Tag Archives: Intercollegiate Athletics Committee

Post-live blog:

I zoomed in for most of this. The most real part was Rob Mullens talking about possible NCAA cost-cutting measures. Cutting student-athlete scholarships was on the list, reducing the number of assistant coaches was not.

5/23/2020: The Senate turned this committee over to the President’s office back in 2016 or so, because Rob Mullens refused to work with it and as Senate Pres I was concerned that faculty might get in legal trouble for failing to regulate athletics, as happened at UNC.

Now it’s another toothless administrative group. Tune in to watch:

Intercollegiate Athletics Advisory Committee

Zoom login info: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/92187710415
Meeting ID: 921 8771 0415

Agenda:
1. Update PAC12 work groups, fall planning — Rob Mullens

2. Academic successes/challenges in remote learning for student-athletes — Steve Stolp

3. Update on PAC12 Presidents Meeting/NIL & soliciting committee feedback/priorities —President Schill

3/10/2017 update: InsideHigherEd has the bracket here:

A reminder that not all coaches exploit their players as much as the Ducks. This tongue-in-cheek bracket is based on the teams “Academic Progress Rate”, an easily scammed measure designed by the NCAA to make big-time college sports took good, and help their coaches get bigger bonuses. More on it here.

3/10/2017: Can Mike Schill and Andy Karduna’s new IAAC help UO’s student-athletes?

Kenny Jacoby had a long piece in the Emerald yesterday on the history of the IAC, PAGIA, and IAAC. The story starts with this:

Connor Johnson, a former longsnapper on the Oregon football team, said it’s a “bummer” how many athletes have to make decisions they don’t want to make due to conflicts with sports.

Almost all the time, he said — whether it’s being unable to enroll in certain majors or take classes that conflict with their practice schedules — athletes are asked to put sports above their education.

“It would be really nice to have the academic people looking out for the athletes so that they’re actually getting a decent education and what they were promised out of high school,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he would be in favor of some faculty oversight when it comes to how the athletic department spends its $120 million budget. Because all the athletic department’s decisions, he said, boil down to money.

It was the Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee’s attempt in the fall of 2013 to investigate similar complaints from student-athletes about UO’s Services for Student Athletes – including claims that revenue-sport minority athletes were particularly poorly treated – that was the immediate cause of former UO President Gottfredson’s decision to allow the athletic department and SSA Director Steve Stolp to stop coming to IAC meetings, and then to replace the IAC with the secret PAGIA – although the athletic department had been unhappy with the IAC for years.

I went to the first meeting of the new IAAC last week. AD Rob Mullens and SSA Director Steve Stolp gave the same canned presentations that they used to present to the IAC. I still remember the first time I heard Mullens brag about how graduation rates for UO student athletes were the same as for non-athletes at an IAC meeting. It’s well known that students in the non-revenue sports – particularly women in sports like tennis and soccer – have excellent graduation rates. The problem is the revenue sport athletes, who are pushed by their coaches to train more and study less. So I asked Mullens if he would break those graduation rates out by race, or gender, or for the revenue sports.

He wouldn’t, and he got mad when I pressed him on it. (I eventually got the numbers from Roger Thompson’s office, and now they are supposed to be posted on-line.) So we’ll see if Karduna’s IAAC is any more successful at dealing with the big-money people from the Duck athletics enterprise than the IAC was. It’s not off to a good start.

Will Campbell has the report on today’s Senate meeting, in the Daily Emerald here:

My amendment to keep the IAC in reserve failed narrowly, and I then voted with the ayes to replace the Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee with a purely advisory IAAC. I regard the agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

The Senate’s new blog has a post here on the proposed IAAC, complete with a helpful set of links from Andy Karduna.

Anyone can read the blog, but you need a UO email address to log in and post comments. Please try it out!

