This piece reflects the views of the author, alumni Shahbaz Yusuf, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

To: UO Board of Trustees

Chuck Lillis

Ginevra Ralph

Connie Ballmer

Peter Bragdon

Rodolfo (Rudy) Chapa

Andrew Colas

Ann Curry

Allyn Ford

Susan N. Gary

Joseph Gonyea III

Ross Kari

Will Paustian

Michael Schill

Mary Wilcox

Kurt Willcox

I’m an alumnus of the University of Oregon. I graduated from the university in the late 80s. As a student, I worked through my four, almost five years at the UO to pay my way through college. At the time, the undergraduate tuition rates were approximately $750 per quarter for a full-time load and I was enrolled as an international student paying approximately $1200 per quarter for tuition. Even in those days, it was quite a burden to maintain my way through college. I met many friends who dropped out for reasons of cost. I am 54 today and a father of three children headed for college.

In the past 30 years, I have observed a seriously disturbing and irresponsible trend among the university funding stakeholders. It starts with the state officials, then the university trustees and UO executive administration. It’s the same trend Senator Sanders called out in his campaign with respect to access to college education.

The trend I refer to is the progressive defunding of public universities and the shift of the burden of higher and higher and higher tuition costs shifting to the undergraduate students.

I am appalled that today in this climate of ignorance, fear and a continued degradation of progressive values that you — the trustees of the UO — have approved yet another tuition increase. This increase just adds to the backs of hard working students from working-class and middle-class families and is the wrong decision.

These types of approvals continue to perpetuate the complete abdication of responsibility that the state and you, the trustees, have to hold fast to the values of the “public” education system and hold them in a direction that supports tax paying, working class and middle-class families and individuals.

I see a lot of big names on the list of trustees — people who are likely very well-off, and for whom the idea of paying for a full-time student or two may seem like a minuscule fraction of their financial picture. But I urge you to think about it from the perspective of an average or even a median middle-class family that is faced with putting two children through a college education. Increases like this on their backs, versus being covered by the state, are flagrantly violating the reason public colleges were funded.

I urge — heck, I require you guys to look at ways to close down irrelevant school programs and cut costs rather than pandering to outdated tenure systems, unneeded core requirements and outdated curriculums that have no place in today’s college programs.

As trustees, you need to embrace and promote a cradle-to-college education value system for public schools and ensure that states such as Oregon’s preserve and lower the cost of entry into higher education for the lowest economic tiers of our citizens. And, do that without increasing the debt burden on them!

But you guys are doing just the opposite! I say to hell with this. This is wrong and as a past progressive Oregon student, I morally oppose and denounce this direction you are taking.

I urge you to rescind this.

Thanks for your attention.

The post Guest Viewpoint: A letter from an Oregon alumni to the Board of Trustees appeared first on Emerald Media.

This piece reflects the views of the authors, Natalie Fisher and Andrew Dunn of ASUO executive, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

A response to “Schill to University of Oregon undergrads: We may hike your tuition cost 10.6 percent in the coming year.”

About tuition… as you may know, the University of Oregon faces a $25 million increase in operating costs next year. This is nothing to scoff at. Just about one-third of this increase is directly correlated to the decision to shift some of the responsibility of PERS (or the Public Employee Retirement System) from the state onto public universities, or more literally onto my student loan debt. That’s fine, but are we sure our faculty are considered public employees, let alone the University of Oregon a public institution, when we receive just around seven percent of our funding from the state?

The recent article in the Register Guard, by Elon Glucklich, describes our dire tuition situation we are facing fairly. Yes, being backed into a corner by our lack of state funding, the current tuition proposal to cover these increasing costs would raise resident tuition above 10 percent and non-resident tuition above three percent for next year, as well as gutting nine million dollars in jobs and essential student services. And yes, students will protest. And yes, we should make our voices heard in the ways we deem necessary. But we are also more than just dissenting voices on the outside of this process.

