Spoiler alert: If you have not watched the first episode of the Netflix original series “House of Cards” third season, do not listen past minute 13 of this podcast. Also, you should really get on that.

After a brief hiatus, your favorite University of Oregon-based news and social media commentary podcast is back.

In this episode of The Weekly Show, we discuss the UO’s mass meningococcal disease vaccination efforts, talk with Alex about her experience getting the vaccine and the UO’s counterclaim against the survivor of an alleged sexual assault.

Our social media coverage includes #dressgate, runaway llamas, and the first episode of the Netflix original series, “House of Cards” third season. (Again, spoiler alert.)

Follow Dahlia and Alex on Twitter: @dahliabazzaz & @wall2wallachy 

The post Podcast: The Weekly Show with Alex and Dahlia – UO’s counterclaim against rape survivor, campus vaccination efforts, appeared first on Emerald Media.

The University of Oregon began giving out emergency antibiotics at 7 p.m. to ward off bacterial meningococcemia, a meningitis-causing bacteria, to residents of Barnhart, according to UO spokeswoman Julie Brown.

The antibiotics follow the death of acrobatics and tumbling athlete Lauren Jones, who lived in Barnhart. Though Brown could not confirm whether Jones had actually died from bacterial meningococcemia, the UO Health Center staff is offering the medication as a precaution.

“This is a preventive step,” said Brown. “We have reached out to residents of Barnhart as well as student athletes about the prophylactic medication.”

Freshman Benjamin Gonzalez was one of the many students waiting in line for antibiotic treatment on Tuesday night. He heard about the emergency antibiotics when he went downstairs for dinner and saw a crowd standing in the lobby as they waited for the antibiotics.

“They were all freaking out,” Gonzalez said. “They told me something bad had happened.”

Gonzalez learned about Jones’ death through an email sent to each Barnhart resident.

Brown said that antibiotics would be made available to student athletes sometime tomorrow.

Jason Davis, a spokesperson for Lane County Public Health, said that if Jones’ cause of death is confirmed as the result of meningococcemia, the county will begin a full analysis of everyone she came into contact with.

Officer Adam Lillengreen remembers a time he felt unprepared, and it could have cost him.

It was 2010, tucked away in a dark corner of a parking lot off of Kinsrow Avenue in Eugene. Lillengreen was a gunless public safety officer for the University of Oregon’s Campus Safety Department — now known as the University Oregon Police Department. 

Around 2 or 3 a.m., he noticed a shadowy figure who appeared to be smoking out of a pipe. Lillengreen drove his car closer and noticed the man begin to walk away.

He got out of his car and pursued the subject on foot. He was a couple of feet away, flashlight in hand, when he realized it wasn’t pot paraphernalia the subject was holding. 

It was a handgun. The subject was suicidal. 

After some struggle, Lillengreen was able to cuff the man and wait until the Eugene Police Department could arrive for backup. Neither the Lillengreen nor the subject were harmed. But for the UOPD, it’s the “what ifs” that count.

In June 2013, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education granted the UOPD’s request for an armed police force. By October 2013, police officers had guns on their belts during patrol.

The purchase of 26 handguns by UOPD wasn’t an isolated incident. It was another stepping stone in a plan to bulk up security at the UO. Just a few years ago, the UOPD was a campus security department staffed mostly by public safety officers who acted as de facto police officers but without a lot of the same powers.

That changed in 2011 when Oregon Senate Bill 405 granted universities the right to establish campus police departments.

But instead of granting firearm authorization to the UOPD, the State’s Board of Higher Education asked that the UOPD make its case for an armed police force — which included gathering feedback on campus about the possibility of an armed UOPD and putting the PSOs through training to become police officers.

“It was an unusual situation that resulted in the UO creating a police department without the ability to arm its police officers,” said UOPD Public Information Officer Kelly McIver in an email.

According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2012, 91 percent of public universities with a campus police presence have armed officers. Looking at total numbers across the nation, public and private institutions combined, 75 percent of college campuses have armed police forces.

“On most days, the University of Oregon would, as a standalone entity, rank as the 18th largest city in Oregon…The UO’s 295-acre campus boasts almost 5,000 residents and attracts more than 30,000 students, employees and visitors each day,” wrote UOPD Police Chief Carolyn McDermed in a 2013 recommendation for arming UOPD staff.

Though UOPD officers haven’t had to fire a gun yet while on duty, most proponents of the UOPD’s armed police force, like McDermed, argued that “industry standard tools” would provide a safer working environment for officers and offer a quick response to campus distress. During the UOPD’s campaign to get its officers armed, several police departments around the state, including the EPD and Springfield Police Department, confirmed that access to arms would be vital to campus safety.

The primary goal of arming UOPD’s sworn police officers was to improve the quality and quantity of police response on campus. In McDermed’s recommendation to the university administration, she cited mass-shootings at universities like Virginia Tech in 2007 as a hypothetical situation in which an armed police force on campus would be able to respond faster than relying on the city.

Before the UOPD was armed, Chief Patrol Officer of the EPD, Sam Kamkar, said the EPD used to get at least one call per day with a request for backup — which could take anywhere between two minutes to two hours, said UOPD officer Jared Davis.

In her recommendation, McDermed cited a time in May 2013, when “several 911 calls reported a man repeatedly shooting off a gun inside a UO-owned house. Unarmed UOPD officers responded quickly, and waited at a safe distance for Eugene police officers to respond some time later.”

Today, the UOPD sometimes assists EPD when incidents occur near campus, and the relationship between the two departments could come full circle with another contract to allow UOPD jurisdiction to extend to West University, but no concrete plans have been made.

