Duck Days attracted people far and wide as every available spot was filled Friday afternoon. Students and their families milled around the EMU Green, visiting tables set up by an array of campus groups.

The campus recruiting program is designed to bring high school juniors and seniors to campus. Friday’s was the second this year with five more happening in the next month and a half.

Casi Porter, a prospective student from Olathe, Kansas, said she is excited to join a diverse community.

“I feel like everyone in Kansas is like-minded,” Porter said. “And here, they’re not. There are a lot of different views.”

Porter’s father, Courtney, said he is excited for her to see the world.

“I keep telling her to get out of the Kansas area,” he said. “Go somewhere far away. There’s a whole world to see.”

The recruiting event is attracting locals too. Kyle Jorgensen is from Hillsboro, Oregon and his whole family went to UO.

“Our family went here and we know this place,” he said. “We’ve become very familiar with it throughout the years. So I always wanted to go here.”

Jorgensen’s dad, Mark, graduated from the advertising program in 1986.

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Provost Scott Coltrane announced Marcilynn Burke as the next of the University of Oregon School of Law. The announcement was made in an email to UO student email accounts.

Burke is replacing Michael Moffitt, who announced he will step down from the position on July 1, 2017. Burke will join the university the same day.

Burke was the top candidate for the job, according to the announcement. UO’s highly touted environmental law program helped to attract Burke according to statements she made to the university.

Burke received her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and her law degree from Yale Law School. She joined the University of Houston in 2002. She will remain an associate dean and associate professor at UH until she comes to UO in July, according to the announcement.

Burke’s work outside the classroom has involved working as the deputy director for programs and policy at the Bureau of Land Management and acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management. Her professional experience has informed her scholarly work; she currently teaches courses in property law, land-use law and natural resources law according to the announcement.

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The Board of Trustees, University of Oregon’s governing body, will decide whether tuition costs for in-state students will increase by 10.6 percent during a meeting this Thursday.

This week’s meeting is split up over two days.

Following reports, the board will discuss the president’s recommendation to increase tuition and fees.

Last month, the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board sent its recommendation to President Schill that tuition be increased $21 per credit hour, or $945 a year for undergraduate students. This increase will also include an additional $50 per term technology fee.

UO will spend approximately $25 million on campus operations next year. The increased tuition rate will raise $15.6 million and the technology fee will raise another $3 million.

Even after these raises, the university has an $8.8 million shortfall in its budget.

“Roughly 80 percent of our educational budget pays salaries of our faculty, staff and administrators,” Schill said in a Feb. 21 memo to the board. “Therefore, any efforts to cut the budget will inevitably lead to a loss of jobs and pain to our community.

The first news of that pain and loss of jobs came Tuesday when the Register-Guard reported that approximately 75 non-tenure faculty will be cut. Schill told the UO Faculty Senate in a meeting on Wednesday that that number was “extraordinarily speculative.”

In response to the proposed increases, students have staged a rally at noon on Thursday.

The board is tackling several other issues on Thursday, with some spilling over into Friday.

On Thursday, ASUO, the faculty Senate, Provost Scott Coltrane and President Schill will all give a report of their actions and initiatives over the last year and what they plan to address moving forward.

ASUO is taking on a wide range of issues this year. In addition to tuition increases, ASUO leaders are calling for another look at the decision not to dename Deady Hall, arguing against the mandatory live-on requirement beginning next year and improving lighting around campus.

The provost and president’s reports were not available in the pre-meeting materials, but Schill outlined a budget plan to the UO Faculty Senate on Wednesday.

Thursday’s meeting will conclude with a request for the approval of projects to begin work on the Knight Campus. Any project that is expected to exceed $5 million has to be approved by the board before it can begin. The Finance and Facilities committee is requesting pre-approval of some work on the Knight Campus that will cost an estimated $6 million.

A full project outline will not be made available to the board until Sept. 2017 according to the committee’s proposal. However, in order to remain on track to break ground by Spring 2018, some projects will have to begin before the board can approve the project as a whole.

The board will reconvene on Friday to discuss the federal budget, sustainability efforts on campus and a report on the Knight Center.

The Thursday meeting, which is open to the public, will start at 1:30 p.m., in the Ford Alumni Center Giustina Ballroom. The Emerald will provide live coverage of the board meetings through Twitter and the Daily Emerald website.

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University of Oregon is preparing to lay off roughly 75 people, according to a report from the president of the faculty union.

