?

Unlicensed polymath Robert Plamodon has the latest on his Unlicensed Practitioner blog here, regarding the efforts of the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying to fine Mats Jarlstrom $500.

Mr. Jarlstrom’s special crime? He wrote letters about traffic light timing, with math in them, and noted that he had a degree in engineering, which he does. He did not claim to be a licensed Civil Engineer, and yet the OSBEELS quickly got medieval guildish on him. From their website:

Mr. Jarlstrom claimed to be an engineer to OSBEELS, the City of Beaverton, Washington County Sheriff, and other organizations when providing engineering algorithms and calculations to change traffic light timing. The final order was issued against Mr. Jarlstrom assessing a $500 civil penalty for violations of ORS 672.020 and 672.045, engaging in the practice of engineering without proper registration, and Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 820- 010-0730, using the title of engineer without identifying the jurisdiction in which he is registered.

From what I can tell the OSBEEL would have no case against Mr. Jarlstrom if he’d expressed his suggestions in prose, or as limericks. It’s the math that got him in trouble. So he’s fighting back with words. From his subsequent First Amendment lawsuit against the State Board:

[Full disclosure: I put myself through college working as an unlicensed oil field surveyor, and to compound things I did so in part as an illegal alien in Chetwynd BC, along the lovely Sukunka River. When the Mounties caught me they gave me a week to leave, and not only did they not fine me, they told me to call them if I had any problems getting the rest of my paycheck from the survey co.]

In other news, the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission is finally taking up the challenge of protecting Oregonians from dangerous, uncertified pastry chefs. The agenda for their May 11th meeting:

VP for Equity delays release of consultant info, wants to charge for docs

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7/24/2017 update:

This university needs an effective office of Internal Audit to examine these sorts of bids. It took 5 weeks just to get an estimate from the VP for Equity and Diversity for the public records, and now the PRO refuses to waive their $114.62 fee:

07/21/2017

Dear Mr. Harbaugh:
The University of Oregon has received your public records request for “…a copy of all bids submitted in response to: RFQ for Executive Coaching Services Solicitation Number: PCS# 211000-00055-RFQ and emails between Michael Tani-Eshon or Yvette Alex-Assensoh and bidders or potential bidders regarding this RFQ” on 06/19/2017, attached.

The office estimates the actual cost of responding to your request to be $114.62. …

Thank you for contacting us with your request.

Sincerely,

Office of Public Records

publicrecords.uoregon.edu

7/10/2017 update: UO Matters saves UO $25K and an uncountable amount of administrative B.S.

Sometimes a simple question is all it takes. In an effort to find out more about the $25K buzzword consultant VPEI wanted to hire, I made this public records request on June 18th:

From: Bill Harbaugh <[email protected]>
Subject: PR request VPEI Coaching Services
Date: June 18, 2017 at 10:32:41 PM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], Yvette M Alex-Assensoh <[email protected]>

Dear Ms Thornton –

This is a public records request for a copy of all bids submitted in response to:

RFQ for Executive Coaching Services
Solicitation Number: PCS# 211000-00055-RFQ
at https://pcs.uoregon.edu/content/business-opportunities

and emails between Michael Tani-Eshon or Yvette Alex-Assensoh and bidders or potential bidders regarding this RFQ. I’m ccing Mr. Tani-Eshon and VP Alex-Assensoh since they should have easy access to these public records.

I ask for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest.

Thanks,

Bill Harbaugh
http://harbaugh.org

The public records office has sat on it for 3 weeks now, and hasn’t responded to my follow up, but the good news is that the request has already worked. As of July 6th, “THIS OPPORTUNITY IS CANCELLED”:

5/17/2017: Office of Equity and Inclusion searching for buzzword consultant

Nice to know that, after laying off 100 faculty, UO now has money to burn on a consulting firm to help with “executive trustbuilding”, “change management”, “active learning skills including paraphrasing” (that’s a direct quote) and “harnessing the power of culture to optimize outcomes“. $25K, or enough to pay for 4 Pathways scholarships. And it’s renewable:

 

 

Oregon Supreme Court gooses bar exam, pass rate jumps by 36%

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9/27/2017 with 10/4 update:

Normally about 260 people pass the July Oregon Bar exam. This spring the Oregon Supreme Court dumbed down the pass score and made some other changes, and 360 people passed. Obviously this is good news for the 100 students who otherwise wouldn’t be licensed to practice law, and good news for the Oregon Bar, which collects an annual $470 from each. It’s bad news for those 260 students who would have passed the older, harder exam, and who now have to try and find a job in an even more flooded job market.

