The tit-for-tat from the Duck boosters who wanted the state to give them a Board they could control was their promise that private donations would soar. They haven’t – except of course for sports facilities like the Mariota worship center, the new softball egofice, and the Hayward Field tart-up. The state, on the other hand, has…
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The bottom line is that UO faculty are likely to slip back a little relative to peers. Nothing like the disaster had Coltrane and Moffitt implemented their 1/3% per year plan, but potentially an issue for hiring and retention. InsideHigherEd has the summary on the CUPA salary survey, here. They break salaries out…
Here’s Andrew Theen in the Oregonian on PSU’s efforts to tax Metro payrolls. The PSU Foundation has donated $100K to lobby for the ballot initiative: Supporters are proposing a payroll tax of one-tenth of one percent on wages paid by Portland metro business owners. If approved, the tax would produce up…
I’m going to miss the old building, though the poolside cabanas were getting a bit ratty. According to the blueprints the original Jim Bean Bar room and Lariviere Smoking Lounge will be faithfully recreated. Rumor has it that Bob Berdahl and Mike Gottfredson are willing to make a substantial donation to top…
April 12, 3PM in the Paul Olum Atrium in Willamette Hall. From Around the O:
UO President Michael Schill is inviting the University of Oregon community to participate in a campus conversation focused on the university’s strategic objectives and priorities. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, April 12, at 3 p.m. in the Paul Olum Atrium in Willamette Hall.
Schill will talk about the priorities and strategies needed to help the UO secure its place among the pre-eminent public research universities in the United States. His presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Note: This deal was done before President Schill arrived. The blame should go to Coltrane, or whichever of UO’s many other recent presidents or interims put this in de Kluyver’s contract and gave him raises while UO’s business school slowly sank and then disappeared from the US News rankings. UO Management Professor Cornelis “Kees”…
3/23/2016: While the FBI quits after the Ten Most Wanted, the UOPD’s Bowl List is more comprehensive, as Betsy Hammond explained in the Oregonian. Page 3 of 11, here:
Diane Dietz has the latest KWAX story online. Here’s an amuse-bouche, as Debussy would have called it:
… the University of Oregon Police Department broke into the station’s locked door to perform a “welfare check” last Jan. 29 or Feb. 1, records show. Soon after, General Manager Paul Bjornstad got word that he was forbidden entry and, instead, had to play the recorded music by remote.
While UO Strategic Communicator Tobin Klinger can neither confirm nor deny that Bieber has been kept in a Matt Court holding cell, VP Kyle Henley is “thrilled” that normal KWAX operations can resume. [Redacted] has left the building, any damage that may or may not have resulted has been cleaned up, and live broadcasts resume Thursday with renowned classical DJ Peter van de Graaf in charge:
“I’m thrilled that we will be able to get back to normal operations,” Henley wrote, “and on behalf of KWAX and the University of Oregon, I’d like to thank listeners for their patience over the last two months and apologize for any inconvenience caused by the disruption in the station’s normal broadcasting schedule.” KWAX listeners say they’re excited about the arrival of van de Graaff, who is the popular host of the “Through The Night” overnight show. He’s also program director of the internationally syndicated Beethoven Satellite Network.
The BSN is Beethoven’s syndicate, not Bieber’s? I want to bieleb Henley.
3/11/2016: UO secrecy about KWAX classical music about Justin Bieber – or Putin?
3/22/2016: Sorry, long story.
After HLGR lost the Bowl of Dicks case, a UO communications person told a student reporter that UO was fully insured for the ~$1.5M Bowl of Dicks damages and legal fees to HLGR and the plaintiff’s attorneys and that no university funds would be used.
I was skeptical of this, given that UO was covered by PURMIT, which is a risk sharing pool with the other Oregon public universities with some re-insurance for large claims. That would typically mean that at least some and probably most of the ~$1.5M costs are paid by UO and the other Oregon publics in proportion to their contributions to the pool.
UO’s Public Records Office wanted $267 to release the documents that would show this. So I made the request to PURMIT. They eventually posted the past year of meeting material on their website at no charge, but with all the good stuff redacted. Their lawyer argued this was justified by the “trade secrets” exemption:
If PURMIT’s competitors are able to see how PURMIT sets it rates, projects its losses, and structures its excess insurance (including price and coverage specifics), it puts PURMIT at a competitive disadvantage to its competition which has no such obligation.
Wow, what a thing to admit. I’m petitioning Attorney General Rosenblum to order PURMIT to post unredacted documents, arguing that:
In a nutshell, PURMIT’s attorney is arguing that PURMIT, an agent of the state, should be allowed to use a “trade secrets” exemption so that it can restrict competition and charge public universities more for insurance than private competitors would. Allowing this exemption for this purpose is not in the public interest, to put it mildly.