Students have been organizing for months to advocate for more funding for higher education, including students from the ASUO, the Oregon Student Association and the student organization, Tuition Transparency. There have been two tuition forums, one with the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board, the other with local members of the Board of Trustees as well as a public comment period on the current tuition proposal through Feb. 20 on the tuition website: uoregon.edu/tuition. ASUO student leaders have been tabling on 13th Avenue and talking to different student groups on campus to collect letters to drop on the doorstep of the Ways and Means Committee to demand funding for our education. On Oregon’s birthday, Feb. 14, your peers from across the state, alongside OSA and United Academics, spent the entire day in Salem missing classes and working to fight for our education.

Up next for us: catch the ASUO and your fellow students at the Ways and Means Roadshow at Lane Community College on Feb. 25 and the University of Oregon’s Lobby Day in Salem on March 9. You can find ASUO on Facebook for info on these events.

Won’t you join us?

Sincerely,

Natalie Fisher
$30,174 in debt (so far)
ASUO External Vice President

Andrew Dunn
Pell Grant Eligible
$6,000 in debt (and counting)
ASUO External Director of Staff

The post Guest Viewpoint: Students to legislators: We may drown in debt appeared first on Emerald Media.

This piece reflects the views of the author, Ryan Mishap, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

As an Oregon football fan, one of the things that bothered me most about last season didn’t happen on the field. What bothered me was the silence from the coaches after Torrodney Prevot and then Eddie Heard were suspended for allegedly hitting women; the silence about Tristen Wallace and Darrian Franklin, both under investigation for sexual assault. This silence from the coaches is a common ploy, right out of the institutional playbook when it comes to violence against women, as Jessica Luther explores in her book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape. Mark Helfrich didn’t have to discuss specific incidences or violate anyone’s due process — I just wanted him to say that violence against women won’t be tolerated.  

Willie Taggart hadn’t been on the job for a month before he declared violence against women to be “unacceptable.”As Taggart said in an interview with Oregonlive, “We’re going to respect women, first and foremost, at all times. There’s no way around that.”  

“If you can’t live up to [the rules], you won’t be here,” Taggart declared.

According to a Jan. 9 article on Oregonlive.com, Taggart is apparently backing up his words as Heard, Wallace and Franklin are not just suspended, but no longer with the program. I thank the new coach for speaking up and drawing a line in the sand.

That I’m thanking him for such a basic ethical stance shows how badly rape culture permeates sports in our society. We don’t talk about male violence against women, rape and the sports culture that creates male athletes who feel entitled to women’s bodies. We need to talk about it, though. There’s the dismissal of ten football players from the University of Minnesota, some of whom were directly accused of assault and others whose involvement was uncertain. There’s Joe Mixon of the University of Oklahoma breaking a woman’s jaw and still playing. Who can forget Stanford swimmer Brock Turner assaulting an unconscious woman and only getting three months in jail?  A recent study by the University of Oregon’s own Jennifer Freyd found that one in ten women will be sexually assaulted while attending the UO. This goes beyond athletics.

We need to talk about it, but it takes more than words to change a male-dominated culture that views women as sexual objects instead of people.

The second half of Luther’s book outlines ways coaches and colleges can change the way they deal with sexual assault and violence, as well as prevent it from happening in the first place. This makes the book a must-read.

As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also writes in his recent book, Writings on the Wall, “Any tolerance of sexual assault teaches … students that women are somehow less deserving of protection than men in society, that sexual aggression by men is perfectly okay, and that even if we huff and puff about how it isn’t okay (wink, wink), nothing much will be done about it. It’s not enough to provide panic buttons around campus or train female students how to be alert to predators, we must attack the bros-before-hos mentality … ” In other words, it is up to men to take responsibility for stopping rape and violence against women.

Ryan Mishap is a member of Men Against Rape Culture, writes the punk zine Mishap, will see you Jan. 20 at the Oregon/Colorado basketball game, and can be contacted at mishapzine@yahoo.com

The post Guest Viewpoint: Creating dialogue on assault in sports appeared first on Emerald Media.

By Mateo Sundberg

Peace, stability and prosperity. Those are words that describe the ideal world that we the people, people of every nation, strive to achieve. The difficult question is how we achieve, sustain and spread these ideals to every corner of the earth.

Multiple attempts have been made to accomplish this goal within the past century. The first and most notable failed attempt was President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. The League of Nations had a similar structure to today’s modern United Nations: it served as an international governing body that was supposed resolve disputes through diplomatic negotiations between feuding nations.

