As soothing as any of the numerous mom and pop shops in Eugene — the bookstores, the cafés — bike shops set themselves apart only for the uncanny ability to make customers feel dumb. It’s good business in this city, in this region actually, but it can be intimidating for some to stroll into a bike shop and try to wrap their heads around the intricacies of a bicycle.

Blue Heron understands this, and being so near to the University of Oregon campus, it often faces students new to school and cycling, who may be new to the city and region, as well. As deftly as they can retool a bike’s brake cables and return it in the same day, the staffers also go out of their way to make customers feel welcome.

“That’s the key,” says Susan Kelley, the store’s owner since 1992. “You can’t work here unless you like people. We aren’t intimidating, which I think bike shops can be for people.”

It’s that sort of effort that has helped Blue Heron gain a steady following despite advertising very little. Word of mouth has brought many cyclists, new and old, into the shop, greeted by Kelley’s 9-year-old Papillion, Bella, ambling between the merchandise. The store owners say they always try to fix a bike first instead of offering to sell a newer one.

“A lot of other guys just want to get you parts and get out of there,” says Jesse Wilson, 23, a new face around the shop for about the last year. “I’ve brought in some crappy bikes other places would have tried to just turn away. I don’t need a new racing bike, just need a way to get around town.”

Scrunched between Caspian Mediterranean and Yogurt Extreme, Blue Heron has experienced something of a renaissance in the last few years. It’s been stocked with road bikes for an older generation while fixed gear bikes of all styles have helped reel in a newer generation.

“Sometimes we’re ahead of the curve,” Kelley says. Blue Heron has sold fixed gear bikes for the past 15 years.

As strong as the cycling community has been in Eugene, Kelley says that the rise in popularity of bicycles has helped the store grow, literally. It has doubled in size after knocking down the wall of the next door establishment that has been a turnstile for businesses like an imports store, a ballet studio and a couple student travel agencies.

Blue Heron has won Best of Campus bike shop three years running now, and the staff is proud of the hat trick. “It’s nice to be recognized,” says Louis Orsini, a longtime employee who’s been at Blue Heron since it was called Pedal Power in the ’80s. “I take it as we’re doing a good job. Ultimately when you’re in the bike business, you do the best you can with every bike that comes through. Nobody gets rich in this business so it’s a passion more than anything else.”

Former University of Oregon tight end Colt Lyerla won a $10,000 prize from Adidas for his performance at the NFL Combine Monday afternoon.

Along with Oregon State wide receiver Brandin Cooks, Lyerla raked in the extra money as a reward for notching the best time in the 40-yard dash while wearing the Adidas adizero 5-star 40 cleat model.

After being jettisoned from the Oregon football team following an undisclosed issue within the team and being caught with cocaine in late December, Lyerla posted the second fastest sprint among tight ends with a 4.61 second effort. The 6-foot-4, 242-pound Aloha native ranked behind only North Carolina’s Eric Ebron and Tennessee State’s A.C. Leonard.

Cooks posted the second fastest time at 4.33 seconds, second only to Kent State running back Dri Archer, who ran a 4.26 40-yard dash. Cooks has the opportunity to win the $100,000 grand prize for the fastest overall 40-yard dash time after defensive backs get their turn on Tuesday.

Per the contest, the defensive back will also have to wear the adizero 5-Star 40 cleat, which has competed heavily against Baltimore-based apparel company Under Armour to jockey for the spotlight at the increasingly popular NFL Combine.

Adidas began awarding $100,000 to prospects in 2013. Marquise Goodwin, now signed with the Buffalo Bills, won in 2013. Afterward, he signed with Nike.

A blonde receptionist sits behind a desk under a sprawling wall of televisions in the lobby of the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex.

A student-athlete makes his way from a faraway corner. He runs up to ask for help using the elevator to access another section of the byzantine sports facility. Meanwhile, 55-inch television screens beam overhead, 64 in all. They glow from the far wall of the cavernous lobby at all hours. Long after the coaches, players and janitors have gone home, the screens display either “SportsCenter” or various graphics with only the occasional car driving along Martin Luther King Boulevard to notice. The video wall has to stay on, says the facility manager, because shutting it off might reset the finely tuned color settings.

“Football is a seven-days-a-week operation. And even in the off-season, you think about recruits [visiting], there’s still training going on, coaches are here,” said Calvin Kenney, Hatfield-Dowlin’s on-site manager. “The building never goes to sleep.”

