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UO Matters

Harper warns Faculty Club members to leave sgian-dubh at home Wed

Dear Colleagues, The Faculty Club will be open this week during the usual hours, with gatherings on Wednesday and Thursday from 5:00 to 8:00. Wednesday, we join Scots and Scot-o-philes around the world in the annual celebration of the birthday of revolutionary poet Robert Burns (b. 1759). Barbara Mossberg, poet…

Senate leader Peter Courtney’s anti-NCAA cartel window-dressing

2/9/2020: Claire McMorris, Government Relations Coordinator, Oregon State University, submits this statement from the PAC-12 sponsored student-athlete group.  Unsurprisingly, they support the cartel that sponsors them (and whose lawyers presumably drafted it) and oppose even Courtney’s weak bill. 2/6/2020: UO’s Rob Mullens showed up to testify: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2020R1/Committees/SED/2020-02-06-13-00/SB1501/Details video soon 1/27/2020:…

MMXX-III bargaining live-blog: 125 CHILES, 12-3pm today

125 CHILES, Thursday 1/23/2020, 12-3PM. Open to the public

MMXX-I is here, -II here. My continuing series on Budget Buckets is here. If you don’t like my blog read the official Union tweets or Facebook.

MMXX-III Live-blog. Usual disclaimer: My opinion and interpretation of what the bargainers are saying, thinking, or should be saying or thinking. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. Rumor has it the union proposals will include Research Support, Sabbaticals, and Hiring. I don’t know what the administration will do.

12:07: Disheveled Admin team strolls in late:

Faculty Club open Wed & Th

Dear Colleagues, The Faculty Club will be open this week during the usual hours, with gatherings on Wednesday and Thursday from 5:00 to 8:00. Wednesday, we will feature the School of Architecture and Environment, the “placemakers” of the UO, with an inspiringly designed, solidly structured Six-o-Clock toast. If you’ve always…

Why are faculty reluctant to help with university governance?

From the Encyclopedia of Virginia: The University of Virginia Riot of 1836 occurred on November 12–13 of that year when members of the student drilling company, the University Volunteers, commandeered the Rotunda and marched through the university’s grounds, destroying property. In some respects, the violence was the culmination of a decade of misbehavior…

Bargaining live-blog MMXX-II: PIPs for tenured faculty, Senate & IHP

In 125 CHILES, Thursday 1/16/2020, 12-3PM. 

MMXX-I is here. My continuing series on Budget Buckets is here. If you don’t like my blog read the official Union tweets.

Recap from MMXX-II: The union proposed a new article on faculty Performance Improvement Plans, which would allow departments to make tenured faculty who had failed at research get their shit together or do more teaching. The fact that a faculty union is proposing serious consequences for those few members who are not doing their job and making others cover for them should come as no surprise to anyone who understands basic economics. But it will probably throw Board of Trustees Chair and one-time B-School Dean Chuck Lillis – who apparently believes that the median faculty is deadwood and that the union is their agent – for a loop.

Other important proposals include reasserting shared governance control of faculty hiring, and figuring out how to keep the temperature in PLC to somewhere between 60 and 85 Fahrenheit.

See below for the details, Chuck, because the next proposal will be PIPs for you and your Trustees.