The tenants at the Spencer View apartments will have to wait a little bit longer to solve their weedkiller problem.

Last week, Gus Lim and the UO Housing Department announced that while they had found a suitable herbicide to replace Round Up that met all their criteria — easy on the budget, effective, and safe — they recently uncovered that its manufacturer had stopped producing it. Now it’s back to the drawing board.

Parents demanded a switch from the Monsanto pesticide in May after discovering groundskeepers had been using it at the University-owned complex. And rather than shoehorning a lesser herbicide in, Lim and the Department will instead go back to the drawing board and return in 30-60 days. Tenants at Spencer View are willing to wait.

“I’m just happy that there’s transparency and they’re not using Round Up,” says Abby Rius, a resident. “As long as the right product is used they can take as long as they need.

Stemming from the pesticide’s chief ingredient — glyphosate — the young parents feared their young children may accidentally come in contact with its harmful chemicals while playing outside. Parents there became aware of widespread use of the pesticide, which is currently under a lengthy investigation from the EPA, back in April after a groundskeeper warned Katie Cave, a resident there, to ensure her young daughter doesn’t accidentally swallow some of the dirt she had just played in.

University of Oregon student D’Laney Ford, 34, passed away on July 15. She was a member of the School of Journalism and Communications.

Ford’s death was unexpected. In a Facebook post dated July 13, she describes developing jaundice, hepatitis, and kidney failure which may have been related to an infection stemming from a cat bite weeks before. She was given two to four weeks to live by her doctors. Her friend Jeremy McKenzie, acting as her proxy, posted to her wall just two days after her Facebook post stating Ford had died in her sleep during the night.

A celebration of Ford’s life is scheduled for this Saturday, July 27, at her parents’ house at 123 Leisure Lane in Siletz, Ore. from 2 to 5 p.m. McKenzie has established dlaney.com to share condolences and memories.

An obituary will appear in Monday’s print edition.

Karen Creighton drives from the Register Guard to her first delivery spot, an apartment complex in the Oakway area. Creighton is an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon. She takes a second job as a newspaper delivery woman to help make ends meet. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)

A dusty, teal 2000 Dodge Caravan idles outside Rustic Manor at 4 a.m. most mornings. Its owner, Karen Creighton, is darting around the Oakway area apartment complex, shuffling in properly comfortable shoes with her wavy blonde hair tied up tightly, lobbing rolled-up newspapers onto doorsteps. It may be difficult to peg her as a faculty member at the University of Oregon, or any large public university for that matter, seeing as she needs to pad her wallet by delivering papers for The Register-Guard. Creighton picked up the part-time gig because, as an adjunct instructor in the physical education department, she’s a stranger to pressed suits and the reserved parking spots often associated with teaching higher education.

Karen Creighton leans down to grab several stacks of the Register Guard’s newspaper. On some nights she delivers as many as 150 papers. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)

“On average, I’m teaching an aerobics class that has about 40 students paying $35 to $120, resident versus non-resident,” she explains. “I show up to teach 50 minutes, the students are paying anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 per class session. The University pays me $35.” Creighton’s paper route every morning gets her about $600 a month on top of a third job as a fitness instructor at the Sheldon Community Center. Calculating office hours and class preparation, Creighton estimates she and many of her colleagues are paid roughly $12.50 an hour.

On a typical day, she works from 3 a.m. until 7 a.m. delivering papers, followed by a fitness class she teaches at the community center from 8-10 a.m. Depending on what day of the week it is, she’ll either work daycare there until 2 p.m. or teach at the UO from 4-6 p.m. Then it’s bed at 8 and the cycle begins again the following morning when she wakes up at 2:30 a.m. to pick up her newspapers.

Creighton’s route covers 10-15 miles every morning. It’s dark and warm today as she passes the time by giving herself Olympic-style ratings for accurate tosses. She fell into this work after her first daughter was born more than 20 years ago, summarily ending her studies for a master’s degree. But she’s been delivering papers ever since, and fortunately been able to maintain her work — and a healthy schedule of naps.