Oregon’s pass rate for the July exam, (all takers, not just UO students) has jumped from 58% last year to 79% this year. That’s a 21 percentage point increase or a (79-58)/58=36% increase in the success odds, in one year. In July 2016 the average pass rate for all US takers was 62%, compared to 58% for Oregon. So we were a little low, but not by much.

In July 2016, only Nebraska had a higher percentage of takers (82%) passing than Oregon’s 2017 new rate of 79%. (Kansas and Missouri were tied at 79%, Oregon’s new rate). See http://www.ncbex.org/pdfviewer/?file=%2Fdmsdocument%2F205 So, with one decision made without adequate prior public notice or discussion, and apparently with no discussion in the Oregon Supreme Court, Oregon has gone from being middle of the road to being among the four easiest states in which to get a license to practice law.

This is not what the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners intended. According to internal documents obtained with a public records request, the BBX believed these changes would increase the pass rate to about 68%. They explicitly rejected a proposal from the three deans of Oregon’s law schools for an even lower cut-score, apparently because they thought that would produce a pass rate of 78%, which they thought was too high. I wonder if the deans will now argue for raising the cut-score and lowering the pass rate?

(From the April 19 letter from BBX chair Jeffrey Howes to Oregon Chief SC Justice Thomas Balmer, at https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Official-letters-to-Court-BBX-PubRcrdsReq-Aug-17.pdf)

In short Oregon’s new test, with the new lower cut-score, is much easier to pass than the old one, and much easier than the BBX led the Supreme Court to believe. It has given Oregon what is almost the highest pass rate in the country.

It’s true that the new exam will also make it easier for Oregon law students to move to other states, assuming their score was high enough to have passed those state’s cut-rate. But why is Oregon subsidizing the tuition of out-of-state students who will take out-of state legal jobs – if they can even find them?

For comparison, last July:

Michael Tobin has a brief report about this in the Daily Emerald, here.

10/4/2017 NOTE: I’ve now received two letters from the Oregon Bar, arguing that they did not break the public meetings law, while also promising that they will now post meeting notices on the bar’s website. As you can see from their October posting, they’re still trying to figure this transparency thing out:

…

I’ve got some more public records requests into them and the Oregon Supreme Court (which has updated its website and fixed some of its public records procedures in response to my previous questions to them) and I will post what I find out.

Posted 9/27/2017 and earlier:

Continue reading →

Oregon Senate confirms Laura Lee McIntyre as “Faculty Trustee”, over objections of the UO Senate leadership and the UO faculty union

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9/20/2017: Around the O has the puff piece here, from PR flack Tobin Klinger. You’d think UO’s $475K budget for “Executive Communications” would buy a few more facts – maybe even a link to the letters from the Senate and Union, which McIntyre got by making a public records request to the Governor? Or at least something about how Prof McIntyre’s research is financially supported by a donation from at least one of the UO trustees, which may present some interesting potential conflicts of interest. [9/21/2017 correction: I’ve been informed by a generally reliable source that McIntyre’s research is not supported by donations from trustees.] She has of course agreed to follow Oregon law on conflicts of interest, which is not particularly strong.

McIntyre follows Trustee Susan Gary from the Law School, who served two terms during which she refused to inform the faculty of such matters as Chuck Lillis’s Delegation of Authority power grab.

We’d probably be better off abolishing the Faculty Trustee position than continuing to help the Trustees believe that they are getting the faculty’s point of view on UO issues through these sorts of appointments.

6/16/2017: Gov. Brown to nominate passionate Gottfredson defender as faculty trustee

That’s the rumor down at the faculty club. Here’s video of Professor Laura Lee McIntyre (School Psychology) taking a courageous stand in the UO Senate in defense of President Gottfredson’s handling of the basketball rape allegations. Backup to hear Gottfredson’s remarks. The Board fired paid Gottfredson $940K cash to leave town less than three months later. The official UO channel has taken this video down (perhaps because of the lawsuit against him) but it’s on youtube:

 

“Art of the Athlete” II – next spring in Aix-en-Provence!

