Students and faculty were evacuated from Klamath Hall Tuesday afternoon after a reported chemical smell according to campus operations.

Campus operations did not identify the smell was, but confirmed that it was not a gas leak.

“The non-hazardous odor was identified as a material contractors were using in a water pipe project in the building,” UO Alerts said. “People were allowed to re-enter the building about 12:15 p.m.”

An email alert informed subscribers that a suspicious odor was the cause and that Eugene Fire Department responded to the incident.

When the city manager’s office requested $500,000 in May for projects related to the 2021 World Championships coming to Eugene, eyebrows were raised. The budget committee was prepared to earmark the half-million dollar sum but couldn’t do so because the request came without any specific plans for the money.

“There were no projects proposed,” Skov said, “It was really just, ‘can you approve half (a) million dollars related to the 2021 games?’ At a moment of low trust, it shows a real misunderstanding of where the community is to make such an open ended request.”

Undeterred, the city took the delay in stride and has yet to return to the table with plans to move forward. They plan to meet in the fall to refine ideas, according to city spokesperson Jan Bohman.

The committee refused to grant what was seen more or less as a trust fund for a city government that has faltered in the public eye in recent months.

“I think many councilors and committee members are very supportive of making necessary investments for being a successful host in 2021,” Josh Skov, a citizen member of the budget committee, said, “But we have had some episodes in the last year especially that have damaged people’s trust in our spending practices.

Earlier in May, a five year plan for rezoning the South Willamette district of Eugene was thrown out after months of controversy surrounding inadequate communication with the public and a lack of thorough planning by the city. The Oregon Consensus Assessment Report found that, any excitement or willingness for citizens to work with the city on the project was “tempered by a lack of trust.”

Other projects that have ran out of hand, such as the ever-escalating budget for the new City Hall, are more reasons that the budget committee was expecting a clear plan for what the city manager had in mind to do with such a large request.

Broad brushstroke ideas from the city include matching fund grants for parks, and “community improvements,” according to Bohman.

Referencing previous endeavors to generally improve the city leading up to major events that would draw visitors from all over, including this month’s Olympic trials, Bohman hinted at similar endeavors. Enhancing lighting on paths and a “big goal” of enhancing the riverfront area were among them.

“How do we prepare the community for this amazing opportunity?” Bohman asked. “We want these projects to leave a lasting legacy after the event.”

The funds requested by the city are for “outside the fence” projects. None of the $500,000 would be used to fund the event itself or its sponsor, TrackTown.

However, considering this most recent cause for public scrutiny, the city has a number of barriers to cross.

For his part, Skov, who has served in a number of citizen advisory roles and is running for City Council Ward 1 this year, is optimistic.

“I think the government can do really good planning,” said Skov, “it can foster the kind of downtown we want. But that general belief doesn’t let anyone off the hook for real accountability and real transparency.”

When the Faculty Senate rejected a proposed revision to the university’s responsible employee policy, most of the conversation centered around the issue of required reporting for incidents of sexual assault and harassment.

Boiled down, the debate coalesces around who is a reporter and how many are on campus, as well as whether reporters, not the survivors, should be the ones to put an incident on file.

According to Title IX and The Clery Act, mandated reporters are in place to ensure that the school can respond “promptly and effectively to sexual harassment.” For many however, these reporters are seen as allies of institutions rather than survivors of sexual assault, who may not want the incident reported or their name attached to an official incident report.

“I absolutely think that mandatory reporting protects the institutions and university, not the survivor at all,” Brenda Tracy, a sexual assault survivor and activist said. “It does a disservice to survivors.”

Jennifer Freyd, a Psychology professor at UO joins Tracy in pushing back against the requirement for all university employees to be required reporters. Her website provides links to a number of American universities that don’t enforce employee-wide reporting.

Responsible reporting is about, “Giving student and survivors options and control/autonomy,” Freyd said in an email, “To me this means letting survivors decide what they want to have happen to their personal information.”

The goal of the mandated reporters policy was to “present a policy that was very survivor central,” said Carol Stabile, a professor in the SOJC who spearheaded the rejected overhaul.

Keeping survivors at the center of the policy included steps such as clarifying who is and isn’t a mandated reporter. Currently, all university employees are listed as mandatory reporters for instances of sexual assault or harassment that they have “credible information for.”

When reporters are given evidence that harassment has taken place, they must make a formal report.

In an attempt to return control to the hands of survivors, Tracy, Freyd and others recommend that universities embrace tools such as Project Callisto.

The program allows victims of sexual assault to file a claim immediately, without being required to submit any information to authorities. However, if the accused perpetrator appears in another report, the Callisto team notifies the survivors. This accountability, coupled with the knowledge that they are not alone, is meant to encourage survivors to stand together.