Although the League of Nation’s goals and ideals were admirable, in practice it fell short of its goal to bring order and stability to the world as it failed to prevent multiple crises from ballooning out of control, such as the Manchuria crisis and the Abyssinia crisis in the 1930s, which were instigated by future World War II axis powers Japan and Italy, respectively.

Another more recent example of failure to uphold peace, stability and prosperity in times of crisis was the UN peacekeeping forces of the 1990s. Notable stumbles during this decade include its failure to intervene swiftly during the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda, and the failure to protect Muslim safe zones in Srebrenica during the Bosnian crisis, which led to the systematic slaughter of the town’s men and boys.

What is notably missing from these two examples is strong leadership from the United States.

The United States declined to join the League of Nations after World War I, and the UN peacekeeping forces were under command of a multinational command structure which diluted influence from the United States. In turn, decisions from leaders in these situations were often under the influence of many different international interests which would complicate decision making and quick action. This foreign policy strategy by multinational bodies represents a time in which global order was at times sporadic and lacked uniform policy and implementation.

The alternative can be, and has been, affectionately referred to as Pax-Americana: strong leadership from the United States on the global stage. American leadership in foreign affairs conjures up images and failures from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the Vietnam War; however, United States foreign policy is not given credit for its successes in the First Gulf War of 1990 and even the war in Afghanistan, the former representing the success of accomplishing a large strategic goal without deviation, and the latter displaying tepid success in nation building.

The United States is far and beyond the strongest military power in the world, the hard power that it yields is unprecedented in human history, and with the United States at the helm of global influence, this has been arguably the most peaceful time in human history. Why would we want to transition away from global stability and prosperity demonstrated under United States leadership to a more uncertain future under multinational organizations, or even other emerging powers such as Russia?

Often, the counterargument is that the United States has no right to meddle in foreign affairs of other sovereign nations, and that our value system, or lack thereof, is incompatible to other countries. This point is important to keep the United States’ reach and influence in check, but it should not prevent or deter the United States from intervening in foreign conflicts where human rights violations are being perpetuated, or where war is raging on without an advocate and protector for the defenseless.

A strategy for foreign policy that works for the world and the United States can be a form of the “Broken Windows” theory. As outlined by Pulitzer Winner Bret Stephens, the appearance of disorder in foreign affairs, in the form of civil war, illegal annexations or the use of brutal tactics by autocratic regimes on their citizens, encourages more belligerents to act out and wreck havoc in the world. To combat disorder on the world stage, the United States should be proactive in its foreign policy, stopping and combating dissidence and evil when they arise by force, and before they balloon into larger and multiplying problems. Creating a precedence of having swift military action in response to a violation to the United States’ commitments to peace abroad will give future dissidents pause.

The United States cannot shrink away from the world stage, as often suggested by Donald Trump. The world needs the United States to guarantee peace and prosperity in the world, and the United States can do this without overly burdensome measures through the “Broken Window” theory.

The post Sundberg: U.S. needs a more involved foreign policy appeared first on Emerald Media.

This piece reflects the views of the author, Travis Evans, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

Over the past two years, I have been on a course that has shifted almost every term. I am a graduate student at a university where I am studying conflict resolution. Eventually, my course shifted enough that I took a class on human trafficking and how it affects every country, every city and every community. I decided to focus on advocacy for victims of human trafficking and try to work towards the prevention of human trafficking within my own small town. As my concentration developed I eventually took a course on the psychology of trauma. This course expanded my knowledge of how trauma affects the human brain, body and mind. Learning the processes that go on within a human who has endured some sort of trauma were extremely informative and I wanted to learn more. This interest, along with extra credit, put me into a room where a panel discussed sexual assault on campus, who should be responsible for reporting and how it should be reported. An idea popped into my head and I have not been able to stop thinking about this since.

