Tag Archives: jock box

 “They spent all the money on the Jacqua Center to kill baby ducks.”

6/1/2011: Only problem is that it will be in Corvallis:

Campus officials are set to build a $14-million Student Success Center, just north of Reser Stadium. It will feature classroom space, computer labs and more room for student tutoring.
More academic help for a growing campus.

Oregon State’s Assistant Vice President, Todd Simmons, explains, “We’re now up to 24,000 students and by all indications we’ll be well up over 25,000, maybe closer to 26,000 students this fall.” At first, the project was going to be just for O-S-U student athletes. That policy at the University of Oregon’s Jaqua Center has angered many non-athletic students.

Reporter Tom Adams asked Simmons, “Given the controversy to your brethren to the south (U-O) over the Jaqua Center–how much did that controversy enter into your thinking here?”

Simmons: “Well, I think as with most things, OSU does its own, follows its own path.”
Provosts say all students will have access to the new center when it opens next year. 

Brubaker-Cole told KVAL, “It’s the perfect timing to have this new building come up for us to expand services and help more students in their success at OSU.”

Meanwhile, here at UO the word is that the subsidy for the Jock Box will be still higher this coming year.

To the left, the sleek, overflowing (but shallow) fountain of the Jacqua Jock Box, symbolizing purity, excess, and athletics. To the right, the broken debris filled fountain in front of the Knight Library, symbolizing the corrupt, dissolute, and empty life of the mind.

Note that the jocks tricked Provost Bean into making the academic side pay for the maintenance of their fountain. I think those literature profs call that irony.

A reader sent me the idea for this visual metaphor a while ago. I’ve hesitated to post it out of fear our administration’s reaction will be to cut a few more RA positions and spend the savings prettying up the library fountain for the graduation ceremonies – which President Lariviere moved to a Monday, without consulting faculty or students, so as not to conflict with a track meet.

3/18/2011: From Bill Graves in the Oregonian:

A group of University of Oregon students today plan to enter a restricted area in the opulent academic center built for athletes by Nike founder Phil Knight and call for opening the building to all students.

Students say the top two floors of the John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, a three-story $42 million glass cube built on campus last year, are reserved for student athletes.

“We just feel it is a physical representation of the separation between students and athletes and how athletes are valued above non-athletic students,” said Janae Schiller, 22, a senior majoring in sociology who plans to take part in the 1 p.m. demonstration.

Schiller said she expects at least five students and possibly dozens at the event, where some students say they are prepared to be arrested. Students say the fact this is the last day of finals may limit participation in the event.

The building, nicknamed the jock box by some on campus, is a public space on public property, Schiller said, but non-athletes are allowed on only the first floor, where there is a classroom, study rooms and a coffee shop.  …

I like Ms Schiller’s priorities: finish finals, *then* occupy a building. Here’s the follow up story – UO let the students in – but didn’t let them hang out on the couches. Strangely, neither Bill Graves story mentions that the athlete only tutoring is paid for by regular student tuition and state funds. $2 million a year. Rachel Bachman covered that story months ago.

“This has been a fairly laissez-faire type of institution where you just kind do what you want to do, … There’s no control, there is no policy. There really is no oversight. People just spend. That’s the inheritance we have here, that’s my inheritance.” … On the university level, Cofer has set up an executive budget committee, an academic affairs budget committee and an administrative budget committee. He has said the budget process will be inclusive and transparent.

10/19/2010: Today the RG prints a story on the Lariviere overtime kerfuffle and Pernsteiner’s attempt to get Lariviere to toe the OUS line on his UO restructuring plan. This is a week after Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week did the hard work getting the audit reports and emails for the stories, and only after the Oregonian has already written an editorial on the overtime.

The RG *still* has not even mentioned the Oregonian story on the annual $2 million UO subsidies for the jock box, or Provost Bean’s op-ed attempting to justify using student tuition and tax revenue to pay those costs. In combination these have nearly 200 comments on OregonLive. To the RG the debate on UO subsidizing athletics simply does not exist!

A few weeks ago the Register Guard editorial board admitted Dave Frohnmayer and Pat Kilkenny had fooled them with their claims that Matt Court would be a moneymaker. But the RG is still refusing to cover the real issues at UO. UO would be a much stronger institution if the administrators knew their decisions were going to get thoroughly aired in public. The RG simply is not doing its job on this.