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The “Art of the Athlete” course was one of the more hilarious scams set up by the Duck Athletic department, presumably with the help of their academic liaison Lorraine Davis, although it’s often hard to get the administration to reveal exactly what it is that Ms Davis does:

The Art of the Athlete course was only open to athletes, taught in the Jock Box, and until the Senate’s IAC found out, every athlete got an A+, which certainly helped pump up the Duck’s academic excellence. As soon as we reported it to the NCAA it was changed to pass/no-pass, and supposedly opened up to unathletic students.

UO’s academic side currently spends about $2M a year subsidizing the athlete-only Jock Box operation, paid out of UO’s general fund: i.e. state support and tuition. This is roughly $4K per athlete. In contrast expenditures on regular students are about $400 per student. You’d think that the Ducks would be able to pay for the tutoring for their athletes themselves, with some of the Duck Athletic Fund donations they collect – but any money left over after paying tuition goes to the athletic department’s own expenses.

So has the athletic department made any effort to get the Duck boosters to cover some of this subsidy? Quite the opposite. A few years ago Robin Jaqua gave $5M to set up an endowment to help with this, but AD Rob Mullens got his hands on it before the Provost did, and he uses it to pay for the utility bill – the only part of the Jaqua Center operating costs that the athletic department is responsible for.

And now it’s getting crazier: instead of giving to help the academic side offset the $2M athletic tutoring subsidy, UO’s development office is letting a Duck donor give money for a second gut “Art of the Athlete” course:

The Art of the Athlete in Aix-en-Provence:

Rob Mullens throws more cash at losing baseball coach George Horton

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8/23/2017: The RG’s Austin Meek’s report on this porkfest is unusually incurious. In fact this new contract is not a pay cut as Meek suggests, it’s a $50K raise for Horton to $500K a year, plus some new and remarkable bonuses. Although the old contract did guarantee him $90K for ticket sales that never happened, so I suppose you could see it as a cut.

In any case, not bad for a man who sold about $160K in tickets last year, and whose team costs UO at least $2M a year in subsidies.

For contrast, $2M is more than the UO administration seems willing to spend on merit raises for ~800 tenure track faculty over the next 2 years.

Horton’s full contract is here. It’s great to see that his players will get cash bonuses for good grades, to be paid within 45 days of the end of the term:

Just kidding, the players do the work, but the money is “earned by Coach”. The 45 days is real though – these jocks really don’t trust each other, do they? Soon we’ll have to pay them in bitcoin and make use of apps like News Spy App to help us get the best return for our investments. The new contract also makes clear that Horton is not a faculty member – something the UO GC’s office has claimed of coaches in the past to try and hide their public records – and also that he’s bound by standard UO ethics policies etc.

5/29/2017: UO to pay Horton for 2 years as he closes down Duck baseball program

Apparently the women’s softball team did not react positively to the idea of a merger. Austin Meek has more in the RG here.

5/23/2017: UO baseball loses games, money

Kenny Jacoby has a comprehensive report in the Emerald on the increasing baseball losses – $17M so far. Attendance is so bad that Rob Mullens is offering the *faculty* free tickets. Duck spokesperson Tobin Klinger:

UO spokesman Tobin Klinger said President Michael Schill is “working to determine the best approach forward,” but suggested it is unlikely he would take any away from athletics to mitigate cuts to academics. Schill did not respond to multiple email requests for comment.

“Should it come down to re-examining the budget, it would be safe to say that we will need to think as broadly as possible,” Klinger said in an email. “That said, athletics is a self-sustaining auxiliary unit… and this exercise is ultimately about right sizing our general fund budget.”

Story here – this just a snippet:

2.5 months after public records request, UO gives Emerald faculty hiring proposals

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Thanks to the Emerald for sharing this with UOM.

So far as I am aware previous UO administrations have never been willing to share this sort of information with the Senate – but maybe that will change, and the day will come when shared governance will no longer have to rely on the kindness and curiosity of UO’s student journalists, or the whims of Jim Bean’s 4.25 big ideas and their ilk.

Or maybe the PRO is just trying to clear up their backlog before Oregon’s new PR laws make them improve their response times. 207 pages worth with some light and appropriate redactions, and all provided to the Emerald by UO at no charge – remarkable.

