Bruce Darling tried to make each day a good one. His mantra was “making today a good day.” If his wife Cher Darling was not having a good day, he would tell her to “make today a good day.”

“He was very positive,” Cher said. “He had been suffering from heart disease for a very long time, and he just kept on going and making it a good day.”

Bruce, an accounting professor at the University of Oregon, passed away last month at the age of 65. A beloved teacher at UO, Lane and NCU, Bruce made what he taught fun. According to a statement by the UO Department of Accounting, he was full of interesting stories – he played softball with Bruce Springsteen and watched rock artist Meatloaf record “Bat Out of Hell.” He would tell stories in class to add humor to what he was teaching, even if it was a topic that was boring or uninteresting to some, Cher said.

Students, faculty, alumni and members of the community are invited to attend a memorial being held by members of the Lundquist College of Business on Monday, March 20, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Lillis Business Complex.

Bruce grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended The College of Wooster. He later earned an MBA and MFIS at Cleveland State University and a Ph.D. at Madison University. Bruce was an accounting instructor at Lake Erie College and Stark State College until he moved to Oregon in 2002. Bruce also ran his own accounting firm for small businesses since 1980, according to the accounting department. Bruce is survived by his second wife Cher Darling, his two daughters Dawn Olsen and Lori Biamonte, and his six grandchildren.

Bruce was always a collector, Cher said in an interview with the Emerald. His first job was in elementary school delivering newspapers. He would cash his checks to get pennies, and he would look through bowls of pennies until he found the best ones for his coin collection. Bruce collected many other things, such as model trains.

He was a musical man – he played the organ, piano and accordion. He loved to swim; he and Cher went to hot springs every Sunday for 12 years. Bruce loved cats and made sure to always greet his cat Chessie when he got home, Cher said.

Whenever Bruce and Cher would go out they would frequently run into students he taught at UO. Students were always so thankful for everything Bruce had done for them and were always so happy to see him.

Cher said he was dedicated to his job and to everyone in his life. He always tried to make sure his students made it through school. He would stay longer during his office hours and be late getting home because he spent extra time helping his students. He was concerned for people and would speak up for those who could not protect themselves.

“They don’t make men like Bruce very often,” said Cher. “He was so kind and gentle, and when I would talk about him with people, I would say ‘You know he is like a gentle giant.’”

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A philanthropy magazine recently ranked Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny Knight as the number one philanthropists in the country for 2016.

It’s the first time the Knight couple topped the The Chronicle of Philanthropy Magazine’s annual list of 50 Americans who donate the most money. In 2016, Knights gave $500 million to the University of Oregon and $400 million to Stanford University, totaling $900 million for the year, according to the article.

The Knight’s donation to UO goes toward the creation of the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, which is estimated to be completed in a decade. The campus aims to increase scientific discoveries that will improve people’s lives in Oregon.

“In an age of declining public support for scientific research generally and declining public higher education support specifically, Penny and I are delighted to contribute to these critically important areas,” Phil Knight said in UO’s blog, AroundtheO.

Phil Knight, 79, earned his bachelor’s degree from UO and has made many other donations to the university, such as a $10 million donation to help with the construction of the Knight Law Center and a $100 million gift to help support athletics, according to an AroundtheO post.

The Chronicle has compiled a list of top philanthropists every year for 17 years. This year, colleges and universities received almost half of the total money that was donated by the top 50 philanthropists. Other philanthropists in the top five were Michael Bloomberg, Howard and Lottie Marcus, and John Arnold.

The article in The Chronicle states that in 2016, the total amount of money donated by those on the list shrank. The total this year was $5.6 billion, but in 2015 it was $7 billion and in 2014 was $10.2 billion.

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Crowds of students rushed into the streets of the University of Oregon, venting their frustration and chanting, “Fuck Donald Trump” as they passed through the intersection of 13th and Kincaid on election night. Students said standing and yelling with peers was therapeutic in the face of an unclear future. The demonstration was spontaneous, loud and disruptive — and protected by First Amendment free speech safeguards.

But if new rules being considered by UO administrators are adopted, outcries like the one on Nov. 8 could be considered a violation of university policy.

