Three AAEO Director candidates to give public talks this week

NOTE: Candidate #1 has withdrawn and the Monday sessions are cancelled:

Campus Visits and Public Presentations

Candidates for the AAEO Director position are scheduled for onsite interviews.  The campus community is invited to attend the public presentation of each candidate on the dates provided below.

Presentation Topic: Building and maintaining campus trust in an AAEO office in an ever changing legal landscape

NOTE: This candidate has withdrawn and these sessions are cancelled:

Monday, May 22, 2017

Candidate 1: Gayla D. Thomas-Dabney
Cover letter
Resume
Feedback survey to be posted following presentation.

Public Presentation:
May 22 @ 1:30-2:30pm
Knight Library Browsing Room

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Candidate 2: Roberto A. Sanabria
Cover letter
Resume
Feedback survey to be posted following presentation.

Public Presentation:
May 23 @ 1:30-2:30pm
EMU 145, Crater Lake South

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Candidate 3: Henry T. Evans
Cover letter
Resume
Feedback survey to be posted following presentation.

Public Presentation:
May 24 @ 1:30-2:30pm
Ford Alumni Center Ballroom

Gottfredson to backdate another Affirmative Action Plan

8/3/2014 update: On Friday UO’s AA Director Penny Daugherty posted UO’s 2014-15 Affirmative Action Plan. Only a month late, which by her standards is not bad. Some years she doesn’t bother to file it at all. The new PDF is here. The stats and hiring goals are at the back. Please, don’t call them quotas, but the UO administration will give your department $90K if you can persuade a new hire to check the right box on Ms Daugherty’s race card, here:

It doesn’t look like Gottfredson has got around to signing off on her latest plan yet, although his PR flacks at Around the O have just announced that his “President’s Diversity Advisory Community Council” will meet Aug 7. It’s got 21 members, but they won’t list any names. Will that be a public meeting? Dream on.

Gottfredson could establish a little credibility on the diversity issue if he replaced Ms Daugherty. But instead it looks like he’s going to keep on backdating documents for her:

6/12/2013. Penny Daugherty to resign as AAEO Director?

That’s the rumor, but instead she’ll probably get another raise. I wonder if she’s going to get UO’s Affirmative Action Plan prepared on time this year? She’s failed to do that almost every year since she was hired, which puts UO out of compliance with federal law. Sometimes she just blows it off entirely. Last year she was late again, though you wouldn’t catch that from President Gottfredson’s signature on it, unless you happened to know he wasn’t hired until August 1, 2012:

 

AAEO Director Daugherty failed to comply with Title IX

That’s my take, from this excellent Josephine Wollington story in the ODE:

“What am I supposed to do again when someone tells me they’ve been sexually assaulted?” …

The 21-year-old UO junior didn’t know she was a mandatory reporter until summer 2011. No written policy, no explanation, she said. “No one knew what they were doing,” she said. “It was so unclear.” 

Drobnick, like her fellow RAs, didn’t know about decades-old laws that require UO employees to report to the administration any case of sexual assault they are aware of. She didn’t know because no one told her. …

UO law professor Cheyney Ryan first expressed his concern about UO’s compliance with Title IX in 2009 to administrators in dozens of emails. The law requires universities to adequately train students and employees to know how and where to report a sexual violence case. …

Not until 2011 did the UO hire a Title IX coordinator — a position required for all universities under Title IX. 

“As we were looking more critically at our compliance in 2011, there were queries, ‘Well, who is the Title IX officer?’” said Penny Daugherty, director of UO’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. “Given that this is the office that deals most clearly with discrimination, it was logical that I would be the Title IX officer. It’s become part of my role.”

AAEO has been a disaster under Ms Daugherty, who has regularly failed to prepare UO’s federally required Affirmative Action plans. More here. Frohnmayer used to backdate them for her, to make it look like UO was in compliance. 2/25/13.

Affirmative Action for women in science?

The NYT raises the question. Several of the NYT panelists mention mentoring and programs to get girls interested in science, as an alternative to heavy handed quotas and hiring preferences. UO has a lot of successful fill the pipeline programs to do that, and is building more. Meanwhile here is some actual data on the UO faculty. CAS Science is at the bottom, and while its TTF is more than representative of the pool (national PHD’s) when it comes to minorities, it is far behind on women. Compare columns 1 and 3. I’ve written before about UO’s UMRP and its peculiar and probably illegal AA efforts. To top off the idiocy, UO’s UMRP does not even apply to women, just to minorities. 10/1/2012.