The full letter from PURMIT’s lawyer and my petition to AG Rosenblum are below. The law gives her office a week to rule on the petition.
I don’t know, but it’s getting down to the wire for the noted big-tobacco attorney. His last retraction demand to UO Matters was on March 26, 2015, here.
https://around.uoregon.edu/content/duck-id-new-face-old-card A nice map of campus, helpfully oriented to highlight the Duck athletic egofices, with PLC fading into oblivion at the bottom. I hope the duck is just the placeholder for the student’s photo.
Posts will be light to nonexistent until spring break ends, in compliance with this bitter 2013 holiday email from former UO GC Randy Geller, now “of counsel” at HLGR, who had apparently just learned that Gottfredson had dropped him from the list of bowl game junketeers: Subject: [Cas-infoshare] Work schedule for bargaining unit…
Story in the RG here on U.S. News Best Grad School Rankings. Yes, we all know Ken Arrow has proved it’s impossible to do this perfectly, but these rankings are influential, particularly for the professional schools like Law and Business:
Business Schools (of 92)
University of Oregon, unranked
Oregon State University, unranked
The New York Times has the wonderful news here. Sorry, the sad truth is that Namyet and Weinhold are still fighting our students’ calls for divestment. So Wall Street is doing it for them. JH banner or no JH banner. Or, as the libertarians would say, Free Minds and Free Markets. Too bad the Foundation didn’t listen to…
Updated: On March 11 the PAC-12 university presidents met to approve the spineless “Altman-Austin Rule”, which would *not* have stopped Dana Altman from bringing Brandon Austin to UO. It does *not* ban efforts like those by UO lawyer Doug Park to settle with Austin on terms that would have allowed UO to quietly pass him off to…
3/15/2016: Duck Athletics brings still more invaluable publicity and goodwill for UO. Who defines our “national brand”? Brandon Austin. From Google search trends:
Camilla Mortensen has the latest lawsuit story in the Eugene Weekly. Also see Andrew Greif in the Oregonian and Jack Moran in the RG.
The $20M complaint from Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson’s lawyers Alex Spiro of NYC and Brian Michaels of Eugene is here. Artis and Dotson’s state complaint is basically a cut-and-paste of Austin’s federal complaint here, which was filed by Marianne Duggan of Eugene and preeminent sperm lawyer Alan C. Milstein of Moorestown, New Jersey back in October.
I’m no law professor, but if attorney Alex Spiro (Harvard Law) had passed this in as his final paper, I’d report him to UO’s student conduct office for plagiarism and urge Sandy Weintraub and Robin Holmes to expel him – after a thorough hearing and appeal, of course.
John Canzano has an opinion piece in the Oregonian: Canzano: Lawsuit not fair to Oregon Ducks, but ends up a strong NCAA play:
Did Altman support the dismissals of the players? Did Gottfredson ask for Altman’s resignation somewhere in the process and get push back from key boosters? Were the players a sacrifice that was made to appease the protesters picketing the university president’s office? And why didn’t Oregon just do what every other reputable university might do — suspend the players pending the outcome of the investigation instead of initially standing with them, then after the NCAA Tournament, dismissing them?
Quite the difference from his Jan 8 2015 column: Canzano: Every day Oregon stands with Dana Altman is another step into the muck:
Best case scenario, he turned his back on three innocent players who were under investigation for sex assault. Worst case, he knowingly recruited a player who was under investigation for a sex assault, then lied for months about what he knew and undermined campus safety while trying to save himself.
This is your basketball coach, Oregon. One who should have been fired months ago.
… The lawsuit [he means the one from the survivor Jane Doe, with whom UO settled for $800K], zeroes in on the exact problem. It alleges that the university took steps to protect itself and to guard its coach, while accepting the survivor as collateral damage. Given that federal law mandates that Oregon should have handled this with urgency and alacrity the actions at UO are troubling.
Among the shocking allegations in the lawsuit? UO refused to provide the players with unredacted documents. Say it ain’t so!
As with Austin’s, this complaint makes many other serious allegations of violations of due process rights by VPSA Robin Holmes and her assistants Sandy Weintraub and Chicora Martin and the feckless Mike Gottfredson.
Where were these people getting their legal advice? From Randy Geller, formerly UO General Counsel, now “of counsel at Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick, and/or his Assistant GC Doug Park, who is still employed by UO as associate GC for $200k+.
Here’s UO Strategic Communicator Tobin Klinger’s improbable explanation for why Geller “retired” – announced in the midst of the events described in the lawsuit, and the day before sports reporters unexpectedly broke the story of the basketball rape allegations:
Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson’s prayer:
1/26/2016: Duck lawyers respond to Brandon Austin’s due process lawsuit. Park gave Austin a clean transcript.