“It gives all of the control to the survivor,” Tracy said, “I think using a system like [this] is not only going to increase reporting, but increase timely reporting.”

Reports at UO have gone up exponentially, according to Darci Heroy, interim Title IX Coordinator, but the concrete numbers have not been released.

With an end to the current “responsible employee” policy on the horizon, the Senate will continue to face the obstacles that are associated with responsible reporting.

A “peaceful, non-confrontational rally” will take place tomorrow at 5 p.m. in front of the Lane County Correctional Facilities, according to a press release from Community Alliance of Lane County.

Springfield Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is co-hosting the event with Community Alliance of Lane County.

The rally will be followed by a march to Kesey Square downtown.

“It’s the center of downtown,” Shanalea Forrest, a CALC member said about the decision to march to Kesey Square. “We want to utilize the space for this rally because it has been a central location for Eugene.”

The rally is being held in protest of the continuing police violence toward black community members.

Both CALC and SURJ are, “answering the global call of the Movement for Black Lives,” according to the press release.

“Right now it’s really important that as allies, we stand with our black sisters and brothers in our community,” Forrest said. “This is one way we are doing that.”

After displaying outdated information for months, the University of Oregon’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity has finally addressed problems with the accuracy of its website.

For the students and faculty at the University of Oregon, answering questions about sensitive topics such as reporting sexual assault and harassment had been made difficult by misleading information from the AAEO.

The debate about mandatory reporting reached its peak on the UO campus in May when the Faculty Senate voted down a set of proposals to the current policy in a series of highly publicized meetings.

In May, current Senate President and outspoken blogger Bill Harbaugh began drawing attention to some of the holes on the AAEO website, namely links that led to PDFs with outdated contact information and booklets that communicated expired policies. Though some information had been updated, swathes of information were still unclear or incorrect until site construction began last week.

The most glaring inaccuracy concerned information about where students and faculty should report instances of prohibited discrimination.

A new emergency policy took effect in February when UO President Michael Schill saw a need to address the informal “responsible employee” policy, laid out by his predecessor, Michael Gottfredson, that effectively makes all university employees mandatory reporters, without any formal policy changes.

In the past, all cases of discrimination were dealt with by the AAEO. Under the new emergency policy, instances of sexual harassment are dealt with by the Title IX office or Crisis Intervention Center, not the AAEO.

“[The AAEO] is still responsible for investigating situations [depending] on who is the victim, not who is the perpetrator,” Harbaugh said.

The changes to the reporting policy stating that cases of sexual harassment involving students should be directed to the Title IX Coordinator or Crisis Intervention Center were ratified in 2014; however, the revisions concerning prohibited discrimination weren’t made effective until February 18, 2016.

Concerns about the timeliness and effectiveness of the AAEO office isn’t new. A 2014 report from the ombuds office, which offers impartial conflict resolution, found that, “Classified staff report high levels of distrust […] in the fairness, competence and responsiveness of the University’s AAEO function.”

The ombuds office did not investigate the AAEO itself and only makes notes of patterns of perception, according to the report. Former ombudsman Bruce McAllister did note that, “Perception does not necessarily equate to fact, but patterns are important to the acceptance and long-term efficacy of any particular program.”

Until site reconstruction last week, there was no mention at all of the ombuds office, an integral piece in the murky mandatory reporting debate on college campuses. The ombuds office is one of the few truly confidential outlets for survivors of sexual assault, which is a key part of the debate surrounding mandatory reporting.

The Office of Intervention and Sexual Support Services is another resource available to students, unless a “responsible employee” reports an instance to them. As soon as a faculty member files a report, the OCISSS is required by the policy to take that report to the administration.

A University of Oregon alum is working on a project to help combat the dread that can often accompany the search for a new home. Sure, there can be excitement for the next stage of life, but moving can also mean months of searching and rejection, particularly for those from low-income households or homeless individuals looking to get off the streets.

When Brady Sieg graduated from the UO business school in 2014, he spent the next year drifting, finding what he wanted to do with his degree. The beginning of his time with NoAppFee worked out as well as any entrepreneur could expect.

“I was living in Korea,” Sieg said in a Skype interview. “I applied to an online listing [and] found out a week later I knew someone who worked there.”

When he applied, Daniel Rosenberg, Sieg’s acquaintance at the fledgling startup, didn’t think he would be experienced enough. When he was handed the task of writing a sample investor letter however, he proved that he deserved a spot on the team.

The team at NoAppFee is led by Tyrone Poole, who birthed the idea for a one-stop-shop for rental applications while he was homeless himself. The online rental listing platform is streamlining the process of applying for housing, weeding out costly application fees and cutting down travel times to visit housing that low-income families will simply be denied for.

“We’re not just a listing platform,” Sieg said, “People [fill out] one [application] and we show them where they’re qualified. The problem really is that they can get section 8 vouchers, but it’s extremely hard for them to find places that will accept them.”