High-end projects require high-end maintenance. With football season over, the building donated by Nike co-founder and UO alum Phil Knight runs at a higher clip than most buildings on campus. Records provided to the Emerald show that from July 1, 2013 to Dec. 31, the building has racked up $95,413 in utility expenses alone — averaging just under $16,000 per month — and the building didn’t open officially until Aug. 3. For its first six months, the total bill for the building is $235,284, on pace to cost nearly half a million a year. So far, the building is paid off by both the athletic department funds and an endowment set up by donors.

Before the University of Oregon even cut the ribbon on its brand new football operations building, the project garnered attention from all across the nation. Its interior trimmings, included hand-woven rugs from Nepal and hardwood from Brazil, drew The New York Times and Sports Illustrated to Eugene. It was called “opulent” and even an intergalactic space station by Deadspin, a comparison that isn’t far-flung from the arms race that’s overtaken college athletic programs.

State of the art facilities is the oldest trick in the recruiting book, and Oregon caught up in a matter of years.

Like many expensive gifts, these buildings come with responsibilities and those have grown substantially over the last four years. The university pays a third of the costs of the John E. Jaqua Center’s operating costs for access to the first floor of the three-story glass cube. It also came with stipulations from Phil Knight to bolster the academic help for athletes. A 2011 story by Register-Guard reporter Greg Bolt reported the cost took nearly $2 million out of the academic budget. Similarly, Matt Knight Arena was funded up to $100 million by Knight, and took an extra $29 million from donors. Still, the arena required yet another $98 million the university had to find for itself.

For comparison, the Erb Memorial Union, 60 percent larger and overrun with students, was billed $481,225.99 from July 2012 to June 2013. Its costs don’t  account for many of the bells and whistles of the football facility. The 137,000-square-foot Hatfield-Dowlin Complex — which plans to bring in other student-athletes to use its cafeteria — is mainly exclusive to the football program and costs roughly $2,500 per player for just half a year of operation.

Kenney says  the cost of running the building could be misleading. The International Facility Management Association, the organization that sets the building’s standards, suggests giving a building three years before concluding how it costs to run a building like Hatfield-Dowlin.

“We really won’t have an idea until after the first three years,” said Kenney, who worked as a facility manager for the city of Eugene before accepting his current job. “If you look at the first six months, we opened the building in August when we had record heat, we had a monsoon — literally a monsoon — hit the area, then we had record snow and record cold, already in six months.”

The building itself is an investment in keeping the football program in the limelight, fixed in the minds of both recruits and potential students.

As athletic departments are often referred to as “the front porch” of a university, UO’s is now towering and granite. For opponents, the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex also holds an air of intimidation. It’s a fortress sealed in triple-pane windows. It shows the flex of an athletic department unabashedly pursuing every edge over the competition. For recruits, it’s a show of loyalty and the benefits afforded to them at Oregon versus any other place in the country — that it may write the check for a billboard in Time Square as it did for Joey Harrington in 2001.

“We always had in mind the arrival sequence of the visiting team. As the visiting team arrived from Martin Luther King Boulevard in their bus, their first view of this building should be ‘Oh my god, we have to play against them?’” said Bob Synder, the project manager for the building’s architects, ZGF Architects. “That was intentional. It’s sort of armor, a dark imposing building that tells them about their competition.”

For the time being, the building’s operating costs derive from athletic department coffers and various donations.

“The Hatfield-Dowlin complex is an athletic building and is funded entirely by athletic department funds,” said Craig Pintens, senior associate athletic director of communications. “A quasi-endowment fund for the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex was established with the University of Oregon Foundation during construction of the building to assist in operational costs.”

Part of that endowment comes in the form of naming rights to certain sections of the building, similar to a hospital wing. For example, the coaching room for running backs is named for former Duck Jonathan Stewart.

The bill, however, may be a small price to pay for a competitive edge over other booming athletic departments across the country. The financial tidal wave making its way across the country has landed other schools their own dedicated football performance centers. Arkansas recently revealed a $35 million complex itself. Washington State also unveiled plans for a $61 million, 79,000 square foot football building. Even Louisville, lauded far more for its basketball program than football, dropped $7.5 million on a football complex.

In the off-season, the building still works as office space for the football program. For coaches and other essential operations staff, there is no off-season. During last Wednesday’s national signing day, they sat in the building’s War Room perusing info on their new recruits. Meanwhile, the televisions beamed in the lobby, morphing into four simultaneous streams of recruiting coverage with the building and all its occupants humming along.

Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the building’s operating costs were paid entirely by the endowment fund. The athletic department also uses its own general fund in these payments.

Airfare to San Antonio for University of Oregon enrollment personnel and administrators? Check. Green and yellow balloons? Check. Droves of prospective students clamoring for the opportunity to walk the same halls as athletes such as Joey Harrington, LaMichael James and De’Anthony Thomas? Not so much.