The frequency of demonstrations this year has shown that protesting is part of the culture at UO. Whether it is a post-election demonstration at the EMU or a sit-in at Johnson Hall, students practice free speech in many ways. This is why the guidelines set forth by a proposed time, place and manner policy worry some students.

A group of students lead chants outside of the Knight Library. Students protest the election of Donald Trump on Nov. 9, 2016. (Aaron Nelson/Emerald)

UO undergraduate Andrew Dunn, external director of staff for ASUO, says the proposed policy is too limiting.

“There is really a lack of specificity in a lot of the policy language, which is a huge problem. It seems that it would be left up to the interpretation of the administration,” Dunn said. “I think that the way the policy is designed could drastically limit the voice of students on campus.”

The Time, Place, Manner and Protection of Speech Policy, proposed by UO General Counsel Kevin Reed, limits where speech activities can occur. For example, the policy mandates that students ask for permission to protest in certain spaces. The policy states that, “The interior spaces of university buildings are, generally, exclusively reserved for university business activities and therefore are not open for speech activities unless properly reserved in advance through the facilities scheduling policy.”

The TPM policy also includes guidelines for posting signs not related to UO affairs, restricts writing with chalk on walls and demands that sound at protests be held to a reasonable volume during university hours, but does not specify the exact decibels.

When Reed arrived at UO in 2015 from his position at UCLA as vice chancellor of legal affairs, he expressed to President Michael Schill that he was concerned the university didn’t have a clear procedure on how to respond to protests.

Reed said the proposed policy “is all about enabling free speech and not restricting it.”

He said the policy is necessary to prevent certain protests from suffering more critical regulation on a case-by-case basis. A set of protocols established ahead of time provides clear guidelines for students about what is allowed and what isn’t.

“There isn’t a mature entity I think in the nation that doesn’t have rules that restrict the time, and the place and the manner where free speech happens. When they’re done right – and I hope they are done right – they’re about empowering people to speak,” Reed said.

Senate President Bill Harbaugh said the university has no need for this new policy. Members of the university Senate disagree with parts of the policy. The Senate will be proposing an altered policy to President Schill probably around early spring, Harbaugh said.

“The university has operated under the existing rules for six years now without any problems,” Harbaugh said. “Why are General Counsel Reed and President Schill looking for problems where there have not been any problems?”

Although some students and faculty are upset about this policy, it does not violate the law, according to UO journalism school First Amendment chair Kyu Ho Youm.

Youm says regulations regarding time, place and manner are constitutional because they do not affect the content of the speech activity. If there is still space available for students to protest, then such policies are allowed. The policy would only be unconstitutional if there were no places for students to demonstrate.

“Time, place and manner regulation is simply a regulation which is designed to accommodate the speaker’s interest to express the message without being excessively or unconstitutionally punished for the message, and so content is still protected,” Youm said.

Many universities, including Oregon State University, have policies regarding the time, place and manner of protests to avoid disruption of day-to-day activities on campus.

The policy at OSU has similarities with UO’s proposed policy, such as rules on noise not being disruptive. A major difference between the two policies is that OSU’s policy allows protesting inside buildings; Reed’s proposed policy says that interior spaces are not allowed for speech activity, unless they are designated for it.

The policy has drawn concern from activist clubs on campus, such as the Climate Justice League, a student club that advocates for social change. Last year, the group held a campaign called Divest UO, which sought to reduce the UO Foundation’s investment in fossil fuels. Through protests and sit-ins, the campaign was successful.

Co-director of Climate Justice League, Sahalee McFarland, a junior anthropology major, is worried that the potential new policy would limit the success of future campaigns.

“The club’s general feelings are that [the proposed policy] is pretty restrictive and it really limits student’s free speech,” McFarland said.

Aspects of the policy appear to be a direct result of the Divest UO campaign and might signal that Divest UO instigated the creation of this policy, McFarland said.

Reed said that the policy is not a direct response to the Divest UO demonstrations.

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“The only real restriction on expression activity are restrictions that are related to making sure that the campus can operate and engage in its daily activities of teaching and research and learning without unreasonable disruption,” Reed said.

