Ducks to let regular UO students go upstairs at Jock Box

but just this Thursday at 1:00, for a meeting of the Senate’s Intercollegiate Athletics Committee:

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Word is that SSA Director Steve Stolp and his boss Lorraine Davis will address questions about the effectiveness of the Services for Student Athletes operation, which segregates Duck athletes from regular UO students while making the regular students foot the entire $2.4M bill for the athletes.

Only two of the twelve black male athletes UO admitted in 2008 had graduated by 2015. That’s a one-year anomaly, but from what I’ve seen of the data Stolp and Davis are going to have a hard time showing a positive effect, even using some of the NCAA’s specially cooked up measures. More here:

This is an open UO Senate committee meeting, so anyone can attend. Ignore the signs on the stairs saying “Stop: Authorized use only.” Just don’t ask too many questions. The last time UO student reporters started asking questions, AAD Eric Roedl had them kicked out, Dave Hubin made sure they couldn’t use student funds to pay for the public records, UO redacted the shit out of them anyway, and a few years later the administration subverted the IAC with a toothless, secret PAGIA.

Video shows secret meeting of President and advisors, plan to recruit academically unqualified football players

Last spring Professors Kim Sheehan (Advertising and PAGIA Chair) and Tim Gleason (Journalism and Faculty Athletics Representative) refused to let me attend a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Group on Intercollegiate Athletics, as explained in detail here.

President Mike Gottfredson had set up the PAGIA – with handpicked members – to replace the UO Senate’s elected Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, in the midst of the basketball rape allegations cover-up. The IAC is known for asking tough questions about athletics at UO and keeping the Senate informed. The PAGIA, on the other hand is still meeting in secret, and the administration is still letting athletic director Rob Mullens skip IAC meetings and avoid IAC questions.

UO Matters has now obtained a secret video of what seems to be a PAGIA meeting. It shows some disturbing conversations between the president and his advisors, about a plan to subvert academic standards so that the football coach can recruit the kinds of “student-athlete” transfers needed to get the team back to winning. They lay this all out in explicit detail. Much of the plan is not just a violation of NCAA rules, it is blatantly illegal, as the meeting participants openly acknowledge.

We all know this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and we all know the administration and the NCAA winks and chuckles at it. I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s an outrageous effort to subvert higher education and the proud academic tradition that universities like ours once stood for.

I’m against it. Therefore I felt I had no choice but to post the video below, despite the inevitable retaliation that will follow:

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UO’s “Art of the Athlete” course gave all the athletes A+’s

10/12/2015: Today’s report by the Daily Emerald on this course, here, doesn’t mention that little detail. How did UO’s Faculty Athletics Representative miss this irregularity?

Fortunately for the Ducks, the UO Senate Intercollegiate Athletics Committee discovered this and put an end to it several years ago. The course is now pass/fail.

What other questionable courses are UO’s student-athletes taking? Hard to say. AD Rob Mullens and his designees have refused to meet with the IAC since a few days after Mullens and Mike Gottfredson read the EPD report on the basketball rape allegations, and Gottfredson then appointed his handpicked “Presidential Advisory Group on Intercollegiate Athletics” to take over the IAC’s job. The IAC asked too many questions.

And the PAGIA’s meetings are closed.

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10/23/2014: Report on gut classes for athletes leads UNC to fire nine employees

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