One student, an undergrad who identified themselves as such, mentioned resident advisors and how these advisors are often unintentional reporters because they are usually the physical representation of an authority figure or a parent when a college student is living in the dorms. The conversation went back and forth with possibilities and opportunities and I was really intrigued. But what really caught me off guard was the fact that these RAs are, in a sense, mandatory reporters. From my psychology class, I learned that what really helps many victims of sexual assault and other forms of trauma is the survivor’s ability to maintain autonomy. These two ideas started to conflict with each other in my mind and I thought back to my conflict resolution studies. We had just visited the new office of the Ombudsman on campus and with this in mind I thought to myself: why aren’t RAs falling under the office of Ombuds and becoming mediators of sorts?

Being a college student over a longer period of time than I would like to admit, I have seen the campus change and the mindsets of many parents, faculty, and the local police, shift. These adults now see many of the issues that plague new college students as things that should not derail a college student, but as opportunities for growth. I have heard the story time after time: an underage student drinks too much and everyone is afraid to help that student because no one wants to get in trouble. Well, what happens when that fear of punishment ends up hurting someone even more? What happens when a student loses control over a situation where they already feel they have lost control of their own body? While all parents want their children to be safe once they leave the house, and indeed resident advisors add some sense of safety to the parents’ mindset along with holding certain legal responsibilities for the universities at which they attend and work for, why should the RA role be that of punishment?

I feel we are at a great moment where we can combine multiple issues into one opportunity. Let’s create a safe and healthy environment for our college students, one that allows for mistakes, but one that also helps those who have been hurt. Let’s take away the fear of punishment from the students living in dorms and across campus. Let’s change the way an RA works, train them to be mediators for disputes, give these RAs a true form of discretion, and most importantly, let’s give victims of assault the opportunity to maintain their autonomy so that they can heal.

Under my proposed shift in policy, resident advisors would still be required to report any threat of violence or death to any individual just as the Ombudsman is. However, once taken on under the office of Ombuds, these RAs would be able to listen to problems, attempt to help those in need and mediate if possible along with tracking data. The students that an RA helps remain anonymous (again, this is the way the office of Ombuds currently works), so there is no change to that policy. The RAs will be trained in policies and procedures for multiple issues including, but not limited to, sexual assault. RAs will still maintain a presence that promotes safety, but would do so with the understanding of the students that their lives remain in their control.

With changes in policy regarding sexual assault and trauma becoming a monthly development, let us also keep in mind the opportunities we have for healing — for helping our students rather than continuing or causing more harm.

The post Guest Viewpoint: Proposing a shift in sexual assault policy appeared first on Emerald Media.

By Mateo Sundberg

Over one year ago, the Black Student Task Force released a list of twelve demands for the University of Oregon administration to address campus issues surrounding diversity and tolerance. One of the demands, demand number six, was a request for the University of Oregon to commit to hiring more African-American professors, specifically in areas outside of the humanities and the social sciences, to encourage diversity in our university’s faculty.

However, this demand, and many other similar demands for diversity by means of race and ethnicity in higher education, fails to reach its goal of creating a space of intellectual rigor, debate and ideological diversity.

Commentators on both the political left and right have highlighted how academic departments value diversity in the form of race and ethnicity over diversity in thought. Few people would try to argue that having an entire faculty of white, middle-aged, straight and upper-middle class professors would create a campus climate that was diverse and inclusive. Sadly, this line of thought does not ring true when applied to faculty having diverse political ideologies. In the 2006 Politics of the American Professoriate survey, researchers found that amongst American social science faculty only 4.9 percent consider themselves conservative compared to 17.6 percent who considered themselves Marxist. When looking at faculty in other departments, the picture does not get much brighter as only about 6 to 11 percent of faculty in the humanities consider themselves to be Republican.

What explains this trend of conservative and republican ideologies being in the insanely small minority? Perhaps it is because there has not, and will not be, enough conservative scholars up to par with a university’s intellectual standards — yet trends show that in the past there was a more equitable share of liberal and conservative faculty, and in the past 20 years there has been a sudden and inexplicable rise of liberal faculty; additionally, the most cited legal scholar of all time, Richard Posner, was a conservative, proving that scholars on the right end of the political spectrum can be the most respected in their respective fields.

Maybe there is a disproportionate share of liberal professors in the humanities and social sciences because conservatives are more likely to pursue higher paying jobs outside of academia. This idea would fail to explain why there are a fair share of right wing faculty members in the natural sciences, mathematics, and business departments, and not in the humanities and social sciences.

