A black Nissan SUV and a Mazda sedan crashed on the corner of 14th and Hilyard Street around 12:40 p.m. today. Neither driver was injured.

Firefighters and police responded to the accident. A fire truck blocked the intersection until 1 p.m., delaying traffic and some LTD buses. Police cars also blocked the intersection, cutting off traffic on Hilyard between 14th and 13th Avenue. Officers directed traffic, though it was backed up on 14th Avenue toward Alder.

Tow trucks started to clear the area around 1:10 p.m. The area is now clear.

Chief Carolyn McDermed left quietly and with no warning.

On Friday, Feb. 26, at 9:34 p.m. the staff at the University of Oregon Police Department found out its chief of nearly four years had retired via email. By Monday, she had been replaced.

McDermed had a full schedule for the following week. Her contract guaranteed her employment as chief until June 30. Upon retiring, the university paid out the rest of her contract — $46,000. Retired UOPD captain Pete Deshpande was named interim police chief until a full-time replacement is found.

McDermed is the third chief in a row to leave the department suddenly. The UOPD has not had a permanent chief finish his or her contract in a decade. Former officers say UOPD’s management has been unprofessional and unstable.

Carolyn McDermed, UO police chief from 2012-2016 (Cole Elsasser/Emerald).

McDermed’s tenure was marked by several scandals.

In October 2012, McDermed fired a young officer named James Cleavenger, who then brought a lawsuit against UOPD, alleging wrongful termination and retaliation from other officers. The university lost the lawsuit and $755,000 in damages to Cleavenger last summer, and $36,000 of the total stemmed directly from McDermed’s involvement in his termination.

The university filed motions to appeal the court’s decision, but those motions were denied by a federal judge on Feb. 29 — the next business day after McDermed retired.

In 2014, the “Bowl of Dicks List,” was leaked, a list of people and things UOPD night shift officers felt should “eat a bowl of dicks.” The story was picked up by many national media outlets, adding to the scrutiny over McDermed’s management.

But the scandals under McDermed’s leadership are symptoms of shaky management that began much earlier than McDermed’s tenure.

“I personally went through five directors while I was there — for 10 years, that’s quite a few,” said former officer Elizabeth Nix. She served on the department from 2000 to 2010. The constant turnover in leadership created an unstable atmosphere in the department.

“It affected the morale. It affected the feeling,” she said. “Some [directors] would be a little more restrictive with things; some would come and lay down the hammer, like, ‘You’ve been doing it this way, but you can’t do that anymore,’ or ‘You need to start doing this, even though you’ve never done this.’ ”

Part of the recent instability at the department can also be traced to UOPD’s transition from a department of public safety to the sworn police department it is now. That transition began in 2012, a few months before McDermed took over as chief.

Le Duc is leading the search for the next chief. He plans on inviting candidates to campus to speak with students before the end of spring term.

“We have an opportunity now to look at what is the next wave of leadership to take UOPD to the next stage?” Le Duc said.

Interim Police Chief Deshpande said he’s focusing on giving human resources a stronger presence in the department, in order to prevent internal problems from occurring again.

Deshpande acknowledged the turbulence of the UOPD’s last few years. While he wouldn’t address specific events like the Cleavenger trial, as they were set in motion before his arrival at the department, he did address his plans for the future.

He vows to begin addressing issues immediately, saying anything UOPD does in the department needs to be “thoughtful, considered and sensible.”

Deshpande does not plan on remaining the department’s chief. While he doesn’t know if he’ll be involved in the search, he is prepared to assist if asked. “In the meantime, certainly, I will do everything I possibly can to move the department forward.”

Hoverboards, the hands-free two-wheeled motorized scooters, are being banned from college campuses across the country. The University of Oregon banned the devices on Jan. 25 by adopting an emergency policy that went into effect the day it was announced. President Michael Schill approved the policy on Jan. 20. The policy bans the devices from all campus buildings, including residence halls.

Hoverboard riders are not only banned from riding the boards, but from possessing them in a building. The boards can be used on campus in outside areas, the university confirmed, but they cannot be brought inside, making it difficult for students to ride them to class. The university views the boards as an extreme fire concern.

