Elle Mallon, who was the external vice presidential candidate on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T. slate, filed a second grievance against We Are Oregon regarding its response to her original grievance from April 3.

Here’s how it played out:

March 29

We Are Oregon holds its kickoff event in PLC 180.

April 3

Mallon submits grievance against We Are Oregon for holding its kickoff event in a building with no gender-inclusive bathrooms.

April 4

The ASUO Elections Board rules that We Are Oregon broke the rules and as a result, it couldn’t campaign for 36 hours.

April 5:

2:54 – We Are Oregon campaign manager Taylor Allison asks the Constitution Court to overturn the Elections Board’s decision, and We Are Oregon gets to keep campaigning while the Constitution Court makes that decision.

Allison’s appeal says that part of Mallon’s evidence was taken out of context.

6:21 – Mallon files a response accusing Allison of sexual harassment because she referred to Mallon as “Ms.” when Mallon identifies with the use of “Mx.”

7:30 – Allison apologizes in an email, saying:

“In every situation I’ve been in with Elle, Elle has said Elle’s pronouns were “She, Her, Hers,” including on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T website. With that information, I used “Ms.” when addressing Elle.”

April 8:

Mallon submits a second grievance saying Allison chose to misgender her.

She cites the apology email from Allison as evidence saying that:

“Allison found a place where my pronouns were listed and then chose to misgender me anyway (My pronouns also include xe xem hyr and they them their).”

In a later email, Mallon calls for the removal of all We Are Oregon candidates from the ballot.

April 9

The Constitution Court sends an email to its mailing list with the decision addressing the bathroom grievance.

“While this Court is empathetic towards Respondent’s original grievance, and advises all future campaigns to remember their cultural competency trainings in order to promote as inclusive a community as possible, access to a bathroom is not a campaign related purpose.”

The court reversed the Election Board’s decision and removed the sanctions.

The decision did not address the misgendering claim. Associate Justices Chaney and Huegel agreed with the Court’s position on the bathroom grievance, but dissented in part that the decision did not address the additional complaint and makes the accusations part of the court’s public records.

“Sexual harassment is a very great evil, but the record supports the conclusion that only a single unintentional gender-based microagression occurred. To conflate the two may serve to salve the sense of anger Respondent may feel at Petitioner’s mistake. However it may serve Respondent, it is unnecessarily inflammatory and risks damaging the reputation of Petitioner, an ASUO member who the record shows made a mistake, and then took the first opportunity to apologize. At no time was any of this relevant to the matter before the Court, which is a dispute over whether the Elections Rules require campaigns to provide gender-neutral restrooms.”

14 C.C.

Live coverage of Wednesday night’s ASUO Senate meeting

Access the agenda here.

UO Forward is banned from campaigning for the rest of the week after the Constitution Court overturned the Elections Board’s dismissal of We Are Oregon’s grievance against the campaign.

That means no more campaigning for the slate before voting closes this Friday.

The grievance that stopped the campaigning was submitted last Thursday, April 2. It stated that Helena Schlegel and UO Forward violated elections rules by using a petition calling for the Board of Trustees to freeze tuition to also collect student phone numbers, a form of campaigning that was not allowed at the time of the petition. We Are Oregon campaign manager Taylor Allison submitted screenshots of text messages and a recorded phone call from a UO Forward volunteer to Miles Sisk, We Are Oregon’s presidential candidate, as evidence of the violation. The original grievance called for Schlegel and the rest of the executive ticket, in addition to a senate candidate, to be removed from the ballot.

On Saturday April 4, the Elections Board dismissed the grievance, saying that there was not evidence to prove the violation “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Allison then appealed the decision to the Constitution Court that same evening.

The Constitution Court said that it used a standard of “clear and convincing evidence” to determine that the rules in question had been broken and that the nature of the violations was severe.

“Though the primary purpose of collecting students’ contact information was to submit a Petition to the UO Board of Trustees, there was another clear intended purpose as well, which was to use the contact information obtained from the petition for their campaign,” the decision reads.

UO Forward is now banned from all activities that involved direct contact with voters for the rest of the week. This includes canvassing, phone banking, events and street-teaming. Voting will continue and close on DuckWeb on Friday April 10.