Handfuls of high school students clad in new green Oregon T-shirts from Nike were ushered through the lobby of the Mariott Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 30. They walked under Win The Day banners sweeping across the hotel overhangs. The Duck, a bit east of his usual winter migration routes, pretended to throw a few of kids in the San Antonio River and the occasional joke: “Does this free T-shirt come with free tuition?” was met with laughs.

This was a chance for UO officials to show off for high school kids who might not consider Eugene. Though it wasn’t the usual Saturday game day for the football team, it was one of the biggest events the enrollment office would throw all year. And even though the banquet hall wasn’t quite as populated as, say, the pep rally before the Alamo Bowl game later that day, even one successful recruit would recoup the event’s expenses.

“They get to meet the university president. They’ll get to meet the leadership,” says Roger Thompson, the vice president of enrollment management. “That doesn’t happen for high school kids very often. There’s no question in my mind it’s a great event.”

The office of Enrollment Management has set up recruiting events for high school students for the last four bowl games. The events have been a staple for reeling in potential students ever since Roger Thompson came to UO in July 2010. The native Oregonian hosted events like this at his previous posts at Indiana University and the University of Alabama — two athletic powerhouses in basketball and football, respectively. And he has arrived at a time when it has become increasingly important to attract non-Oregon students as the state slowly withdraws its funding of public universities.

“We’ll probably spend five grand on this event,” Thompson said in the days leading up to the recruitment event. “Even if we spend 15 grand, one student at non-resident tuition is $28,000. It’ll have paid for the event and then some.”

For years, out-of-state students, who pay triple the tuition of Oregon residents, have grown in importance. The state only covers around 5 percent of the total budget of the university today, and as Oregon football climbed to new heights in the past decade, so has the opportunity to entice high school juniors and seniors with the promise of a prominent football program and raucous game days. Out-of-state students make up 35 percent of the total student body — up 7 percent from 2009 and 15 percent from 2005.

There’s a Rube Goldberg-style chain of events that universities have claimed when it comes to this tactic of enrollment. A strong, visible football or basketball team gets noticed by kids across the country who wouldn’t normally pay any attention. Their interest leads to rising applications at the school, which in turn brings higher enrollment and more money, in addition to allowing the school to be pickier with who it selects to come to the school. For instance, according to the enrollment department, the fall 2013 freshman class had the highest cumulative GPA and SAT scores in school history.

An example of this is Boise State. According to the book Saturday Millionaires, which inspects the relationship between America’s universities and their athletic programs, Boise State saw a 9.1 percent boost in applications after the football team’s upset of the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Similarly, after Oregon made appeared in the 2011 BCS national championship against the Auburn Tigers, applications to UO shot up 30 percent.

“There’s no other part of the university that’s in the news every single day,” says Holly Simons, director of strategic communications in the office of enrollment management. “In the past we almost didn’t promote it a lot because we felt it didn’t need to be promoted. It promotes itself very well. But there’s benefit to us to remind students that you get to have this incredible fan experience while you’re here.”

More money also means means paying professors more, or affording better credentialed professors altogether, and therefore raising the reputation of the school. The UO, however, is near the bottom of the rankings from the American Association of Universities, and its spot in U.S. News and World Report’s best national universities is at 109, where it’s hovered for the last 10 years.

This has led some to ask why the university even bothers making the trips in the first place. Nathan Tublitz, a biology professor at UO and former president of the faculty senate, says the university is simply squandering dollars by sending administrators to meet students across the country. In 2011, the UO spent $1,599,307 of a $1,942,000 budget to send 515 people from the athletic department and 56 administrators to the Rose Bowl. This year’s San Antonio expenses to have not been calculated yet.

“I think the issue here is one of spending money at the university appropriately to enhance the academic side of the university,” Tublitz said. “Sending athletic department families to a bowl game does not enhance our academic standing. Why does the entire athletic department staff have to go? I think that’s more athletic staff than even football players.”

However, university officials insist that these are appropriate steps to capitalize on an opportunity that many schools don’t get. Jamie Moffitt, vice president of finance and administration, hopes that the athletic success in bowl games draws people to other parts of the school.

“For me, this goes beyond bowl games, this goes beyond athletics,” she said. “This institution has some places where we have experienced tremendous success and I think we need to think about how we best celebrate that success, make sure that people understand the strengths we have as an institution. And then think about where we have success and how do we leverage that and make use of that so that it benefits other areas as well.”

An attempt by the faculty senate to halt university payments to the athletic department has been put on the backburner until winter term. A committee chaired by economics professor Bill Harbaugh and seated by President Michael Gottfredson has been proposed in its place.

