The Association of American Universities is planning to administer a national survey to all 60 colleges in its system. This survey fall in fall 2015. This will be nearly a year after UO professor Jennifer Freyd published the results of her Campus Climate survey, which found that one in 10 women on campus have been raped.

The University of Oregon learned about the AAU’s plans to develop a nationwide survey last spring, and they originally disapproved of Freyd’s plans to conduct her survey. However, the UO has expressed its willingness to take part in AAU’s survey once it is finalized, according to Jennifer Winters, communications director of public affairs communications at the UO.

“These survey results shine a light on a terrible, unacceptable problem,” UO Interim President Scott Coltrane said. “It shows us we have a lot of work to do. …We are also interested in participating in national efforts to create and use a standardized climate survey tool in the future. The better we understand the issues here on campus and across the country, the better we can respond.”

The AAU began developing plans for a national campus climate survey on sexual assault in May, after a White House task force brought up the need for such a survey, according to Politico.

“[We] want to get ahead of this issue before a federally designed survey is mandated for us,” AAU President Hunter Rawlings told member institutions.

Right now, AAU is developing a pilot that will act as a trial before the actual survey tool is launched in Fall 2015.

The University of Oregon Foundation launched a seed fund today with $500,000 from the Willamette Investment Pool. The fund, managed by UO business and law students, will be used to make investments in emerging local companies, according to Chief Investment Officer Jay Namyet.

Guided by staff and advisers, the UO Foundation Seed Fund is prepared to make “initial investments of $20,000-$75,000″ over the next three years, with following investments on top of that, according to a press release from the UO Foundation.

The Business Innovation Institute and its Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship will provide advice for the group of student managers. The fund will invest in both on-campus and off-campus startup companies.

The Business Innovation Institute and the Lundquist College of Business hope this fund will provide a learning opportunity for students.

“As a fiduciary for the University of Oregon, the Foundation’s chief responsibility is to protect the purchasing power of the endowment,” Namyet said in the press release. “As portfolio managers, students in the UO Foundation Seed Fund program will take an active role in ensuring stable financial support for future students as they seek to achieve positive returns on their investments.”

A record-breaking class moved onto campus last Thursday.

Of nearly 5,100 new freshmen, more than 1,300 were students of color. That’s 27 percent — the highest percentage ever at the University of Oregon.

Students of color now comprise 22 percent of the entire student population, making UO’s population more diverse than the state of Oregon by two percentage points. Since 2007, UO’s minority numbers have nearly doubled from 12.5 to 22 percent, according to preliminary numbers from UO’s office of Institutional Research.

Part of this is due to a concerted effort by the school to create a better learning environment for all students, Vice-President of Enrollment Management Roger Thompson said.

“So much of the great learning happens outside the class,” Thompson said. “We should be embracing (diversity). Studying with, learning with, living with people who are similar to you and different from you. That’s when you learn from fellow students.”

The diversity effort also reflects UO’s effort to prepare students for diverse workplaces, Thompson explained.

“We have an obligation to prepare our students to compete in the 21st century workplace,” Thompson said. “It’s more diverse than it’s ever been.”

Ashley Campbell, an African American student from Los Angeles, was one of those students. Interested in cinema studies with hopes to pursue a set design career, Campbell applied to 17 different schools before deciding on the UO at Embracing the Future, an event that invites ethnic minorities to campus.

“People were very warm and I just felt I had to be here,” Campbell said. “Both my parents went to UCLA, my sister went to UCLA. I decided to come here instead.”

UO was one of the first places Campbell applied and got into.

The university has reached out to different minority communities in and outside Oregon through events such as the Fiesta Mexicana and the Rose Festival, as well as partnering with groups like Self-Enhancement Incorporated, which supports at-risk urban youth.

Having more students like Campbell helps the UO reach toward Governor Kitzhaber’s 40-40-20 Goal, which aims for 40 percent bachelor’s degrees, 40 percent associate’s degrees or certificates, and twenty percent high school diplomas in Oregon’s adult population by 2025.

In the past year, UO’s diversity stats have pulled ahead of Oregon Institute of Technology and Oregon State University, and UO is now second in the state behind Portland State University, which touted 25 percent students of color in 2013. Oregon State University hasn’t released updated numbers yet, but last year it sat .3 percent lower than UO with 20.5 percent students of color.

Two things have contributed to the minority jump: Increased efforts to recruit students of color, and more financial aid and guidance available to low-income UO students. Pathway Oregon, a scholarship program for first-time freshmen who are Pell-eligible and have a GPA of 3.4, is one example.

Targeting low-income students helps diversity because minority students are statistically more likely to fall into the low-income bracket, according to Grant Schoonover, an adviser for Pathway Oregon.

“There’s a greater number of first generation and historically underrepresented students in that cross-section,” Schoonover said.