UO "updates" Affirmative Action Plan

9/24/2012 update: 

From: Penny Daugherty Subject: RE: 2012-2013 AA planDate: September 24, 2012 12:46:33 PM PDT
Cc: Annie Bentz

The reference to October 31, 2010 data in footnote 8 is in error.  I will work with staff to make the necessary correction, and arrange for the copy posted on our webpage to be corrected.  Thanks for bringing this error to my attention.

Penny

9/19/2012 update: As a commenter points out, Randy Geller just got Mike Gottfredson to sign a backdated federal document. I’m no law professor, but I’m told that can be a pretty big deal.

Maybe Gottfredson did this knowingly, figuring it’s a harmless coverup. Or maybe Geller was less than complete in briefing Gottfredson on the long history of this backdating, the OFCCP agent’s statement that this was fraud, and UO’s promises to the OFCCP investigators to stop, and the news stories. He just sent it over for a signature, thinking that by the time Gottfredson figured it all out, he’d be in so deep he’d be part of the JH coverup instead of the cleanup. I guess will find out someday.

9/18/2012 update: On Friday UO posted its 2012-13 Affirmative Action Plan, some 11 weeks late. Frohnmayer used to backdate these plans – once by some 16 months – to make it appear that UO was in compliance with the federal requirement for annual updates. Gottfredson has now done the same. UO promised the OFCCP they would stop doing this several years ago. From an October 2008 ODE story by reporter Jessie Higgins:

She [Penny Daugherty] acknowledged that the phrase, “effective date” is misleading, and that future plans will use an alternate wording. “(This) will eliminate what I can only assume is genuine confusion,” Daugherty said. She added that although the University is required to create a new Affirmative Action Plan annually, there is not a specific date it must be completed. 

But a former official in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program said that is simply not true. 

“The plan is suppose to be updated annually; it is a 12-month plan,” said Harold Busch, the former OFCCP Director of Program Operations. “That means (the contractor) needs to have a new plan in effect at that date. You can choose the date … but you must be consistent.”

Effective July 1? Really?

From: Penny Daugherty Subject: RE: 2012-2013 AA planDate: August 13, 2012 5:23:52 PM PDT
To: [ ]
Cc: Annie Bentz
Hello [ ],

Preparation of the plan was a bit delayed.  However, it was submitted last week for administrative review and presidential approval.  I expect to have the updated 2012-13 Plan posted soon.

Penny

As usual, the job group with the most glaring minority under-representation is UO’s central administration. Hardly a shock, given their good-old-boy hiring strategy. And no one familiar with Penny Daugherty’s work will be surprised at a comparison of footnote 8 from this new plan with footnote 6 from last year’s plan. Yup, both plans are based on the same 2010 UO workforce data, now 2 years out of date. Or maybe that’s a typo. (That’s what an email I just got from Daugherty claims.) Or maybe the whole damn plan is a typo. Either way, I’m sure you’re as shocked as me to see that the competent legal review by Randy Geller’s office, which apparently held up approval of this Plan for 8 weeks or so, missed this little problem.

2012-2013 plan:

2011-2012 plan:


9/10/2012 update: Now 10 weeks late, and Randy’s not answering questions as to why. UO can’t bother to comply with basic federal affirmative action law, but our administrators have plenty of time to compile 5 year “Diversity Action Plans” and plenty of money for the UMRP and to hire consultants to train “diversity search advocates” to sit on faculty hiring committees.

8/20/2012. It’s now 7 weeks late, hardly the first time Penny Daugherty has failed to meet the federal OFCCP deadline for our Affirmative Action Plan. She tells me she’s submitted it, so presumably it’s now sitting on Randy Geller’s desk, waiting for some of that sweet “competent legal review”. Check that UMRP part extra carefully, Randy.

Still no UO affirmative action plan

Federal law requires annual updates, the 2012-13 plan was due 7/1/2012. The OFCCP has investigated Penny Daugherty’s AAEO office before for their repeated failure to do these plans, and for backdating them to make it look like they had. Last year Lariviere signed it late and just left off the date. When the plan is filed I expect it will show what it always has shown – UO’s hiring of tenure track faculty is generally representative of the pool of available PhD’s by race and ethnicity, but is low on women in science. The Johnson Hall executive administration, which frequently exploits a loophole in federal law that allows them to hire their friends without a search or even a public announcement will have substantial underrepresentation of minorities. 8/2/2012.

Penny Daugherty late with Affirmative Action Plan again

7/3/2012 update:

I got interested in public records matters back in 2006, after Melinda Grier and AA Director Penny Daugherty tried to charge me $200 to see copies of UO’s Affirmative Action plans – documents which state clearly on the cover that they are to be made freely available on request. Most universities post these on the web, but it took the threat of a motion to the UO Senate to get UO to hand them over.

