A tuition increase for University of Oregon students was approved by the Finance and Facilities Committee on March 4.

The committee met at 2:30 p.m. in the Ford Alumni Center to discuss budget, tuition and fees, finances and investments. The committee began the session by approving minutes from December 2014, followed by public comment from four of the five UO students who attended the meeting. They waited in the back of the room and one student held a sign reading, “Tuition Freeze Now.”

GTF Dana Ronglie began, saying that she watched her students struggle to keep up in the classes she teaches because they are working so hard to try and pay for school.

“It is very difficult for me to fulfill my aspect of the mission of this university when my students cannot put in the time or the effort for my class,” Ronglie said.

Another student, Jake Rutledge spoke of his friend Lillian Huebner, who is now homeless and in debt after being unable to continue taking classes due to the cost of tuition.

Student Labor Action Project Co-director Colin Worley spoke of his gratitude for being awarded the Pathway scholarship and the need for affordable higher education.

“The day that I found out I got the scholarship was easily the happiest day of my life,” Worley said. “Because without this scholarship there would be no way that I would be attending this university and that’s honestly unacceptable.”

Worley also called for increased student involvement in the tuition-deciding process.

“These decisions ultimately affect us as students, they do not affect the Board of Trustees and as such, students need to have an actual voice in deciding this process,” Worley said.

ASUO President Beatriz Gutierrez spoke last, recalling her experience as a student on the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board as intimidating and said that the students she represents cannot handle a raise in tuition.

“Their stories aren’t here because they’re in class,” Gutierrez said. “They have to be in class and they have to be at work, and just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not here on your campus.”

Following public comment, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Finance and Administration Jamie Moffitt then explained the quarterly financial report. According to Moffitt, the “big picture” was that the budget was tighter than expected. Moffitt highlighted state funding low, about 82 percent of this budget paid by tuition and fees. At this point the students who spoke during public comment left the meeting.

The committee moved onto addressing 2015-2016 tuition and fees. Moffitt began with an overview of tuition and fees. Vice Provost for Budget and Planning Brad Shelton explained that 10 percent of academic year tuition is set aside to be used for financial aid funded by the institution. According to Shelton, this year that was about $30 million.

Shelton and Moffitt went on to show the tuition and fee recommendations for 2015-2016. Both Shelton and Moffitt are co-chairs of the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board. The proposed undergraduate rate increases would generate approximately $10.4 million a year.

Undergraduate Tuition Proposed Increases:

• Resident Tuition: 3.8 percent increase
• Nonresident Tuition: 3.7 percent increase
• Honors College Differential: 3.7 percent increase
• Mandatory Fees: 3.2 percent increase

Interim President Scott Coltrane called the raise an “unfortunate situation” and student member of the Board of Trustees Helena Schlegel spoke before the resolution was passed, expressing her disapproval of the proposed tuition raises. Ultimately, the committee moved to approve the proposed tuition changes for next year. The Board of Trustees will address these changes on March 5 during its next meeting.

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The post University of Oregon tuition increases approved despite student criticism appeared first on Emerald Media.

* Post has been updated to include a statment from the plaintiff’s lawyer. 

Five hundred and seventy-three people and counting have signed a petition calling for an end to the counterclaim filed by the University of Oregon in their legal response to a  lawsuit filed by the survivor of an alleged sexual assault last spring.  The petition, created on Change.org by a user named Sven Praoc, is addressed to the Board of Trustees, board chairman Chuck Lillis and the university General Counsel.

The description of the petition reads, “Send the UO a message: suing rape survivors will not make campus safer for the 1 in 5 women who will be sexually assaulted, harassed, or raped each year on campus.”

Change.org is a website that allows users to create and circulate petitions via social media. To sign the petition you must include a name, address and email address.

Users also have the option to include comments with their signature. Samantha Brace, a UO student, wrote, “As a person, I am apalled. As a female student at the University of Oregon, I am outraged. UO is putting them self on the wrong side of history, the student body does not support the legal actions being taken against this woman. Make it known.”