Students who qualify for Pathway Oregon get a promise from the university that any tuition and fees the federal Pell grant and state grants don’t cover, the UO will absorb.

In 2013, Pathway Oregon’s funds were raised by 69 percent, and since then, students receiving the aid has jumped from 395 to 532 this fall–an increase of 40 percent. For low-income students, to whom financial cost is the biggest deterrent for attending school, this piece is crucial.

“Low-income students are least likely to graduate from high school, and if they do, they’re likely to take longer to go to college,” Schoonover said, “and if they do enter college as freshmen, they’re less likely to continue on as sophomores, and if they do, they’re less likely to graduate, and if they do, they’re more likely to have lots of student debt.”

The rise in diversity numbers does not include international students at the UO. International students comprise 12 percent of the incoming first-year class, according to the preliminary numbers, which is similar to previous years.

Another big piece of the rising numbers, according to Jim Rawlins, director of admissions at UO, is that students are learning that they can get help to pay for college when they’re in high school. Pathway Oregon and other programs like it have been trying more and more to reach into high schools so student’s mindsets can change, and now from early on, more students are keeping college as an option.

But much of this change in diversity could simply be because high schools are getting more diverse, says Peace Bransberger, a research analyst for the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

“If you look at the simple view, you’ll see that even from 2005… entering classes of students are more diverse,” Bransberger said.

Bringing diversity race-wise will include more Oregon residents who historically haven’t been able to take part in higher education, according to Rawlins.

“37 percent [of the student body at UO] are Pell-eligible,” Rawlins said. “Those students are much more likely to be first-generation college students, and much more likely to be racially and ethnically diverse.”

If the numbers hold true, most of these students will be staying: Preliminary retention rate is 87 percent from 2013’s freshman class.

The victim who took the first bullet in the Umpqua Community College shooting was a UO grad who taught others writing while dreaming of publishing his own.

UCC professor Lawrence Levine, the instructor of the small “Introduction to Expository Writing” class that became the scene of the fifth deadliest school shooting in United States history on Oct. 1, studied creative writing at the University of Oregon just an hour north of Roseburg in the 1970s.

But it was the brain of a frustrated writer, his friends have told news outlets. Levine wrote many unpublished novels throughout his life, novels throughout his life, but none were published. That was a lifelong source of struggle for Levine, childhood friend Joey Weiss told The Oregonian.

Though Levine grew up in Beverly Hills, his friends said he found refuge in nature. That may be why he came to University of Oregon and later settled in Glide, 20 minutes east of Roseburg.

He loved fly fishing almost as much as writing, and worked part-time as a fly fishing guide. His Facebook bio says, under that job, that he was “in charge of answering dumb-ass questions.” His profile also shows that he liked Oregon Ducks baseball and the San Francisco Giants.

The only quote on Levine’s Facebook bio is from Samuel Beckett’s “How It is,” an unpunctuated monologue from a narrator crawling through endless mud, searching for form:

“all these calculations yes explanations yes the whole story from beginning to end yes completely false yes.”

Though he didn’t talk much, friends said, he had a dry sense of humor. He was a listener and a watcher, according to Lynda Winter, who dated him in 1976. He loved Tom Waits and the blues.

At least one of his novels was set in the Northwest. He once took a job bartending in Grants Pass because he was writing a novel about a bartender, friend Steve Schaffer told the Oregonian.

That writer’s mind was probably hard at work thinking how to best teach his craft as Levine started class on at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1. One of his students was not there at the start of class, and his name was Chris Harper-Mercer.

Harper-Mercer did show up half an hour later, however, and then there are two different accounts of what happened: A few sources say he fired through a window, hitting Levine from the parking lot.

One unverified account given to CNN by family of wounded student Anastasia Boylan says that he came into the classroom first and spoke to Levine.

“I’ve been waiting to do this for years,” Harper-Mercer said, according to Boylan’s family. Then he fired, killing Levine in one shot.

This story is developing as new information is released. If you have any information you’d like to share about Levine to be included in this obituary, please email sgreenstone@dailyemerald.com.

The emergency alert system Umpqua Community College had in place failed them during the shooting Thursday morning, several associate professors have told The News-Review, Roseburg’s paper. The emergency alert is supposed to send text message alerts to numbers registered and shut down school computers with a crawling message on the screen, but did not.

Professor John Blackwood was teaching a computer information systems class the morning of the shooting. He told The News-Review he had his campus computer in front of him and his cell phone next to him, and neither received data from the system. Other faculty confirmed what he said.

Board of Trustees chair Vanessa Becker said Saturday that she plans to investigate the reports. However, she said that she has received conflicting reports.

Securities assistant Kathy Frazer did send an email, according to Blackwood, that simply said “Shooting on campus. Please go into lockdown. Not a drill.”