The University of Oregon Faculty Senate will only see a minor change in leadership next year. Senate President Bill Harbaugh will be next year’s Senate vice president and president-elect after he ran unopposed for the position. Harbaugh was elected to the position at the Faculty Senate meeting on Wednesday.

Candidates nominate themselves to be elected vice president for 2017-2018 and then become president for the 2018-2019 year. Harbaugh was the only candidate for Senate vice president next year.

In a role reversal, Chris Sinclair, this year’s vice president will take over Harbaugh’s position next year and Harbaugh will serve as the vice president.  

“I get along really well with Chris Sinclair and I think the combination of the two of us is a good combination,” Harbaugh said in an interview with the Emerald.

Nominations for vice president/president-elect were allowed until the last minute, right before the vote, but nobody volunteered. Harbaugh said that this is likely because of the amount of work required to be president for not a lot of money.

Senate members still voted, even though Harbaugh was the only candidate. Sinclair only asked members to vote if they were in favor. The majority voted for Harbaugh, but not every Senate member raised their hand.

Harbaugh said he ran again because he did not feel that he had enough time in his one-year tenure as Senate president to do everything he wanted to do.

“You learn a lot doing the president’s job and if we keep rotating the jobs with new people, nobody ever gets enough institutional knowledge to really be able to use that knowledge to change what the university is doing,” he said.

Sinclair is looking forward to being Senate president. He believes the Senate is in a strong state and hopes that everyone continues to take the job of being on the Senate seriously. Sinclair told the Senate that he wants there to be a focus on making good policies.

“I would like us to be known as that university which does produce good policy — produces thoughtful, ethical policy which serves as models for others,” Sinclair said.

Harbaugh said that people are mostly pleased with what he has done as Senate president this year and that not a lot of people wanted to replace him. He said that a couple people did want to run, but did not think they would have enough votes and support.

“The main push back that I have gotten so far has been that I have been too much of a sellout to the administration,” Harbaugh said. “Given my past history people really expected me to be a hell raiser and I haven’t been.”

Senators also handed out UO Senate awards. One non-Senate or university member, Diane Dietz, a former reporter at the Register-Guard, was awarded for her work covering higher education. Other award winners were Senate members Kurt Willcox, Jennifer Freyd, and Lisa Raleigh. At the end of the meeting, Provost Scott Coltrane and Anthropology Professor Paul Simonds were both recognized for their service to the university.

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The Bias Education Response Team Task Force has finished its final report, stating concerns and suggestions to improve the controversial office on campus.

The Bias Education Response Team, or BERT — based in the office of the Dean of Students — sparked conversation and national coverage because of its potential negative impact on free speech and academic freedom.

An article in National Review called the UO BERT “even more ridiculous than you’d think,” and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education questioned the impact BERT would have on students’ freedom of speech.

This caused the UO senate to create the BERT Task Force to see what it could do to fix the problems. Chris Chavez, co-chair of the task force, said he hopes the debate of free speech and bias will start conversations in classrooms, but ones where everyone feels like they have the authority or privilege to speak.

“We could find a place where it’s not mutually exclusive — academic freedom and tolerance,” Chavez said. “We could find places where they are actually complementary.”

The Task Force’s report explains some of the issues that it found, such as the office not ensuring privacy. There is duplication of the work they do being done at other campus resources (such as Title IX, the Ombuds Office, respect.uoregon.edu and the AAEO) that they use too broad of a definition of bias and that it intervenes in classrooms.

“There is no attempt by the senate or this task force to reduce access to offices where students can report these things or tell their stories — never was that a consideration,” said co-chair Chris Sinclair. “It was always more about how do we ensure that that office is behaving in a uniform way to these reports, but also taking into account academic freedom.”

Sinclair was fascinated to find the different responses that the BERT had to the various complaints it has received.

“I think that really [the report] was worthwhile because it demonstrated that the responses were kind of all over the map; there wasn’t kind of a uniform approach,” Sinclair said.

The report recommends that the BERT educate students on bias-issues and free speech, that they refer students to the correct office if their complaints are not specifically appropriate for the BERT and that they refrain from classroom interaction.