Seeing that these counter arguments do not hold up well when examined more closely, it suggests that there is a bias, even discrimination, against prospective conservative faculty. There have been examples of this type of discrimination amongst faculty search committees across the nation, including one example at Georgetown University, where a search committee member attested that the chairman of the committee stated that, “No libertarian candidates would be considered,” or that job descriptions would be changed when it became apparent that the most qualified candidates were found to be conservative.

If liberal faculty believe that higher education requires a robust exchange of ideas that is enhanced by having faculty and students of diverse backgrounds, why is there not a push to hire faculty that have different ideological viewpoints and are not liberal?

The University of Colorado-Boulder has begun the process of trying to undo the homogenous ideological space that has been created by creating a Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought in 2013. Bringing in a top scholar from an opposing viewpoint strengthens the legitimacy of the ideas that come from the university since they have been tested and debated against. What do liberal faculty members have to fear about having conservative ideas floating around campus? As shown by the University of Colorado, having faculty of conservative ideology does not subvert liberal ideas — if anything it strengthens its legitimacy since it was not created in an ideological vacuum.

The University of Oregon should continue to pursue faculty candidates of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds because the life experiences and worldviews of minorities are important and valuable for intellectual debate.

However, if the universities do not diagnose and fix their ideological bias problem, they will become an echo chamber of only liberal ideas and thought, which would result in the failure of our universities duty to be a space of intellectual rigor that is full of debate. Universities do not have a monopoly on knowledge and intellect; they need to hire more faculty members of diverse ideological and political thought before universities render themselves obsolete.

The post Sundberg: Universities must diversify their ideas appeared first on Emerald Media.

This piece reflects the views of the author, the University of Oregon Black Student Task Force, and not those of Emerald Media Group.

There is a big difference between erasing history and continuing to foster a relationship with white supremacy. The University of Oregon’s noble verdict to dename Dunn yet unfortunate decision to hold off on denaming Deady represents the latter.

In November 2015, the UO’s Black Student Task Force presented university administrators with a list of 12 demands, including the de-naming of both Dunn and Deady Hall for ties to the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Black racism. Earlier this year, UO President Michael Schill put a team of historians together to investigate the histories of Frederick Dunn and Matthew Deady and make recommendations. Ultimately, the UO chose to dename Dunn Hall but leave Deady as is.

One of the most troubling aspects of this decision is that it appears to place more importance on the false narrative of erasing history than the humanity of UO’s Black students. To be clear, the criteria for denaming Deady Hall, as established by President Schill, includes erecting a display that explains the building’s history, the history of those with whom the building was affiliated, and how that history might be viewed in their own times and in contemporary Oregon.

Just what is that history? According to the historians’ findings, Dunn served as the “Exalted Cyclops” of Eugene Klan No. 3 in the 1920s. Deady, however, was more “complicated.” He ran for office as a proslavery delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention and supported the infamous Exclusion Laws that banned Black people from living in Oregon. However, later on in his life as a judge, he made some decisions in favor of Chinese immigrants. He also “embraced” the 14th and 15th Amendments following losing the Civil War as a member of the Confederacy, but there is no evidence that his anti-Black sentiments ever changed. Some point to the fact that 89% of Oregon voters also supported the Exclusion Law, but does that mean he’s above being held accountable? Deady also espoused pro-slavery views even though 75% of Oregon voters opposed it.

While it’s easy to get bogged down in the details, the decision of whether or not to dename Deady Hall comes down to one simple question. Is the UO welcoming to its Black students or not?

We understand that Deady played a major role in the founding and maintaining of UO (which will be detailed in a display in a prominent part of the denamed building) but it’s 2016. For just as much as he’s done for the university, Deady has also contributed to a culture of anti-Blackness that persists on campus today. There is no shortage of Black males who are more used to being called “Football Player” than their actual names, even if they’ve never set foot in Autzen Stadium. Likewise, far too many Black students have stories about run-ins with either campus and or local police for no other reason than walking while Black. Perhaps most detrimental is the fact that many Black students have to spend valuable study time seeking help from student advocates, just to force their professors to serve them the same way they serve their white counterparts. The fact is, we see and live with this anti-Blackness every day. Buildings honoring the architects of our oppression only add insult to injury.