Senator Sami Tayeh has resigned after the ASUO Executive called for his removal because of what it described as “homophobic, racist and predatory behavior” at the United States Student Association’s Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 27-30.

A delegation of seven people from the University of Oregon flew to the conference on March 26, planning to stay at a USSA staff member’s house for the first night. According to the motion, that night Tayeh became intoxicated at a party and began using racist and homophobic slurs.

The motion also stated that the senator entered a room where a woman from another delegation had been asleep. He went into the bed she was in, resulting in an “inappropriate interaction” with the woman, and refused to leave even after repeated requests.

Tayeh said that he remembered nothing about his actions that night, but suggested he may have thought the room and bed he tried to enter were the ones in which he had been assigned to sleep earlier that day.

“As it was mentioned, I was not very conscious at the moment,” Tayeh said. He added that someone else had furnished the alcohol and that: “They were asking for trouble by doing that.”

The motion then said that when the owners of the property entered the room and asked him to leave, Tayeh exited the room. He passed out in another room in the middle of the floor, woke up and urinated on the host’s couches and furniture.

Tayeh attended the first day of the conference, but was asked by the UO delegation leader Gabe Gardiner and the USSA president to leave. He found another hotel room and stayed away, eventually flying back to Oregon without the group.

Internal Vice President Tran Dinh submitted the motion to censure Tayeh on the night of April 6.

According to the Green Tape Notebook, which details the rules of operation for the ASUO Senate would host a hearing at its next meeting to discuss removing the senator from office. However, when Tayeh resigned a half hour later, the meeting was no longer necessary.

Tayeh said he could not confirm or deny if the actions in the motion took place, but offered his “deepest apologies” in his resignation.

Dinh said that the representation of the university was a main concern in calling for Tayeh’s resignation. “We should hold people accountable for what they do,” said Dinh.

Tayeh held Senate Seat 15, for psychology and cultural studies. He was appointed to Senate in fall term.

While students buzzed around campus last week searching out unfamiliar classrooms and the fastest routes between buildings, they also had to account for the slew of tents, clipboards and puppies that mean only one thing: ASUO election week.

Elections took place much earlier this year than last. Current ASUO President Beatriz Gutierrez was elected on April 25 of 2014. The 2015-2016 ASUO president will be decided by the end of week two, which is April 10.

This year’s elections board was aiming to hold the general election during week two, according to Coordinator Monica Nunan, but that was not possible. Two employees in the Office of the Registrar run the elections process on DuckWeb, and they need to be on campus to do so. Nunan said that both these employees would be leaving town during week three and would not be able to run the program as a result. This would have presented problems in the event of a runoff election.

“We would have had to either do the elections week one and week two, or week two and week four,” Nunan said. They went with the first option.

As it happens, the Green Tape Notebook also states that a runoff election must take place within a week of the general, so the other alternative was not really one at all.

According to Sue Eveland, one of the two employees in the Office of the Registrar responsible for organizing elections, holding elections during week one is advantageous and something the ASUO wanted in place six or seven years ago. The reason for this is that among other week one rituals, another thing many students do is shift their schedules around on DuckWeb.

“Traffic is exponentially higher during week one…there’s less dropping and adding of classes during week two, even,” Eveland said.

She said that kind of traffic increases the likelihood of students voting in the general election. “Now you go on and it’s the menu item you see on your screen.”

That effect was not clear in terms of voter turnout this year as compared to last. General election participation on April 3 fell to 3,852, down from 4,561 last year, when the general was held on April 18.

Voting for the general election closed on Friday April 3 at 4 p.m. The voter guide, which was an interactive program engineered by a team from the School of Journalism and Communication, didn’t make it online until Thursday due to the vast number of candidates and short notice. A debate between the three presidential candidates also did not take place until Thursday.

ASUO Senator Andrew Lubash, who has participated in three years of elections, gave another reason for why he thinks holding them so early can hurt the voting process.

“I think campaigns should be allowed to do in-person campaigning before students have a chance to vote, because otherwise students just vote for the first campaign that talks to them,” Lubash said.

