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5/19/2014 update: Exactly how much will UO pay Gottfredson to leave? He can be dismissed for cause, or without cause with 30 days notice. For cause is a lot cheaper, but if he fights it the legal bills, and mutual embarrassment, increase substantially. I’m no economist, but it’s basically a…

The UO Senate is to blame for the Student Conduct Code delays? Really?

5/17/2014: On Wednesday President Gottfredson told the UO Senate we were to blame for the delays in fixing the student conduct code, and Margie Paris backed his story.

But Carl Yeh, Gottfredson’s Director of Student Conduct, told UO he was leaving for OSU in August 2013, and he left at the end of the month. The UO administration did not get a new Director until March 31st 2014. Job ad here. The new Director is Sandy Weintraub. The Director is an ex-officio administrative appointment to the Student Conduct Code committee. Sort of hard to hold a productive meeting without a Director, given that he’s the convenor. And at least from the committee’s website, there is no sign that they have met this year. [Update: They met on April 10 and May 1 – they just didn’t announce it, or post an agenda or minutes, yet.]

5/14/2014: The US Civil Rights Office proposed revisions to Student Conduct codes in 2011. But VPSA Robin Holmes dropped the ball. She was too busy going on bowl game junkets, and spending $25K in student money on consultants to manipulate the students into voting to pay for EMU renovation fees.

So this evening Professor John Bonine (Law) went down to the weekly ASUO meeting, and asked the students to get involved in changing their Student Conduct Code to address the sort of sexual violence that happened with the basketball players on March 9th. Here’s the student live-blog report:

UO M stats

Recent UO M daily page-views peaked with Rob Illig (Law) and his “I’m worth $1 Million so tough luck, law students” emails. That was driven by the links to UO M from posts on the ABA website, Gawker, etc. For the latest Duck athletics scandal, page-views come mostly from Twitter…

Altman’s career in ruins, along with Gottfredson, Geller. Lorraine Davis off the hook so far.

NBC sports story on Altman here. I’m thinking Dane Altman is blaming Mike Gottfredson, for botching the rape allegation cover-up. And Gottfredson is probably blaming Altman for the fact that *his* career is in ruins. Meanwhile, Lorraine Davis was probably the one who should have vetted Brandon Austin, but for some reason…

Professor Freyd files Clery Act complaint over cover-up

5/15/2014: Steve Duin in the Oregonian: When Freyd’s research indicated that 46 percent of the women dealing with unwanted sexual experiences felt betrayed, and further traumatized, by the institution where those incidents occurred, she said, “I felt it was my duty to go to the president and say, ‘We have a problem.'”…

UO Foundation still laundering cash for Duck Athletic Fund

5/15/2014 update:

  • 2013 IRS 990 here. It covers the period 7/1/2012 to 6/30/2013.
  • 2012 here.
  • 2011 here.

More on these later.

5/14/2014 update: The UO Foundation has told me that they will release their IRS 990 form tomorrow. This should have been made public no later than November 15, but the foundation requested and received two 3 month extensions from the IRS. Tomorrow is their final deadline. The form will include information on expenses, salaries for their highest paid employees such as Paul Weinhold and Jay Namyet, and some rudimentary information on what the foundation does with the money it manages for UO. Probably not much clarity on how much goes to the Ducks and how much to UO academics, but I’ll post what there is, when I get it.

11/20/2013 update: Two weeks ago I received a “demand for retraction” from Thomas Herrmann, legal counsel to the University of Oregon Foundation, regarding this post which I first published on 10/25/2013. (Page down to read the original post in its entirety.)

UO Senate to question Gottfredson on scandal, academic freedom, etc

3PM in 115 Lawrence. Official agenda here, live video here. My understanding is that Senate President Paris has cleared the session for as long as the Q&A takes. The UO M timeline on the rape and cover-up allegations is here. Sorry, the live-blog below has gaps – though none as bad as those in the administration’s timeline on how they responded to the rape allegations.

Short Version:

He’s not ready to sign the Academic Freedom policy – his lawyers still need to review it. Speaking of lawyers, I wonder how much Rudnick and Frohnmayer have billed on this so far.

President Gottfredson reiterated his desire to protect UO students. He was very forceful about that. It was a better delivered speech than his usual, but he didn’t explain the many gaps in the timeline, e.g. the 14 day gap, JH failure to send the EPD report to the UOPD, the Geller resignation, decision to dismantle the IAC, etc. He was asked about Senate participation in hiring the FAR replacement. He punted. I asked him if he had ever planned to report the alleged rape to the campus. He didn’t give an answer to that. (If you’ve got any idea how not giving a police report to your police “protects your students” please let him know, for his next speech.)

After the questions ended, I asked the Senate to suspend the rules to consider a resolution about the allegations and the administration’s response, but explicitly not including a vote of no-confidence. The senate voted 30/9 to suspend the rules. People repeated said that the Senate needed to “own this problem” as it involved our core responsibilities as teachers. Senator Martinez proposed that the resolution include a call for a) an investigation of the response to this situation and b) proposals for how to fix issues uncovered during a).

The Senate agreed that we needed to act but that we could not draft this resolution on the floor. The Senate will draft it over the next two weeks, and vote on it at the 5/28 meeting.

Reports: LMS. New Ombud Bruce McAllister introduces himself. Lots of experience, attorney, 1st floor of Anstett. Serves faculty, employees and students – anyone impacted by UO. Has already worked with a few “visitors”, ready to roll out soon. Has one staff person. Four principles: Confidential and informal, does not report (e.g. not the place for Clery reporting. Neutral and independent, although he’s hired and paid by President. Serious about the confidentiality.

Stahl speaks on behalf of Nathan Tublitz, giving notice of motion for a vote of no-confidence in President Gottfredson.

President Gottfredson’s University Update:

The UO faculty are to blame for the gap in Duck athletes’ sexual violence prevention training?

5/14/2014: This was the IAC’s first explicitly public meeting. There were 3 reporters, a UO alum, and two Senators including Rob Kyr. I think the transparency helped make things go relatively smoothly. Actually, just having a meeting helped – I think this was only the 4th all year – it…