When they did I found out why they were so secretive. UO’s AA Office routinely filed the plans late – even skipping some years. Dave Frohnmayer would then backdate them to make it look like UO was in compliance with the federal law requiring annual updates.

Eventually I was able to convince AA to post the plans on the web, and at least try and do the updates annually. This year Penny Daugherty tells me the plan will only be a month or so late. When it is done, I expect it will show what it has always shown – UO’s hiring of tenure track faculty is generally representative of the pool of available PhD’s by race and ethnicity.

On the other hand the Johnson Hall executive administration, which frequently exploits a loophole in federal law that allows them to hire administrators without a search or even a public announcement that there is a job opening, will not be representative of the available pool of administrators.

The problem is not lack of resources. UO’s AAEO office was already larger than of many other comparable schools, and their spending has increased from $432,000 for the 2009 FY to $635,000 for 2012. Report here. They spent $13,000 on conference registration fees, and $10,000 on out of state travel. Add in the $1 million or so budget for OIED, and you begin to see how expense and mismanaged UO’s diversity efforts have been.

7/8/2011 update: This time she’s only a week late – Penny has now posted the signed 2011-2012 AA Plan on her website. The quick take for those who enjoy the sordid business of classifying Americans by race and gender: Faculty hiring is broadly representative on race/ethnicity, bit less on gender. UO’s higher administration executives remain a problem:

 One question I’ve got is why the UO AAEO office has not yet adopted the new multi-racial categories. The OFCCP has been recommending these for several years now. More on this later.

7/6/2011: At the bottom of every UO job ad it says “The University of Oregon is an EO/AA/ADA institution …” Sort of important stuff, if you are looking for work, or serving on a search committee.

Penny Daugherty is in charge of the AAEO office. She has two main responsibilities: Update UO’s Affirmative Action Plan every year with new numbers, and approve exceptions to the regular hiring rules. In practice, this means giving the wink-and-nod to appointments for UO administrators and their kids without requiring an AA compliant public posting and competitive search.

Ms Daugherty has failed to update the AA plan on time 7 out of the past 8 years. Some years she just blows it off completely. She’s late again this year – and won’t say when or if she will update. It’s not about resources – she has nearly twice the staff of comparable offices. Her incompetence has lead to one OFCCP investigation of UO, so far.

But she must be doing a hell of a job with the wink-and-nod. Our administration just gave her a 7% raise, to $105,316.

New University Ombuds appointed

at OSU: 

The university ombuds position at OSU is designed to serve the campus community by acting as a designated neutral, independent and confidential referral resource in resolution of concerns. The ombuds is not an advocate for any individual or the university, but rather acts as an advocate for fairness and healthy conflict resolution, according to Sabah Randhawa, OSU provost and executive vice president.

Given the many failures of UO’s AAEO office under Penny Daugherty (despite their bloated budget) UO probably needs this too. Or maybe Ms Daugherty’s new boss Jamie Moffitt, will do a review of the AAEO office, retire her quickly, and get someone who can actually do the job.

RG on UO hiring: 26% more students, 9% more faculty, 36% more administrators.

10/23/2011: Very interesting RG story by Greg Bolt, on UO’s role in Lane County employment:

Employment at the UO has grown across the board, with increases seen in nearly every job category. The university has more teachers, professors, administrators, clerical staff, laborers and technicians today than it did before the recession began.
But the growth hasn’t been even across those categories. For example, the number of faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track grew by 9 percent between 2001 and 2010, while the UO sharply ramped up hiring of nontenured faculty, increasing it by 32.5 percent. …
The UO also has hired more administrators, whose ranks grew 36 percent over the past 10 years. Over the same time, the number of classified employees — front-line workers in clerical, technical and maintenance jobs — grew 22 percent and enrollment 26 percent.
The growth in administrative jobs has drawn criticism, from front-line classified workers and faculty who think the UO has bloated its managerial ranks at the expense of other needs. But Penny Daugherty, the UO’s affirmative action director who also coordinates non-classified hiring, said it’s more a matter of catching up. …

Enrollment up 26%, TT faculty up 9%, and administrators up 36%.

And Penny Daugherty is now the highest level UO administrator who will publicly comment on administrative bloat. That is what Harry Truman would call passing the buck, President Lariviere.

updated: You can’t make this shit up

3/9/2011: Comments are heavily in favor of the surplus office and some obscure but important sounding A/R thing. Also support for a dedicated staff training room. Makes sense. Then for video conferencing for central admin – doesn’t everyone use skype for that? Here’s one on the Diversity police academy idea:

“Let’s spend the money on scholarships and fellowships for students in underrepresented groups instead, or on outreach programs like the one Economics runs in the summers.”  Mary Jaeger

Also, some dog-hating economist railing against the cute bomb-sniffing puppy proposal. What’s PETA’s stance on this one?