They also pose a major problem for recruiting. When UO student ambassadors give campus tours, do they explain Deady’s anti-Black/pro-slavery history and Dunn’s position as an exalted member of the KKK? These subjects certainly weren’t mentioned during our campus tour. What about the Black students who give campus tours? What message does it send when the UO tasks them with promoting a school that celebrates men who didn’t want Black people on their campus?

Like most, we discovered the history of Dunn and Deady much later through informal research. This doesn’t speak highly of how the UO handles its image or how much it trusts the intellects of its students to process this information. Thus, it is patently disingenuous to say denaming Deady Hall is erasing history when the UO has made no effort to educate its students on this history in the first place.

We are witnessing a rise and normalization of white supremacy throughout the country. It’s to the point where the presidential candidate of one of our major political parties retweeted KKK members and neo-Nazis (among a laundry list of other things), knowing it would boost his popularity and get him elected. In this context, it is as critical a time as ever for the UO to stand with its Black students and foster a climate that is welcoming and equitable.

This is bigger than Deady Hall, the UO or the state of Oregon. It’s about our country confronting the cancer of white supremacy before it spreads any further. This means attacking it in all forms, whether overt or subtle.

The UO Black Student Task Force seeks to do its part by helping create a campus that is not defined by past and present anti-Black racism and xenophobic politics. Changing the name of Dunn and not Deady Hall is selling both Black students and the rest of the university short. Other universities like Georgetown are already leading the way in these efforts to redefine themselves and better serve their students. Instead of playing it safe, the UO could be part of this vanguard.

Regardless, history will continue moving forward. The question is, will the UO move with it?

University of Oregon Black Student Task Force

­

The post Guest Viewpoint: UO must cease from symbolically supporting slavery and DENAME Deady Hall appeared first on Emerald Media.

By Jordan Ingram

The Eugene Police Department will receive $250,000 in city funds to match a federal grant to expand its body camera program as part of the City Council’s June 27 approved budget. But the EPD faces myriad fiscal challenges with a growing video monitoring system, according to department officials.

In combination with the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s award, the department will have nearly a half-million dollars to purchase cameras and software, increase data storage capacity and provide training.  

However, the nationwide demand to equip police officers with body cameras is stumbling on the reality of maintaining such a program, raising agency concerns over long-term costs.

The National Institute of Justice notes that law enforcement needs to consider “privacy issues, officer and community concerns, data retention and public disclosure policies and financial considerations,” according to its website.

EPD Public Information Officer Melinda McLaughlin said all video footage released to the public will require forensic technicians to ensure the privacy of a victim or any bystanders caught on camera at a rate of $32.60 per hour, in addition to a $25 processing fee.

The labor intensive, frame-by-frame editing process could take 8 to 10 hours to produce an hour of redacted video footage, according to McLaughlin.

Oregon state public record laws are pockmarked with over 500 exemptions that can delay or prevent the disclosure of state agency records. This includes any police audio and video recordings.

The law also requires that recordings be held anywhere between 180 days and 30 months.

These storage restrictions and redaction processes stretch the public records workload beyond the police station.

“There is an impact on the prosecutor’s office because now they’re going to have to review video from each officer and incident, so that’s a concern,” Meisel said.

Meisel added that officers with body cameras “are recording a nationwide average of 2 to 3 hours of video during a 10-hour shift. And that’s a lot of video.”

“Those are some of the issues that not only Eugene but agencies around the country are dealing with,” Eugene police Capt. Sherri Meisel said.  “We are trying to figure out the best way to store long-term in the most cost-efficient way.”

The BJA estimates the average program costs around $1,500 per camera, which includes everything from the hardware, licensing, and training.

“It’s worth the expense from my perspective as being both an oversight professional and a member of the community,” said city of Eugene Police Auditor Mark Gissiner.

Gissiner also said that the EPD’s program expansion is a sign of a larger cultural paradigm shift that insists upon more transparency and accountability of law enforcement.   

“It’s 2016 now and people want accountability for public bodies,” Gissiner said.

The EPD had equipped a handful of downtown officers and traffic enforcement patrols with body-worn cameras as early as 2012. The following year, the department bought 18 more cameras.