After dropping off a newspaper on the doorstep of one of the apartments along her route, Karen Creighton is silhouetted by the porch light. Creighton often times darts down dimly lit pathways and sidewalks throughout the night. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)

There has been a recent trend of universities nationwide scrounging for teaching faculty, not because there’s a drought of capable academics but rather to trim budgets. Potential professors reaching for the top shelves of their profession — money, research, tenure — find their spots outsourced to adjunct instructors. Adjunct faculty are often former professionals in search of a little extra money, who can teach a few classes a week while still working their main jobs or taking a break. They fall into a broad category of non-tenure track faculty that who, at the UO, simply do not conduct research but may be full-time instructors.

According to Pullias Center of Higher Education, in 1969 tenured professors comprised 78 percent of college teaching jobs in America. Today that number is nearly inversed in favor of non-tenure track professors, who are more favorable for their shorter contracts and lower pay. Some non-tenure track faculty can still be considered career instructors on longer contracts, but there are many who are on year-to-year contracts or, in some cases, term-to-term.

And because university salaries are determined by a department’s budget, which is in turn determined by the school’s stake in enrollment, some departments are more vulnerable to this reshuffling than others. The average salary for professors at the Lundquist School of Business is $150,600, and $132,000 at the law school. That’s double what the average Architecture and Allied Arts professor can expect. Non-tenured track faculty, more than 60 percent of the UO’s teaching staff, average $46,000 a year. The bottom rung is left for faculty who work less than half a “full-time equivalent,” which is set by each department separately.

In 2002, the University had 951 non-tenure track positions and has hired 352 since. In that same span, tenure track has gone from 165 to 200. Good for 37 percent and 21 percent respectively, and indefinite tenured positions have increased from 465 to 515. Thirty-nine percent of all faculty were tenured or tenure-track in 2002. Since then it’s slowly whittled down to 35 percent.

Barbara Altmann, vice provost for academic affairs, attributes the University’s increase in non-tenure track faculty to the boom in students since 2008, which saw enrollment spike from 19,000 to 25,000.

Bundles of the Register Guard’s newspapers sit on Karen Creighton’s dashboard as her car sits idly waiting for her return from a segment of her route. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)

“In order to handle that huge rise of students that we’ve experienced in the last five years, we’ve had to add adjuncts,” she said. “We have more non-tenure track faculty than is ideal. Now we’re at the point where we have to start righting that ratio a little bit.”

Many of those non-tenure instructors, like Creighton, resort to stacking part-time jobs. Mary Baxter, a 12-year adjunct with the geology department, scraped hours at Rennie’s Landing for cash and benefits.

“I’ve worked weekends there up until two years ago,” Baxter said, “and I wasn’t full-time either place so I couldn’t get health insurance, but (Rennie’s Landing’s owner) gave me health insurance.”

Non-tenure track faculty are everywhere on the UO campus. Though there are some exceptions, non-tenure track faculty do not conduct research for the University. Usually they are former professionals in their field, brought in by UO to teach practical skills while tenured profs and those on the tenure track conduct research and teach theories in the field.

“It’s just a different career path,” said Ron Bramhall, senior instructor at the business school. “I came into my profession from a more professional career track as a consultant and it worked well with what I teach. I elected not to pursue my Ph.D or conduct research.”

On the other hand, Creighton, who is putting two daughters through college, said she will try to continue working for the University because of the relationships she’s created here. “I love the students and I love my co-workers,” she said. “If it wasn’t for them, I might say this is for the birds.

You know summer has arrived in this city when construction crews start tearing it up.

Hilyard Street, between 13th Avenue and Broadway, will be under construction beginning July 15, with one open lane for cars. Alder Street, from 18th to 24th avenues, has been clogged with construction crews since July 10. The dual maintenance projects in the West University Neighborhood are scheduled to begin this week and continue until some time in September. Students are likely blind to construction at this point with so many campus buildings in scaffolding.

Spearheaded by the city’s Pavement Preservation Project, the idea behind both projects is to find streets that have worn down over the years and give them a tune-up.

“Think about it like the roof on your house. You could just leave it and wait for it to fall apart and put in a whole new one,” said Jenifer Willer, manager of the project. “Or you could re-shingle every 10 or 15 years, those kind of things.”

Both construction projects are funded through a 2008 proposal to levy property taxes to repave roads, divvying up $35.8 million initially and being recouped for another $42 million in 2011. Though Hilyard Street has seen better days, Alder has needed a facelift for some time according to cyclists. A popular thoroughfare connecting campus with neighborhoods to the south, complaints from cyclists did weigh in for repaving.