3/8/2011: Comments on Frances Dyke’s “Seeds of Change” proposals are due tomorrow, here. Nothing yet in favor of the canine, but there is this posted, in favor of Annie Bentz’s plan to train “search advocates” who will sit on faculty hiring committees to sniff out “unconscious bias”:

“I write to express my support for the Seeds of Change, Building Diversity Proposal. The project represents the collaborative, best thinking of individuals from many campus units, all to further the end of diversifying our professoriate by impacting the search process from beginning to end. The project is well constructed, involves people on the “frontlines” of diversity and equity issues on this campus, and is a concrete response to a longstanding challenge, ie, diversifying who we hire as our faculty. I urge you to support the proposal and the people seeking to promote change.”  Mia Tuan

Penny Daugherty’s AAEO office is already substantially larger and more expensive than what other campuses have, and they can’t even fill out their Affirmative Action plan on time. She wants more money for this? We’ve received one anonymous comment opposed:

UO Matters: The issue of recruiting women in the sciences raised in ‘seeds of change diversity’ narrative  is a serious one and deserves serious attention. That being said, using one of the most difficult recruitment areas to justify a campus-wide police force of indoctrinated diversity advocates forced onto academic search committees is heavy-handed and worse, unnecessary.

Aside from women in the sciences, no major category of unclassified employees outside the immediate control of Johnson Hall is underrepresented for women and minorities, so why doesn’t the administrative side of the campus clean up its own act before sending out diversity police to the rest of us?

Funding for administration has increased more than twice as fast as for academic instruction, despite having done much worse with respect to diversity, so money isn’t the problem for administration. Funding and success in diversity are obviously inversely related on our campus. If anyone in the central administration is listening, please don’t send any more of your plans to help. They aren’t needed and we can’t afford them. Just send the money for the excessive increase in administrative funding.

Ironically, the most discriminatory, illegal comment I’ve ever heard on a search committee was made by one of the public proponents of this ‘seeds of change’ plan, a person who questioned whether a male, white, Mormon who had resigned an equivalent senior position at an AAU university better than the UO to take a two-year appointment to manage an orphanage-school-clinic for the indigent in Central America could be ‘sensitive’ to our campus culture, despite his long record of success on another aau campus. A currently sitting vice president repeated the same ‘concern’, and complaints from two members of the search committee to our former campus President were ignored, and both of those who made the comment are now senior members of our central administration. God save us. Petronius Arbiter.

2/28/2011: Frances Dyke’s “seeds of change” proposals. She wants comments by 3/9. I only read two, but I know this one is best:

Having a UODPS explosive detection canine would also provide the University of Oregon with a great professional recognition tool. Explosive detection canines are generally well liked and most always tend to have a gentle demeanor. The University of Oregon would help establish itself as a more professional public safety agency, by having an explosive detection canine as a member of its staff.

Affirmative Action Director Penny Daugherty‘s proposal is also a winner – if not quite as cuddly. Have Annie Bentz train “search advocates” who will sit on faculty hiring committees to sniff out “unconscious bias”:

Develop and offer a “diversity leadership academy” to train “search advocates” who will serve on search committees and actively promote diversity and affirmative action principles throughout the search process by sharing information, facilitating discussion of unconscious and unintentional bias throughout the search process, recommending inclusive/affirmative strategies, supporting full committee and stakeholder participation, and consulting with the Office of Affirmative Action & Equal Opportunity as needed.

Given the critical nature of this initiative, particularly as it relates to faculty appointments, the effort related to faculty hiring is already underway. An ambitious timetable has been established for developing a pilot “diversity leadership academy” to train “search advocates” to be available to serve on faculty searches beginning in 2011-2012. 

How about just spending the $150,000 on a new faculty hire? Glad she left the link for anonymous reporting of financial irregularities right next to the list of proposals.

Affirmative Action late again

11/10/2010: I used to be a skeptic about Affirmative Action. But the rules boil down to this: have a public announcement of job openings and an open search – or a good explanation for why not. If you are spending taxpayer’s money, report your hiring practices and outcomes to the feds once a year in an AA plan. Who could have a problem with that? UO does.

Under Director Penny Daugherty, UO’s Affirmative Action Office has a long history of failing to prepare federally required Affirmative Action Plans, and then trying to cover this up.