Voting for the runoff election continues this week with Miles Sisk of We Are Oregon and Helena Schlegel of UO Forward vying for president. Students can vote on DuckWeb and catch up on all the elections news here.

Follow Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @ka_tornay

This year’s ASUO presidential election features three candidates who have spent at least one year working in student government: Helena Schlegel, Miles Sisk and Joaquin Ramos.

Helena Schlegel

Schlegel is a former ASUO senator and holds the student seat on the board of trustees. She is a junior majoring in economics and Spanish.

How do you hope to improve communication within the ASUO?

We have two points that are kind of related. We want students to be aware of what the ASUO is doing and then have the government serving them. We want to implement some kind of newsletter that goes out to students so they are kept up to date on the current ASUO campaigns.

We also want to create more executive positions for communities that have traditionally been left out of the ASUO, such as a grad student liaison, a law student liaison, a freshman liaison, so communities that don’t have such a set spot in the ASUO have a position that they can work with the ASUO and the communities that they’re a part of.

How are you planning on increasing inclusivity?

Right now, our ASUO Executive has a cultural competency campaign and we want to ensure that if we are elected we continue that campaign, but also expand it to students, faculty and staff so it’s more enveloping, so it’s open to all walks of campus instead of focusing on students.

What direction do you hope to take the ASUO in regarding Fraternity and Sorority Life and sexual assault?

I think that the resolution that was brought before senate, that’s their decision to make. If a similar resolution were presented to me, I would consider it, but I haven’t really taken a personal stance and our campaign hasn’t taken a stance on that. We have had conversations about creating a Greek liaison and having them work with sexual assault prevention programs on campus to create that healthy dialogue.

Joaquin Ramos

Ramos is the ASUO state affairs commissioner and a junior majoring in ethnic studies.

What kind of specific cultural competency trainings and policies are you planning on implementing for students?

There are definitely oppressive moments that occur all over campus all the time. I hear racial slurs all over campus, especially at football games. I hear the word “gay” being used with negative connotations. All of these are examples of oppressive speech to certain people, and if we don’t find a way to stop that, I feel that our campus could become very exclusive.

Myself and my two campaign managers have worked on cultural competency for students this year, and we have been trying to implement a training during IntroDUCKtion and when freshmen start coming into residence halls.

How do you plan to start homeless advocacy? What will you do after you collect data about homeless students?

What I plan on doing is starting data collection with the student-led survey that they send out at the end of the year to get information about how many students on campus are homeless or have experienced homelessness and with that, start moving towards helping these students by giving them the resources that they may need to better their educational experience.

How does your slate plan on tackling the issue of FSL and sexual assault prevention?

I feel like the purpose of the FSL resolution is to fix a structure that isn’t doing so well and then moving onto the rest of the campus as well. So it’s not just to target fraternity and sorority life, it’s like we are noticing that there’s a problem there and we want to implement what we learn from there to other parts of campus. Personally, I feel like there’s a sexual assault problem within the FSL community and they should address that before expanding.

Miles Sisk

Sisk is the ASUO senate vice president and a junior political science major.

What stance does your campaign take with regards to FSL and potential halts to expansion?

I absolutely think that the issue of sexual assault in Greek life is something that needs to be attended to. But I don’t believe that ultimately halting the expansion will alleviate the issue.  We have a very strong Greek life team on our campaign. They go around to chapter meetings and talk to different Greek houses during elections week to encourage voting. I don’t want that to just be something that just disappears once the elections weeks are over. I think that we should be going to chapter meetings regularly to talk to Greek life students about the projects that we are doing — how they can help make campus better.

Why did you decide to focus on the international student community?

I’ve seen all of the things that the ASUO can accomplish. When I hear personal stories from international students about things that are not getting done, about things that they are missing out on or that some don’t feel welcome at this university, it makes me think that we should be doing something at the ASUO. We have the ability to do it, to make things happen, so let’s do it.

What challenges about allocating funds to student resources do you want to overcome?

There are a lot of things that are currently being funded by the ASUO that we feel that the administration should be picking up on. Things like the (LGBT Education and Support Services Program), a department underneath the Student Life umbrella, for example, that should be funded by the administration because they are an administrative body that reports to the dean of students. But a lot of it is currently funded by the ASUO budget.