Alumna Diana Salazar wrote, “Stop victim blaming! As an alumna, Im ashamed to have gone here and will reconsider recommending folks to UO.”

University spokesperson Tobin Klinger told the Emerald that the counterclaim is not directed at the plaintiff herself, but rather her attorneys.

“The university is not seeking court costs or attorney fees from a student. Rather, the counterclaim is directed at the Colorado-based attorneys. The goal is to hold the plaintiff’s attorneys responsible for their actions in bringing forth false allegations to leverage a difficult and unfortunate situation for their own financial gain,” he said in an email.

*John Clune, the Colorado based lawyer representing the plaintiff responded to Emerald inquiries about the university response with the following statement:

“They need to just stop.  This whole counterclaim was an ill-conceived PR move that has blown up on them.  Since they are finding out that it looks bad to sue a rape victim, they are now saying that it was only intended for her lawyer.  That is obviously not what the counterclaim says.   We genuinely would like to help UO do a better job with responding to campus rape and would love to work together to achieve this but their behavior so far is not encouraging.”

Tuition and fees are on the rise again after Brad Shelton of the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board announced the group’s recommendations for the 2015-2016 year to an open forum of students in Lawrence Hall.

The board recommended that resident tuition increase by 3.8 percent and nonresident tuition to increase by 3.7 percent.

Many students in the audience, including students and members of SLAP, SEIU, LESS-T and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, were not happy with the recommendations.

Proposed increases in undergraduate tuition that are higher than 5 percent require approval from the Higher Education Coordinating Commission.

Shelton also announced a $10 increase in student fees, from $360.75 to $370.75.

These changes would raise the cost of a student’s credit hour by $7 for residents and $24 for nonresidents. In 2015-2016, the cost of attending UO full-time (45 credits a year) would increase by $315 for residents and $1,080 for nonresidents.

Shelton explained that there would be two increases in costs mandated by the state: a $3.5 million increase in retirement costs and $2.5 million increase health care for employees.

Many students were displeased with the proposed tuition raise. Some held signs that read the salaries for various members of the administration.

One read, “President, $440,004.”

One student in the crowd proposed lowering those salaries, saying that the president of the university earns a higher salary than the president of the Unites States. Barack Obama earns $400,000 per year for his work as commander-in-chief.

Some called for a tuition freeze. Others asked how many tuition dollars paid for lawyer’s fees during GTFF bargaining or the UO’s pending sexual assault litigation.

Shelton did not present any information on 2014-2015 expenditures. Instead, he directed students to find them online.

Lillian Huebner told their story of being “priced out” as a sophomore nonresident. Huebner couldn’t enroll in classes this term, and therefore could not live in the dorms. They were now living with friends who could help them and called themselves “homeless.”

When it comes to nonresident tuition, Shelton said the UO’s rates run in the middle of the pack among its peer institutions.

“I think this will leave us right at the median because I expect all the other schools to be going up as well,” Shelton said. “California schools have said they’re going up 5 percent and that’s one of the main places where we draw non-resident students is from California.”

Another concern was the racial background of the students that couldn’t afford attending the university with these increases.

“I hope it’s zero. We have looked pretty carefully at the tuition charges at our peer universities,” Shelton said. “What we know is that for resident tuition, we’re actually on the low side of tuition.”

Some students called for an impact study to determine the toll that tuition raises would take on different groups. According to Shelton, there are no plans to conduct one.

Shelton said he couldn’t release changes to the incidental fee as they were not yet known at this time. Graduate student tuition changes were not released because according to Shelton there are over 30 different graduate tuition schedules.

“It is in the materials that are being prepared for the [board of trustees],” Shelton said. “We just didn’t want to put it up here because it’s mind-boggling how much there is.”

One student called that choice “patronizing.” Many students expressed frustration that because this was the only venue where they could voice opinions about the proposed changes in tuition and fees, all of the information had not been provided.