“The concern was raised by the fire marshal due to reports of fires related to the lithium ion batteries used in the devices,” Enterprise Risk Services Communications Director Julie Brown said.

Videos of the boards catching fire through seemingly spontaneous combustion have been spreading across social media like wildfire, a spark that caused the Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue a statement warning consumers about the dangers of the product.

Lithium ion batteries are used in smart phones, tablets and laptops, but their use in a moving device -one that gets knocked around with natural use- adds an element of danger.

The inside of these batteries are liquid, with a positive side and a negative side separated by a thin sheet of metal. If that metal is punctured slightly, exposing the liquids to each other, it can cause the batteries to overheat almost instantly. While a rough hit may be the cause of the puncture, the high rates of explosions in hoverboards specifically, and often while the devices are charging, point toward defective batteries caused by cheap production. But even smart phones took some heat in 2004, when dozens of reports came in of cell phone batteries exploding.

On the UO campus, violating the policy is not a criminal offense, but can cause the perpetrator to be removed from campus or fined. “The guidance is similar to the policy on skateboards and rollerskates,” said Julie Brown. The “no skateboard and rollerskates” policy states that any building manager, dean or security officer can force violators off campus. Since the hoverboard policy was enacted as an emergency, there is no language detailing the repercussions of violating the policy.

Since hoverboards were banned immediately from all residence halls, the university has offered a, fireproof storage facility for them while students find a permanent area to store them. “Our fire marshal worked with housing to make a secure storage facility available to students who may need to wait to permanently relocate the device,” Brown said.

Either there aren’t any hoverboards in the dorms, or students aren’t taking the ban very seriously. “No one has transferred a hoverboard into the storage area,” Brown said. “It’s an empty storage room.”

Meningitis B vaccinations continue this week, with vaccination clinics being offered on Monday and Tuesday from 12-8 p.m. at Matthew Knight Arena. These clinics will be the final school-sponsored event centered around the vaccine for the ongoing outbreak.

In 2015, seven University of Oregon students were diagnosed with the deadly disease, and one student died. The virus attacks the tissue around the brain, causing swelling of the tissue and spinal cord.

UO has been hosting vaccination clinics since March 2015 in collaboration with the Center for Disease Control, Oregon Health Authority and the Lane County Public Health Department. This will be the fourth clinic at the UO.

“I really encourage if you are in the middle of getting the vaccine series to finish it,” Dr. Richard Brunader said, medical director of the UO Health Center. “If you haven’t gotten it, I can’t strongly emphasize enough how important it is to do it.”

Besides administering the vaccine, the CDC is also studying the impact of the new vaccine. Classified as “serogroup B,” this vaccine is one of the first of its kind to be used in an outbreak, according to the CDC. In many ways, the outbreak at the UO is being used as a test case for future epidemics. The vaccine had just recently been licensed when the outbreak occurred.

“The reason we want to study this is that these new vaccines have become available, and we want to understand if use of the vaccine will impact carriers of this bacteria,” CDC Medical Epidemiologist Anna Acosta said. “One of the reasons we’re doing these evaluations is to understand how well the vaccines work. They’re so new; there’s not a lot of information on how effective they are in the long run.”

The CDC will conduct the study during the clinics. It’s voluntary, but involves only a few cheek swabs. They’re offering $5 Amazon gift cards as compensation.

The Oregon Health Authority is also conducting a survey of UO students and their responses to the clinics, such as what kind of students attended, why they attended and why they came back for the second round.

“The surveys are voluntary, but the information is very important,” said Emily Fisher, an epidemic intelligence officer at the Oregon Health Authority. “This information helps improve vaccination efforts, and basically we’re evaluating how effective the vaccination clinic is.”

The clinics this week are the final events encouraging students to vaccinate, although the university will still considered to be in an outbreak scenario until May.

“Really, the only way to know that we effectively intervened is by vaccinating,” Brunader said. “So, we’ve been fortunate that there have not been any new cases since students returned [this school year].”

While the bacteria that cause meningitis are harder to spread than a flu or cold, college students are their prime targets.

Acosta said this is “just because of close interaction, social interaction, sharing cups, kissing.”

