The NYT op-ed focuses on the “UO Student Coalition’s” efforts to prevent him from giving his State of the University address. Information on the administration’s botched attempt to discipline the student protestors is here. Information on his administration’s treatment of Prof Nancy Shurtz for her stupid and offensive – but…
UO Matters
The Chicago faculty eventually followed the UO faculty’s leadership on Academic Freedom and Free Speech, by adopting a verbose and watered down version of the UO policies. Now their grad students are following the long established UO GTFF by voting 2.3 to 1 for a union. Colleen Flaherty of InsideHigherEd…
The UO Faculty Club in the Schnitzer Art Museum is now open 5-7 Wed and Th, and 4-6 Friday. Attendance tonight was about 40, and the room can’t hold many more. English was having their department party, and some physicists showed up with their seminar speaker. I did not observe…
This study is the first to examine the effects of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) on body weight, physical wellness, and exercise. While also looking into some of the more basic factors of frequent consumers, such as asking them “what’s it like to be high?“, how it compares to their first…
10/19/2017: Amy Adams calls for Bach Festival transparency in Eugene Weekly op-ed. The gist is that the secrecy is about protecting the administrators, and that they are willing to damage the festival to do that. Read it all, this is just a snippet:
Berwick Hall, the new home of the Oregon Bach Festival, is an elegant building — small, modern, light-filled, with a performance hall that can seat up to 140, perfect for small-ensemble performances such as were given at the public reception on Oct. 8 celebrating the building’s opening. Windows abound — from virtually every desk in the office, light floods the space. That, sadly, is the only transparent thing about the festival these days.
The few scraps of information given to the public lead to more confusion than clarity: The festival renews artistic director Matthew Halls’ contract through 2020 and then abruptly fires him, issues an unconvincing press release and then claims that the relationship has “drawn to a close.” Both the university and Halls agree to not “disparage” the other party. Yet in that silence, both parties are discredited as the public struggles to guess at what has been concealed. That is how silence works — people fill it with whatever comes to mind.
… Confidentiality is not a virtue, it’s just a tool that ensures information stays with authorized people. And it can, like any tool, be misused. Because of confidentiality, the festival’s stakeholders are prevented from knowing if there was wrongdoing or ineptness or both. They are unable to prevent whatever happened from happening again, because they don’t have any relevant information. All that’s known is that the University of Oregon, in clinging to its self-imposed secrecy, may well be protecting someone’s interests, perhaps even its own. And it is doing so at the expense of the Oregon Bach Festival. …
10/17/2017: UO cuts Bach Festival Exec Director Janelle McCoy out of leadership role
But of course we’ll keep paying her and SVPAA Doug Blandy, and Johnson Hall will avoid having to do any honest soul-searching about why they keep making mistakes like this. I wonder what the next one is going be?
Bob Keefer has the latest in the Eugene Weekly:
A statement released this afternoon by dean of the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance confirms the names of the seven-person committee that is to direct the planning of the 2018 Oregon Bach Festival. Eugene Weekly reported the names based on a source on Oct. 9.
The statement also sets the date for the 2018 festival and confirms that some previously planned events, such as premieres of works by Richard Danielpour and Phillip Glass, will move forward.
Perhaps notably, it doesn’t mention the “guest curator” plan proposed by executive director Janelle McCoy in the immediate aftermath of the still-unexplained Aug. 24 firing of artistic director Matthew Halls. McCoy is not mentioned in today’s statement and has been virtually invisible in recent weeks.
Here is the full text of Dean Brad Foley’s statement:
Dear Friends of Oregon Bach Festival:
Following the grand opening of Berwick Hall earlier this month, all of us at Oregon Bach Festival are looking ahead to next season.