Mike Gottfredson’s pick for Faculty Athletics Representative Tim Gleason (Journalism) and current Senate IAC chair Andy Karduna (Human Phys) are going to present the Senate with a proposal to replace the Senate’s Intercollegiate Athletics Committee with a “Presidential IAAC” that the administration can control. See below for details. Given the long history at UO and other universities of the failure of shared governance when it comes to big-time athletics, I am considering proposing the following resolution instead:

Whereas: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury and a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object;

Resolved: That the University of Oregon Faculty and Senate declares that all connection between the Duck Athletic Department and the University of Oregon’s academic mission is and ought to be totally dissolved. We renounce any pretense that the Senate or the Faculty operating through the institutions of shared governance has any influence over academic matters involving Duck Athletics. We dissolve the University of Oregon Intercollegiate Athletics Committee and we refuse to replace it. We leave all responsibility for academic matters peculiar to the NCAA and Intercollegiate Athletics to the UO President and UO’s Faculty Athletics Representative, who serves at the President’s pleasure and who does not represent the Faculty. We advise all faculty to refuse to serve in any role connected to athletics including presidential advisory committees and special athletics admit committees. We encourage all faculty to make their best efforts to advise and educate those athletes who take their classes just as they would any student, and to catch a few games if they have time.

Further Resolved: That the UO Senate asks the UO administration to follow our lead on this, and shift their own time, efforts, and resources away from promoting, apologizing for, and defending Duck athletics in the press and the courts, and back towards doing more to help advance UO’s academic mission.

Here are my references for an upcoming Senate meeting on the IAC charge, so I’ll have them in a convenient place. In chronological order. I’ll add more later. My old list of athletics docs is here.

• 2001-2004 Athletics Task Force Report. A thorough, well researched, inclusive, and mostly failed attempt to strengthen UO faculty governance over athletics and get some benefits for the academic side. Authors included President Dave Frohnmayer, Athletics Director Bill Moos, Nathan Tublitz (Bio), Jim Earl (English), etc.
• 2004 (current) Senate IAC charge and membership, passed in 2004 in reaction to above. Senate IAC archives including minutes. Additional Senate athletic document archives. Old Senate IAC charge and useful definitions of terms.
• 4/19/2012 IAC meeting on the IAC charge. Bob Berdahl, Rob Mullens, and Jim O’Fallon were trying to gut the IAC. The official recording of the meeting (in lieu of minutes, made with the knowledge of all in the room) is here as an MP3. The powerpoint I am discussing, which put Jim O’Fallon (Law, longtime UO Faculty Athletics Representative) in a tizzy, is here.  
• 2012 emails between IAC Chair Nathan Tublitz and Interim UO President Bob Berdahl, in which Nathan explains a few things about shared governance to Bob, here.
• UO runs athletic “special admits” through a special committee, refuses to allow IAC participation or membership on that committee. (Senate motion.)
• 2015 FAR election legislation
• Some history of the 2014 Presidential Advisory Group on Intercollegiate Athletics (PAGIA). John Canzano’s report in the Oregonian.
• 2016 draft of the proposed charge for a presidential Intercollegiate Athletics Advisory Committee (IAAC) to replace the IAC, written by Andy Karduna (Human Phys and IAC Chair) and Tim Gleason (SOJC and FAR).
• Emails to IAC about IAAC, suggesting the faculty and Senate stop pretending we can influence athletics, and Gleason responses.

The IAC’s charge and membership are here.

AGENGA

2015/2016 Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, Location: HEDCO 340

Day: Wednesday, January 6, 2016, Time: 2 pm

Tentative Schedule

2:00     Review and approval of minutes from last meeting

2:05     Chair report

2:15     Overview of Athletic Department NCAA and Pac-12 Compliance Activities

Jody Sykes, Senior Assoc. Athletic Director, Chief Compliance Officer

Tim Gleason, Faculty Athletics Representative 3:00

3:00     Discussion about revising the committee charge

10/28/2014: The Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee voted today to approve the following resolution, over the objections of Professors Margie Paris (Law) and Kim Sheehan (Advertising):

Resolved:

The IAC affirms its support for the Senate Task Force on Sexual Assault Prevention recommendation #1.4, and will work to interpret and implement it.

