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UO Matters

Correction: UO adds 29 more positive student cases to last week’s covid count

9/28/2021 update: I reported yesterday, from UO’s covid tracking site, that there’d been only 1 covid case last week. Several readers pointed out they’d got an email yesterday saying there had been 29. Now the official count is up to 30. Note that they’ve also sorted the data on count…

Returning UO faculty to enjoy anti-viral health benefits of steam heat and fresh air

The older your office or classroom, the more likely you are to survive teaching this fall and winter, because of quack Civil War era science. Bloomberg explains here: … It turns out that the prodigious output of steam-heated buildings is the direct result of theories of infection control that were enlisted…

Dean hosts zoom meeting to instruct faculty on mandatory in-person teaching policy

The Greeks had a word for this: Sent on behalf of Harry Wonham, Divisional Dean for Humanities: Dear Colleagues, I have arranged with the Teaching Engagement Program to offer a Fall Teaching Overview for Humanities faculty Monday, September 20, 10:30am-12:00pm. Zoom link: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98855984910. I’ll host the session, which we’ll record…

Pres Schill appoints Josh Gordon as new “Faculty” Athletics Rep to NCAA

Gordon was one of the founders of the “Competition not Conflict” program, which ran sham undergraduate classes in the Law School with help from then Dean Michael Moffitt. Dear Colleagues, It is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Joshua Gordon, Woodard Family Foundation Fellow and senior instructor of sports…

UO offers $5K prizes to anti-Vax students who submit “philosophical exemption”

You can’t make this shit up. From Around the O: The University of Oregon is offering a total of $50,000 in prizes to students who complete compliance with the UO’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements earlier than the prescribed deadlines. Any student who has completed the policy requirement will be eligible for…

On any Sunday,

you will probably find me in my ’87 Caballero making a run to the Glenwood Transfer Station, Eugene’s finest recycling center and garbage pit. If you’re a friend of the blog and have some stuff to add to the load, drop me an email. This load cost $32.50 to get…

Overconfident Provost’s Office thinks they have a clue about what will happen next with Covid:

Full email here. What You Need to Know Fall In-person Instruction and Operations:  Thanks to carefully developed safety plans, the UO remains confident and committed to welcoming students back to campus for in-person learning, living, and experiences for fall term. Our full suite of safety plans and tools include: requiring…

SCOTUS gives lowly faculty a chance to get a piece of big-time college sports wealth

Give the front four a pass then bet on the home team. Or the opposite. Law school prof Marc Edelman has the details in Forbes: In the three years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its seminal decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, at least 21 new states have…

Faculty Union delivers sensible list of Covid “asks” to Johnson Hall bosses

The full message is here. Ask Number One: Ask 1 – Flexibility for Illness and Quarantine We told the administrators that our first priority was for instructional faculty to have a process for moving their class to a remote modality if they have COVID, need to quarantine, or have children who cannot…

Knight Campus scientists use Prefontaine Track Meet crowds to test UV light machine’s effectiveness against Delta variant

While prior research (e.g. Biasin et. al 2021) has found that UV light is effective in inactivating Covid-19 in controlled laboratory conditions, Knight Campus scientists are the first to attempt a large scale study of this effect “in the wild”. A large sample of test subjects were recruited using the…