The recommendation given by the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board will inform the president and provost before the recommendation goes to the board of trustees in March. Trustee Kurt Willcox was in attendance, and invited students to bring their thoughts to the board meeting on March 5 and 6.

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter: @francescamarief

Galen Martin has been with the University of Oregon since 1985 after finishing his master’s degree here. Now a senior instructor in the department of international studies, Martin had previously struggled as an adjunct professor after teaching at the UO for 14 years in various departments.

Before UO faculty unionized and formed United Academics in 2013, Martin faced difficulties in supporting his family without the benefits of working as a full-time faculty member.

“My wife was self-employed at some point, so I was supporting my whole family with my benefits and there was no consistent policy about it…at one point the benefits office decided that you had to be more than half-time in one department to get benefits,” Martin said.

Martin negotiated with three different departments to put his contract together. There was at least a year and a half where Martin was working full-time but because he was employed part-time in various departments, he was not considered a full-time employee.

As an adjunct professor, Martin’s pay varied as much as $3,200 to $6,000 depending on which department hired him. Eventually, Martin became a senior instructor and questioned the logic of hiring faculty members as adjunct for an extended amount of time.

“Adjunct indicates that you are just being hired on a short-term basis,” Martin said. “I was an adjunct for 15 to 20 years, which doesn’t make sense. That’s not an adjunct. At some point, the institution that hires you year after year should handle that.”

United Academics has addressed the problems of accurate classification and inconsistent pay that Martin faced prior to its formation.

“We had an election that resulted in about 56 or 57 percent of the faculty voted in favor of unionizing,” UA President Michael Dreiling said. “It was a significant majority – we’re talking out of 1,800 people.”

That vote was verified by the Employment Relations Board of Oregon. Then the group bargained with the UO for about 11 months, finally ratifying a contract in October 2013. Once the contract was ratified, the union elected their officers and representatives to the representative assembly.

“It was a lot of work, but it’s a good kind of work,” Dreiling said. “It’s satisfying work because we see the effects.”

The contract allowed for the reclassification of adjunct professors like Martin, as well as raises for all faculty.

Bill Brady, senior director of employee and labor relations, said that the formation of the union has led to the development of policies that will provide more consistency in how the faculty interact within their departments and with the administration.

“We are going to have a more positive environment for collaboration with our faculty and administration and that is going to impact students,” Brady said. “There will be a positive impact on students because of that sense of collaboration and shared ownership of how we want the institution to move forward.”

According to Martin, the formation of United Academics will benefit students.

“Students benefit because there’s more consistency in hiring, there’s more commitment to the teaching process,” Martin said. “Anybody who feels more appreciated and being paid a decent wage is probably going to be happier about their job, and if they’re happier about their job, they’re probably going to do a better job.”

“In the end, that’s what this is about: it’s about providing better classes and better teaching for students.”

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter @francescamarief

Four UO students are working to help determine the cost of education for the whole student body. As members of the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board, these UO students provided their perspective on how tuition and fees should increase or decrease.

“The idea was to have a comprehensive holistic group that could provide different perspectives so that when the president and provost make recommendations to the board, they have the benefit of having an advisory group that has really thought about these issues and discussed them,” co-chair and Vice President for Finance and Administration Jamie Moffitt said about the formation of the board.

The president and provost then present their decisions to the Board of Trustees in March.

James Kress, a graduate student on the board, has learned a lot by working with the school’s budget.

“Understanding exactly how things are broken down is really the most important,” Kress said. “Because I’d never seen the breakdown before of how much money goes to wages and salary, how much has to go to health benefits, so it’s a huge game of chess.”

As an undergraduate at Boise State University, Kress was annoyed at the costs of being a student.

“I don’t think I understood the breadth of what it takes to run the university,” Kress said. “I knew there had to be costs, but seeing them broken out and how much they really are is interesting to see.” Like Kress, many undergraduates may not know or understand what their tuition and fees go towards.