Students have been protesting in Johnson Hall, the way the Divest UO movement did, since the 1960s and 70s. According to an Emerald article from 1970, students had a 31-hour overnight sit-in at Johnson Hall to protest the Vietnam War. Sixty-one protesters were arrested for trespassing and disorderly conduct in a nearly two-hour confrontation with police.  

The proposed policy will also likely affect ROAR, a student activist group that runs campaigns opposing oppression. ROAR President Augustine Beard, a junior history and environmental studies major, believes that the policy takes away from UO’s history and culture of protesting.

“The Time, Place, Manner policy undermines the rich history of activism at the University of Oregon,” Beard said. “From Vietnam protests, to queer rights activism, to Students Against Sweatshop Labor, to the GTFF Strike, to Divest, to Black Student Task Force, protest and direct action have been tools of social progress for our campus.”

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President Michael Schill spoke to a group of Jewish and Muslim students on Tuesday about the importance of free speech, tolerance and unification at the Oregon Hillel meeting.

Manzil Midrash is a project that Oregon Hillel, the Muslim Student Association and the Arab Student Union started three years ago. It was created to have deeper conversations about Israeli and Palestinian issues, and to bring people together. Schill spoke as a part of a series of events for the project, according to Andy Gitelson, the executive director of Oregon Hillel.

The president recounted a brief history of his life and described being the only Jewish kid at his elementary school in Schenectady, New York. Schill spoke about how this experience made him embrace his differences and he encouraged other students who are minorities to do the same.

“Tonight’s talk is a really great opportunity for us to bring together students of different faiths and cultures, and obviously it is a very timely moment for this,” Schill said. “Our nation is at a crossroads where identity politics rages in a way that is troubling to me.”

Gitelson appreciates the way that Schill uses Jewish values to make his decisions as president of UO.

“He utilizes his own upbringing and the Jewish value system,” Gitelson said.

Schill said the university will always remain insistent on protecting the values of free speech; however, he said that there is no clear-cut line of when free speech has gone too far, such as the recent black face incidents at UO.

Drew Williams, a senior political science and religious studies major, agrees with Schill’s view on free speech.

“You really have to understand that freedom of speech is something that is essential to being American: for every group from every variety of the spectrum to be able to speak and state their opinions,” Williams said.

Darian Rosengard, a junior majoring in planning, public policy and management, appreciated Schill taking the time to talk about these issues in open conversation.

“It was interesting hearing him showing sympathy to what minorities face all the time and taking a step back and saying, ‘What questions do you have for me and what conversation can we have to be able to look at opposition and look at discomfort in a place of positivity?’ ” she asked.

Resources are available to students on campus, such as the Dean of Students website which has university policies against discrimination.

“I’ve heard a lot of incidents which have been very troubling at this university as well as at other universities, but what’s important is if there is intolerance, if there is racism, if there is xenophobia, the university wants to do what we can do to address it,” Schill said.

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Scholarship opportunities are set to increase for University of Oregon students after the school raised $12 million more than its 2016 donation goal of $70 million, according to the 2016 Annual Report.

“We’re still plowing through going stronger and stronger to raise even more money,” said Roger Thompson, the Enrollment Manager.

Thompson has a team of students called the Student Advisory Board that he consults for university decisions. The group was created in December 2016, but some members have praised the success of scholarship funding.

Sawyer Jenkins, a junior environmental studies major and member of the Student Advisory Board, is excited about the increased scholarship support.

“The funds for scholarships is fantastic because college is something that most people should be able to access,” Jenkins said.

UO also met other goals for 2016 in the report. It stated that 31 percent of the first-year class came from ethnic or racial minorities. This is an all-time high for the university and surpassed their goal to be at 30 percent by 2020.

However, not every goal was met in 2016. The university usually has around 24,000 students, but this year total enrollment was slightly under, at around 23,700. Thompson said that total enrollment being under is good because students are graduating quicker. The difference is small enough to not affect tuition, he said.

“It’s a small margin. Every student matters because they all pay tuition, but we had budgeted effectively,” Thompson said. “We were more focused on who the new students were coming in than on what the total enrollment would be.”

The team builds models to predict enrollment numbers. This can be difficult; however, the model that predicted the 2016 freshman class was accurate, Thompson said.

