OPB’s Anna Griffin has the story here: Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian has accused state legislative leaders of creating a hostile work environment in which reports of sexual harassment were ignored, underplayed or buried. In a complaint filed Wednesday with his own Bureau of Labor and Industries, Avakian says Senate President Peter…
UO Matters
When the 2012 Olympics came to London, the town’s graffiti artists took to the city’s walls to mock the corporate pomposity of it all. As the Guardian reported, London’s government did its best to eradicate these troubling works of artistic sarcasm, which was not hard to do in a country…
That’s the word from one of Ken Goe’s many anonymous sources, in the Oregonian here. So Howard Slusher and Jim Petsche have less than two years to get their thing erected. Thanks to an anonymous reader for the tip. PS – can someone tell me the dates for this extravaganza, so…
That would be Northwest Christian University. The RG’s Austin Meeks has the esports story here: Talking to Jacob Gates is like talking to any other student-athlete preparing to enter college on a sports scholarship. Gates, a 2018 Sheldon High graduate, wanted to attend Northwest Christian but wasn’t sure he could…
That’s the surprising implication of an event study by former UO economics professor Jason Lindo (now at Texas A&M), et al: Since 2011, when the landmark “Dear Colleague” letter declared that the Department of Education (DoE) would use equal-access requirements of federal law to remediate sexual assault on college campuses, 458…
The AP report is here. The exhaustive report on basketball coach Amory T. “Slats” Gill, by OSU history professor Marisa Chappell and sociology prof Dwaine Plaza is here. While Gill was obviously a petty tyrant who thought he owned his players, there is no evidence that he ever did anything…
7/27/2018 update: The RG’s Austin Meek reports today that Travel Oregon is claiming the federal investigations into the awarding of the 2021 IAAF championships to Tracktown will not prevent Travel Oregon from giving them $10M in state funds:
“It is Travel Oregon’s perspective, barring DOJ counsel to the contrary, that language included in future contracts referencing ‘pending investigations’ relates to any investigations in which the successful applicant/awardee is named as the subject or otherwise included as one of the subjects of that investigation,” [Travel Oregon spokesperson Linea Gagliano] said in a written response provided to The Register-Guard.
The Oregon DOJ declined to comment. Meanwhile there’s still no budget for how Tracktown/Oregon21 proposes to spend these state funds.
7/25/2018: Back in early 2016, after some serious log-rolling and arm-twisting, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill to raise the hotel tax and have the Oregon Tourism Commission, a.k.a Travel Oregon, run a grant process to give Vin Lananna’s Tracktown at least part of the $25M in public money that John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown had promised them. For a taste of the politics, here’s Saul Hubbard in the RG:
Cash trail leads to track subsidy
Posted Jan 5, 2016 at 10:01 PM
When Vin Lananna, president of TrackTown USA, and Paul Weinhold, president of the University of Oregon Foundation, first contacted then-Gov. John Kitzhaber in mid-2014 to request a $40 million state subsidy for TrackTown’s bid to hold the 2019 track world championships in Eugene, they were met with coolness and skepticism, newly released emails show.
After Lananna gave an in-person pitch to Kitzhaber on July 7, Kitzhaber economic policy adviser Vince Porter sent a scathing assessment of the request to the governor and his top advisers.
Talks should continue, Porter wrote, but “there are a lot of hurdles to get over before it becomes much more than a pipe dream.”
Nonprofit TrackTown’s request contained “probably as much as $20 million that we would never want to consider subsidizing,” he added. “I don’t think the state should be even considering something larger than $20 million” to help fund the event in Eugene, he wrote.
The subsidy request — which would require three-fifth votes in both chambers of the Legislature — also was met coolly by Salem’s two most powerful legislators, Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek, both Democrats, Porter’s emails indicate.
Yet, only five months later, Kitzhaber publicly pledged to “use all the means at my disposal to deliver the financial support needed for the championships” in a video message he sent — along with then-Secretary of State Kate Brown — with TrackTown’s team to the International Association of Athletics Federations bid meeting in Monaco in late November.
For the first time in that video, Kitzhaber endorsed a specific amount: the full $40 million. Getting the governor to publicly state the $40 million was a priority for TrackTown, Porter’s emails show.
What happened between Kitzhaber’s initial resistance and his endorsement? His campaign coffers were swamped to overflowing with donations from people who want the track world championships held at the UO’s Hayward Field.
The emails show that Kitzhaber’s apparent reversal coincided with almost $400,000 in campaign contributions he received during a 42-day period in September and October 2014 from athletic apparel giant Nike, its co-founder Phil Knight and its CEO Mark Parker, as well as four members of the UO Board of Trustees. …
Update: The students from Laura Bovilsky and Brian McWhorter’s Performing Arts camp will be putting on their show today at 2PM in the Daugherty Dance Theater (in the Gerlinger Annex). No tickets required. KLCC has a report on this year’s program, highlighting the World Cultures camp. SAIL is focused on high…
Or at least they search for UOMatters more than they search for Around the O: You’ve got to admire Kyle Henley for continuing to try though.
The GAO is basically Congress’s audit division. Congress asked them to look into the Chinese government supported Confucius Institutes. About 100 US colleges, including UO, have these. The GAO asked to meet with CI administrators and a selection of faculty. They also scheduled a 30 minute meeting with me, as…
Ryan Nguyen and Michael Tobin have the story in the Emerald. While other university’s have been sued for closing frats and expelling students for exercising their first amendment rights to act like fucking morons, UO’s student conduct office cleverly nailed them on a hazing violation instead. Great idea. Read the story for…
Personally I don’t care where it goes, although it wouldn’t look out of place on Nantucket. Just get the damn thing out of the middle of campus. The proposal is to use the site for a classroom/faculty offices building, which sounds perfect. The Campus Planning Committee is meeting tomorrow at…
Michael Tobin has the story of the incident, and what it took to get these public records from UO in the Emerald here: The University of Oregon Police Department released officer body camera footage this Tuesday of a spring term incident during which a student said officers pointed guns at him outside of the…
The RG has the report on today’s arborcide here: Last time this didn’t end well:
A reader asks: … perhaps it is time for this website to focus less on issues we cannot change and more on those we can. Here’s a few to start: 1) Lack of long term academic vision by the administration; 2) Administrative refusal to include faculty as partners in decisions;…