… To that end, I have assembled (and will chair) a highly-qualified artistic committeefrom the staff, faculty, and board to assist with planning for the 2018 Festival:
• Royce Saltzman, Director Emeritus and OBF Board member
• Michael Anderson, OBF Director of Artistic Administration
• Josh Gren, OBF Director of Marketing and Communications
• Steve Vacchi, Professor of Bassoon, OBF Orchestra member, and OBF Board member
• Sharon Paul, Professor of Choral Activities, Director of the UO Chamber Choir (an OBF ensemble)
• Peter Van de Graaff, KWAX Music Director, Program Director of the Beethoven Satellite Network, bass-baritone soloist
…
Brad Foley
Dean, University of Oregon School of Music & Dance
Quite a change from the lies in the Around the O post of Aug 27:
“We look forward to a wider range of programmatic choices, community events, and cross-departmental relationships with UO faculty, staff, and students – from the UNESCO Crossings Institute, the Department of Equity and Inclusion, and the UO museums, to traditional academic units such as the School of Music and Dance, food studies, classics, humanities, history, and planning, public policy and management. These partnerships,” says McCoy, “might include lectures, public seminars, classes, publications, interactive programming, and so on.”
Meanwhile the UO Public Records Office is still sitting on a number of records requests that might shed more light on Doug Blandy and Janelle McCoy’s roles in this fiasco – one now more than 5 weeks old:
What a surprise: 9/19/2017: Oregon basketball: Ducks to host … 5-star PF Emmitt Williams this weekend 10/19/2017: Five-star recruit Emmitt Williams, 19, was arrested and charged with felony sexual battery and false imprisonment early Wednesday morning. Williams, who is a top 25 prospect in the 2018 recruiting class, was booked…
Update: While I am not sure the AR-15’s, Tazers, ducked-up trucks are an improvement, Chief Matt Carmichael has done an enormous amount to improve the UOPD. And he’s somehow done it without spending any new UO money, so far: 4:25PM It’s taking him quite a while to get around to it,…
Back in January, Erwin Chemerinsky, a well known legal scholar and at the time the UC-Irvine law school dean, published this opinion piece castigating UO President Mike Schill’s response to the Halloween blackface incident: Worries about offensiveness threaten free speech on campuses All too often campuses are forgetting one of the…
Daily Emerald reporter Hannah Kanik has the story here: The university faculty senate is working to create less biased and more informative course evaluations through a targeted task force and increased student input. Last May, the University senate discovered sexist and racist correlations in the results of student course evaluations.…
Unfortunately it’s not for violating his First Amendment right to protest while someone sings “O’er the Land of the Free”. The Daily Emerald’s Jack Pitcher has the details here.
10/17/2017 update:
I’m no law professor, but I think this is the reverse of the preferred sequencing.
Page down for the video of UO spokesperson Tobin Klinger last Friday, declaring that “the demonstration actually violated university policy”. Today the “UO Student Collective” facebook page posts this message from Sandy Weintraub, Director of Student Conduct, calling one of the students into his office to begin the process of an investigation under the student conduct code:
On Oct 15, Senate President Sinclair wrote UO President Schill the following:
Dear President Schill:
I’ve had a number of conversations around campus with both students and faculty regarding the student protest of the State of the University address.
Here are some reflections:
The statement from Tobin Klinger to the Oregonian that the protest was in violation of the student conduct code is unhelpful and has irritated many faculty. Faculty see Klinger as an un-academic public relations spokesperson who has little credibility with the students or the faculty. However, he is an official spokesperson, and so we assume he was speaking for the administration. As such his statement could be taken as an abrogation of due process. This removes the veil of faculty oversight of student discipline, and there is simmering resentment that this power was taken from faculty by the Board of Trustees. Any unilateral administrative establishment of discipline on an issue that revolves around speech is a hornets nest that is best left un-kicked. We do understand that it may sometimes be necessary to “read the riot act” to students to notify them (or others) that continued assembly will be dealt with under the student conduct code.