“I am really proud of our team. We have great people who work across so many different areas and I hope that they make a positive difference in what a student experiences,” Thompson said. “For much of fall 2017, that’s our goal: to really keep building in the direction and with the trajectory that we’ve been on.”

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UO Faculty Senate President Bill Harbaugh is worried about the university’s new protesting restrictions and fears the senate may not be able to agree with administration.

At the UO Faculty Senate meeting on Wednesday in the EMU, Harbaugh said his goal is to have a large base of people look over the policy that restricts the time, place and manner of protesting on campus.

“We need to keep in mind it’s a university, and we are all about free speech and engaging in debate on controversial issues,” he said. “We need to make sure this policy does not restrict that right in unreasonable ways.”

The proposed regulation prohibits speech activity, such as picketing and protesting, from taking place indoors and instead must take place in designated free-speech zones. The rule may create controversy among students, especially with recent events in the U.S. federal government, such as the Immigration Ban and the gag orders on the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It may be in the end that we are unable to come up with a policy that the U of O administration will accept,” Harbaugh said. “In that case, they may, and they can, use their authority to pass a temporary policy of their own.”

Also at the meeting, the senate voted to create a new master’s program in Language Teaching Studies, which was already a concentration but is now being offered as its own degree.

Doneka Scott, the associate vice provost for student success, also spoke at the senate meeting about student retention, increasing four-year graduation rates, and the new online advising program, SSC Campus.

“SSC Campus is a tool we are fortunate enough to have on campus that really connects advisors and students and other staff that really advise students in other capacities that aren’t just academic,” Scott said. “Our goal is to have all advisors using SSC Campus by fall of 2017.”

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The National Weather Service in Portland issued a Winter Storm Watch for a storm coming to Lane County on Thursday morning.

The storm will hit the South Willamette Valley, the Central Oregon Coast Range, and the Lane County Cascade Foothills, including Eugene and Springfield. The freezing rain is expected to get worse through Thursday afternoon and continue until Friday.

The National Weather Service expects possibly light snow or sleet and two to four tenths of an inch of ice. The impact from the ice could lead to trees being damaged and power going out.  Driving conditions could also become dangerous.

The temperature on Thursday and Friday will be around 30 to 40 degrees with winds around 6 to 8 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.

The storm should be done by Friday night, but students should be careful if they are traveling to Portland. A wind advisory has been issued for Portland and snow, and freezing rain may hit both Portland and Salem on Thursday and Friday, according to the Register-Guard.

The time the storm is not expected to be as bad as the storm in December and the beginning of January, when the first day of classes for winter term were canceled.

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A reorganization of the UO information technology department, called Transform IT, has recently set off a backlash from some employees.

The reorganization started in August 2016 with a report, which states that the goals of the reorganization are to centralize and understand IT. After the report, the university hired consultants and sent out a survey to IT workers, indicating the start of the reorganization, which upset some of the IT staff.

Greg Bryant, who works in IT, felt that an internal discussion, instead of hiring investigators, would have worked better.

“These [IT workers] are people who have been here for decades. They’ve solved problems all the time, and they have all kinds of suggestions about how things could be better done, but they weren’t asked that,” Bryant said.

Patrick Chinn, a member of the Transform IT Advisory Board, believes that the reorganization helps the IT staff and students. He said it aims to optimize the IT  department and to improve the students’ experiences on campus.

Chinn attests that this reorganization is “not an effort to lay people off,” he said. “We need all the IT staff we have to continue doing the work that we do. It’s not a cost-cutting measure.”

Jennifer Perren, an IT staff member and a member of the SEIU 503-085 union, has voiced her concerns about the reorganization. Perren created a report of the IT staff’s complaints, such as low morale, unclear goals and text-based communication instead of face-to-face communication. The report also lists possible solutions to these problems.

“One issue is just the wanting more of the, I call it, ‘on-the-ground IT staff involvement,’ and not necessarily less management involvement or planning, but more actual involvement from IT staff around campus who are actually doing the groundwork,” Perren said.

Bryant hopes that Transform IT will lead to more autonomy for the IT staff, instead of the current way Transform IT is currently being managed.