The post The 2015 ASUO presidential candidates appeared first on Emerald Media.

University of Oregon students planning to vote in this year’s ASUO elections should get familiar with the presidential candidates: Joaquin Ramos, Helena Schlegel and Miles Sisk. The Emerald snagged some time with each candidate to ask them a few questions.

Joaquin Ramos is this year’s ASUO state affairs commissioner and is running with the Ducks F.I.R.S.T. slate. The acronym encapsulates the campaign’s platform: Free HIV testing, Inclusive spaces, Resources, Student jobs and Tuition affordability.

What are some of the most important issues to your slate?

JR: All of those issues are really important. I feel like what’s going to resonate with students most is focusing on tuition affordability as well as student jobs because a lot of students are really mad that our tuition keeps rising and they have no way of paying for the increase. However, we also want to have a focus on marginalized communities, and to make our campus really inclusive and really accessible for a lot of people. We also want to offer free HIV testing and free STD testing because our HIV testing that used to be free no longer exists. The grant that was paying for it just ran out this year so we don’t have that resource anymore.

How did you go about organizing the campaign?

JR: I decided to run about halfway through fall term, and since then I’ve wanted people to approach me — I let people know that I was running and I wanted them to approach me and tell me they were interested in running so that I knew the people on my slate were gonna be really passionate and care about the issues that we were putting forward. And then we did like core meetings and things like that so people would know what our values were and why we were running.

Is there anything you’re hoping will go differently with elections this year?

JR: I really hope there’s less drama. I feel like all the candidates, we’re going to be cordial with each other. I don’t think there’s going to be any big issues between our campaigns, hopefully.

Helena Schlegel is the presidential candidate for UO Forward. She holds the student seat on the board of trustees.

What are some of the most important issues to your slate?

HS: UO Forward really wants to prioritize student safety, and that looks like a lot of different things, so we want to work on supporting and uniting student-run groups that work on sexual assault prevention because that’s such a big problem on our campus. We want to ensure that the groups that are already working on the support issue can collaborate and have the resources to be able to make positive change on campus regarding that issue. Another issue near and dear to my heart is sustaining the counseling center so all students have access to the counseling center and then once their eight to ten free sessions are up, they can still visit the counseling center. Just so students aren’t turned away, they don’t have to wait weeks or up to a few months to get support.

Another thing we want to try to work on is improving the campus culture on campus. Just like briefly on that one, that one could look like being more inclusive and safe, and having safe spaces on campus for students to go and talk about the issues bothering them, and also we want to work on having more healthy communication reaching all realms of campus, so students, faculty, staff and administration.

And then the last one is we want to increase connectivity, which kind of goes along with what I just said about better communication. We want to ensure that communication between students exists and that students are aware of what the ASUO has to offer them. But especially, undergrads have an idea of what the ASUO does, but law students and graduate students and GTFs have almost no interaction with the ASUO, so we want to improve that by making student liaison positions to these communities that are historically left out of the ASUO.

What do you think is unique about your slate?

HS: I think our team brings a good intersection of experience in the ASUO, leadership within and outside of the ASUO, and most importantly, passion. I think I can speak for everyone on the campaign when we say that we honestly want to work to improve the student body and the ASUO, and we want to serve students to the best of our ability, and because of our past experiences within the ASUO and other spaces on campus, we can use that experience that we have to work hard and have as much positive change on campus

What would you like to see go differently during elections this year?

HS: I just hope that elections give all the candidates a fair chance to communicate and educate the student body on what they want to achieve.

Miles Sisk is the presidential candidate for the We Are Oregon slate. He is this year’s ASUO Senate vice president and chair of the EMU Board.

What are some of the most important issues to your slate?

MS: One of them is of course campus safety; there are about four different things we want to focus on, very specific items that we want to focus on to make campus a safer place. Another one is we want to find more efficient ways to use the ASUO budget. We don’t want to cut any services, we don’t want to make any major changes, we just want to find ways that money is being wasted or ways that money is not being spent efficiently. We want to build U of O as a very strong global community by supporting students to go study abroad, by providing more resources and support for international students, and we want to drastically increase involvement on campus. We want to get more people involved in groups, in club sports, in Greek life, in everything and anything people can get involved in we want them to get involved in. Those are our four main items.