This year, it plans to purchase nearly ten times that amount.

There are approximately 190 sworn officers on the police force that work in 10-hour shifts.

As police officials iron out concerns, the immediate consequences for journalists, lawyers, and watchdog groups could amount to longer waiting periods and higher price-tags for public records.

For those in Eugene still wobbling on the fence between financial prudence and heightened awareness of public officials, Gissiner says, “The question I ask all the time is, ‘What does it take to convince people that an investigation was fair and impartial?’ Transparency. That’s what it takes.”

This piece reflects the views of the authors, the 2015-2016 ASUO Executive, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

Thank you to all students who have allowed us to serve as a support for student voices over this past year. After a contentious election in 2015, we have worked hard to engage, grow student power and advocate for access on campus. The ASUO is spread across many areas and is heavily involved in issues of policy, this year we worked primarily in the areas of sexual violence prevention & education, campus safety, food security, accessibility and tuition affordability. In addition to these projects, we advocated for funding for higher education in Salem, sought to secure student input on the health center expansion project and attempted to improve education between students by obtaining the student email listserv from UO admin.

As our Sexual and Mental Health Advocate, Sophie Albanis expanded on her already vast intersectional feminist SVPE work by arranging the first ever Summit on Sexual Assault early in the year, bringing together student groups in the field to come up with collaborative goals. In addition to this, she planned two SVPE poetry slams and an As You Like It sex positive workshop with team members.

Our campus safety project worked in collaboration with student Sydney McBride to coordinate a forum on concerns in the fall, and has since worked with Enterprise Risk Management and faculty members to develop a survey for better addressing campus needs, as well as new methods for identifying issues. Meanwhile, the food security team has paired up with other student organizations and the EMU to find campus space for a food pantry for students.

Lisa Weiss served as the Accessibility Advocate, pairing with the AccessABILITY Student Union to bring guest speaker Reveca Torres to campus for a discussion on spinal cord injury, developed a phone app with the Infographics Lab to update the true campus accessibility as reflected in the UO map, developed a flipbook with her team which highlights accessibility resources on campus and wrote a policy change for Universal Design with members of AASU. Lisa’s hard work has created more accessibility on campus, as well as overall awareness of the issues students with disabilities face every day.

Tuition will be going up by over 4.5% in the upcoming school year, but it didn’t happen without strong opposition from students this year, and we thank everyone for that participation. We presented the UO Board of Trustees with over 1,000 petition signatures against the tuition hike, suggested a reduction in IT expansion and Trustee Kurt Wilcox recommended alternative funding sources, all as ways to reduce the increase for this year. After convincing the Board to reject a 10% hike in a transition to a guaranteed tuition model, they unfortunately sided with the goals of President Schill and the Tuition & Fees Advisory Board administrative members in their tuition increase.

Additionally, Executive members Potratz and Gimm organized with OSA Campus Organizer Rachel Jones to bring the concerns of students to Salem. They held administrators responsible to the state legislators, and presented a path for more funding for higher education in the years to come. Though there is never a chance at garnering funds during a short session year, these two students did incredible work to improve communication with Salem and fight for affordability at the UO.

In the upcoming years, there are a few things that we hope students are cognizant of.

First, find anyway to learn more and get engaged. This year, the administration has worked to keep the list of student emails away from the ASUO in order to break communication and awareness of issues. Though no other department or apartment rental company has a contract for sending emails, we have been dragged through several months of negotiations to even send one message, and will leave office without getting the emails, despite being promised the list for several weeks now.

Secondly, while this same administration wants the $6 million dollars of student building fee dollars to go towards a health center expansion, and we want the same, they want the ASUO to sign off on that money with no agreement in place for how conversations around the new space will be conducted. Also, they will be coming back with an ask for $10-18 million from students as they haven’t begun fundraising for the new building yet. We want to give them the $6 million because these resources are needed, but having students to pay the full amount of the building with no control over the construction would be bad practice of stewardship of funds for the ASUO.

Keeping costs down is what we aimed to do, and with tuition costs going up without negotiation, we cannot ask students to submit more fees and payments to this administration. There is nothing holding them accountable to our funds, as the Board is here for a few days out of the year and is so far removed that they cannot understand student needs in their fullest capacities.