An electrical fire was extinguished by a UOPD officer in Villard Hall at approximately 12:30 p.m. today. UOAlerts sent out an email saying occupants were evacuated after the fire was reported: UO asked that everyone remain clear of the building while the fire department works.

The fire was small and electrical in nature, UO Safety Management spokeswoman Julie Brown said. A UOPD officer put out the fire before it set off the alarm. The Eugene Fire Department arrived at the scene with three fire trucks to assess the danger and clear the building. They discovered no further fire concerns, but worried about the smoke levels in the building, Brown said.

Around 50 people were evacuated from the building, which houses the UO’s theater department and faculty from other departments.

Because of smoke concerns, the third floor of the building is closed for the rest of the day. The first and second floors will remain open. Only three classes are affected, and university officials are working on moving those classes to other locations.

“Smoke will be venting from the building,” UO Alerts said.

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, around 8 p.m., a man in a black hoodie and Nike sneakers tried to rob a female University of Oregon student on Franklin Blvd. There was a struggle over the student’s bag, but the attacker decided to flee the area on foot. Police arrived to search for the man but were unable to locate him. They decided to ask the community for help.

The university sent out a Campus Crime Alert through UO’s emergency notification system, asking for information on the attacker. 29,589 people received the email notification.

The robber is still at large, but his presence is known of by roughly the population of a small town. Awareness is the primary goal of UOAlert!, UO’s system for instantly notifying all of campus about potential health and safety risks. The system has recently been expanded to allow even more people to sign up.

“We want to be able to inform our community as soon as possible,” said Julie Brown, Campus Relation Director at Enterprise Risk Services. UO Emergency Management and Continuity sends out UOAlerts through email, text and social media and on digital displays throughout campus. Notifications used to go exclusively to UO staff, faculty and students. On Jan. 15, however, UO expanded their services to allow students to add significant others’ non-uoregon emails and phone numbers to the system.

“We received requests from parents to be added to the system,” Brown said. “It will be helpful for students, faculty and staff to add a parent or a partner.”

The system also added selective location services. Subscribers can choose certain areas they want to receive notifications for. This includes UO facilities outside of Eugene. If an incident happens at the Oregon Institute for Marine Biology in Charleston, for example, which is over a hundred miles from the main UO campus, only students who sign up for that location receive those alerts.

“We want to encourage students, faculty and staff to think about where they are every day,” Brown said, “when they say ‘this is part of my routine. I want to know what’s happening in this area.’”

The alerts cover any safety risk, including gas leaks, fires, earthquakes and crime. The Clery Act, a policy of transparency at university police departments, requires that notifications be sent out by the UOPD when certain incidents happen, such as “criminal homicide, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary, and may be distributed for motor vehicle theft, arson and hate crimes,” UOPD’s 2015 Safety Report says. The list is not exclusive. UOPD focuses on sending notifications when an incident poses a continued threat to the community.

The Eugene Police Department has a similar system called Alert Me, but they are not required to send notifications out. “We don’t have the same guidelines as they [UOPD] do,” EPD spokeswoman Melinda McLaughlin said. “If, say, a street robbery happens, we may send out a notification or not, depending on the situation. They operate under the Clery Act, so they have to.”

UOEMC is working on expanding their subscribers even more. Currently 82.3 percent of UO community members have opted-in for text alerts, but they encourage everyone to participate. “We want to expand in our modes of communication,” Brown said.

The University of Oregon Senate met on Wednesday, Jan. 27, to discuss data security, the code of ethics and diversifying campus.

At 3 p.m. the Knight Library browsing room began to fill with senators and their audience. President Mike Schill and Provost Scott Coltrane attended, seated in the front row. Five minutes later Senate President and chemistry professor Randy Sullivan banged the gavel, calling the meeting to order. Sullivan quickly mentioned that the meeting would definitely end at 5 p.m. since he had his wife’s birthday to get to. The minutes were approved, and the first motion brought to the table.

Colin Koopman, philosophy professor, brought the first motion. The Information Technology security policy needs to be upgraded, he said. In collaboration with several departments across campus and the IT team, Koopman proposed some amendments to three data security policies that had been enacted during Coltrane’s interim presidency. The policy had previously had to be extended, since no new policy was put in place. If it didn’t pass through senate today, there was no backup policy.

