UO Matters

Patrick Hruby’s award winning long-form report has one hell of a lede: While the NCAA’s rules governing college athletes are colorblind, the impact of amateurism is anything but—disproportionately costing black football and men’s basketball players and benefiting white stakeholders by as much as $2 billion a year. … Today he…

Nature is of course one of the most prestigious, highest impact science journals. Their editors think UO’s new plan has it backwards. Instead of making decisions about budget and pay based on what faculty have already published, they think we should give money to promising faculty, to do promising new…

The RG has his obit here. I only met him once, at the Lariviere firing meeting in Portland. He was furious at Pernsteiner, Kitzhaber, and the OUS board. Here’s his op-ed from the Oregonian, published just before that meeting: On Monday, the State Board of Higher Education will meet to…

The RG reports on the legal settlement of a case of the latter kind: … While working as a professor of exercise science, Richardson advised NCU officials in May 2015 that she was an expectant mother. In response, university administrators gave her a choice: If she wanted to keep her job,…

Read it all – many twists and turns. Obviously this has an OSU focus, but particularly towards the end it is filled with info relevant to UO etc.

A Review of the 2017 Legislative Session

With the adjournment of the 2017 legislative session last Friday afternoon, this issue provides a summary of the session, including:

• The big picture and a prognosis for the next year;
• How OSU’s legislative priorities fared;
• Other bills that captured our attention and time; and
• Acknowledgements for all the help we received over the last seven months. 

The Big Picture

As described in previous updates, the legislature entered the session with a list of “mega issues” that demanded attention in order to balance the budget and address real problems facing Oregonians across the state. Over the course of the session the items on this list ebbed and flowed, but they generally included:

• Revenue reform (tax increases);
• Investments in transportation infrastructure;
• Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) reform;
• Health care reform, including a health provider tax and bolstering the state-financed health care system that was susceptible to changes at the federal level;
• Housing affordability; and
• Overall cost management/cost cutting for state agencies.

Letter in the Emerald, here: … In a recent anonymous survey of SEIU 503 members working at the UO Health Center (UHC) – including licensed and non-licensed staff – 83 percent of respondents reported having seen specific coworkers being targeted and held to a different standard than their colleagues. 70…

7/12/2017 update:  Dear Mr. Harbaugh: Below please find the names of the vendors who responded to procurement number 900100-00012-RFP, responsive to your request made on 07/12/2017. • Berkeley Research Group, LLC • Gallagher Benefit Services Inc. • Robert K. Toutkoushian, Ph.D. • Sibson Consulting The office considers this be fully responsive to your request, and will now close this…

Here:  

That would be the Oregon State University Board, which has an admirably transparent website and policies.

In the RG here. He’s been accused before, but the first survivor didn’t want to take him to court. The second one? “If I don’t hold you accountable for your actions, who will?” the woman wrote in the statement, in comments directed toward Wood. He pled guilty to sexual assault…

The highlight of the 2013 UAUO faculty union bargaining was when the administration made us a “take it or leave it” offer that included a one-time $350 lump-sum payment, which Sharon Rudnick and Tim Gleason thought would be irresistible to our underpaid adjuncts and split the union. I checked craigslist…