“We heard from a lot of cyclists that the road was very poor and so that added weight to doing the Alder street project sooner than later,” said Eric Jones, public affairs manager. There won’t be any new bike lanes or structural changes to the street, but brand new road and clearer markings, called “sharrows,” to help cars realize they’re driving on a road heavy on bike traffic, yet too small to accommodate a bike lane.

“They’ll help communicate to drivers and cyclists where they should be within the roadway,” said Reed Dunbar, bicycle and pedestrian planner for the city. “And the existing bike lanes on Hilyard will be widened.”

The University of Oregon has reshuffled its merit aid funds.

The Dean’s Scholarship, a minimum $1,000 prize for high-achieving incoming freshmen, will be replaced this fall with two loftier scholarships: the Summit and the Apex. Both scholarships will be offered to in- and out-of-state freshmen, but they bolster the $2,000 maximum reward offered by the Dean’s List scholarship to $5,000 and $4,000 respectively.

Students currently on a Dean’s Scholarship will continue to receive that award.

“We basically looked at our major recruitment scholarships and we revised the whole thing,” said Jim Brooks, director of Financial Aid and Scholarships. “We wanted these awards to be truly meritorious.”

Stemming from a growing number of merit aid-eligible students being accepted but not enrolling at the University, officials decided to refocus their funds to both reward and attract high-achieving students to Eugene. In recent years, there had been a growing public perception that Oregon was disinterested in aiding resident students in favor of higher-paying out-of-state students. Out-of-state students can earn up to $8,000 in scholarship money, but Brooks insists that bolstering the maximum reward for residents was the goal.

“Many of the things you were hearing were that the University of Oregon didn’t really care about Oregonians,” Brooks said. “This is our way of saying that’s not true at all. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.”

Jonathan Jacobs, director of research for the Office of Enrollment Management, was tasked to analyze how the money could be shifted to more effectively and how to better identify students who will be more deserving of merit aid. A major change is to incorporate standardized testing as criteria. Where the Dean’s Scholarship only required a 3.7 grade point average, Summit will be available to freshmen who achieved a 3.8 GPA with a combined 1,200 in reading and math on their SATs, or an ACT of 26. Apex weighs in with a 3.7 GPA and an 1,100 combined SAT score, or 25 on the ACTs.

“We want to reward students for their achievements in high school,” Jacobs said. “We also wanted to emphasize residents, reward them for their achievements and make it more attractive in general.”

In preparation for the next four hours, two hulking security guards strategically park their cars to wall off an alleyway next to a house. It’s 9 p.m., a party at this house near 14th Avenue and Ferry Street is nearly underway and as the night wears on, people will increasingly cut through the adjacent alley on their way to Little’s Market or Max’s Tavern to grab a quick snack or close out the night. The security guards have decided that the path creates too much congestion and that cars will limit foot traffic. Their presence is more of an iron gate than a velvet rope.

“It only takes a couple of people for a party go wrong,” said Erik Hartmann, owner and chief officer for Oregon Event Enterprises, a private security firm. Tonight, he and Joseph Hernandez, a co-worker, are watching over the party until 1 a.m. As a colorful and excited group of students walks up to the house’s lawn, the pair of guards ensures partygoers file up the front steps rather than linger around the sidewalk. Just next door, another party starts, erupting with music, but it won’t be covered by the firm.

Hartmann’s outfit normally runs security for festivals and large venues, but its 300 working members are pleased to work just about anybody’s door. Festival or house party, they’re simply happy for the business and lately, business is booming.

According to Hartmann, the firm’s house party-related business has spiked 80 percent since the City of Eugene’s Ordinance on Unruly Gatherings, known by many as the Social Host Ordinance, became enforceable on April 1. And because the ordinance carries a base $350 fine — stacking with any violation that prompted a police response to begin with — students have begun to shell out a little extra money for protection. For many, the $25 hourly fee — at a minimum of four hours — is worth it. That’s where Hartmann and Hernandez come in.

“Before, it was more of an issue of us making sure only people who were invited were coming,” Hartmann said. “Now they’re more concerned that we just help them have a good time. People are preemptively hiring us to put a cap on it for them if it gets to a point where they’re going to get in trouble.” The ordinance targets parties that grow into “unruly gatherings.” The ordinance defines such as events as those in which alcohol is served and that also exhibit two out of the following seven criteria: minors in possession, public urination, fighting or noise disturbances. It took barely a week before the ordinance claimed its first casualty: a pinning party where seven students were cited $700 each.