United Academics, the labor union that represents UO faculty, said that the university’s plans are to reduce 25 positions in both the College of Arts and Science and College of Education, along with 25 additional positions in other areas.

The number of layoffs is a rough estimate, according to Michael Dreiling, President of United Academics.

“It is an estimate. It’s not a certain number,” Dreiling said. “Based upon the information we’ve received, that’s roughly the number that comes up.”

Dreiling said that the number was gathered via conversations with faculty that have been notified about their status and university officials in deans’ offices.

According to administration, these faculty cuts will be a cost-cutting measure, as UO faces an $8.8 million budget shortfall next year. UO has not confirmed the layoffs.

“Leadership from across the university is looking at ways they can help reduce costs and bring about a balanced budget, without sacrificing quality,” UO spokesman Tobin Klinger wrote in a statement. “As the state budget continues to take shape, plans are being made to adapt to the final fiscal circumstances we ultimately face.”

UO generally implements layoffs in the form of contract non-renewals that must occur by May 1. Last May, the school cut 79 non-tenured faculty positions, all in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dreiling fears that these cuts will hurt the quality of education that students will receive in the future. When combined with the cuts made last year, about 10 percent of the workforce at UO is being eliminated, Dreiling said.

“This risks the kind of quality education that we as faculty can deliver to our students,” he said. “It risks hurting programs that serve our students, that they rely on.”

Jack Pitcher contributed reporting.

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As the national debate on immigration and deportation leaves some undocumented students questioning their place on college campuses, groups at the University of Oregon are trying to reassure them that they are safe.

Ellen Hawley McWhirter presented an overview of the challenges that undocumented and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals students are facing at UO. The UO Dreamer’s Working Group hosted the information session.

About 40 people, mostly staff and faculty members, met in the Spruce and Cedar rooms in the EMU Tuesday afternoon.

“This is not going to make you an ally,” McWhirter said. “One of the goals of this presentation is to give you a little bit of information and then access to resources so we can be better allies.”

McWhirter and her colleagues plan to provide longer sessions throughout the year that will help equip community members to become allies.

UO President Michael Schill has not committed to using the term “Sanctuary Campus,” but the university has committed to supporting undocumented students. Administration has said that it will not facilitate immigration enforcement on campus, nor share the immigration status of any of its students unless required by a court order.

Jane Irungu, assistant Vice President for student engagement, said that the university knows the approximate number of DACA students but that it will not share the number, saying the university is “100 percent” committed to protecting its students.

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This post has been updated to include a list of the buildings that have lost power.

Update: Power was restored to campus around 8 p.m.

The west side of campus lost power Sunday evening around 6 p.m.

Each building on campus has power routed to it by a distribution feeder which carries about 12,500 volts. One of the main feeders opened up and caused the outage, according to Gary Malone, a co-generation engineer.

According to Malone, there is a team of electricians searching for the cause of the breach.

“They’ve done everything they can. The plant is up and running,” Malone said. “It’s just a matter of time. The last time they did this it took about two hours.”

Malone said the last time a feeder opened up it was when a whole line failed. He was unable to recall exactly the last time an outage such as this happened.

An email from UO alerts confirmed the following halls lost power Sunday evening: Allen, Lawrence, Friendly, Villard, Deady, Lillis Business Complex, Fenton, Computing, Chapman, Johnson, Collier House, Hendricks, Susan Campbell, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Gerlinger, Gerlinger Annex, Knight Library, Frohnmayer Music.

Tweet @DailyEmerald if you’re in another building on campus suffering from the outage.

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Bruce Darling, an accounting instructor at the University of Oregon, has passed away, according to an email sent to his students this morning.

The head of accounting, Angela Davis, sent the email this morning at 9:36 a.m., about 20 minutes before Wednesday’s class started.

“I walked into class and there were representatives from the business college and they just told us,” Andy Collins, an economics major, said in a phone interview. “It was shocking, I couldn’t believe it.”

Adam Antony, a public relations major taking BA 215 for his business minor, said Darling seemed fine during Monday’s class.

“It was a regular day. He just asked us questions about homework,” Antony said.

The cause of Darling’s death has not been announced.

This story will be updated.

Natalie Waitt-Gibson contributed reporting to this story.

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President Michael Schill told University Faculty Senate leadership Tuesday morning that he will be placing the proposed Time, Place and Manner and Protection of Free Speech Policy on hold.