8/14/2010: German rich guy questions the logic. From Der Spiegel:

Peter Krämer, a Hamburg-based shipping magnate and multimillionaire, has emerged as one of the strongest critics of the “Giving Pledge.” Krämer, who donated millions of euros in 2005 to “Schools for Africa,” a program operated by UNICEF, explained his opposition to the Gates initiative in a SPIEGEL interview. …
Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.
SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?
Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?
SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day.
Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.

8/10/2010: Greg Bolt of the RG has an article on the Jock Box, based on the cost estimates the Oregonian obtained from UO with a public records request. The article does not explain how the tax-deductibility of this sort of donation means that regular taxpayers picked up about half the $42 million. Nor does it explain how UO has an obligation to ensure that gifts further the academic purposes of the University. He does get a quote from Frohnmayer:

Retired UO President Dave Frohnmayer also defended his decision to accept the gift. Calling criticism of the building “both petulant and inaccurate,” he pointed out that the university has more than enough examples of what can be produced when it has to build on the cheap.

“If you want to see what low-balling construction does, just go look at Prince Lucien Campbell (Hall),” Frohnmayer said, referring to one of the least-liked buildings on campus. “Our buildings have to be built to last and they have to be built with class, and the examples of low-balling construction are among the most uninhabitable and undesirable buildings on campus today.”

PLC is pretty bad – but at least it has an academic purpose. There are no faculty offices in the Jock Box.

Frohnmayer’s decision that the Jock Box was consistent with UO’s academic mission would be easier to accept if he didn’t have such a large apparent conflict of interest. At the point Frohnmayer approved the project Knight’s assistant Pat Kilkenny had given $440,000 to Frohnmayer’s Fanconi Foundation, and Dave had appointed him AD to help move the deal forward. About half of Frohnmayer’s pay was coming through private donations laundered through the UO Foundation – donors still unknown. Who was Frohnmayer really working for?

8/9/2010: The Chronicle and several other papers quote Senate Pres Nathan Tublitz on the Jock Box:

Cost of U. of Oregon’s New Center for Athletes Draws New Debate Over Priorities

The $41.7-million cost of the University of Oregon’s new academic center for athletes prices out to more than $1,000 per square foot, about twice as much per square foot as Portland’s priciest condo buildings, according to The Oregonian. The John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, named for a founding board member of Nike and paid for by Philip H. Knight, the company’s chairman, has spurred controversy because of its opulence and exclusivity—most of it is off-limits to nonathletes. “Forty million dollars buys a lot of new faculty, reduced class sizes, better facilities for the rest of campus,” said Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology and president of the University Senate who has previously criticized the role of athletics at the university. Phil Weiler, a university spokesman, countered that “the building was a gift,” and that donors decide where to direct their funds.

The truth is that nearly half of the cost came from taxpayers, because the gift was tax-deductible under the argument that it furthers UO’s academic purposes. Many universities use the “academic purposes” argument to tax athletic donations themselves, requiring that a certain percentage go to academic causes. But not UO. Frohnmayer approved the Jock Box despite substantial costs to the academic side.

Now Phil Knight is planning another similar egofice for the football coaches:

This new expansion would include space for a UO Football Hall of Fame and Museum, a covered parking facility for 300 cars, surface parking for 75 cars, a weight room of at least 20,000 square feet and space for a Duck Shop and ticket offices. In addition, the project would include construction of a new soccer and lacrosse complex after the existing one is moved.

But Phit’s gift does not come without costs. The license agreement requires the university to employ a facilities manager, museum curator, museum receptionist, food service administrator and a senior administrative assistant for football operations — all full time for at least six years. The university also would maintain the facilities, which could become costly. 

The RG says President Lariviere has already approved this:

“I’ve been told repeatedly since I’ve come here that there are coaches in what used to be closets and that sort of thing,” Lariviere said. “It does look to be pretty jammed up. I’m not sure that this would be absolutely the top priority for the university if we were having to pay for the building, but that’s another matter.” 

Actually, UO not only has the right to tax these sorts of donations, it has the duty to do so, because the IRS rules that allow our operations to be tax-exempt require that our non-academic enterprises benefit our academic purposes. This tax-exemption provides a huge benefit to the athletic side. At the moment the coaches have managed to capture every dime of it in higher salaries.