Koopman introduced a few of the proposed amendments. The first concerned the reporting of data breaches. Staff, students and faculty have always had a mandatory duty to report data breaches. The clause in particular was amended to protect reporters from the possibility of retaliation by their supervisors. “Employees who identify themselves and make a good faith report of suspected fraud, waste, or abuse are protected from retaliation,” the amendment states. Confidentiality is guaranteed for anyone reporting suspicious data activity.

Senator John Ahlen, a representative for classified workers, asked that the motion be postponed. After discussing with the Service Employees International Union, which represents classifed workers on campus, Ahlen worried that the language in the policies did not protect employees’ confidential emails. There was a specific incident he cited in which a manager gave administration full access to an employee’s email and voicemail for several months. They asked for an official procedure for administration to access employee emails. SEUI withdrew their endorsement of the motion until this procedure is finished.

A question of policy versus procedure, many senators were confused over how the policy being voted on would impact the procedure proposed by SEIU. Eventually the motion to postpone the policy revisions was denied. The policy revisions passed at 3:52, despite eight votes against.

The second motion brought to the senate was a complete revision of the university’s code of ethics. This motion was sponsored by Sullivan, who passed leadership onto another senator while the motion was discussed. Sullivan completely rewrote a new code of ethics and asked that the old one be completely deleted. “The more I looked at the old policy, the more unacceptable I thought it was,” Sullivan said.

Senator Ronald Lovinger, professor of landscape architecture, asked that an environmental responsibility clause be added. He even dictated a potential clause. After reviewing it, Sullivan implied that it may already be covered in the social responsibility section. The amendment was denied when senators decided that additional changes should not be made on the senate floor. The new code of ethics passed unanimously.

Done with motions, the senate opened the floor up for public discussion. Members of the Office of Equity and Inclusion outlined their new framework for increasing diversity on campus. The new plan, named the Inclusion, Diversity, Evaluation, Achievement and Leadership framework, or IDEAL, lists tactics for each department to increase their diversity.

At the end of the meeting Coltrane briefly spoke about the widening gap between student enrollment and staff hiring in certain departments, showing some newly collected interactive data. Robert Kyr, past senate president and music professor, gave an update on the Interinstitutional Faculty Senate, a collaboration between several Oregon universities.

The meeting ended ten minutes early. Minutes and complete policies are available here.

University of Oregon President Michael Schill announced in early January that the university will move forward with a plan to funnel more of the budget into research and tenure-track faculty.

The new budget plan is designed to rearrange faculty and funds from several departments that have become unbalanced. The plan is a step in Schill’s goal to make UO a world-class comprehensive research institution.

Provost Scott Coltrane will lead the academic side of the plan. A primary goal, Coltrane said, is in reallocating faculty resources. Several departments have rapidly increased their non-tenure track faculty, while student enrollment in those programs has gone down. Coltrane aims to decrease those gaps.

“The demands from students, in terms of credit hours that they’re taking, have gotten more and more out of line with the number of people we have teaching in those areas,” Tobin Klinger, UO spokesman said.

“Our student demand in the sciences has gone up, whereas our student demand in the humanities has gone down,” Coltrane said. Because of this, a focus of the plan is the College of Arts and Sciences.

Since 2012, CAS enrollment has been steadily decreasing. At the same time, the number of non-tenure track faculty in CAS has risen 89 percent since 2007. This has created a large gap between students and faculty.

“We’re trying to realign, so we have the faculty in the right place, where the students want to take classes,” Coltrane said.

Realignment means cutting faculty in some areas while increasing it in others. Some departments, particularly sciences, which have seen a marked increase in enrollment, will benefit from more faculty. “We currently have 40 different faculty searches ongoing as we seek to grow our tenure-related faculty by 80 to 100 scholars over the next four years,” Schill said in his announcement on Jan. 6.

Other programs will lose people. “I will not sugar coat this message,” Schill said. “Not all departments or schools will be net winners.”

On Jan. 22, interim Tykeson Dean of Arts and Sciences W. Andrew Marcus announced the first step of the CAS staffing changes. Five job positions will be eliminated from the CAS dean’s office, including the Associate Dean for Finance and Administration. The changes will go into effect when the positions’ contracts expire.

