UO Matters

5/14/2009:

At yesterday’s UO Senate meeting Provost Bean spent a long time talking about “misinformation spread by blogs.” We are happy to hear he’s been reading UO Matters, and we welcome his response to our comments on his speech:

1. He refused to repudiate his Furlough meeting claim that UO’s Admin expense ratio was 38% of peers. Odd, because an hour before the meeting one of your Editors was talking with OUS Legal Counsel and Board Secretary Ryan Hagemann, who said that despite extensive searching OUS could find no evidence to support this, other than the document referred to here, which he agreed – in fact insisted – was not relevant. Mr. Hagemann then said that he would be encouraging Provost Bean to stop making claims of this sort unless he could back them up with data. Why was Mr. Hagemann so firm on this point? Perhaps because he knows that in Oregon it is a crime to misrepresent administrative expenses when you are soliciting charitable donations – as Provost Bean did (legal disclaimer: appears to have done from the video) at the furlough meeting. The ball is in your court Jim – got any more anecdotes for us?
2. He claimed that Frohnmayer was paid just slightly more than his peers. But Bean – who has a PhD in Operations Research – departs from the standard Chronicle.com definition by not reporting the $206,000 Frohnmayer receives in 401K and retirement pay.
3. Similarly with his comparisons of administrative salaries. He is claiming UO is the equivalent to the median AAU public university. Provost Bean, have you looked at that list of universities? Budgets, enrollments, Med schools, … You are comparing VP for Finance and Research jobs at Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, UVA with UO? The VP’s at those schools deal with budgets that are what – 3 to 5 times UO’s. While the source for Bean’s comparisons (CUPA) includes this budget information, Bean dropped it from his tables. Provost Bean also left out his own $25,700 “stipend” – which he takes as additional salary.
   
4. Provost Bean claimed that the faculty salaries we have posted included salaries for medical school faculty. It does not. However, his comparison group of administrators does include those with responsibility for medical schools.
5. In short, the salary comparisons we have posted here are more reliable than Bean’s with respect to both the set of comparators and the accuracy of the UO salaries.
6. Interestingly, Bean didn’t try to justify Diversity VP Charles Martinez’s salary or explain his second job at OSLC. See below, more here, and still more to come.
7. Frances Dyke’s $170K helper VP. We get it: you are a gentleman. (When spending other people’s money.) But you are paid to make tough calls for the good of the university. Time to earn your pay and make this one.
8. Bean’s claims on Bend have morphed from “we are slightly in the black” when asking the faculty for furlough contributions to “we’ve lost millions but we will almost break even next year – if no one notices we are keeping everything possible including Moseley’s salary off the books.” Uh, but he’s the Director, Jim. And what about Leahy and Seitz? You are going to lose your last shreds of credibility over this Jim. Everyone including the CAS Dean knows you haven’t been telling the truth about Bend and still aren’t. Sunk costs are sunk – so don’t use them to justify digging a deeper hole. You are paid enough to do hard things, this one is easy.

But we should all celebrate this:

Nathan Tublitz’s UO Senate motion for a bit of financial transparency passed on an unanimous voice vote with a few minor amendments. The argument was over when a Senator said to Frohnmayer: “You are asking us to give up our pay to help out UO. We deserve to know how you are spending our money.” Somehow that didn’t sink in with Frances, who kept on talking. During the debate VP for InfoTech Don Harris said it would cost $26K to implement, vs. the $10K OSU paid. He also said that UO was upgrading to BANNER 8.0. Perhaps this upgrade already includes basic web reporting features? If anyone has any inside knowledge of this or on why cost is so much higher at UO, please go here and pass it on. Why does Frohnmayer insist on fighting transparency to the bitter end?

The meeting also had the Diversity Progress report by VP Charles Martinez. Charles’s speech was straight up bureaucratic double-speak. As has become traditional, Charles brought a large contingent of Diversity Committee people with him for protection, announced their presence and had them stand before speaking, and took so long to say nothing that there was no time for questions about that nothingness. But at least this year he took time off from his OSLC job to show up for the meeting, and we appreciate that gesture – so thanks Charles, you are doing a heckuva job. Notably, he did not mention the UMRP once. We will have more on why later. The other rumor is that his office will be reorganized and Charles will be replaced in fall, because of his questionable second job – though the press release will read something like “Mission Accomplished”. We expect (hope?) that President Lariviere will insist on an open hiring process – it’s a little embarrassing having a Diversity VP who was hired without an Affirmative Action compliant search!

5/13/2009 AM:

The UO Senate meets in 115 Lawrence today at 3. The agenda includes Charles Martinez’s Diversity report and Nathan Tublitz’s motion for financial transparency. We hear that Frohnmayer has told the Johnson Hall dwellers that they are to support this iff:

1. It is not implemented until sometime after he steps down as President on 7/1/2009.
2. It is not retroactive to payments made while he was President.
3. It does not cover expenditures from UO Foundation funds.

Now why would those particular things be so important?

The Daily Emerald’s 3 part series of retirement interviews with Frohmayer continues. Today‘s topic is athletics and donor influence. He moves from yesterday’s “UO is a hot brand” and “the state never gives us enough money” memes to “athletics brings in money for academics”. His claims that athletics has improved the academic side aren’t absurd, but they are all based on selected anecdotes, and the reporter doesn’t question them. The story ends with this quote from Dave: “That’s what the essence of academic freedom is.” But the ODE website is apparently not accepting comments on the interview!

Yesterday there were no questions about why the hot brand is all about athletics instead of academics, and why Frohnmayer has spent the money we do get from the state on himself and his administrators and their pet projects instead of on improving UO’s academic ranking.

Nearly a month after the hyped 4/14 Town Hall meeting – Frohnmayer was so proud of this he posted it on youtube – the voluntary furlough program seems to have all but vanished. A few hundred people signed up – mostly junior administrators pressured into it by their bosses, who left the filled out forms in their subordinates mailboxes. But many faculty were told by their Deans and Heads that it was all politics, and to ignore it. Provost Bean has stopped answering emails about it, and the administration website hasn’t posted any updates since the meeting. Meanwhile, the junior admins and the few faculty who, I’m sorry – got tricked into this by Frohnmayer and Bean – are still giving up their pay, and no one will explain why. If you know any thing recent email us at [email protected] or post an anonymous comment here.