A extensive report here: In a precedent-setting case, an Ontario arbitrator has directed Ryerson University to ensure that student evaluations of teaching, or SETs, “are not used to measure teaching effectiveness for promotion or tenure.” The SET issue has been discussed in Ryerson collective bargaining sessions since 2003, and a formal…
UO Matters
Report here: The 11th Circuit appeals court has just overturned a lower court ruling and said that Georgia’s laws, including annotations, are not covered by copyright, and it is not infringing to post them online. This is big, and a huge win for online information activist Carl Malamud whose Public.Resource.org was the…
an undergrad campus tour leader, talking to a group of 30 prospective students and their parents about the research and teaching excellence of the Lundquist College of Business faculty. Just kidding, actually he was telling them about how the giant yellow O was put up for ESPN gameday, and how…
That would be at the University of Maryland. The Washington Post reports: While most of the facts contained in Maryland Today’s posts may be accurate, some articles omit negative facts necessary to understand what actually happened. … In “University Commits to Follow McNair Report Recommendations,” the author discusses the report’s…
Lananna, who’s on the UO payroll for several hundred large, asked the Governor for $40M in state subsidies. He’s now got $10M. If you think that’s the end of it you haven’t read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, or Ken Goe’s update in the Oregonian here.
The Oregon DOJ held up Tracktown’s $10M grant from Travel Oregon for a full year by requiring that they provide a budget and a disclaimer that there were no legal issues, despite the FBI investigation. UO and Tracktown told the press that the Feds hadn’t contacted them. Lananna didn’t tell GC Kevin Reed?
The budget and reporting requirements are now hilariously out of date, and Lananna and Reilly’s admission is scrawled out in pen:
What could go wrong? Rumor has it that UO has now appointed an administrator to deal with it all. I wonder who is paying their salary.
The full grant of $10M in state funds is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/OR212018_FE.pdf.
10/8/2018 – Tracktown / Oregon21 replaces Vin Lananna with Niels De Vos as head of IAAF 2021 championship
In her sleep last night, at home, surrounded by her family, at the age of 72, after a very full life. The link to her Brain Development Lab is here: Helen Neville uses psychophysical, electrophysiological (ERP), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to study the development and plasticity of the…
Ted Sickinger has the report here on PCC’s plan to borrow $200M to use to pay its PERS tab. The bonds will go on sale soon. While this is portrayed as a bet that stock-market returns will exceed the interest rates on the bonds (and it is) as Sickinger explains…
But what did Reed promise UO would do? It’s now almost 4 weeks six weeks since I asked for this agreement. Eventually they’ll run out of ways to hide it:
09/28/2018
Dear Mr. Harbaugh:
The University of Oregon, Office of Public Records has received your public records request for “The document I am looking for is called a “Facilitated Resolution Agreement” and it was signed by General Counsel Kevin Reed on or about August 21.” on 09/21/2018, attached.
The University is the custodian of at least some of the records you have requested. …
You don’t say.
9/21/2018 update: GC Kevin Reed cuts deal with Betsy DeVos & wants $378.49 to show the terms
The Washington Post has the scoop. Some excerpts: A police investigation into complaints by more than 20 women that they were forced to commit a variety of sexual acts with University of Oregon football players over the past two years has led to open warfare, with the chief of police…
10/10/2018: Reposted for the historical record.
When you’re running down our First Amendment, you’re walking on the fightin side of me:
4/6/2016 update: The day Merle Haggard died? Have our administrators no sense of patriotism? Or irony? More on the troubling response from the UO Foundation CIO here.
3/29/2016 update: Press Conference on the Johnson Hall steps, Facebook event page here.
Our students have been conducting a quiet CO2 Divestment sit-in the Johnson Hall lobby for months. The administration has banned their banner from the bush outside JH, and now the students are apparently going to reassert their free-speech rights.
Do they have the right to put up the banner? I’m no lawyer, but here’s some UO history. Back in 2010, former UO GC Randy Geller wanted to change UO policy to implement “Free Speech Zones”, outside of which First Amendment rights would be tightly controlled. This was in reaction to the Pacifica Forum incidents. Geller’s policy starts on page 13 here. It’s funnier than Animal Farm.
Free speech is indispensable, but:
UO will restrict Free Speech, except inside the Free Speech Zones, and even then you’ll need insurance and maybe a reservation:
No unapproved banners outside free speech zones – and don’t even think about posting the video on the internets:
Oh yeah, no camping or chalk either. Chalk? What’s that about?
All of Geller’s silly language above was rejected by the UO Senate and it is not UO policy.
The Facilities Use Policy that was adopted instead is at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/04-facilities/facilities-scheduling. It turned Geller’s policy on its ass, by limiting the areas UO can control to buildings and “scheduled outdoor spaces” i.e. the EMU amphitheater. The Senate rejected all of Geller’s anti-free speech, anti-banner, and anti-chalk language.
The Facilities Use policy is paired with the powerful Free Speech and Inquiry policy, at http://policies.uoregon.edu/policy/by/1/01-administration-and-governance/freedom-inquiry-and-free-speech:
Free speech is central to the academic mission and is the central tenet of a free and democratic society. The University encourages and supports open, vigorous, and challenging debate across the full spectrum of human issues as they present themselves to this community. Further, as a public institution, the University will sustain a higher and more open standard for freedom of inquiry and free speech than may be expected or preferred in private settings.
How much clearer could this be? It’s not like the CO2 Divestment students are doing anything reprehensible, like using chalk.
3/13/2016: UO bans students’ fossil fuel divestment banner from a bush?
Dear Colleagues, Come on out to the Faculty Club this week–we’re open Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 8:00. It’s always fun & easy to pair JSMA events with a visit to the Faculty Club. Wednesday our colleague Ina Asim (History) is giving a 5:30 talk right upstairs in the…
You’d think a grown man like Gleason would have better things to do with his time, but apparently not. Presumably this comes out of this alleged track and field violation. No word yet on how much UO paid its outside lawyers to handle this, but rumor has it that the…
Brad Moore has the report in the Emerald here: … The executive order forbids nationals from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen from entering the U.S. According to Dennis Galvan, UO vice provost for International Affairs, there are approximately three to four dozen students at the UO…
Inside Higher Ed has the story here.
Henry Houston has the report in the Eugene Weekly: UO spent more than any other Pac-12 college team this year for its nonconference schedule — sometimes scornfully called “body-bag” games because of the mismatch between teams. Bowling Green received $900,000, Portland State received $500,000 and San José State received $1.6…