4/18/2014: Ted Sickinger has the story in the Oregonian: Aliotti is 59 years old. If he lives another 26.5 years, as PERS’ actuarial tables predict, the state pension system will pay him about $6.6 million in retirement, plus cost of living increases. Where will that $6.6M come from? As Sickinger…
UO Matters
4/16/2014 update: It’s been a week now, no signing ceremony. The rumor is that President Gottfredson has stuck Dave Hubin with the job of finding some explanation – plausible or not, doesn’t really matter – for why although he would personally love to sign this policy, it would be a violation of his fiduciary responsibility as “The University”.
4/10/2014 updates: Senate passes academic freedom motion unanimously
InsiderHigherEd has a report on the “months of contentious negotiation” between the Senate, the union, and Gottfredson over academic freedom, and Betsy Hammond has a story on this in the Oregonian here:
Gottfredson, in an emailed response to The Oregonian, said, “I look forward to closely reviewing (it) …I fully support the strongest policy on academic freedom possible. Academic freedom is central to our mission and underlies everything we do as a university.”
This is our passive-aggressive president’s typical non-response. “Asked and answered.” “I’ll take that under advisement”. ” “I look forward to reviewing it”. Then nothing.
Here’s some more history, with his Randy Geller’s redlines of an earlier Senate draft. And here’s Gleason and Rudnick’s restrictive proposal on academic freedom, from 2/17/2013 during the union bargaining. All about the limitations, authority, and of course that easily abused requirement for “civil dialogue” – and if The University thinks it’s not, then discipline!
4/17/2014 update: And now the ABA Journal.
These emails have gone viral, with many hundreds of comments on law blogs like Lawyers Guns and Money, Tax Law Blog, Above The Law, Professor Bainbridge, JDU, Eschaton, Leiter’s Law School Reports, something called Gawker, and Jeff Manning’s piece in the Oregonian:
This was bad viral. The University of Oregon Law School professor’s wild rant about his compensation made Illig look petty and unsympathetic at the same time. More importantly, it shined a light on the raging debate about higher education, the value of advanced degrees and the mushrooming debt encumbering a generation of students.
The official UO law school blog – which, in an admirable demonstration of transparency actually allows comments, has responded:
To The Law School Community:
We’ve been getting some questions about a resolution brought to the last faculty meeting, and we’d like to share some information. Recently the University announced across-the-board cost of living adjustments and merit pay increases to take effect later in the year. A group of law faculty came up with the idea to divert the law school’s portion of the faculty merit pay funds to a post-graduate fellowship program for new law grads, in lieu of accepting a pay increase. Last Friday, this group brought this idea as a resolution (included below) to the regularly scheduled faculty meeting. A wide majority of those present voted to approve the resolution—in addition, a majority of the full faculty support the resolution.
We brought the matter to the Provost and although he is supportive of our goals he cannot bend the University rules to make this creative idea happen. However, we remain committed to finding ways to fund post-graduate opportunities and address other employment issues facing our graduates. We invite your comments and questions on this blog or one-on-one.
(I am not the Faculty Spokesperson. To avoid the appearance of speaking for everyone on the faculty, here I will include the names of some faculty who agreed to sign this statement (and I don’t mean to imply that those not included do not support it): Stuart Chinn, Michael Fakhri, Caroline Forell, Liz Frost, Erik Girvan, Carrie Leonetti, Mohsen Manesh, Roberta Mann, Michelle McKinley, Margie Paris, Jen Reynolds, Liz Tippett.)
Here is the text of the resolution from 4/11/2014:
The faculty recommends that the dean proceed with conversations with the Provost and the President regarding: reallocating funds for proposed faculty merit raises toward student fellowships, with a focus at present on post graduate student fellowships. If this proposal is approved, the faculty will revisit this reallocation of funds after two-three years.
4/14/2014: Several members of the law school email lists (which included staff, secretaries etc.) have forwarded these two emails from professor Rob Illig (Law) about a plan apparently floated by Law Dean Michael Moffitt (paid $292,800 after a recent raise) to deal with the law school’s enrollment problems and US News ranking, which has fallen from #80 to #100 since Moffitt took over in 2011.
The plan? Cancel raises for the faculty, and use the money to fund a program to give non-profits money to hire UO law school graduates, boosting the employment numbers that go into the US News rank.
Here are UO Law salaries for 2012-13, with comparison to other AAU publics:
Associate Professor Illig is not happy with Moffitt’s plan, or with the lack of transparency in how it was presented to the law faculty (who apparently voted to approve it).
Subject: Re: law-fac-staff: What happened to Oregon Law?
From: Rob Illig <[email protected]>
To: Rob Illig <[email protected]>
Cc: Dustin Littrell <[email protected]>, law-faculty Faculty <[email protected]>, “[email protected] Staff List” <[email protected]>, Dan Miller <[email protected]>
Michael,
To my shock and amazement, I just learned – three days after the faculty
meeting – that someone (you? the faculty?) is trying to take away my
one-in-a-decade chance at a raise WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT.
Update: UO student journalist Will Rubin has an excellent report on last week’s UO symposium, here. Complete with a brief quote from De’Anthony Thomas – then his lawyer cut him off. AAD Craig Pintens keeps a tight leash on what athletes say in public, so don’t expect any uncensored comments from the Duck’s current revenue producers on unionization, rights to player likenesses, concussions, random pot testing, and so on. Notably absent from the panel were UO’s soon to be replaced FAR and NCAA cartel enforcer Jim O’Fallon (Law) and the UO Senate’s current IAC chair and wannabe sports lawyer Rob Illig.
