4/12/2011: From what I hear Huron and Moira Kiltie have fixed the ORSA situation and it is now running smoothly. But this was – is – sure expensive, and Linton is still not telling us how it got this bad. $1,789,000 should at least buy a story. But nope –…
UO Matters
4/12/2011: Nice try, from Pernsteiner’s attorney: The complete letter is here. Mr. Gary’s letter does not seem consistent with Chancellor Pernsteiner’s expense accounts and calender, here. But some additional data should answer that question, and I will get it. I certainly don’t want to clog the tubes with inaccurate posts!
4/11/2011: VP for Research Rich Linton has now issued an explanation of who is running ORSA (Moira Kiltie has just been promoted) and who all the Huron consultants are. Rich is not providing a word on the cost – but here are the contracts and $1.5 million in invoices. Another…
4/11/2011: The UO Senate votes Wednesday on endorsing Lariviere’s New Partnership plan. Ian McNeely wrote this last week in the ODE: I have studied the New Partnership in detail, plus the two bills proposed in Salem to enact it. I have asked President Lariviere tough questions about donor influence, public…
4/8/2011: Date: April 8, 2011 5:31:06 PM PDTTo: Elizabeth Denecke , Public Records Requests Cc: Frances Dyke , …Subject: public records request, Huron report Hi Liz – The last amendment to the Huron contracts you sent me earlier this week says: A. The second to the last bullet point in…
4/8/2011: A commenter suggests that these Huron invoices are not complete. We are on that. Since we have an active petition in with the Attorney General, we are expecting that we will get a quick answer from UO this time: Date: April 7, 2011 5:23:24 PM PDTTo: Elizabeth Denecke Cc:…
4/7/2011: It took a petition to Attorney General John Kroger to force the UO administration and Public Records Officer Liz Denecke to finally cough up these documents. No wonder. Our administration has blown about $1.5 million since last June – $130,000 a month – on a contract to administer UO’s…
At some point you start wondering what they are hiding. Maybe we really are paying $100,000 a month out of our ICC money? Maybe they didn’t put the contract out for bid? It would have been much simpler – and much more in the spirit of trust and transparency –…
4/6/2011: Gov Kitzhaber’s is out selling his “one board to bind them” education plan. The fact that his chief adviser is Springfield Schools head Nancy Golden is a good sign – she’s very impressive. Big step up from Goldschmidt’s Dr. Pernsteiner – whoops, sorry, that’s Mr. Pernsteiner. The RG has…
4/5/2011: President Lariviere’s UO Freedom legislation is off the table until the next session, and apparently many other education bills are also stuck in the House Ed committee. But the state Senate seems to be rolling right along with the bill to allow UO to convert DPS to an armed,…
4/5/2011: The original decision generated a lot of bad press about China’s intentions regarding academic freedom at its Confucius Institutes. From Insidehighered.com: China Again Recognizes U. of Calgary China has restored the University of Calgary to the country’s list of accredited universities, a list that many Chinese students rely upon…
4/5/2011: From the Oregonian.
4/4/2011: I was fully prepared to make fun of the “Bias Response Team” and its event-packed awareness week, but the truth is it looks like the most diverse diversity event on campus yet, by far. See you in the Tunnel of Oppression. Glad to see the students are acting like…
4/4/2011: There are rumors that ORSA’s contract with Huron consulting is costing UO $250 an hour plus expenses for each of two consultants. Supposedly this includes round-trips back to their home base in Chicago on weekends. $100,000 a month by one account, or close to $1 million total so far.…
4/4/2011: Counting benefits, retirement. 2009-2010 data, obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Ed via what I am sure was many, many public records/FOIA requests and published last week: The four-year institutions shown here comprise (public) universities with total fall enrollments of at least 10,000 that are classified by the Carnegie…