UO Matters
No, I don’t mean Oxycontin. The NYT has the scoop from the Society for Neuroscience meetings, here. 11/21/2012.
The athletic department is willing to take a chance on provoking an international incident involving a star Iranian basketball player, if it will help the Ducks pay off those arena bonds. Matt Walks has the story in the ODE. 11/20/2012.
The Emerald has photos. First is beautiful. 11/19/2012.
Full email dump here. Lots of CYA, spiced with a little defamation. Robin Holmes to Mike Gottfredson, after Diane Dietz broke the RBI story: Of course UO would never interfere in a student election. And anyway, it’s OK, everybody does it. Wait: the EMU is generating profits as an IRS 990…
11/19/2012 video from camera 4 in our Johnson Hall surveillance system: I’m no environmental economist, but I think a pigouvian tax on the bottles (like the EMU does with coffee cups) would be the efficient solution. But a ban seems like good second best policy. For reasons I don’t understand Gottfredson has…
Ted Sickinger of the Oregonian has been digging into PERS for several years now. Sickinger’s latest report covers reforms that the Legislature might consider, their consequences, and the likelihood they will survive legal challenges. Former UO student Hannah Hoffman covers PERS often in her State Workers Blog for the Salem Statesman-Journal. And…
11/19/2012: One of the weirder moments of Bob Berdahl’s brief UO interregnum was his videotaped rant at the May Senate meeting, when the students asked to add one more member to the IAC. We must have pissed away 30 minutes of 30 people’s lives debating that. Berdahl drew a line in…
11/19/2012: Faculty unions almost never strike: A reporter told me he could find one strike in the last 25 years, it lasted a day or two. But asking union members to vote to authorize a strike is a relatively common bargaining strategy designed to show the administration that the faculty…
11/16/2012: Greg Bolt has the story in the RG on the efforts of a group of UO alums to use tax deductible contributions to build a golf course for themselves and the Ducks. How does this relate to our academic mission? Meanwhile the athletic department has not said a word about any…
11/16/2012: Adam Jude has the story in the Oregonian. Horton’s program loses a cool $1.5 million a year, not to mention the upcoming $5 million balloon payment the athletic department owes on the loan Kilkenny used to build the ball park he named after himself. But Rob Mullens pays Horton $500,000…
Final update: Not until Hubin gives the Commentator the emails showing who gave Robin Holmes the go ahead to hire the RBI consultants and what their orders were.11/16/2012 6PM: The ODE now reports that the referendum passed with 54% of ~4,000 votes. The ends justify the means?11/16/2012: Ian Campbell of the ODE…
Word from the LCNI is that the brain scanner is down until mid December because of a shortage of helium for the 3 Tesla super-cooled super-conducting electro-magnet. Donate your party balloons, children! 11/16/2012.
A group of faculty opposed to the faculty union have just started a blog at http://uounionforum.wordpress.com/: Who we are We are faculty concerned with the establishment of the UO Faculty Union. We are not affiliated with United Academics or with the Faculty Union Bargaining Team. Many of us have not joined…
Update 11/15/2012: Their accrediting agency is now investigating these courses. Are UO athletes using them or similar to pass the requirements for UO degrees? I’ll put the question to NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative Jim O’Fallon. 11/11/2012: Brad Wolverton at the Chronicle has the scoop on how athletes are gaming the NCAA’s…