[That recommendation states: 

1.4. Empower the Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (IAC) so that it can address
sexual violence issues as they pertain to athletics:

The elected Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (IAC) is key to implementing education
about sexual violence. The 2014 NCAA report “Addressing Sexual Assault and Interpersonal
Violence: Athletics’ Role in Support of Healthy and Safe Campuses,” emphasizes the
importance of Athletics’ collaboration with the rest of the campus. The policy and practice of
faculty legislative involvement in oversight of intercollegiate athletics at the University of
Oregon date back to October 5, 1895. At that time, the Faculty Assembly, meeting with the
University President, voted to create the University Committee on Athletics. In September 1902,
the faculty added undergraduate students and alumni to the committee.24 The Intercollegiate
Athletics Committee of the University Senate operated in its current form for several decades
until former UO President Michael Gottfredson announced that the Athletic Department would
no longer meet with the IAC. Shared governance, an ideal and policy of the University of
Oregon since the adoption of its charter nearly 140 years ago, is essential to the adoption of
policies and practices that will reduce sexual violence at UO. It is essential that the University
President instruct the Athletic Department to cooperate with the Senate IAC on this important
matter. This cooperation must include a willingness to provide requested information and
cooperate with suggested programs, particularly on matters that can reduce instances of sexual
assault perpetrated by, or on, student athletes as well as promulgating more generally values and imagery regarding gender and sexuality that may promote or reduce sexual violence. The goal of a safe education for students, in a university that is free of the scourge of sexual violence, can only be achieved if all parts of the University are told that they must engage with the shared
governance structures that are dedicated to that education.]

This recommendation requires cooperation with the Athletics Department. The Athletic Department is currently not cooperating with the IAC.

Therefore we request that the Senate pass our charge, after review, as legislation. [Legislation would require that Interim President Coltrane accept, or explain his objections, potentially to a faculty assembly].

Given the urgency, we ask that the Senate Executive Committee work to get this done by November 19th, 2014.

KMTR TV has a report on the meeting here:

Paris was Senate President last year, and Sheehan is the chair of the “President’s Advisory Group on Intercollegiate Athletics” which President Gottfredson established the day after he finally picked up the EPD report on the basketball rape allegations. The timeline is here:

April 14: The EDP tells UO that their investigation is complete. Under the Clery Act UO was required to begin its own investigation “immediately” after learning of the allegations, but certainly no later than the conclusion of the police investigation. Any UO investigation would have started with the EPD report. But despite EPD requests, UO did not even pick up a copy of the report until April 28. (April 24 in some reports.) That’s 50 days after Gottfredson knew of the alleged rape.

April 21: UO General Counsel Randy Geller tells President Gottfredson he is resigning. The campus is not told until May 5.

April 25: Deadline for basketball season tickets and donations.

Season ticket application deadline & half of DAF donation is due.
Priority points calculated for season ticket and single game benefits.

April 28: UO finally picks up its copy of the investigation from the EPD. (April 24 in some reports.)

April 29: UO’s official “Around the O” blog reports that UO Professor and co-founder of the UO Coalition to End Sexual ViolenceJennifer Freyd (Psychology) has gone to the White House for the announcement of new Title IX rules strengthening universities sexual assault reporting and prevention efforts.

April 29: President Gottfredson suddenly announces he will not require AD Rob Mullens or other athletic department employees to meet with the UO Senate’s athletic oversight and advisory committee, the IAC. Quoting a report by IAC chair Rob Illig (Law) that was never approved by the IAC or the Senate, Gottfredson says he will establish his own “Athletics Advisory Council” and make his own appointments.

The UO Senate Executive Committee declines to cooperate with Gottfredson’s request for nominations to his AAC, until further discussion. Details and documents here.

Sheehan and Paris had the opportunity to speak at length and explain their opposition to this motion. [A recording is available on request, if I can figure out how to get it off my phone]. After more than an hour of discussion, the IAC voted to end debate and then voted to pass the resolution.

10/27/24: IAC to hold emergency public meeting on athletics and sex assault prevention

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