The original policy regulated the time, place and manner of protests students may hold in the future. Proponents of the policy said it would give students guidelines for what is allowed in a protest so events would not be judged arbitrarily on a case-by-case basis. Opponents of the policy said that it unnecessarily restricted their first amendment rights

According to an email sent to Senate President Bill Harbaugh and Vice President Chris Sinclair, Schill determined that more work had to be done to refine the policy.

“While I still believe that these rules are advisable to protect content neutrality,” Schill states in the email, “I am also convinced that we need to do more work in educating the community and building consensus around them.”

The Senate met the proposed policy with significant reluctance and planned to propose an alternative policy this spring. The University of Oregon does not have a clear set of guidelines to govern protests on campus. Instead, a combination of policies including the Facilities Scheduling and Freedom of Inquiry and Speech policies make up the standards for student protesters.

The TPM policy was attempting to combine the rules and regulations contained in these policies into one. Harbaugh does not believe that the university needs such a policy.

“The university has operated under the existing rules for six years now without any problems,” he told the Emerald last week.

The University Senate will host a town hall meeting on Feb. 23 to gather input from students and community members. The event will be held from 5-6:30 p.m. in PLC 180.

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Jane Irungu is passionate about education. She is passionate about education because, in part, she was discouraged from obtaining one. Now undocumented and international students at the University of Oregon will benefit from her struggle.

Last week, Irungu was named the point person for undocumented students who might be approached by immigration officials. The position was created to serve students who are afraid of the recent immigration ban currently being contested in court.

“The university wanted to make a statement that we serve all students,” Irungu said about her new position. “We are supportive of our international students. We are supportive of our undocumented DACA students.”

International and undocumented students face many challenges coming to the US. Now they have a clear, confidential place to help them connect with resources they might need.

“My focus is on supporting students,” Irungu said. “This position is making sure we are pulling our resources together but also making sure students know that the university has a point person they can talk to. If I don’t have the answer I can direct them to the right person or the right resource.”

Irungu was born in Kenya. She is the daughter of a modestly educated man and the oldest of 12 children. Her community focused on supporting men. Not even her grandfather understood her desire to go to school.

“My grandfather wanted me to be married after elementary school,” Irungu said. “He didn’t understand why I should go to high school … but my father said, ‘No, she has to go to school.’ ”

“I remember my dad saying that, because he didn’t have any boys, that we were his boys,” Irungu said. “[Because] I was supported by my parents to go to school, how that transformed me and my community, I’m very very very passionate about education.”

Irungu completed six years of high school and three years of college, graduating from the Kenyatta University in Nairobi in 1986 before becoming principal of a high school.

School in Kenya was difficult. The curriculum was highly structured and only the best would move on. Rudimentary technology wasn’t available so students’ research and term papers were all written by hand.

Irungu ran a school under these conditions. Teachers and administrators had no kind of online database. All of their notes and memos were delivered and written by hand. Only people doing secretarial work used typewriters.

Until she came to the U.S. in 1997, Irungu had never used a computer. When she was a graduate student at the University of Kansas, she had to ask students to help her check her email.

In order to compensate for her lack of knowledge, Irungu took every computer and typing class available to her. Within a year, she was “100 percent proficient,” she said. Even now, she can’t believe that she ever couldn’t type.

She said the technological barrier was high but the culture shock had a longer-lasting effect, an issue international students often face. Constantly answering questions about who you are and where you come from can be overwhelming, Irungu said.

She says these personal experiences have equipped her better than most people on campus to assist international students.

“I have walked that road, I have worked with faculty,” she said. “I have been in a classroom where I am the only international student.”

Paired with her own life experience, Irungu’s scholarly work focuses on struggles facing international students. She pointed to a shelf that covered an entire wall of her office, saying that all of that work, her dissertation, term papers and research, has all focused on international student success.

Administration creating a new position to assist international and undocumented students will not relieve all of their problems, but Irungu hopes it provides support. She says the support she received from her family, teachers and professors drives her to continue doing the same for students.

“My desire is always to see a student come in and then walk out successful. When I see them walk off the stage … that is my ultimate reward,” she said. “That’s why I’m passionate. It’s a story of transformation for me.”

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In this weekly news wrap-up from the Emerald Podcast Network, we cover the biggest news from Feb. 5-10. News editor Max Thornberry discusses the proposed tuition hike, news reporter Andrew Field tells us about “UO United” and we all pitch in on the pizza ban.

This episode was produced by Emerson Malone.

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