My recommendation would be to have Tobin clarify his remarks and to state publicly that the university has no plans to charge any of the students in the protest with any conduct violation. Were actual conduct charges to be brought, I do not think you would have the support of the majority of the faculty nor students, and I think the Senate would react in a manner which you would find unproductive. A couple senators have already threatened a resolution to be introduced next Wednesday; we have a busy agenda that day and I would prefer to stay on task.
As you know, I have invited [the UO student collective] to come to the Senate for a brief 5-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute question and answer period. [The UO student collective] has not responded yet. In conversation with faculty, more individuals agree that this is the correct course of action for the Senate than agree with you that this is rewarding bad behavior. I will not argue that we are not rewarding bad behavior, because I see your point, but I think more people are moved by the argument that these students have fewer avenues to air their grievances than you or I, and that this was a legitimate protest.
I have been reflecting on my formal invitation of this student group to the next Senate meeting. Had I a do-over, I would take the advice of Frances White and merely indicate to this group that the Senate is a public forum on campus and that any group of students should be able to get on the agenda (with instructions on how to do so). This would allow the students an avenue for a public conversation without officially sanctioning it. I am unwilling to rescind my invitation to the student group, but I will hold onto this lesson for future use.
Thanks for considering my recommendations and for helping find a productive way out of this tricky situation,
Chris Sinclair, Assoc. Prof. Math, Senate President University of Oregon
Meanwhile, on the same day as the protest, the administration updated its website on Time, Place and Manner restrictions on free speech. They are calling these guidelines and procedures, not policies, because they agreed last year not to implement them as a policy, after the Senate raised numerous objections.
Until 2014, the UO Faculty had responsibility for the Student Conduct code. The Board of Trustees took that away from us as part of their Delegation of Authority, helped out by the faculty board member Susan Gary (Law) who failed to notify the faculty about the power-grab.
The new student conduct code even allows the administration to modify the procedures retroactively, and apply them to existing student discipline cases:
All revisions to Student Conduct Code procedures, including but not limited to jurisdictional revisions, shall apply retroactively to pending Student Conduct complaints, filed on or after September 11, 2014
10/12/2017 update: Student Conduct Judge Tobin Klinger finds protest violated conduct code
Just kidding. Tobin Klinger is UO’s chief PR flack, not a Student Conduct Judge. He is not responsible for enforcing the student conduct code, nor has anyone at UO conducted any sort of investigation as to whether or not the student conduct code was violated, or whether any such violation was significant enough to supersede the UO policies on freedom of speech and academic freedom.
So what in the world was Klinger doing, in his official capacity as UO spokesperson, telling an Oregonian reporter 5 minutes after the administration suspended President Schill’s speech, that
“.. the demonstration actually violated university policy…”
Speaking in my private capacity as a blogger, I think the administration can make a plausible case that it did violate the code (and the Freedom of Inquiry and Speech policy). If that case succeeds they can then discipline the students accordingly.
But that case is going to be harder to make given this official statement from Klinger, which the students can argue is prejudicial.
10/9/2017 update: Small, ineffective, and reflects poorly on the student body
The Oregon Daily Emerald editorial board rarely posts editorials. They have written a good one on Friday’s protest:
10/17/2017: I’m not going to live blog this – Bruce Blonigen will post the notes on the CAS diversity web page. There are a few undergrads, about 15 grad students (particularly women from the sciences) and about 5 people from the dean’s office. Andrew Marcus does a good job inviting…
Jack Moran has a report in the RG here.
10/16/2017: Shawn Medow has the report in the Emerald here: “Taking the knee before the game means just to raise awareness for the social injustices and inequalities that are happening in our nation,” defender Jazmin Jackmon said after the Ducks’ 1-0 loss to Washington on Oct. 8. “That’s what my…
Apparently the organizer of the event, Chicago Provost Daniel Diermeier, thought the administrators wouldn’t come or wouldn’t speak freely if they thought their comments would be public. Insider Higher Ed has the report here: … Just last week, students shouted down talks at Columbia University and the University of Michigan. Those doing…