What is something unique to your campaign?

MS: One thing that’s interesting and one thing I’m really proud of and something that I pushed for a lot is we have a strong point about bringing in more resources and more support for international students. Our campaign is also bringing international students in leadership in the ASUO like no ASUO has ever really done before. We want to not only focus on providing more resources for international students, but bringing international students to the forefront of campus leadership and getting them involved and making sure they’re able to speak out on issues, so that’s really one cool thing about our campaign is we have an unprecedented level of international involvement.

How did you go about getting organized?

MS: A lot of getting a campaign started is building the right networks. I didn’t really start doing anything until the end of fall term, when I started having conversations with people, and since then it progressed into a very full, strong campaign, almost surprisingly so. It just kind of rolled right in. It’s a good mix; we have a lot of people who are involved in the ASUO, we have a lot of people involved in clubs, I have several group leaders working with us on our slate and there are people from all over, really.

Follow Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @ka_tornay

The post Meet the ASUO presidential candidates appeared first on Emerald Media.

Vice President and Provost Frances Bronet sent out an email to the University of Oregon community at around 4 p.m. Saturday reaffirming the University’s commitment to confidentiality of student records. The message came in response to the outcry that was raised when the Office of the General Counsel obtained the counseling records of an alleged sexual assault survivor after she brought a lawsuit against the school.

“I am affirming that University of Oregon students will have the same level of strong confidentiality that they have in private, off-campus therapy,” Bronet wrote in the email.

She outlined three courses of action that the university will be taking. The first is the return of all the records that the OGC obtained from the counseling center. Secondly, Bronet said she was instructing all UO employees to respect the confidentiality of therapists at UO clinics and counseling centers.

The last action was a promise that counseling records from UO clinics and counseling centers would never be released to anyone not involved in a student’s treatment, with a few exceptions. Those included if the student signed a release form, if a therapist needed to prevent harm to the student or others, or if a court orders release of the records.

In addition, Bronet said she would be forming a committee of licensed therapists, faculty, general counsel and staff to “propose new or clarified policies on how the confidentiality of medical and psychological records for any university departments that handle protected health information will be maintained and protected, and when records may be released.”

The committee will put forth a draft of those proposals in April.

Bronet also provided numbers for on-campus counseling and mental health resources for students, and said she would be sending the email again at the start of spring term.

The post Frances Bronet affirms administration’s commitment to student confidentiality appeared first on Emerald Media.

We Are Oregon was the third and final campaign to launch its website on March 16, in addition to its Facebook page and Twitter.

Miles Sisk is the slate’s presidential candidate, alongside Haley Wilson for internal vice president and Adam Gould for external vice president.

Sisk is a junior political science major and has been involved in the ASUO since his freshman year, currently sitting as the Senate vice president and chair of the EMU board. Wilson is an at-large member of the EMU board and has served as a legislative intern with the U.S. Senate. Gould has also interned with the U.S. Senate and is involved with QuackPAC.

We Are Oregon’s platform centers on campus safety and student involvement, among other things. A full list of the candidates can be found here.

The post Miles Sisk listed as candidate for ASUO president on new We Are Oregon site appeared first on Emerald Media.

Ducks F.I.R.S.T. launched its campaign website on March 15, putting forth Joaquin Ramos as its presidential candidate, Suzanne Barrientos for internal vice president and Elle Mallon for external vice president.

Ducks F.I.R.S.T’s platform is embedded in its name. The acronym stands for Free HIV testing, Inclusive spaces, Resources, Student jobs and Tuition affordability.

Ramos is this year’s ASUO state affairs commissioner and is also involved in MEcHA.

Barrientos is the diversity coordinator at the Women’s Center. Mallon is the ASUO gender and sexuality diversity advocate and is involved in the LGBTQA.

The group’s Facebook page and Twitter have been up since March 9 and 13, respectively. Their website also provides a full list of their candidates.

The post Ducks F.I.R.S.T. becomes second campaign to launch website for ASUO elections appeared first on Emerald Media.