Thank you again everyone for an incredible and progressive year. Stay aware and willing to challenge the University when they act against students’ best interests, and work together to find a means of accountability. Enjoy your time left on campus, make positive inclusive change and build student power!

 2015-2016 ASUO Executive

This piece reflects the views of the author, Jennifer Gómez, and not those of Emerald Media Group. It has been edited by the Emerald for grammar and style. Send your columns or submissions about our content or campus issues to letters@dailyemerald.com.

It seems like a simple matter.

An undergraduate student discloses to a university employee, such as a faculty member, that they were the victim of sexual violence or another form of discrimination (e.g., racism). To protect that student and the university community, that faculty member reports all information to the appropriate official university office. In doing so, this student is also connected with campus resources for help.

Sounds good.

However, through critical interrogation of the ramifications of this scenario, the problems with a required reporting policy like that being reviewed by the University of Oregon appear: removing autonomy and privacy from adults; silencing reports; infringing upon academic freedom and potentially First Amendment rights; disproportionately affecting minorities, who are subject to both sexual violence victimization and discrimination and potentially violating Title IX federal legislation as it may cause ‘unintended discrimination’ against those most likely to be victims.

The image of victimized students needing to be saved by UO through having their privacy and autonomy removed is a paternalistic stance that infantilizes grown adults.

Experiencing victimization through rape, sexual harassment, being called a slur or the many other injustices that this umbrella policy covers does not render one powerless and mindless. Harmed, yes. Weak, no. Students, who are afforded the right to drive, vote and risk their lives in the military should be able to determine where and to whom their experiences are shared.

Furthermore, the proposed policy does not only affect undergraduates who are victims. It also applies to graduate students — who are often both students and employees — staff, and faculty. Imagine a 50-year-old professor receiving the implicit communication that they do not know what is best for them through having their harmful experience shared without their consent.

Requiring reporting is not mandated by the federal government. Nowhere in Title IX or the subsequent Dear Colleague Letters from 2011 and 2015 is required reporting of this nature actually required.

If consent is important in sexual relations, with lack of consent indicating assault, then shouldn’t consent in the reporting process also be primary? Why not have a policy that holds employees accountable by requiring that they follow the wishes of the adult who has disclosed to them?

In privileging adults’ basic rights for autonomy and privacy, an uncomfortable question arises: What if, for all its potential for harm, required reporting does create a safer university environment for all by stopping repeat perpetrators?

Unfortunately, required reporting cannot do that if people make no initial disclosures because they know their information will be shared without consent (and 90 percent of survivors of sexual violence do not disclose to any university source at all).

Secondly, UO has demonstrated its incapability to consistently hold perpetrators accountable.

For instance, I was a witness of discrimination at UO. The target of discrimination voluntarily reported to the official university source. I, as a witness, also reported this same event. Following reporting, I received no follow-up. That person still works at UO and is free to continue to perpetrate, despite the case being reported with a corroborating witness. This one example elicits mistrust by highlighting a systemic flaw in the system that should be corrected.

Further inhibiting disclosure is some minorities’ justified mistrust of the UO as a predominantly white university that currently has two buildings named after white supremacists.

That justified mistrust was strengthened for many by the fact that specific concerns for minorities — related to sexual violence and other forms of discrimination — were entirely excluded from the rationale for the UO’s required reporting policy.

The mistrust that some university members have for the UO should be empathized with, respected and addressed in other ways. Mandating trust is impossible; attempting to do so will not work.

Advocates, experts and survivors have spoken out about requiring reporting in this blanket manner, including an anonymous graduate student; UO Organization Against Sexual Assault; Brenda Tracy (nationally recognized advocate against sexual violence on college campuses); BB Beltran, director of Sexual Assault Support Services and Dr. Jennifer Freyd, UO professor and expert on sexual violence.

The issues with requiring reporting are many and varied. Solutions to the complex cultural problems of sexual violence, discrimination and inequality must start with respecting the rights of victims as autonomous adults. If we start there, then our solutions serve to create a better world in which fairness is paramount, differences are respected and discrimination is not re-instantiated.