Because there are multiple resources on campus that serve similar roles, Chavez thinks that the role of the BERT should focus primarily on education.

“I think they have accepted the fact that there are probably other resources that are more equipped to handle these kinds of situations,” he said.

Although there are so many resources, both Chavez and Sinclair agree that they all serve an important purpose, including the BERT, and that what is important is making sure they work together and students understand where to go to get help when they experience incidences of bias.

The BERT has been cooperative with the task force by attending meetings, Chavez said. The Task Force will likely be put on a hiatus now that the report has been released, Sinclair said, unless there is pushback from the BERT, which he does not think will happen.

“I think they understand the need to be careful about issues of academic freedom,” Sinclair said. “I think that they have heard our concerns and so I am very hopeful that this report and this task force will ultimately change the behavior of that office in a positive way.”

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @henderemma .

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The University of Oregon Board of Trustees voted unanimously to change the name of Cedar Hall to Unthank Hall on Friday morning, ending the decision on what to rename the wing of Hamilton dorm.

Denorval Unthank, Jr.’s name will be placed on the Cedar Hall dorm building.

Cedar Hall, a dorm located on the east side of the University, was the temporary name of Dunn Hall. The university stripped its name in fall 2016 because of Frederic Dunn’s racist history. Frederic Dunn was a Latin professor and the head of the Department of Classics at UO, but was also a known member of the Ku Klux Klan. He worked at the University of Oregon in the early 20th century.

On May 24, President Schill recommended naming the hall after DeNorval Unthank, Jr., the first Black graduate of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Unthank was also an activist in Oregon for minorities and Black communities and a visiting lecturer at UO in the 1970s. He had a successful career in the Eugene area, including designing McKenzie Hall.

“This physical space is a reminder to us all that this extraordinary man overcame racial discrimination as a child in Portland as well as discrimination and overt acts of hatred at the University of Oregon,” President Schill wrote in his memo recommending the new name.

Unthank passed away in 2000. He was 71.

Unthank was one of the four possible new names for Dunn Hall. Other individuals the school considered were Unthank’s father, DeNorval Unthank Sr., dean of the UO School of Law, and Nellie Louise Franklin, the first African-American woman at UO.

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Transform IT, the reorganization and renovation of IT at University of Oregon, is pushing forward into its next phase with the start of the new Chief Information Officer Jessie Minton.

Transform IT began in August 2016, with the release of the Harvey Blustain report. The report stated some of the issues with IT at UO, such as decentralization of IT and an efficient use of IT resources, as well the goals and plans for improving IT like making Information Services  the central unit for IT and making the library the leader on campus for academic technology.

Since August, a lot has been done for Transform IT while Chris Krabiel served as interim CIO, but now that Minton, the new permanent CIO and head of IS, started working in May, Transform IT can enter into its next steps.

“I am really thrilled and honored to have the chance to make a difference for IT here in such a transformative moment,” Minton said.

The overall goal of Transform IT is to make better use of IT resources, Minton said. The project is expected to take around two years, but Minton does not know the exact timeline, as she is still in the process of figuring out the next steps.

“I very much think about this as an ongoing process to improve and continue to iterate after that, so while we will eventually declare Transform IT complete, it incumbent upon all of us to continue to look at how we can make the very best decisions with our limited resources,” she said.

Minton is working in partnership with the Dean of Libraries Adriene Lim to lead the reorganization. Lim is thrilled that the CIO is already beginning to take steps to move Transform IT forward.

“One of the great partners of the library is Central IT, like Jessie,” Lim said. “Usually libraries and Central IT are great partners and it’s been that way at almost every university I have worked and so I am so happy she is here.”

Now that a charter, a document between the Library and IS has been created, Lim said that they can now move together in a partnership. The library plays an important role in IT, like digital scholarship, Canvas and other academic technologies, and platforms for uploading journal articles and books online. If the library does not have a strong infrastructure it hurts students and faculty, Lim said.

Higher education is in a cost constraint time, which is why Minton said they are trying to make better use of the IT resources they do have; however, this does not mean that they are cutting costs, she said.

