The task force inspecting the University of Oregon Bias Education Response Team plans to investigate the team’s historical trends, evolution of principles have changed, storage and access to records, and nature of team interventions. The task force shared its goals at the UO Senate meeting on Wednesday, after assembling for the first time on Sept 21.

The UO BERT was founded after an incident in 1999, when a student made racist remarks that led to a protest and the arrest of 31 students. The UO started a “discrimination response team” to deal with hate speech.

“When bias was spoken about in the original charter, it looked more like a hate crime,” said Chris Chavez, co-chair of the BERT and UO advertising assistant professor.

Since 1999, the scope and direction of the BERT have changed, and Chavez says he hopes to find out how. In June, UO announced the creation of the task force, which is composed of seven members, including students, faculty and staff.

Chavez wants to contact other universities and collaborate on methods of balancing free speech and reporting bias.

The University of Iowa dissolved its bias response team in August, and the University of Chicago’s dean of students sent a letter to freshmen that attacked “trigger warnings” and “intellectual safe spaces.” Chavez said he was interested in the debates that followed the comments in letter.

The use of bias response teams is an increasing trend on college campuses, despite what the University of Chicago and others argue about its chilling effect on on free speech. The UO is one of the first schools to assess its impact with a specific team.

Chavez said the task force is inspecting the BERT “almost like scholars.” He pressed the importance of a dispassionate approach.

“When we talk about it, I think we’re all very sensitive to this issue and ensuring that we don’t cut off avenues for students to report bias,” he said.

Chavez said the BERT is welcoming and cooperative to the task force. Quantrell Willis, head of the BERT, said he wants to be as transparent as possible in a July interview with the Emerald.

“This is not something we’re trying to hide,” Willis said.

Leaders from the two parties met on Aug. 15, according to notes from the UO Senate website.

The notes also state there are “no specific guidelines for when accused individuals are contacted,” something that the newly formed task force will reassess. Until now, the Bias Response Team released only two years of heavily redacted reports, leaving no information to identify individuals.

The task force meets again in two weeks, but there is no definite date. The team will present a report to the UO Senate in the beginning of winter term, Chavez said. The report will be a “snapshot” of the BERT and a list of recommended actions, although the specific actions have yet to by established by Chavez and the task force.

** This post has been updated to clarify that UO President Michael Schill did not say that the passing of Measure 97 would hurt the university’s budget. University officials are not allowed to advocate for or against any political policy.

University of Oregon President Michael Schill listed new faculty hires, academic research and increasing diversity among his first-year accomplishments during his presidential address at the UO Senate meeting on Wednesday.

Schill was optimistic about his first year at UO. His focus included building academic research, increasing accessibility and affordability, and promoting student engagement.

“It was a good year,” he said, giving praise to staff and faculty. He said the year’s successes were a group effort.

Three new vice presidents and three new deans joined UO recently. Schill said UO attracted all of its first choices. The university also hired 52 tenured faculty members — a net increase of 12 people, he said.

Other accomplishments included launching the Oregon Commitment, increasing the number of graduate students, hiring a new UOPD Chief, drawing donors to science research, increasing the diversity of the student body and denaming Dunn Hall.

Schill mentioned the looming vote on Measure 97 — a tax increase for corporations with revenue higher than $25 million. 

“We do not know what the effect of measure 97  would be because there would be a lot of people lining up for those resources,” UO spokesman Tobin Klinger said, “but without the state providing some kind of additional support we will face significant financial challenges.”

Oregon residents will vote on the measure on Nov. 8.

Among other challenges that UO faces, Schill said he wants to proactively hire faculty and build infrastructure to prepare for the growing student body. He aims to find space for science laboratories on the Eugene campus, improve the stability of deans at the Portland campus, and increase student and faculty diversity.

Schill was received well by the senate and was thanked by multiple members.

Two senate committees, the Bias Response Team Task force and the Responsible Reporting Work Group, gave reports during the meeting.