“It’s not a very efficient use of human beings. It doesn’t allow for creativity to really flourish,” Bryant said. “Some people would call it an issue of management style, but it isn’t.” He wrote in an email to the Emerald, that “self-management, by individuals and teams, is the best practice in computing because free collaboration, and free inquiry, leads to the best answers.”

The university’s reorganization of its IT department reflects many other universities have done, Chinn said.

“I think that people’s concerns about where Transform IT is headed is important,” Chinn said. “We have been working to talk to staff who are concerned about that. I think at the same time it is also a really exciting opportunity to realign how we provide services on campus.”

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The state has cut its funds to higher education, so tuition could increase as much as 5 percent. The Tuition Fees Advisory Board met on Tuesday and will come up with a recommendation to the board about a tuition increase, UO President Schill said. It all happened at the UO Faculty Senate meeting yesterday.

“It’s going to be an unusual situation because we won’t know our budget from the state until several months after the tuition decision,” Schill said. “This is a complicated process and not an easy process.”

Schill spoke briefly about a variety of topics at the meeting, including calling UO a sanctuary campus.

“In the resolution, we do ask that we call ourselves a sanctuary campus, and that’s not what we’re going to do,” Schill said. “I don’t feel that we need to do that.”

The president also accepted the Intercollegiate Athletic Advisory Committee, a new committee approved by the senate at its last meeting of fall term, and said it was a good compromise.

Chris Chavez, Co-chair of the Bias and Education Response Team Task Force, spoke about how students are not always referred to the BERT. Students can contact the BERT if they experience bias on campus, but students are often confused about where to go or are mislead to other groups and don’t report to the BERT when they should. Chavez also mentioned that the Bias Education and Response Team can have privacy issues, is disciplinary in nature, and can constrain academic freedom.

Roger Thompson, UO Enrollment Manager, passed out the 2016 Annual Report at the meeting. He revealed that the university has met its goal that it made seven years ago to have a freshman class that is 31 percent students of ethnic and racial minorities.

“Our goals have always been pretty clear,” Thompson said. “We try to increase quality as measured by grade point average and standardized test score, as well as the amount of college work a student brings to the University of Oregon when they come from high school.”

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Starting this term, University of Oregon ID Card Services will be giving out new, pre-printed ID cards to all students, faculty and staff. The old ID cards will not work anywhere after May 1.

From January 10 to March 24, students can pick up new ID cards for free if they bring their old ID. The ID Card Services desk has scheduled blocks of time to avoid long wait times.

The schedule is based on an individual’s last name for UO employees, and by year for students — freshman, sophomore, junior or senior. Seniors are scheduled to pick up their IDs at the beginning of the term, then juniors and sophomores, and finally first-year students can get their new ID at the end of the term.

According to the ID Card Services website, the following schedule indicates when students, faculty and staff can pick up their cards:

The website also instructs individuals who missed their scheduled block to pick up their new cards after the distribution period has ended, on March 24.

“They’re pre-printed, so it’s just a matter of handing in your old one and getting your new one,” said Laurie Woodward, EMU director. “If it were me I would go early in the morning or later in the afternoon when the lines are less likely to be long.”

UO students, faculty and staff in Eugene can get their new ID at the ID Card Services office (located on the bottom floor of the EMU) between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Students, faculty and staff in Portland can get their new ID at the White Stag Building.  Students at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology can exchange their ID cards at the Charleston campus, according to an AroundtheO press release.

After the deadline, the old ID cards will be deactivated. The old ID will no longer function as a pass for the bus, for campus cash, for parking, or to open doors, Woodward said.

The new ID card has an illustration of the UO campus and has the SAFE hotline on the back. UO student Kathleen Darby designed the new card, after winning a campus-wide contest to update the ten-year-old design. A group of students and staff chose the new look, all with experience in graphic design, Woodward said.

UO ID card services will also be offering a new community card for people who use University of Oregon services, but are not students, faculty or staff, such as spouses and people with campus recreation passes, Woodward said. The card recognizes you as a member of the university community, but is white instead of green.

“We’d updated the university look in so many ways and the ID card is the first thing that you get that says you are a duck,” Woodward said. “It’s your official ‘I belong at the University of Oregon,’ and we wanted it to reflect today’s campus.”

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