Harbaugh’s bill sought to cut the $2,000,000 annually given to the athletic department that funds tutors and other academic support at the Jaqua Academic Center, and asked for a 2 percent kickback from athletics to be given back to UO’s general fund. The bill teeter-tottered around the senate agenda, first being taken off Monday morning then reinstated Wednesday morning, by faculty senate president Margie Paris, at the request of the senators.

The faculty senate, which meets around once a month, barely peppered the two hundred seat auditorium, but there was a contentious air in the room between senators and administrators, punctuated by an appearance by Gottfredson, who addressed the senate before voting.

“I’d start by reminding everybody, from my own observation, that we have an athletics program that is amazing,” Gottfredson told the senate. “It contributes to the strength of the university in many, many ways.” Gottfredson mentioned the rapid increase in both revenues and expenses of the athletic department, which has burst onto the national stage in the last half-decade.

Speaking on many of the benefits of a major athletic program, such as growing interest across the country, as well as the relatively cheap funding given by the university compared to peer institutions, the President didn’t waver in supporting the kickback.

“Their revenues are large, their costs are large, [and they have] been increasing. There’s a considerable national interest, and local interest, and should be,” Gottfredson said in a rare appearance in front of the faculty senate. “It’s my view that it’s fair and appropriate and it’s necessary that our athletic department be allowed to rely on those agreements and those budgets.”

Following the address, a brief question and answer session with Gottfredson gave way to the possibility of assembling a new committee to address the concerns. The president spoke of numerous committees in charge of budgets, to which the senate responded they had no part in. Interim senior vice president and provost Scott Coltrane questioned whether the senate even had the authority to make such a resolution.

“I don’t know how to say this delicately, but I would kind of like to know what’s going on here,” Coltrane said. “What is the goal of this legislation, which exceeds the power the senate? You’re setting up a confrontation with the president, who will either ignore or veto the motion. It’s confrontational politics, what are you trying to get out of it?”

Harbaugh responded.

“My goal with this is, I’m trying to be constructive with this, Scott. I think I’ve been trying to be constructive with this process all the way along,” Harbaugh said. “… The senate budget committee, which you’re relying on to act as the intermediary here, doesn’t even have a single senator on it, and has been ineffective. Noticeably ineffective in the past in dealing with this, for a long history since 2011. So I’m more than willing to work for a clever way to work with the administration on this, but everything tried so far has been a failure.”

In response, senators proposed to push the resolution to the first meeting of winter term and in the meantime instate a committee. Senator Randy Sullivan proposed that, because the senate may be left out of some fundamental committees, that a new committee be established, with both Harbaugh and Gottfredson as members, to which they both agreed

“We need Bill Harbaugh and a real delegate from the president need to sit down and hammer out a compromise,” Sullivan said.

The new committee will be chaired by  Habraugh, though it has not yet scheduled a time to meet. They are scheduled to meet before the next session to announce what they’ve talked about.

So, you found someone you want to take home. The collisions of whatever intangible things — the week you just had, the dress she’s wearing, your history with him — led you both to decide that sex was on the table tonight. You walk home together, swallowed up in the moment.

Between fumbling in the dark, looking for the wallet sitting in the back pocket of the pants you threw god-knows-where, you might think, “Do I really need a condom?”

If you’ve ever been there, you may want to think twice the next time you decide the mood is too right to awkwardly inquire about sexual history because the risks of contracting a sexually transmitted infection these days are just as real, if not worse, than they were a decade ago.

A countywide public hearing was held in Columbia Hall last month, but barely more than ten people peppered the seats of the large, dilapidated assembly. What they were discussing was a matter that could affect everyone in Eugene and Lane County, but the general disinterest was as indicative of the problem as the powerpoint slides presented that day. Public health officials for the county, as well as members of the HIV Alliance and Planned Parenthood, proclaimed that sexually transmitted infections, as well as cases of whooping cough and E. coli, have been rising for years.

“We have doubled our cases of gonorrhea over the last five years and we have only raised 1 percent in population [in Lane County],” said Patrick Luedtke, a Lane County public health officer and the hearing’s main speaker. “We’re at a point now where the levels are high enough where we all need to change our behavior.”

Apathy has long contributed to the rise in sexually transmitted infections. A study released last month by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada found that only half of students aged 18 to 24 use condoms. Between July and October, Lane County has seen 68 cases of gonorrhea and, according to Lane County health and human services officer Jason Davis, this is about four times the representation expected for a county of Lane’s size and demographic. Fourteen cases of syphilis have also concerned health officials because it’s still treatable with penicillin, although other viruses have become resistant.

Syphilis is still potentially fatal if left untreated.