The task force held its first meeting in September and aims to assess the perceived impact on student and faculty members’ freedom of speech. The Bias and Education Response Team — the group that task force is auditing — caught national attention for accusations of violating free speech.

The Responsible Reporting Work Group held a forum on Friday to assess the current emergency mandatory reporting policy for sexual assault. Its findings were presented to the senate during the meeting, but it hopes to have a policy written for Nov. 19.

Chris Sinclair, UO math associate professor, revealed the new UO Senate website, which improves accessibility to senate information. Sinclair said the most important feature is the blog, on which senate members may hold preemptive online discussions, saving time during the limited 10 hours the group meets per term.

About 40 students and faculty members gathered in Columbia Hall 150 to address sexual assault reporting policy on campus Friday. The forum hosted by The University of Oregon Senate Workgroup on Responsible Reporting aimed to give students input before a permanent policy is determined by the UO Senate.

“One of our primary concerns is to write a policy that’s useable,” said McKenna O’Dougherty, a workgroup member and the forum’s co-facilitator.

The forum touched on topics such as the history of the current interim policy, online reporting tools and “soft outreaches,” such as providing resources to victims by email and phone.

Callisto — an online sexual assault reporting tool — seemed to garner support. One policy option discussed would include a hybrid of Callisto and personal on-campus resources for sexual assault victims.

“Living in the technology age, there is a certain amount of comfort using online databases,” one student said in supporting Callisto.

One person said some victims want a record and others want an emotional connection.

Facilitators asked if anyone supported the current interim reporting policy, which requires almost all faculty and staff to report sexual assault. No hands were raised.

One staff member said he was worried about the inability to hold a confidential conversation with a student who was sexually assaulted. Under the current policy, the responsible reporter is required to file a report if he or she hears of a sexual assault, regardless of the victim’s wishes.

“Respecting autonomy regarding the course of action seems important,” one person said.

Another topic of the forum was “soft outreach,” in which emails or calls are sent to victims that reported an assault. Some spoke against soft outreaches because of email privacy issues.

Facilitators distributed notecards so that attendees could write concerns and recommendations for the reporting policy, which the workgroup will use in consideration.

The workgroup’s next public meeting on Oct. 7 will continue the discussion on sexual assault reporting policy. Members hope to have a permanent policy passed by the UO Senate by Nov. 19.

America’s newest emerging disease — the Zika virus — continues to spread, with 23 cases in Oregon, as reported by the Center for Disease Control.

At the University of Oregon Health Center, doctors and medical staff are setting up protocol and pushing to inform students about the disease.

Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell, UO health promotion specialist, wrote in an email to the Emerald that the health center is distributing flyers to organizations on campus that work with international students. Triage nurses at the health center have also received training to identify specific symptoms of the Zika virus and are prepared to route students to additional resources for treatment.

Maxwell said the health center is also prepared to draw blood samples for Zika virus testing and screening if they suspect a case. The samples would be shipped to a state institution for laboratory testing and would not actually be tested at the UO.

“I feel like we’re as prepared as we could be,” Maxwell said, “There really isn’t anything to be alarmed about on this campus.”

Of the 23 cases in Oregon, none have contracted the virus in the state – only during travel, according to the CDC. In other words, there are no locally acquired cases in Oregon. Florida, where there are species of mosquito that carry Zika, has 519 reported cases. Florida is also the only state that has reported any locally acquired cases, with 43.

Zika can be transmitted through blood and sexual contact, according to Dr. Richard Brunader, medical director at the UO Health Center, but transmission of the virus through a mosquito bite in Oregon is unlikely, due to the species of mosquito that carry it.

Brunader said the symptoms for Zika are similar to other illnesses, such as the flu and colds, but with additional symptoms like conjunctivitis (red eyes) and rashes.

The World Health Organization defines an emerging disease as “one that has appeared in a population for the first time, or that may have existed previously but is rapidly increasing in incidence or geographic range.”

Like other emerging diseases, the Zika virus is evolving. There is still much research to be conducted, according to Brunauder.