“We’re doing it because we really want to do our best to use resources and staff and all that we have to do the best jobs that we can do,” Lim said.

In January, there was concern from IT workers about this reorganization effort. In her first two weeks on campus, Minton had three meetings – one with IS, one with IT Directors, and another with all IT staff in order to introduce herself and make sure she is having an open dialogue with everyone involved.

“I can’t overstate the importance of communicating really clearly […] throughout the process of a project like this, to be able to have a way to engage and have a two-way dialogue with campus,” Minton said. “That is absolutely my intent moving forward.”

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @HenderEmma 

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A fire alarm, caused a by a small fire in the Craft Center, went off at the EMU on Wednesday evening around 7:25 p.m. The building was evacuated.

A small fire in the Craft Center. (Courtesy of Kevin Yatsu)

The fire was accidental and was quickly extinguished. There was not a lot of damage and no one was injured, said UOPD officer Adam Lillengreen. Police said they suspect the fire might have been caused by a small rag catching on fire.

“I would just like to remind people that if there is a fire alarm to just make to get out the building safely orderly and don’t re-enter until the fire department or police department gives the all clear,” he said.

Sara Hashiguchi, who was working in the glass blowing center near the fire, said she saw flames near the floor and the room fill with smoke. Hashiguchi said that the fire didn’t appear to start spontaneously.

Students were allowed to re-enter the building at around 7:50 p.m. when the fire alarm stopped.

While they were waiting, many students stayed close to the building and calmly kept reading, studying and talking.

Jonathan Herrera said he was inside studying when the alarm went off. He moved to a table right next to the building and continued to study, not worried about the alarm because he had a lot of homework.

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The Higher Education Coordinating Commission approved University of Oregon’s proposed 10.6 percent tuition increase for in-state students today when the commission re-voted in Salem.

The HECC re-voted on the tuition increases for UO and Portland State University today. Both passed.

On May 11, the HECC denied the UO’s request for the tuition increase, following a letter Gov. Kate Brown sent to the HECC requesting that they deny any tuition increases over 5 percent unless the university met certain criteria that included serious consideration of the budget and evidence that minority students were being supported.

UO representatives spoke about the ways that the university is helping underrepresented students, especially focusing on the Pathway Oregon program that covers the cost of tuition for low-income Oregonians.

“Over the last decade, the University of Oregon’s commitment to creating a diverse campus continues to grow,” Assistant Director for Alumni Recruitment Joelle Rankins Goodwin said.

President Michael Schill also spoke at the meeting about how UO is working as hard as possible to increase funding and revenue. Schill said that even with a 10.6 percent tuition increase there will still be $9 million in cuts. If the tuition increase did not pass there would have been $15 million in cuts, Schill said.

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President Michael Schill spoke at the UO Faculty Senate meeting on Wednesday about the new sexual and gender-based harassment complaint policy and about the university budget. Also at the meeting, the Senate voted to make the cinema studies program its own department and the Bias Education Response Team Task Force gave its report.

President Schill discussed how he signed the new Student Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment and Violence Complaint and Response Policy that the Senate approved in April. The policy will go into effect on Sept. 15. Schill said the new policy was created to protect survivors as much as possible, while also keeping the community safe.

“[The policy] is already being sent around to other universities as a model,” said Senate president Bill Harbaugh.

Schill also discussed the budget issues that the university is having and the tuition increase that was denied by the Higher Education Coordinating Commission earlier this month. The HECC is going to reconsider the proposal today in Salem. Without the tuition increase there will have to be $15 million in cuts, but if the increase gets approved there will still be $9 million in cuts, Schill said.

“Even if the HECC approves our tuition we shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief, difficult choices are going to remain,” he said.

Provost Scott Coltrane announced that the university has hired 40 tenured track faculty, from a variety of backgrounds and races, as a part of the university’s plan to hire more tenured track faculty.

Also at the meeting, the Senate voted to make the cinema studies program its own department starting in July. The cinema studies program, established in 2010, is part of multiple schools and colleges on campus, but will now be a department in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Journalism Professor Chris Chavez also gave a report on the BERT, a resource on campus for students to report incidents of bias or racism on campus. Chavez is on the BERT Task Force that was created in June to observe BERT and see what it has been doing.