The work that NoAppFee is doing has recently earned them international recognition when they finished as one of eight finalists in the 1776 Startup Challenge last month. The challenge was designed as an incubator—a company that brings in smaller businesses in order to help them grow—for “socially oriented startups. Startups that were disrupting major socially-oriented industries,” said Sieg.

A total of 3,000 teams competed at local and regional competitions before being whittled down to the eight that appeared in Washington D.C. There, NoAppFee was voted the No. 1 most promising startup by people texting and tweeting in their votes. They were awarded fifth place overall.

Officially, Sieg is the marketing strategist for NoAppFee but he understands that there is more to his job than can be summed up in a bio.

“At a startup, your job title is pretty fluid,” Sieg said. “Marketing strategy is about 20-30 percent of what I do. “

His responsibilities mainly include building relationships with cities and governments all over the country in order to forge ties with property management companies. These relationships help NoAppFee to create a database of cities that will benefit the most from their services, those with large low-income and homeless populations.

Opportunity didn’t just fall into Sieg’s lap. He credits his time at UO for teaching him about what it would take to succeed in the competitive world of business.

“The UO really emphasized how hard it is by exposing us to people who are really doing it,” Sieg said, “You need to be an extremely hard worker.

Long-time wrestling coach Ron Finley died yesterday morning at the age of 75. The former Beaver took over the University of Oregon wrestling program in 1970 and remained at the helm until 1998.

Under his leadership, the Ducks captured Pac-10 Championships in 1975, 1981 and 1982.

Oregon’s wrestling program is now gone but the legacy left behind by Finley will live on.

When the  program was cut in 2007, Finley was at the forefront to resurrect it from the dead. He served as the director of Save Oregon Wrestling and organized the website saveoregonwrestling.org within the week of the program ending.

The hard work put in by Finley was rekindled in January when wrestling was brought back to the university as a club sport.

In 1982, Finley was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and was awarded a lifetime service award by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Finley is survived by his wife and two children.

The Eugene Active 20-30 Club’s 70^th annual Freedom Festival wrapped up on Monday evening with a fireworks show that boasted over 700 mortars.

The Club worked with the Maude Kerns Art Center, which put on the Art and the Vineyard festival, providing food and entertainment throughout the weekend. The rough count at the end of Monday night tallied 25,000 visitors over the three-day holiday weekend.

Attendees were greeted by live music on a large stage as they entered through the main gate. Hundreds of families sprawled out on the grass in front of the stage.

The Maude Kerns Art Center brought together nearly 100 artists and vendors and a wide range of Oregon wineries to accompany the food and live entertainment.

“We’ve been doing this for 6-7 years,” Ray Walsh, owner of and winemaker at Capitello wineries, said. “It’s a great event, with the collaboration between the wine, the art, the food. And of course it’s kid friendly too.”

There was no shortage of family friendly events to pair with the adult beverages. A “Zany Zoo” was on hand in the kid’s area, along with the Girl Scouts, giving families an opportunity for an Independence Day blowout.

The Art and the Vineyard brought people to Alton Baker Park all weekend, but on Monday evening the fireworks were the most anticipated event of the evening. As the sky grew dark, the crowds started to filter in.

“They aren’t all here for the fireworks,” Nathan Mischel, Freedom Festival chair said. “But the fireworks are a big draw for them.”

This particular show may not be the largest in Lane County—it’s overshadowed by the Eugene Emeralds’ and City of Springfield’s—but it is the largest hand-launched show in the county.

Positioned in a field, hundreds of yards from the art festival, stands three rows of fireworks.

Dug into the ground are rows of three-inch mortar fireworks, stacked two deep and around fifty across. In between the two shoots are boxes of smaller mortars, set off in between larger ones.

A small budget this year kept the Club from a blowout celebration for its 70^th anniversary, but keeping with tradition was equally important.

“It’s kind of a thing we put on for the family,” Mischel said. “We enjoy doing it and it’s a tradition for the club.”

All ticket sales from the weekend’s events are going to support the Maude Kerns Arts Center and the sponsorship funds will promote a children’s shopping spree, sponsored by the Eugene Active Club supporting low-income children.

Eugene is currently at the center of the US track and field universe with U.S. Olympic Trials taking place at Hayward Field this week.

Each of the athletes that earn a chance to compete for their country will also be compelled to wear the Nike Swoosh on their jerseys, regardless of whether they are sponsored by the popular athletic company. Nike signed a contract with USATF in 1991 stipulating this, and USATF and Nike just extended the contract all the way to 2040. The $500 million extension, which kicks in next year, “significantly increases the overall support for Track & Field for athletes throughout the United States” according to an announcement on the USATF website.