UO has now beefed up the office with 2 new hires: Anne Bonner and Judith Rideout. Ms Rideout apparently has a lot of expertise preparing AA plans. The office is now considerably overstaffed relative to comparable schools, and here’s hoping Ms Daugherty is – finally – headed for retirement.

Meanwhile, the current plan is out of date once again. The 2010-2011 plan should have been posted July 1 and is now over 3 months late. The federal OFCCP has warned Ms Daugherty about this before, and now she is again refusing to answer emails about when it will be ready. If you are hiring, be sure and ask her if this puts UO at risk when it comes to AA compliance.

Seems like every time Ms Daugherty fails to do the update, Frances Dyke gives her another raise. She’s currently at $99,814.

UO still needs a General Counsel

8/1/2010: The job ad says apply by 7/8 for full consideration, but there’s still no sign that UO has managed to find a taker for the General Counsel position. It’s now more than three months since Melinda Grier was fired. Meanwhile Doug Park is getting a $1400 stipend tacked onto his $10,000 monthly salary, for doing her job.

Grier is still on the payroll at $15,392 a month, with no responsibilities other than prepare for her fall class on Employment Discrimination. Of course, now her salary is being charged to the academic side, rather than Central Administration. (Actually, not. Central is still paying it.) So far, 3 students:

I assume she’ll start with the Joe Wade / John Moseley case that led to the creation of the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity – but who knows, maybe that’s still a sore subject for her? Maybe she’ll have a section on AA law, and explain the potential consequences of UO’s Affirmative Action plan being, once again, out of date?

Student Affairs promotions

7/15/2010: A reader points us to this announcement of a reorganization in the Student Affairs office. Looks pretty straightforward to me.

These “Notices of Intent to Promote” are required by UO’s Affirmative Action Plan – which was once again illegally backdated, and is now out of date yet again. As is the notice – the promotions took effect July 1. This isn’t a “Notice of intent” it’s a “Notice we already did this and forgot to tell anyone”.

I used to be a skeptic about AA. But the rules boil down to this: have public announcement of the job opening and an open search, or a good explanation for why not. Who could have any problem with that? And what does it take to get UO to follow the affirmative action laws?  Given Penny Daugherty‘s history, a new AA Director is step one.

I notice that AAEO lists two vacant positions on their website, but does not have any active searches. Anyone know what is going on there?

OSU

5/4/2010: Lots of OSU visitors lately. Sorry, we got nothing for you, just UO stuff. Get your own blog! Wait, here’s a copy of the OSU Affirmative Action plan. Your Associate General Counsel Charles E. Fletcher tried to sell this to us, and said he didn’t want it posted online. We got it free, and here it is. Sorry Mr. Fletcher, you just don’t understand our business model. FWIW, it’s a much more professional job than the UO AA Plan and from what I can tell your AA budget is about half what Penny Daugherty charges UO. Let’s not even mention UO’s Vice President for Diversity Charles Martinez and his budget – it’s a crime. You should be proud. Go Beavers.

What it takes to get UO to follow the Affirmative Action law?

1/29/2010: Also see here. AAEO Director Penny Daugherty only started working on this draft because of pressure from the OFCCP and, perhaps, the Oregon DOJ. What is going on?

Dear Attorney General Kroger:

As the email below indicates, the UO General Counsel’s office has denied my request for a fee waiver for a copy of the current working draft of UO’s 2009-2010 Affirmative Action Plan. As a federal contractor, federal regulations require UO to prepare AA plans, update them annually, and make copies available “for inspection and copying”. The relevant regulations, which derive from several different federal laws and which are available at http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/index.htm repeatedly say:

The affirmative action program shall be reviewed and updated annually.

and

The full affirmative action program shall be available to any employee or applicant for employment for inspection upon request. The location and hours during which the program may be obtained shall be posted at each establishment.

As your office knows, UO has not updated its affirmative action plans since sometime in October, 2008, though that plan was apparently then backdated and signed by UO President Frohnmayer to read “effective Jan 1 2008.”

Given that this working draft is therefore the closest thing UO has to a valid Affirmative Action Plan, I think it is clearly in the public interest to make it available for inspection without a fee, as these federal regulations rather clearly envision would be the case, had UO complied with them.

Indeed it would seem odd for the Oregon DOJ to hold UO to a lesser standard of disclosure, given that they haven’t complied with these regulations, than the federal government would hold them to if they had followed the rules.

Therefore this is a petition that you order UO General Counsel, and Oregon Special Assistant Attorney General Melinda Grier to waive this proposed fee and make this document available for inspection without further delay or charge.

Sincerely,

Professor X