“When students are paying tuition, that’s going into what’s called our education and general fund,” Moffitt said. “Those are the funds that are generally used to fund the schools and colleges, the academic programs, the administrative units that need to support the schools and colleges and then a lot of the institutional expenses.” These expenses include utility bills, leases, debt payments, salaries and other costs.

Fees, on the other hand, have specific purposes. For example, the student recreation center fee and the health fee go specifically toward the operation of those facilities on campus.

Since 2004, full-time tuition at the UO has risen from $5,570 to $9,918 in 2014. According to Moffitt, while the actual cost of delivering an education has gone up, this dramatic rise is primarily due to diminished state support.

As tuition steadily increases, the budget also accommodates for that increase by increasing the budget for financial aid. According to co-chair and Vice Provost for Budget and Planning Brad Shelton, financial aid comes from multiple sources, including the general fund. Another aspect of the budget that helps education remain affordable is required approval from the Higher Education Coordinating Commission for proposed increases in undergraduate resident tuition higher than five percent.

“So our board would not have authority on its own to set a tuition increase just for resident undergraduate students that is more than five percent, without the HECC approving it,” Moffitt said. No such restriction exists for changes in out-of-state student tuition.

Once the recommendation is made, Moffitt said that students have a chance to participate in a forum held by the provost.

“Basically that’s a point in time for the provost to be able to share what the recommendations are talk to students about it and get feedback,” Moffitt said.

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter: @francescamarief

The historic iron gates outside of Howe Field may be removed during the impending construction of a new women’s softball stadium, according to the Register-Guard.

The Howe Field Memorial Gates were installed on campus in 1938 as a World War I memorial, honoring University of Oregon veterans who died during their service.

The construction of a new softball stadium may require its relocation, though a decision has not yet been made regarding the future of the memorial gates. According to the Guard, the gates were classified as being of “secondary” historical significance by university planners who oversee historic preservation, and therefore would not be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

According to the National Parks Service, the National Register of Historic Places  works to “identify, evaluate, and protect” historic sites, buildings and objects. For example, both Deady and Villard Hall, the first and second buildings built on campus, are listed on the National Register of History Places. Both buildings were added to the register in 1972.

Construction of the new stadium will begin in May 2015 and may be ready as soon as the following May.

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Emily Friedenberg and Hazel Lallemand are both sophomores in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts who came to the University of Oregon as Clark Honors College students.

Friedenberg, who has applied to become a product design major, was attracted to the small class sizes and liberal arts education that the Honors College offered.

“I applied to the UO as a safety school and the Honors College was my way to go to a small liberal arts school without having to pay for one,” Friedenberg said.

Lallemand, an architecture major, applied to the Honors College to feed her love of learning. Her Clark Honors Introductory Program class, the honors equivalent of a First-Year Interest Group class, exceeded her expectations of the college.

“The CHIP I took about race and incarceration was one of the best classes I’ve taken so far,” Lallemand said.

But as they began their classes in the Honors College, Friedenberg and Lallemand had different experiences. While Friedenberg loved the intimate nature of the small classes, Lallemand found herself missing the lecture format of her other classes.

“Lectures are really engaging for me,” Lallemand said. “I want to learn form the professors rather than have discussions.”

Friedenberg remains one of 744 students enrolled in the Honors College, which has a first to second year retention rate of 92 percent. Lallemand has dropped out, and credits her decision to the lack of overlap in her architecture and honors classes.

“The Honors College is marketed as this great diverse education for all when it doesn’t work for everyone,” Lallemand said. Lallemand was especially frustrated with her experiences in the literature and history classes.

“We have a reputation for our literature and history sequences,” Dean Terry Hunt said. The Honors College requires students to take two literature and history sequences, as well as a research class in either literature or history.

“Our gen-ed requirements get stereotyped and we are much more diverse than that,” Hunt said. “Our number one major is biology.”

While Friedenberg agreed that not much of the class material overlaps with her other classes, she enjoys the variety of the material.

“The classes kind of slow down graduation for me,” Friedenberg said, “but I really like supplementing my major and minor requirements with these classes.”