Nick Symmonds, who dropped out of the trials earlier this week, has made headlines with his protests over athlete’s rights—or lack thereof—to wear non-Nike apparel. Last August, his refusal to sign a contract to wear Nike gear cost him a spot on the US team at the World Championships.

Symmonds has called Nike’s influence over running a monopoly.

“It’s important to remember I’m not an employee of Nike,” Symmonds told the Oregonian in 2013. “I’m an independent contractor, and toeing the party line and helping Nike get a monopoly hurts me in terms of renegotiations. It hurts the entire body of professional track and field athletes if there is a monopoly of one or two shoe companies.”

But at University of Oregon, business experts are hesitant to slap the “monopoly” label on Nike’s influence.

“I don’t think they [Nike] have a legal monopoly,” said Josh Gordon, head of the sports business program at UO. “Do they have tremendous influence? Absolutely. The real issue is… Nike is one of the few players who have stepped up with money in this industry.”

For a sport that crops up in the mainstream every four years, the benefits of having a sponsor on Nike’s level are obvious. However, the exclusive relationship raises a number of problems for the sport.

“I think it’s positive that there are opportunities for Track and Field athletes that wouldn’t be possible [without Nike’s involvement],” Gordon said. “[But] it isn’t a particularly good thing to have one player and have it driving so many decisions in the sport.”

Craig Leon, MBA program manager in the Warsaw Sports Marketing program at UO, agrees that Nike’s involvement isn’t exactly a monopoly.

“Whenever you have high profile sponsors of anything, who have a lot of influence, they are going to protect their sponsorship brand,” Leon said. “Which I think is challenging for other brands, but I don’t view it as a monopoly.”

Monopoly or no, Nike’s partnership does appear to be helping the shoe company corner the market for themselves.

“There is certainly hesitation from other sponsors,” said Leon, who runs marathons himself and has a contract with Japanese sportswear brand Mizuno. “They realize they maybe can’t activate their sponsorships on the biggest stages. They think, ‘Well, it’s not worth it if we can’t get a return on our investment.’”

Both agree that changes need to take place somewhere along the line.

“I think there is an opportunity [for other companies to step in],” Leon said. “But right now, Nike doesn’t want that. They are the only logo on there and they want to protect that. If track and field as a sport is a little bit more progressive and creative, it can create a better model.”

The Emerald reached out the Nike for comment, but has not yet heard back.

This Monday, the Freedom Festival fireworks show at Alton Baker Park is celebrating its 70^th anniversary.

A major fundraiser for the Eugene Active 20-30 Club, the weekend-long event is bringing the Club and Maude Kerns Arts Center together to benefit a number of children’s charities in Eugene.

“The Club has always found creative ways to raise money for the children’s charities in the community,” Emily Gray, the Club’s publicity contact said in an email, “And a fireworks display definitely fits into that.”

The fundraising for this year’s special weekend-long celebration will also benefit the Maude Kearns Arts Center, which will be providing live music, food and supplying the fireworks that will be launched by the Active Club.

The Art and the Vineyard, a joint event at Alton Baker Park that will be put on by the Arts Center is bringing together over 90 artists and 20 vineyards to pair with the fireworks show coordinated by the Active 20-30 Club.

Over 70 years, the Freedom Festival has earned itself a reputation as a staple in Eugene. The show has moved around the city, appearing at Autzen Stadium and the Fairgrounds before landing in Alton Baker Park.

Holding to tradition, the festival also represents one of the few hand-launched fireworks shows in Lane County. Most other shows operate using quick match wire to launch their fireworks.

“It’s a blast!” Tyson Woodard, Fireworks chairperson for the festival said in an email, “It’s a lot of fun and an adrenaline filled experience.”

According to Woodard, the experience of putting on a hand-launched show is rewarding for the adrenaline junky as well as the organization itself.

“It’s a great team building experience,” Woodard said, “[From] having to build the fireworks shoot from the ground up [to] rubber banding the fuses in place.”

Fireworks team members can also use the experience from this show as a way to earn their Oregon Pyrotechnic license if they wish to pursue one.

As storied as the show has become, the Active 20-30 Club has been present in Eugene even longer.

“This is a very long standing tradition for our club,” Loni Waltasti, the Active Club’s president said in an email, “We are celebrating 89 years as an organization supporting the children in Eugene. All of the money we raise through sponsorships helps us with our work in the community.”

Community engagement is a selling point for Woodard and the fireworks crew. When they are planning their show, they do so knowing that more than just paid attendees will be witnessing their work.

“Hundreds of people line up in the streets surrounding the shoot,” Woodard said, “Hundreds more will watch from inside the Art and the Vineyard, which is the best view beside the one we have inside the drop zone.”

Day passes for the fireworks show are $9 for adults, $3 for children ages 6-14, and free for all kids younger than six years. Weekend passes to all days of the celebration are $16.