In the meantime, the UOPD is planning on phasing out its PSO program.  Currently, the UOPD has five police officers on duty, with several others on the way who are either going through the state’s police academy or undergoing field training with the EPD. Only three public safety officers remain with the department. The Emerald previously reported in September 2013 that this armed police force would cost the UO an extra $100,000 per year. This additional cost does not affect tuition.

Since the UOPD’s transition, Officer Lillengreen went through additional training and became a police officer with the UOPD in January 2014.

“As a PSO, I was going out and stopping people who had warrants for their arrests, or sex offenders that were not compliant with sex offense registry,” Lillengreen said. “We were always doing law enforcement activities — but now we’ve been fully trained for them.”

A previous version of this article mistakenly referred to UOPD chief Carolyn McDermed by the first name of Kelly. The Emerald regrets the error.

Follow Dahlia Bazzaz on Twitter @dahliabazzaz

This week, there were more drug violations on campus, and no liquor violations.

Liquor violations: 0

Drug violations: 11

Trespassing: 3

Theft: 2

Bike Theft: 0

Multiple cases of harassment and theft occurred on the west side of campus in the residence halls. Two cases of criminal mischief occurred at the UO Riverfront Park and at Autzen Stadium. The University of Oregon Police Department’s campus crime log recorded a total of 12 incidents in the past week.

Warning: some of the content in this episode of The Weekly Show could be triggering to some listeners.

This week on the Emerald news podcast, reporters Dahlia Bazzaz and Alexandra Wallachy discuss how a resolution developed by ASUO Senator and Delta Tau Delta Andrew Lubash could halt the expansion of Greek life at the University of Oregon.

The resolution was based on numbers released by UO psychology professor Jennifer Freyd that revealed female members of Greek life at the UO were three times more likely to be sexually assaulted during their time in college.

In the latter half of the show, we discuss Jon Stewart leaving The Daily Show, Governor John Kitzhaber’s resignation, and the Twitter hashtag #breakupwithafilm.

The Student Press Law Center published a post Tuesday afternoon saying that the University of Oregon “probably” had a valid explanation in obtaining the counseling records of a student that filed a lawsuit against the university in January.

A part of the lawsuit claims that the university violated the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act when it pulled information about the plaintiff’s sessions with a UO Health Center therapist following her alleged sexual assault by three men’s basketball players in March 2014.

The university responded by saying that the collection of the records was legal because it related to the plaintiff’s claim of emotional distress in the lawsuit. University officials also said that they did not review the records.

Attorney Adam Goldstein, who chimed in on the SPLC’s statement today, agrees. Goldstein cited a section in the Code of Federal Regulations that allows the disclosure of a student’s relevant records without prior consent if “a parent or student initiates legal action against” the university.

The CFR is the way the Department of Education carries out interpretations of the FERPA, which was passed by Congress in 1974.

SPLC Executive Director Frank LoMonte said that while the university may be within its legal boundaries in this situation, “it’s a valid observation that universities are over-compliant with FERPA when they are trying to keep secret.”

The SPLC’s post suggested that the information found in the student’s counseling records were pulled to find any inconsistencies with the plaintiff’s claim of mental distress.

A second female University of Oregon student was exposed to and contracted the meningococcemia, according to the Register Guard.

UO students who may have come into contact with the student were contacted via email and text message. The student, who was living on campus in Earl Hall, is in stable condition at a hospital in Oregon.

The Health Center’s website reported that the risk of someone else contracting the potentially fatal bacterial blood infection was relatively slim.

More to come.

After three consecutive weeks of technical difficulties, we are proud to announce the very first episode of the Emerald News Podcast.

Emerald reporters Dahlia Bazzaz and Alexandra Wallachy discuss news events from week 4 at the University of Oregon and beyond, including: a leak of 22,000 UO admin. records, a student allegedly filming a pornographic video at an Oregon State University library, a social media wrap-up and Alex’s love for Stockard Channing. Did we mention Stockard Channing?

Follow Alex and Dahlia on Twitter: @dahliabazzaz & @wall2wallachy

Governor John Kitzhaber will be lecturing on equity and opportunity in the state of Oregon Thursday night at 4:30 p.m. in room 184 of the University of Oregon School of Law. The talk is part of a statewide tour of colleges, the most recent stop being Oregon State University.

According to Kitzhaber’s press secretary, Chris Pair, the governor is using talking points from his inaugural speech on Jan. 12 as the base for his lecture.  He will also speak about his 36-year-long political career in Oregon, which included serving as the president of Oregon’s state senate and serving as Oregon’s governor for an unprecedented four times.

Check out the finished story here.

Follow @dailyemerald and reporters @dahliabazzaz and @smgreenstone for live coverage of the lecture. 

During week two, the University of Oregon’s football team lost the national championship game–but what we lost at the AT&T stadium, we gained in drug violations: exactly 22 incidents of illegal drug activity were recorded this week on the UO Police Department’s campus crime log.

Most of the incidents occurred in Walton Complex, followed by Bean and the Jaqua Center.

Reaction to the game loss was relatively tame, save for the hijinks of a few pyromaniacs. The UOPD and Eugene Police responded to four different fires on Jan. 12. UOPD mostly assisted EPD with off-campus flames, though one of the incidents involved some grass and a sock being lit on fire outside of the northern Living Learning Center building.

Other than natty-related catharsis and dorm room mischief, it was business as usual crime-wise this week. Two bikes were reported stolen along with three thefts.

And if you’re still sad about the game, it could be worse. Back in Ohio, 89 fires were reported and the celebration riots got so unruly that police had to pepper spray the crowd. One person even went to the hospital for it.

Follow Dahlia Bazzaz on Twitter: @dahliabazzaz