The University of Oregon is grappling with growing incidents of gonorrhea and chlamydia as well. Jim Mough, the lab supervisor at the health center, has been keeping his eye on the growing rates of STIs for years now. In the 2009-10 school year, there were only two positive cases of gonorrhea. This year, there were 17 reported cases. Meanwhile, chlamydia has climbed from 75 positive tests in 2008-09 to 141 in 2012-13. Fall term saw the first reported case of syphilis on campus in five years.

“I think some of this is driven by the fact that funding for the public health department has changed a little bit, there are no longer walk-in clinics for STIs,” Mough said. According to him, counties across the state haven’t been able to do as much outreach as they had in the past. “You have to make an appointment, and I think public health used to be an easier approach for some students who might be concerned about confidentiality.”

Condom usage peaked a decade ago and has stalled since, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Richard Chartoff, a UO chemistry professor and researcher, recently acquired a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to design a thinner and more durable condom. His application proposes a one-size-fits-all condom that’s half as thin as today’s, with nano particles to fight infection. 

Sarah Sprague, a student and peer health educator for the health center, agrees that the rise in infections in young people could be attributed to the rate of condom use.

“It’s frightening,” she said. “I think a big issue in college is risk perception. People know that chlamydia is out there, that people die from smoking or that people die when they don’t wear bike helmets, but they say ‘Oh no, that can’t happen to me.’”

Oregon has seen increases in these STIs recently. Since 2010, reported cases of gonorrhea in Oregon have increased more than 40 percent — in Lane County, it’s a 300 percent for the same period. Luedtke insists that it’s well within the power of the county’s citizens to get themselves tested to ensure they are not spreading these diseases unknowingly.

“There’s no shortage of resources for STDs,” Luedtke said. “You can get free care. You can get anonymous care at the health department. You can call the community health centers at Lane County.”

One theory for the increases in chlamydia and gonorrhea on campus has been that the tests were, for about a year, free to all students. According to Mough, the ASUO picked up the tab by allocating a lump sum of about $160,000 to the health center to cover HIV and STI testing. Students who wouldn’t normally have made the decision to spend $20 on a test didn’t have to.

“We really think it was a good way to spend the money for our students,” Mough said. “For a lot of students, the $20 or $40 for the tests — that makes the difference on how much you eat during the week.”

Once that well ran dry, the health center was forced to charge for chlamydia and gonorrhea tests once again. Still, the UO is trying many new ways to curb the increasing cases of infection. Over the summer, workers at the health center had been looking for a more proactive way to reach students. According to them, about one-third of students never even step foot in their clinics, despite paying for access lumped in with their tuition. Keith Van Norman, the health center’s marketing manager, decided that the most effective way to reach students was to put the information right in their pockets in the form of a smartphone app.

“There’s all these people, they need sexual health information, maybe they don’t know where the clinic is,” Sprague said. “How can we reach out to those students who aren’t coming in? What’s an accessible way to reach them?”

SexPositive, which launched on Oct. 15, has been downloaded more than 8,000 times. The free app has been praised by famed sex columnist Dan Savage and on Twitter. Fox News panned the app in a segment that focused on Savage’s visit to campus in October.

Still, while Van Norman knows that SexPositive won’t be a final answer to the growing STI rate, he hopes that putting the information in front of students is a step in the right direction.

“We’ve had a great partnership with ASUO where they helped us out with HIV testing, but there’s gonorrhea and chlamydia are on the rise or are doing different things,” Norman said. “We need to address that and this is one way we can address the STI stuff.”

The folks at the UO health center are hopeful that funding will come in the future from the ASUO to help the battle against sexually transmitted diseases and infections, but they understand it’s going to be a campaign. Mough is particularly optimistic about the chances the university and the county can bounce back from the current spike.

“Their money helped the campus community, but it also had a trickle-down effect for all of Eugene,” Mough said. “You’re not just taking care of each other, you’re taking care of the whole community.”

“B-ten, B-ten,” a darkly dressed man says slowly into a lounge microphone.

“Beeeeee-ten,” responds another darkly dressed man next to him. He drawls in a low voice behind dark glasses and mustache. Those in attendance stifle laughs, waiting for a punchline.

“I think that’s the vitamin that improves your foreskin,” the first man says. The bar, peppered with evening bingo players, bursts into laughter. A few bartenders, tending to glasses and bar-riding players, yell obscenities at the two men on stage sarcastically.

Such has been the scene for years on Monday nights at Diablo’s Downtown Lounge. Owner Troy Slavkovsky, 46, has carved out a living for 14 years ribbing people with a sour sense of humor. But the bar and its basement night club, which are next to the Eugene bus station on 10th Avenue and Pearl Street, will serve their last drinks to the public on Nov. 15.