“It’s incredibly worth it to spend $20 out of your own pocket to not get a huge fine from the ordinance,” said Jonoe Lange, a junior whose party on 14th Avenue and High Street came dangerously close to running into “unruly” territory. “When you have a security guard, the police will talk to him first, so we knew it was a good bet to have a safe party and not get busted. They respect us having a security guard so we can end it safely and without incident.” Hartmann’s company is in constant contact with the Eugene Police Department. That working relationship enables them to act as liaisons between students and police.

Before the party, Lange and his roommates pooled their money together for a guard. The investment paid for itself when some of his roommates noticed the party getting too big and saw an unmarked police car nearby. The housemates urged their hired guard to quash the activity. “It was successful,” Danny Johnson, the guard, said. “The cops didn’t come. When they drove by, they saw that the place was being kept together.”

EPD Sgt. Kyle Williams, the officer who drove by Lange’s party but was not called to the scene, appreciates the effort taken by students to keep things under control. “Anything we can do to smooth out that interaction between us and the students is a welcome endeavor,” Williams said. In this case, seeing a party with security nearby helped Williams decide to move on, saving taxpayers the reported $864 bill attached to police response.

“(It’s) not just having the security there,” he said, “but that the people throwing the party had put the effort into taking steps to avoid a negative police response.”

In this respect, Hartmann and Hernandez are walking, talking deterrents. They tower beside the party’s entrance, demanding good behavior merely by standing with their arms crossed. Students trying to carry drinks outside are told to stay on the porch, and random students scoping out the party from the lawn are asked a scarier version of the “Who do you know here?” question.

Hartmann, in particular, has become a fixture at parties thrown by this house. As party-goers shuffle into the house, a few stop to chat with him and even ask how his daughter is doing. Meanwhile, the party next door blares its music. Although it stays relatively under control, a police car rolls by and flashes its lights briefly just to keep everybody honest.

City Councilor Alan Zelenka has been one of the most vocal supporters of the ordinance since it was proposed in 2011. Today, nearly three months after the ordinance passed and two months since EPD has begun enforcement, he is pleased with the results. “My assessment so far is that it’s working pretty well,” he said. “It hasn’t been applied very often, because it hasn’t needed to. I think there’s a lot less out-of-control parties than I’ve seen in the past.” According to EPD, there have been three citations of the ordinance in two months, two of which were college parties.

He’s most pleased, however, that students are policing themselves.

“That exactly was the intent,” he said. “Not specifically that security would be involved. It was really more about bringing more attention to the issue of out of control parties.”

With summer on the horizon, spring term is usually the most active for student parties. Party activity this spring has lulled in comparison to that of previous years, though Williams isn’t ready to attribute any changes to the ordinance. “Generally, the spring partying has been down, but it’s been hard to say or point at one cause or the other,” he said. “It’s difficult to tell if it’s a lighter spring in terms of partying or whether it’s been affected by the social host ordinance.”

Nearing 1 a.m., an SUV from the fire department passes the party off 14th and Ferry, flashes its lights quickly and drives on. Hernandez expects they’re just taking a lap, that they’ll circle back and tell the party that it’s breaking fire codes, but it doesn’t return. Meanwhile, Hartmann talks to an unfamiliar group of drunk young men who want to cut through the alley on their way to Max’s. They start wailing on belligerently about public property, but the guards just make simple move-it-along gestures. The young men leave in a huff.

“It’s like car insurance,” Hartmann said, “better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

Emails released Wednesday — available here (PDF) — reveal University of Oregon President Michael Gottfredson was summoned to Indiana three months ago to attend a hearing with the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

The NCAA has been investigating the relationship between Oregon’s football program and certain scouting services, namely those of Willie Lyles, since March 2011.

The Notice of Allegations, sent to him on Dec. 5, 2012, rejected the UO’s pitch to punish itself for possible recruiting violations, which was expressed in a summary disposition delivered last fall. The committee stated the UO’s disposition “does not appear appropriate” in this situation and invited Gottfredson, along with unnamed UO officials, to a hearing on Feb. 23, 2013.

It is unclear whether the meeting took place. But some UO officials, including former head coach Chip Kelly and athletic director Rob Mullens, reportedly met with the NCAA committee last month.