Chavez said they recommended that BERT refrains from classroom interaction and that they want to encourage students to understand which resource to go to when they have something to report. Chavez said BERT is planning on revising its role at the university because of the report of the task force.

At the next meeting, the senate will be voting on a new vice president who will also be the president-elect. This person will serve as senate VP in 2017-2018 and will be senate president in 2018-2019. So far nobody has come forward and volunteered for this position, but current senate president Bill Harbaugh said at the meeting that he is willing to run again if nobody else does.

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @henderemma. 

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President Michael Schill spoke at the UO Faculty Senate meeting on Wednesday about the new sexual and gender-based harassment complaint policy and about the university budget. Also at the meeting, the senate voted to make the Cinema Studies Program a department and the Bias Education Response Team  Task Force gave their report.

President Schill discussed how he signed the new Student Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment and Violence Complaint and Response Policy that the senate approved in April. The policy will go into effect on Sept. 15. Schill said that the new policy was created to protect the victims and survivors as much as possible, while also keeping the community safe. He is thankful for everyone who helped draft the new policy.

“[The policy] is already being sent around to other universities as a model,” said senate president Bill Harbaugh.

Schill also discussed the budget issues that the university is having and the tuition increase that was denied by the Higher Education Coordinating Commission earlier this month. The HECC is going to reconsider the proposal tomorrow in Salem. Without the tuition increase there will have to be $15 million in cuts, but if the increase gets approved there will still be $9 million in cuts, Schill said.

“Even if the HECC approves our tuition we shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief, difficult choices are going to remain,” he said.

Provost Scott Coltrane announced that the university has hired 40 tenured track faculty, from a variety of backgrounds and races, as a part of the university’s plan to hire more tenured track faculty.

Also at the meeting, the senate voted to make the Cinema Studies Program its own department starting in July. The Cinema Studies Program, established in 2010, currently occurs between multiple schools and colleges on campus, but will now be a department in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Journalism Professor Chris Chavez also gave a report on the BERT, a resource on campus for students to report incidents of bias or racism on campus. Chavez is on the BERT Task Force that was created in June to observe BERT and see what it has been dong.

Chavez said that they recommended that BERT refrain from classroom interaction and that they want to encourage students to understand which resource to go to when they have something to report. Chavez said that BERT is planning on revising their role at the university because of the report of the task force.

At the next meeting, the senate will be voting on a new vice president who will also be the president elect. This person will serve as senate VP in 2017-2018 and will be senate president in 2018-2019. So far nobody has come forward and volunteered for this position, but current senate president Bill Harbaugh said at the meeting that he is willing to run again if nobody else does.

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @henderemma . 

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Some postings on the UO Career Center website appear to be defrauding students in a scam that could cause them to owe their banks money after cashing checks from various employers.

The scam causes students to deposit checks given to them by people claiming to be their employers. The employer makes up a reason for students to have to give some of the money back, but after they return some of the money, the original check they received bounces and they have to pay their bank.

Cheyenne Thorpe was looking through the Career Center website last year for potential jobs when she saw an advertisement for a babysitter position through care.com. After creating a profile on the website, she was contacted by someone who said their friend was moving to Eugene and needed a babysitter. After getting in contact with the woman, Thorpe thought she had a great $20/hour job ahead of her, but was shocked when she was sent a $3,000 check.

Thorpe never met the woman who was emailing her, but the woman requested that Thorpe take the check and deposit it into her bank account, keep some of the money, and give $2,000 to their “landlord.”  

The woman from the ad went as far as sending Thorpe a location of the home they were moving to in Eugene, and a photo of her, her husband and her daughter. When Thorpe got the check she was overwhelmed by the amount and recognized it as a scam after talking to her parents.

“That was just like too much money for a college student,” she said. “I have never been around $3,000 before.”

Samantha Matta at the UO Career Center said this is a common trend. The career center encourages students to take ownership of this issue and to make sure they are checking every job posting carefully. Matta said showing someone you trust, such as a professor or parent, is a good idea for figuring out if a posting is a scam.