Everybody wins at least once this game and the winners proceed to the stage to collect a trinket or a memento from the bar. One man, in the course of the night, asks for a miniature Harley Davidson posted behind the bar and offers to buy it. The evening looks something like the wake of a funny friend and, in place of divvying up the lost friend’s stuff with an executor, they’re auctioning everything off through Bingo.

“I’m giving away keepsakes,” Slavkovsky said. “I’m trying not to but, hey, it’s their living room.”

The bar has been through a few makeovers. It was first The Montage, when the owners of the popular Portland restaurant wanted to open up a Eugene location. Slavkovsky, who was at the time running a bar called The Tonic Lounge, decided to help run the place, and open up an after-hours club in the basement.

However, it wasn’t long until the downstairs club was drawing more people than the middling restaurant. Slavkovsky’s partner wanted out, so Diablo’s became a two-story establishment.

“I don’t think he thought I was going to make it,” said Slavkovsky of the time. That was 1999. Fourteen years later, grappling with an aging building that racked up repair costs, the building’s owners announced that they intended to sell it.

Diablo’s is set to become a restaurant after it closes. The new place probably won’t be dimly lit with red lights and daunt customers like a happy hell. For now, smiling, paper maché devil masks and Mexican sugar skulls loom above liquor bottles and a Fireball whiskey tap in a stained red armoire.

Like a wake, customers have been coming around to pay their respects to a bar that’s often been associated with oddball interests manifested in underwear parties and events like The Fetish Ball, which showcases bondage, fire acts and more.

“(Some say) it’s a fetish bar, or that it’s a gay bar,” said Qameron Crooks, a sound technician for the bar who helps throw concerts. “For the most part, we’re an everything bar. I’ve met people who don’t want to come here because they think it’s dirty or all fetished out or whatever, and it’s just not true.”

The lounge’s shuttering is the latest in a string of downtown closures that will be replaced by upscale restaurants or sports bars. John Henry’s, the dive bar infamous for raucous parties and concerts, served its last drink in the spring and has since been made-over into the sports bar Sidelines.

One byproduct of these bars’ closures is the gay community having to reshuffle. Weekly events cherished by the community, such as the popular drag show G.L.A.M. Night, are left to scour for new homes like Luckey’s. Jake King, Diablo’s kitchen manager, has been performing at drag shows at the lounge and around Eugene since moving here from Roseburg two years ago.

“It sucks,” King said of the closing. “I’m a performer and this is where we have almost all of our shows. And now we have to find another venue.”

Slavkovsky plans to open another bar down the road, but he says it won’t be called Diablo’s. Plus, he says, he intends to take a break from the bar scene for a while.

Elated over his upcoming 22nd birthday, Josh Huff did what many college students would do. Last weekend, he went online and told his friends about his weekend party and — heads-up — he would be charging a cover to recoup some of the expense.

But Huff isn’t like most college students. As a wide receiver for the University of Oregon football team, he is under the microscope of both the athletic department and the ubiquitous NCAA. His cover charge represented “commercial involvement,” according to bylaws. And because the funds don’t find their way into the wallets of the athletic department, the Pac-12 conference or a charity of some kind, charging admission went against NCAA rules.

The party was scrapped and a litany of 140-character rants ensued on Twitter. A confused and upset Huff called out the NCAA for meddling.

“So it’s okay for the NCAA to make money off of my name and likeness but once I go to charge ppl to get in my party it’s a problem? Crazy,” Huff tweeted.

The athletic department had no comment about the tweets, but spokesman Craig Pintens said, “We worked with Josh to resolve the situation and ensure his eligibility was not compromised.”

The star wideout became just one of the most recent critics of the NCAA’s reach into a player’s life. Before him, Jay Bilas, the former Duke basketball player turned lawyer and ESPN analyst, blasted the association and its online shop for tagging players’ jerseys. Before that, the media scrummed over whether Texas A&M star quarterback Johnny Manziel had the right to sell his signature. What right do student athletes have to earn money for their play, their jersey sales or other contributions? For the money and the publicity they bring to their school, the question is being asked if college athletes are just the ultimate unpaid intern.

The issue has been prevalent since Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball standout, decided to take the college sports governing body to court. O’Bannon and his lawyers have demanded a cut of the profits from years of jersey and video game sales his likeness was featured in. He has never seen a dime of compensation.

The Oregon athletic department supported ideas to get players extra spending money the last time the issue was up for a vote. Colleges proposed a $2,000 stipend for college athletes that would take care of things beyond room, tuition and books. Unlike full-ride students on academic scholarships, athletes are also demanded to put in the work on the field to keep their careers alive. A part-time job isn’t an option, leaving many players wanting money to cover gas or groceries.