Students enrolled in the Honors College also pay a tuition differential of about $3700. For Lallemand, the costs added up.

“My parents will do whatever it takes to pay for my education, and it severely cuts back on what they can do, like fly to see our family,” Lallemand said. “When it comes to paying $3000 for classes that I don’t get much out of, it’s not worth it for me.”

Friedenberg disagreed.

“It’s worth it to me,” Friedenberg said. “You pay more, but you get what you pay for in the smaller classes and greater attention.”

The Honors College also offers scholarships to students after they complete their freshman year, which can help defray the costs of the college.

While Lallemand does not regret leaving the college, she does wish things could have been different.

“If it was more feasible and more manageable around my schedule then I would have stayed,” Lallemand said.

According to Hunt, the benefits of being a Clark Honors College student outweigh any drawbacks.

“One thing I always tell students is all you have to do is say, ‘I’m a student in the Clark Honors College,’ and when you complete that sentence it’s already so imbued with so many things: it was hard to get in, the classes were demanding, you were learning critical thinking,” Hunt said. “The student immediately benefits from that.”

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter @francescamarief

Judith Lechner is an international graduate student, GTF and former GTFF president. Now filling one of four student positions on the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board, Lechner helps the Board make decisions regarding tuition changes throughout the year. Here is what Lechner had to say about her role and experience on the Board:

What is the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board?

The Tuition and Fees Advisory Board discusses tuition and fees, but they are not the ones to set tuition. They just review parts of the budget and make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees about how much they think tuition and fees should be increased or not increased.

When do you meet with the Board?

We meet bi-monthly. We started meeting in fall term, and we’ll be concluding the meetings this month because the recommendation has to be made during February. The Board of Trustees makes the final decision.

How many students are on the board?

Four students. Two students are appointed by the administration and two students are appointed by the ASUO president. Beatriz Gutierrez put herself on the board, and I actually asked her if I could be the second person on the board because I am one of the co-founders of the group of the League of the Educators and Students Slashing Tuition, LESST.

What is LESST?

We are a student group that works with graduate students and undergraduate students. We also have professors on our group and we’re advocating for free higher education. That is our goal, and we’ve been petitioning for a tuition freeze and we have been very successful in our goals so far.

What is your biggest priority as a graduate student member of the Board?

For me personally, the biggest concern is to keep tuition and fees as low as possible. I believe college education should be free, to have equity and equal access. I also believe it’s important to check on the university’s spending priorities. For example, where is most of the money going, could we save some money?

The second part, which is also really important, is to increase the state funding for higher education because it has been dramatically dropping within the last 20 years and only a small portion of the UO budget is still funded by the state, and that needs to change so students don’t have to lift the financial burden.

What do you hope to accomplish as a member of the Board?

I am asking a lot of critical questions, I am trying to understand where the money is going, where we could be saving money. As an international student, I am concerned about the out-of-state tuition as well, which doesn’t affect me as a GTF but I can tell the out-of-state costs are three times as high. I am really worried that international students will have to carry a higher burden.

How would you recommend that students stay informed about tuition costs?

I think people should follow our Facebook group for LESST, and the blog UO Matters.

There will also be a public meeting in February. In this meeting, the recommendations and decisions made by the Board will be explained.

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter @francescamarief

The three candidates applying to become the dean of the Graduate School gave presentations about their goals for the position during weeks two and three. Dr. Scott Pratt, Dr. Andy Berglund and Dr. Mia Tuan each spoke for an hour and answered questions from the audience, which included graduate students, undergraduate students and members of the administration.

Here is what they said:

Dr. Scott Pratt

Dr. Scott Pratt, a professor of Philosophy, emphasized the need for finding donors among Graduate School alumni during his presentation, citing resources as one of the challenges that the dean of the Graduate School will face. Pratt said that he aims to address this challenge by including faculty and students in the fundraising process

“People don’t understand what a graduate program is for the most part,” Pratt said. “They know about the degrees and so on but if you’re talking to people who aren’t familiar, the best people to explain it are people that are a part of it.” Pratt aims to support other schools and departments in their fundraising efforts as well.