With Schill’s announcement focusing on research, some less research-oriented programs have worried that they will see budget cuts. According to Coltrane, this is a misconception.

“Research is a kind of code word for scholarly production, but if you’re a dancer, or an oboist, it’s performance,” Coltrane said. “The kind of university that we are needs people who are distinguished in those ways.” Music school professors on the tenure track, for example, are evaluated by their performances and recordings.

The university isn’t equating grant funding with success, Coltrane said. “Some faculty work collaboratively and do grants; some faculty work alone and do grants,” he said. “Some faculty don’t get grants, there just aren’t grants, so they just write their books and do their research. We like them all.”

Fourteen crimes were reported to the University of Oregon Police Department from Jan. 17 to Jan. 24.

The most common crime was bike theft, with four incidents reported in the last week. UOPD considers bike theft the most common crime perpetrated on campus. The second most popular crime of the week were drug violations, with three people in Barnhart reported to the Dean of Students on Sunday, Jan. 17.

Other notable crimes this week were a graffiti hate crime in Knight Library and a burglar resisting arrest at Spencer View Apartments. Here is a full breakdown of every crime reported this week:

Liquor violations – 1

Drug Law violation – 3

Bike Theft – 4

Burglary, unauthorized use of vehicle – 1

Felon Possession of Restricted Weapon, Resisting Arrest, Interfering with Police, Trespass, Possession of Burglary Tools – 1

Trespass – 1

Laptop Theft – 1

Criminal Mischief, Graffiti, Hate Crime – 1

Warrant Arrest- 1

The University of Oregon Police Department has selected a preferred candidate for the new Assistant Chief position. Upon successful completion of the background check, Police Captain Chou Her of the University of California Merced Police Department expects to be hired.

“I have spoken with the Chief there, and she has offered me the position,” Her said.

UOPD did not confirm this. Kelly McIver, head of communications for UOPD, said, “Obviously when a hiring department communicates with a candidate who will be moved to the background phase, it is clear that the intention would be to offer employment with satisfactory completion of the remaining requirements, so I understand how Lt. Her would express it that way. It is a technicality that an official offer of employment is not made until the background is completed and accepted.”

Her is the only candidate who has progressed to this phase of the hiring process.

UOPD hasn’t had an Assistant Chief since 2012. Chief Carolyn McDermed was the last person to hold the position, and it was not refilled when McDermed was promoted to Chief. The position was revived this year after Captain Pete Deshpande retired.

The Assistant Chief will help McDermed cultivate relationships with the community on and off campus, oversee internal and external operations and take over command of the department when McDermed is unavailable.

“I’m looking for someone who’s open minded, has a commitment to diversity, is motivated to move the department forward in our current transition,” McDermed said. “Someone who can really lead by example in our department and be a role model for our officers.”

Her is currently the Police Captain at the UC Merced Police Department. From March to August, 2015, Her served as the department’s Interim Police Chief. Before his position at the university, Her worked at various law enforcement agencies in the area, including the Merced County Sheriff’s Department.

Her was born in Laos, and his family moved to Portland when he was three years old. From there they moved down to Merced, a place Her has called home since. He is fluent in both English and Hmong.

Her first visited campus last October. “My first glimpse of the area was something I was very, very happy with,” Her said. “Touching down at the airport, seeing the town as I’m driving in, I was very much in love with it.”

During his visit Her gave a talk on campus about his policing philosophy. He is an advocate for community policing, a style of law enforcement that focuses on making connections within the community the department serves.

“I’m a big firm believer in community policing,” Her said. “If you’re just there simply providing a service and interacting with people, that’s not community policing. Community policing is truly getting down to the nuts and bolts of interacting with people and being part of the town. From what I’ve seen of what UO is, there’s a lot of opportunities to do those things.”

Her has had the UC Merced Police Department make appearances at athletic events and even march in the town parade.

University police departments differ from city departments in size and scope of their work. University departments are able to mingle more and really get to know members of the campus community, Her said. At his speech in October, Her told the audience, “Officers can be more than that guy who gave you a ticket.”