Josh Mabry, a junior psychology major, was also almost scammed by a post on the Career Center website. Patrick Cooper, claiming to be with a company called Cooper Engineering, advertised a need for a personal assistant and offered Mabry the job. Mabry said that from the beginning the language and speediness of the application process seemed odd, but he went with it anyway. It was when Cooper told Mabry he was going to send him a check in the mail for $600 and that he could deposit it and keep $400 of it, that Mabry realized it was a scam and stopped replying.

Cooper Engineering is the name of a real company, but David Cooper of Cooper Engineering said that the scam posts are not connected to their business. He advised anyone who has received a scam email to contact the authorities in their area.  

The emails sent from Patrick Cooper were from a slightly different domain name than the website of Cooper Engineering and the emails sent from David Cooper.

Mabry said that what bothered him the most about the entire scam was that he saw the posting on the Career Center website.

“You kind of expect that [issue] more when you search for jobs on Craigslist,” he said, “but the fact that I was on the UO Career Center website and this scam stuff is there is kind of what bothers me the most about it.”

The Career Center reads through and checks several hundred postings a day. Often, students at the Career Center will contact the employer of an advertisement that seems like it might be a scam to check, Matta said.

“This is human-run so of course there is always going to be error,” she said.

Matta suggests that students who have been scammed let the Career Center know so they can remove the post and contact UOPD.

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @henderemma .

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Jayanth Banavar wants to do everything he can to improve the lives of students as the new provost and senior vice president of the University of Oregon.

Starting in July, Banavar will be taking over the spot of Scott Coltrane as the provost of UO. Banavar is currently the Dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland.

“I am deeply committed to give all I have to not let the people at the University of Oregon down because they have put their trust in me,” he said.

New provost Jayanth Banavar will begin in July. (Courtesy of University of Oregon provost office)

The UO provost and senior vice president is the chief academic officer of the university. The provost supervises the programs, research, and budget planning at the university, and has a leadership role in faculty selection and promotions.

Coltrane began serving as interim provost in July 2013 and was named the official senior vice president and provost in February 2014. The search for a new provost began last June, when Coltrane announced his retirement.

According to the UO senate’s website, there was a search committee of 17 people, containing students, professors, and deans. The search was private in order to protect the candidates from putting their current jobs in jeopardy.

Banavar believes that the faculty and staff at a university are what makes students’ experiences outstanding, and he hopes to create an atmosphere where everyone feels encouraged to be the best they can be.

“What I would like to accomplish is to make sure that students come first because we can never ever forget that we are a university and we are all about students,” he said.

Banavar got his bachelor of science and master of science in physics from Bangalore University and his Ph.D. in physics from University of Pittsburgh. Before working at the University of Maryland, Banavar worked at the Department of Physics at Pennsylvania State University for 12 years.

Banavar lived in India for the first 20 years of his life, where he lived with his family and had a sheltered life. At the age of 15, he decided to pursue physics.

“I enjoyed the notion that I could understand the universe and all that is around us,” he said.

Banavar believes that science is important for improving the quality of people’s lives. He is looking forward to the new Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and thinks such a large gift specified for science is astonishing.

Although Banavar loves science, he also believes that art and culture are what makes life worth living and hopes to encourage students to engage in both science and humanities.

“As a provost, I could really encourage interdisciplinary studies because often the ideas that matter come at the interface between disciplines,” he said.

Banavar is married and has two grown children, as well as family back in India who he tries to visit when he can. He loves to travel and feels very fortunate to be able to meet people from around the world.

In his spare time, Banavar likes to sleep because he feels that it is good for his brain. He also enjoys eating good food, watching movies, reading, and taking walks.

Banavar is looking forward to his future as the provost at UO. His goal is to give his new job his best shot. He said that he is a fast learner, and wants to work together with and learn from students, faculty, and staff.

“I feel exceedingly fortunate that I have been given this opportunity to be trusted by the people of Oregon,” he said. “I want to give back and I need everyone’s help when I get there.”

Follow Emma Henderson on Twitter @henderemma . 

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