“We are very much proponents of a stipend that goes above and beyond the tuition fees and room and board,” Oregon Athletic Director Rob Mullens told CNBC at the grand opening of the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex. “We do think they need a little extra money and that’s something on the table with the NCAA.”

Many Division I schools said they couldn’t afford the stipend and rejected it. However, Ed Ray, Oregon State University president and a member of the Division I voting board, voted in favor of the stipend.

“We’re putting (money) into locker rooms, bigger stadiums or whatever, but we’re not able to do something for student athletes to help them keep body and soul together beyond tuition and books,” Ray said to the Emerald in a phone interview. “They can’t go out and get a side job if they’re engaged in the highest level of collegiate competition.”

The same can’t be said of nearly anyone else involved in college sports. Last season, the Pac-12 kicked off its 12-year, $2.7 billion television deal with ESPN and Fox. Conference commissioner Larry Scott made more than $3 million last year. Head football coach Mark Helfrich pulls in $1.8 million. Even the Ducks’ strength and conditioning coaches are making upwards of $40,000 a year. Former coach Mike Bellotti still gets $42,000 a year for his coaching stint and hasn’t called a play since 2009. In fact, Bellotti is in the top tier of former Oregon state employees receiving retirement benefits.

Though the stipend proposal has stalled, Big 12 conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby recently suggested offering players a trust fund to tap into once they graduate. Like the O’Bannon case, the idea suggests a portion of licensing and apparel sales go to the players. Colleges make big money selling the rights to gear, as the UO does with Nike. Nike then sells nameless jerseys with the numbers of their star players.

On the other hand, Jordan Kent, a former wide receiver for the Ducks before spending three seasons in the NFL, says just seeing your jersey number worn by the fans is enough for some players.

“I wouldn’t have cared if I got a cut. I just thought that would be cool if I saw little kids wearing my jersey,” Kent said. “I think you can look at it two ways: ‘I deserve a cut of that,’ or ‘Wow, what an honor, I have little kids buying my jersey.’ That’s a pretty cool opportunity that I want to enjoy.”

Yet big sporting events are basically grand commercials for the entire university. Following Oregon’s appearance in the 2010 national championship game, former UO President Richard Lariviere told the Oregonian that applications for the UO rose 30 percent. At last year’s Fiesta Bowl, the university threw a pep rally for prospective students, and the Office of Enrollment Management suggests at least 30 students enrolled shortly after.

“We try to capitalize that time of year on the publicity and the media exposure that athletics are providing,” says Roger Thompson, vice president of enrollment, also noting that football is just one of the many lures for the university. “We try to run these student recruitment events on Saturday and tell students about all the things that are happening at the U of O Monday through Friday.”

The counter argument has often revolved around players getting paid with benefits. The athletic department estimates that a grant-in-aid scholarship is worth between $21,000 and $53,000, not counting training and meals provided. That’s not to mention the benefit of strolling through two buildings worth more than a combined $100 million in construction whenever they please. Bound in tall glass and upholstered in yellow Ferrari leather, the John E. Jaqua Center and the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex are the envy of football players everywhere.

Everyone earns from the successes of big name sports like football and men’s basketball. Meanwhile, players are still amateurs and toe all sorts of rules to remain eligible while practicing every day to keep their scholarships. Nice facilities are one of the only ways the school can compensate players because they can’t even charge a cover for a birthday party until they graduate or leave school entirely.

Tim Gleason is stepping down.

After first announcing his plans to step down in January, the dean of of the School of Journalism and Communication has been replaced, a faculty-wide email confirmed Tuesday evening.

Julianne Newton, the associate dean of Undergraduate Studies for the school, will move behind the desk beginning on Nov 1.

“I’m very optimistic about the school. I think we’re in a great place,” Gleason said of the change in a phone interview Tuesday night. “We’ve got a great faculty, tremendous students and a lot of exciting stuff going on.”

The email doesn’t mention why Gleason is stepping down a mere three weeks into the 2013-14 academic year, but the university has been shopping around for a new journalism dean since Gleason made his announcement. The school conducted two searches but hired no one. A third search will commence in spring 2014.

As far as Newton goes, Gleason is hopeful. He hired Newton in 2000 and she became associate dean in 2008.

Gleason commends her work so far.

“I think if you look at the program it speaks for itself. It’s a stronger program,” said Gleason. “And when it comes to the School of Journalism and Communication, I think she’ll continue to do just that.”

Gleason was most recently a university representative in bargaining with United Academics, the new faculty union, for their first contract. He says that it has been his choice to step down all along, and since United Academics ratified the contract last week he will continue to work the university has the contract is implemented. Gleason also served as a member of the Emerald’s board of directors until spring 2013.