You can find the Provost’s Institutional Hiring Plan, i.e. the outcome of these proposals, here.

The full pdf of the proposals is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017-Hiring-proposals_Redacted.pdf

I haven’t had time to read through these, I’m hoping others will and leave comments. Page 1:

 

Duck fans won’t pay to watch concussions or listen to control-freak coach

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Ryan Thorburn has the data on pathetic Duck ticket sales in the RG here;

According to data provided by the athletic department, the average renewal price of a season ticket is down by 3.9 percent, with 65 percent of seats decreasing in price and the other 35 percent remaining flat at 2015 rates.

As of Monday, Oregon had sold 36,840 season tickets, which is down from last year’s total of 37,404. The program’s record was 43,295 in 2011, the season after Chip Kelly’s Ducks played for a BCS national title.

Apparently Eric Roedl is having a hard time finding people who want to watch Willie Taggart get paid $3.5M to churn his players brains to mush, or listen to Dana Altman berate his players for supporting #BlackLivesMatters during his national anthem. Roedl has already put the screws to UO students for another $10K, but that’s petty change across the river. Looks like these coaches and Rob Mullens locked in their fat long-term contracts with UO just in time.

Meanwhile there’s a great interview with UCLA QB and Econ major Josh Rosen, here. Rosen puts the lie to all the crap we’ve heard from the Duck athletic department and its “Faculty Athletics Representatives” over the years about how its OK we don’t pay the players, because they’re getting such a great education:

Rosen: “Look, football and school don’t go together. They just don’t.”

Rosen: Don’t get me started. I love school, but it’s hard. It’s cool because we’re learning more applicable stuff in my major (Economics)—not just the prerequisite stuff that’s designed to filter out people. But football really dents my ability to take some classes that I need. There are a bunch of classes that are only offered one time. There was a class this spring I had to take, but there was a conflict with spring football, so…

B/R: So football wins out?

Rosen: Well, you can say that.

B/R: So that’s reality for student-athletes playing at a major university?

Rosen: I didn’t say that, you did. (Laughs.) Look, football and school don’t go together. They just don’t. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs. There are guys who have no business being in school, but they’re here because this is the path to the NFL. There’s no other way. Then there’s the other side that says raise the SAT eligibility requirements. OK, raise the SAT requirement at Alabama and see what kind of team they have. You lose athletes and then the product on the field suffers.

Look, football and school don’t go together. They just don’t. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs. — Josh Rosen

B/R: Wait, some players shouldn’t be in school?

Rosen: It’s not that they shouldn’t be in school. Human beings don’t belong in school with our schedules. No one in their right mind should have a football player’s schedule, and go to school. It’s not that some players shouldn’t be in school; it’s just that universities should help them more—instead of just finding ways to keep them eligible.

Any time any player puts into school will take away from the time they could put into football. They don’t realize that they’re getting screwed until it’s too late. You have a bunch of people at the universities who are supposed to help you out, and they’re more interested in helping you stay eligible. At some point, universities have to do more to prepare players for university life and help them succeed beyond football. There’s so much money being made in this sport. It’s a crime to not do everything you can to help the people who are making it for those who are spending it.

B/R: But those same players go make money in the NFL after being prepared by their college programs.

Rosen: Some do, absolutely. What about those who don’t? What did they get for laying their body on the line play after play while universities make millions upon millions? People criticize when guys leave early for the NFL draft, and then rip them when some guys who leave early don’t get drafted. [They say,] “Why did you leave school if you weren’t going to get drafted?” I’ll tell you why: Because for a lot of guys, there is no other option. They were either leaving early (for the NFL) or flunking out. To me, that’s a problem within the system and the way we’re preparing student-athletes for the future away from football. Everyone has to be part of the process.

B/R: How is it, then, that some guys graduate in three years? Deshaun Watson graduated in three years from Clemson. So did his roommate, Artavis Scott.

Rosen: I’m not knocking what those guys accomplished. They should be applauded for that. But certain schools are easier than others.

B/R: It can’t be that simple.

Rosen: If I wanted to graduate in three years, I’d just get a sociology degree.

Of course football and school go together real well for Willie Taggart and Rob Mullens. If it weren’t for the school part, they have to pay their players.