In the documents, the NCAA states UO officials “should understand that all the alleged violations set forth in the document attached to this letter are considered to be potential major violations of NCAA legislation, unless designated as secondary.” Though none of the seven violations in the document are listed as secondary, they do closely resemble the allegations reported after last month’s meeting.

Expectations are that a final ruling will be issued before the start of the 2013 season.

Something to consider the next time you hammer an alarm clock’s snooze button in the morning: You’re not only sleeping through classwork, you’re also wasting money.

An undergraduate student at the University of Oregon pays $2,848 for a 16-credit term, according to the Office of the Registrar’s website. While that figure doesn’t take into account incidental fees such as tickets to football games or the maintenance costs in keeping the Student Recreation Center dry, it is nearly three grand for 10 weeks of class.

Oregonians wincing at their billing statements at the end of each term may be thankful they’re at least paying a resident’s rate. The tab for an out-of-towner stands at $9,728 for the same workload.

Taking the logical step further: How does that money split per lecture? Assuming a full-time term consists of 16 credits, four four-credit classes that each meet about twice a week for a total of eight classes per week or 80 classes per term. For Oregonians, tuition divided by the total number of classes puts a $35.60 price tag for each class. Not that you could spend it on anything else, but for the same price you could buy the required novels for your English class. Or get the most basic mold of UrbanEars headphones in whatever candied color you could ever want. It’s also a pretty solid date night here in town.

“I’m lucky,” said Stephen Nishida, a sophomore business major from Beaverton. “I’m getting my classes paid for, but I don’t want to waste that person’s money. If you don’t go, you’re just throwing money down the drain.”

Meanwhile, out-of-towners, just under half the total undergrad enrollment, shell out quite a bit more: $121.60 to be exact. If you’re like most college students, you will likely rack up a few absences this term because you’re either sick, hungover or just not ready to break away from a “Game of Thrones” marathon. But even at the cost, sometimes a little class triage is necessary.

“It’s a concern because it seems like a waste of money,” said Nhi Nguyen, a freshman human physiology major. “But there are certain kinds of classes I choose to skip, and others I wouldn’t.”

Many undergraduates still wading through their general education credits find that the high-enrollment lectures tend to be easier to sweep under the rug.

“It’s definitely easier to skip those,” said Laura Ticho, pre-family and human services major and native of Illinois. “I would never skip a science lab because it’s difficult to catch up. But a large philosophy class that posts all the Power Points on Blackboard and tells you the reading, I don’t mind skipping.”

Instructors do take notice when the lecture hall begins to sag as the term gets underway.

“It does seem to be the case that on quiz days I definitely notice more people,” said Sanjay Srivastava, associate professor in the Department of Psychology.

Srivastava teaches Psychology 202, Mind and Society to 500 students in Columbia 150.

“It’s their money, or it’s their parents’ money or it’s the state’s money. I don’t want to moralize, but I don’t think they’re getting the education they could out of it if they’re skipping for no good reason,” Srivastava said.

Sara Hodges, another associate professor from the Department of Psychology, agrees.

“Particularly right after a midterm, attendance tends to drop off. Students say, ‘Oh, I just studied so hard I deserve a break,’” she said. “I think students learn over the course of their college careers just how costly it could be to miss their classes.”

As a whole, however, classes at Oregon’s public universities are nearly a blue-light special compared to other major public schools on the West Coast. For in-state residents, Oregon State costs a mere $27.75 per class, but head out in any other direction you will find the going rates for classes to be higher across the board.

For instance, Washingtonians pay about $45 per lecture at schools in their home state. In Arizona, classes range from high $30s to low $40s, with the University of Arizona tapping its students for $41.85 per class. Utah has the cheapest classes in all, $27 for residents and $85 for non-residents. Oregon State, Arizona State and Utah are the only Pac-12 schools that offer classes for less than $100 for out-of-state students.

Students attending a University in California, on the other hand, drop quite a bit more money for their classes. Californians who attend UCLA or UC Berkeley both weigh in at $46.75 per class. However, Stanford and the University of Southern California take the top two spots in expensive lectures to miss, while charging residents and non-residents equally. Stanford, which requires that its students pay for an entire school year at a time, costs $177.88 per lecture, and USC tops even that at $182.18.

At the end of the day, though, students should understand that lectures are worth the costs, both financially and for their college careers.

“I understand going just for the grades,” Nishida said. “But it’s also about learning.”