In the recently renovated Huestis Hall, under the humming fluorescent lights, a stout janitor bobs between research laboratories to clean. At 1 a.m. the building is mostly empty, save for one graduate teaching fellow working late. Often the only sound is the crash of a cube in the second floor ice machine, the whir of a centrifuge or, occasionally, a door lightly closing shut.

Ron Tucker has worked here for eight years. He pulls the hefty key ring from his hip, grabs a yellow-dotted key and opens the door to his office. The door to the small utility closet reads “custodian” in faded white capital letters. It’s adorned with Oregon football posters. He’s a season-ticket holder, his only luxury.

Tucker is one of 1,207 full-time campus workers at the University of Oregon. Called “classified staff,” the workers are represented by the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union Local 503. The union says 412 of those workers, including Tucker, make less than $30,000 a year. Federally, a family of four earning around $24,000 annually is eligible for food stamps.

On Sept. 28, after months of bargaining, the union came to a tentative agreement with the Oregon University System for a new two-year contract. SEIU bargained on behalf of all seven of Oregon’s public universities, and despite working on the wealthiest campus in the system, a state-wide contract only guaranteed campus workers as much money as the poorest school could match.

It nearly came to a strike.

Tucker, who lives in a mobile home in Veneta, Ore., with his 19-year-old son, Kyle, only makes around $1,700 in take-home pay per month. But he was prepared to sit out of work, even if it meant cutting the cable and shrinking his meals. Tucker switched careers from 18 years as a roofer to a custodian at the UO so that he could work year-round and get health benefits — Kyle has cerebral palsy and autism. He also attends Lane Community College on a grant.

“It’s my belief that they think they can step on our throats all they want and we won’t jump up gasping for air,” Tucker said.

On Sept. 12, union members authorized a strike and planned to picket on the very first day of fall term. Decrying the system was low-balling their annual cost-of-living pay increases and salary steps, SEIU members only came to an agreement with the system two days before the planned walk-out. Their salary steps remain intact and they’ll see a 1.5 percent bump in pay starting in December.

Tucker is an affable man. He stands around 5-foot-8 with a full crop of graying hair. His uniform for the night is a pair of $12 shoes from Wal-mart, black cargo shorts and an Oregon Ducks 2013 Fiesta Bowl T-shirt.

“I’m just happy we’re not going backwards,” he said.

Workers in the union, whose jobs vary from custodians to cooks in student housing to secretaries, will get their cost of living adjustments. Tucker says he will net about $150 a month more starting in December, just enough to resume making car payments on the ‘92 Chrysler LeBaron his former father-in-law sold him.

Part of the struggle in raising wages for campus workers is dwindling state support. Throughout bargaining, OUS maintained that its state budget hasn’t undergone a cost of living adjustment in 10 years, despite thousands of more students in higher education.

“We can’t offer everything that the union asked for because it’s not available for all the campuses,” said Di Saunders, the director of communications for OUS, noting that the funds going to pay workers comes from the shrinking state budget. “Students are basically funding the higher education system in Oregon.”

SEIU wasn’t convinced. Citing a boom in system-wide hiring in every department except classified staff, the union demanded the wage increase and no more furlough days.

“I would say very few of our members feel respected by the system,” said Kurt Willcox, chief bargainer for the local chapter of SEIU and a University of Oregon employee. “I know OUS wants to say that if they gave us anything more they’d have to raise tuition, but we don’t think that’s true.”

Though the union didn’t secure wage floors, which would raise up the lowest paid workers closer to average, its members were able to prevent furlough days from entering this round of contracts. In order to soften the blow of the recession for OUS, the union agreed to various unpaid days off during those two contracts. Tucker had eight between 2009 and 2011, and seven more since then.

“We’re not able to have what we had several decades ago, where you could work at McDonald’s and have enough money to have an apartment and live a decent life,” Saunders said of the struggle to pay state employees. “It’s not just happening at the universities, it’s happening across the state and across the country.”

This past summer, on his last furlough day, Tucker and his son returned to the coast. It was his 15th mandatory day off without pay in the past four years and the pair spent it at Sandland Adventures in Florence, riding along the dune ridges in a buggy before they flew their one-string kites on the beach.

Tucker understands that even with the new contract, he will still earn fairly meager wages, but the health benefits of working at a public university outweighs that.

When he’s not pushing his wide, green broom across the laboratory, he’ll try to keep returning to the coast.

“The sounds of the ocean crashing and that stuff is just real powerful. It kind of centers you and you realize how powerful things are outside our own control,” Tucker said.