Pratt also spoke about the need to increase student enrollment, both in the masters and doctoral programs. Pratt proposed making doctoral enrollment a priority and that the dean’s role would facilitate program improvement, development, recruitment and successful completion. He would do this by working directly with different departments and schools within the UO, and possibly exploring alternative pedagogies within doctoral programs.

To view his presentation, click here.

Dr. Andy Berglund

Andy Berglund has filled the position of interim dean of the Graduate School since April.

Berglund’s goals focus on a theme of growing recruitment and retention in the graduate school by expanding Promising Scholars program, a recruitment award for incoming graduate students.

“When I first came to the graduate school there was very much a focus on recruiting students. I wanted to change to the focus so it’s more about retaining students,” Berglund said.

Berglund is interested in growing the program over 10 years, which will aim to add a second year of funding for graduate students that can be used for dissertation completion, and result in growing the number of awards from 25 to 50. He will implement meetings to find the best strategies to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups.

Other goals outlined in Berglund’s presentation were his 10-year goal to raise an endowment of 20 million to support graduate education and to provide fellowships and funding to 400 graduate students per year by 2020.

To view his presentation, click here.

Dr. Mia Tuan

Mia Tuan, associate dean of the Graduate School and professor within the Education Studies department, hopes to “be bold” in her plans as dean.

Tuan plans to mirror the UO’s current faculty clusters of excellence process, in which the university fundraises for roughly 200 new faculty lines in priority areas, and enacting a similar process for graduate students. The Graduate School would fundraise to bring in 200 new graduate students, both masters and doctoral, and would fund them. The new students could receive three or four years full-ride.

“It’s saying, ‘We want you so much that we’re going to offer you a package that is really attractive and really competitive so that you can come here and be a graduate student,’” Tuan said.

Tuan’s other priority is to become a national model for AAU graduate education by delivering an exceptional student experience. The ability to offer students a full-ride education is one way Tuan proposes doing so. Another is to play a larger role in recruitment and retention by creating campus-wide recruitment events and summer orientation events.

To view her presentation, click here.

Follow Francesca Fontana and Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @francescamarief @ka_tornay

The Oregonian has identified the two librarians who have been suspended for releasing 22,000 pages of records to an unidentified professor as James Fox and Kira Homo. The Oregonian explains that they came to this conclusion through process of elimination and other research. Both Fox and Homo are members of the Society of American Archivists.

According to the Oregonian, the SAA advocates for “open access and use of archived material whenever possible when weighing disclosure needs against confidentiality requirements.”

University of Oregon Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Doug Blandy wrote a letter asking the unidentified professor holding the records to return the zip drive released by UO librarians, according to the Oregonian.

On Jan. 20, Blandy wrote to an unidentified professor that the documents released are “protected by the attorney-client privilege and for which the privilege has not been waived,” and that their disclosure violates state and federal law. Blandy wrote that the professor is obligated as a UO faculty member to protect the confidentiality of the documents.

To do so, Blandy asked the professor to “discontinue any review of the documents, gather or retrieve any and all copies that you have made, remove any documents that you have posted on the Internet and return the originals and all copies of the documents to the Dean of the Libraries, Adriene Lim, by 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22 or sooner.”

According to an email from Scott Coltrane, interim president of the university, only a memo from former UO General Counsel Randy Geller to university administration has been made public. The memo, dated at May 17, 2012, didn’t contain any private information about students or professors, but did have confidential attorney-client information.

The memo appeared on UOmatters.com on Jan. 4, headlined as: “The UO administration’s secret plan to abolish the UO Senate.” The site is operated by Bill Harbaugh, an economics professor at the UO.

Harbaugh has declined to comment on whether or not he is the unidentified professor who holds the leaked documents, and emailed the Oregonian stating that his attorney advised him not to speak about this topic.

Follow Francesca Fontana on Twitter @francescamarief