4/11/2014: Complete with the NYT’s Joe Nocera – our Faculty Athletic Rep Jim O’Fallon’s nemesis. Many other well known speakers. No idea why this wasn’t better advertised. From http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/symposia.php
No, of course I’m not talking about UO and our B-School Dean Kees de Kluyver. This is for Eastern Michigan. Survey responses here. Seems like a constructive exercise. Will this ever happen for UO administrators? Maybe. After a secret performance review of President Gottfredson last spring – the Senate wasn’t…
$500k a year, bonuses, car, country club memberships, outside income, etc. Contract here. This is for a sport that loses millions a year. The administration was supposed to consult with the Senate’s IAC about this hire, but didn’t. In other news, Diane Dietz has a story in the RG about…
Great story by Hannah Golden in the Emerald about the gloriously over-the-top parties that our entrepreneurial Chinese undergrads are organizing. And also an excellent report by Bayley Sandy, headlined “Student leaders do their best to compensate for the UO Counseling Center’s insufficient funding”. Maybe VPFA Jamie Moffitt should raffle off…
The FAR motion is here. Gottfredson has set up a closed search, with some other peculiar conditions for Jim O’Fallon’s long overdue replacement. This resolution asks him to make it open. The academic support motion is here. There have been many scandals about these operations at other universities. Currently UO’s…
4/8/2014 update: Not entirely, but this new UO legal services policy, to be debated and voted on at the Senate meeting this Wednesday, will sure put a crimp in his style. Among other sensible and long overdue restraints on our chief attorney:
Prior to any decision to participate in litigation not directly involving the University as a party by filing an amicus curiae brief, the General Counsel shall notify the President of the Senate of the intention to do so.
Kudos to Gordon Sayre (English) and Tom Lininger (Law) for getting this done. Maybe Geller will react by firing off another email like this one?
Or this unlawyerly stupidity, which made it into the Oregonian?
4/2/2014: Randy Geller’s anti-free speech brief fails, OSU pays out $101K
In brief: UO paid our General Counsel to help write an anti-free speech brief to the SCOTUS. From the timing, it looks like President Gottfredson authorized this.
Back in 2009 OSU staff trashed the news boxes of a student publication called “The Liberty”. Liberty sued OSU over a First Amendment violation. The 9th circuit court said OSU should pay damages. OSU tried to appeal the case to the SCOTUS, and a group of other universities wrote an amicus brief, taking a firm first amendment stand: against free speech, and for the OSU administration. Our own Randy Geller joined in:
The Meeting is this Wed 4/9/02014, 3-5PM in 115 Lawrence. Agenda here. Among the important motions for this meeting is one that would require most Senate committees to post their agendas online a week before the meeting, and generally hold open meetings – with plenty of reasonable exceptions for personnel…
4/8/2014 update: No, I’m not making this up, and yes, my first reaction was to wonder why the UO Senate didn’t think of this years ago.
Reporter Ian Campbell has the story in the Emerald, which also has a helpful timeline for background on this developing crisis. Meanwhile, still no word on which administrator ordered UO’s newly armed police department to arrest and jail one of ASUO’s student president candidates.
and promises to do better with transparency and shared governance. No, of course I’m not talking about Mike Gottfredson, that question was “asked and answered” long ago. These are the gracious words of PSU President Wim Weiwel, after he struck a difficult bargain with the PSU faculty union over raises…
Great news for administrators and coaches though. Full report here:
Dear Colleagues, Supporting the University of Oregon’s core academic mission is our top priority. To advance this mission we are pleased to announce the redirection of recurring funds to support the cluster of excellence faculty hiring initiative.This initiative will enable us to hire two to five new faculty members in…
Update: This looks like a big win for the PSU faculty. They got nearly 2x the money the administration had offered, and seem to have beat back the effort to gut shared governance:
Organization & Strike Threat Get Unprecedented Gains!
– Keep Contract Protections for P & T Guidelines, Past Practices
– Big Shift in Number, Certainty & Length of Fixed Term Contracts
– Advancement Path for APs – Raises Tied to Seniority
– Retain Contract Protection for AP “Positions”
– Meaningful Planning for Academic Quality
– Cost of Living Increases 2.5% and 2.5%, Mid-Year as for Others
– 1.5% Across the Board Faculty Comparator Adjustment
– 8% Promotion Increases
– Travel Fund Doubled, Faculty Enhancement Fund up 30%
– Post Tenure Review Will NOT result in Changed Job Description
– No Retaliation Against AAUP Members for Union Activity
The administration had claimed that the they had no money left. Sound familiar? Maybe their tornado reserves were larger than they’d let on. UAUO will need to increase union membership to be able to credibly make similar threats and get gains in the contract bargaining that will begin in December that will bring our salaries up from the AAU basement. More on PSU here.
Update from Betsy Hammond in the Oregonian:
According to a faculty union account, the administration agreed to give cost-of-living raises of 2.5 percent this year and next, increase the share of non-tenure-track faculty who get long-term contracts and preserve contract language giving the union say over certain university practices.
Speaking of shared governance, the UO Senate will start developing a response to Gottfredson and Geller’s attempted spring break coup this Wednesday.