“For a normal, healthy adult, Zika doesn’t really present a threat,” Maxwell said. “Someone might not even know they have it.”

She said the Zika virus poses the biggest threat to pregnant women, whose babies could be born with microcephaly –an abnormally small head – according to the CDC.

No treatment or vaccine exists for the Zika virus.

The UO Health Center has not tested for the Zika virus yet, according to Maxwell. If UO discovered a case of Zika, the local county health department would run a case investigation. Maxwell said they would try to identify how, when and where the person was infected.

A recent study ranked Oregon State University the number one sexually healthy university in the U.S. The University of Oregon, however, was absent from the list.

Vice News online magazine, Motherboard, reported on the study conducted by an independent research group called The State of Education. The study used three indicators for their scoring: STD rate in the school’s county, annual sexual assault rate and sexual health and education resources.

“What they looked at was STD rate along with sexual assaults,” said Elisabeth Maxwell, UO health promotion specialist who received a doctorate in Public Health from OSU. “Those are not two things that are commonly evaluated together. That is not a measure that is anywhere academically acknowledged.”

Maxwell thinks a similar study by Trojan condoms, released last year, better indicates the status of sexual health in U.S. universities because it referenced more relevant data, she said.

The Trojan report also ranked OSU No. 1 for sexual health in the nation. Maxwell said the Trojan study looked at sexual assault services at schools – but not the actual rates, as did the State of Education report – making it a better indicator of sexual health, she said.

On this list, the University of Oregon landed the No. 6 spot.

“We’re climbing up,” Maxwell said of UO’s performance in the annual Trojan study. It ranked UO No. 48 in 2013, then No. 17  in 2014, and now No. 6.

“That’s actually since I’ve been here, so I’ll take credit for that,” she said with a laugh.

Maxwell received her masters degree and PhD at OSU, where she then taught public health until moving to UO a year and half ago. Although she didn’t work in OSU’s clinic, she thinks UO offers similar resources and reflects OSU’s STD rates.

In an effort to find solid numbers on the STD rates at UO, Maxwell partnered with Dr. Anna Hejinian, university physician, to launch the new STD and STI Screening Clinic at the UO health center.

The clinic opened two weeks ago. It fast-tracks the process for student STD testing, and offers an affordable price, according to Hejinian. She said four students had visited the clinic earlier in the day.

Open every morning except Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., the clinic is staffed by specialty-trained nurses who were trained by Maxwell and Hajinian.

The clinic screens for STDs in students who are asymptomatic – meaning no symptoms appear. If any do, the health center will refer the student to a physician or a nurse practitioner, Hejinian said.

In 2015, student government offered a grant of $40,000 to UO Health Center for free HIV testing to students, but other tests range from $10.75 to $59.00. The health center also offers a wide variety of free contraceptives.

Last year, the UO health center conducted over 3,100 chlamydia and gonorrhea tests, Hejinian wrote in an email to the Emerald. The results of chlamydia- and gonorrhea-positive results at the UO showed numbers that “roughly correlated with national averages for people aged 19-24,” the email stated.

“Part of the reason we wanted to start the UO STI Screening Clinic was to help put a dent in these discouraging statistics,” she also wrote in the email.

Hejinian expects the STD data to show meaningful results within six months to a year, but in the meantime, urges students to get tested.

Fred Quillan, a former Ducks and San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman, died at the age of 60 on Monday, according to an announcement on the 49ers website.

The announcement, released on Sept. 15, did not specify the cause of death.

Born in Portland, Oregon, Quillan attended UO from 1975 to 1977 and was named the All-West Coast center as a junior at UO in 1976, according to The Oregonian.

He was drafted 175^th overall by the 49ers in the 1978 NFL draft, after which he played with Joe Montana. Quillan played for 10 seasons in San Francisco, and won two Super Bowl Championships.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Quillan had been drafted in 1968. This was an error and has since been corrected.

Yesterday, the UO Board of Trustees unanimously voted to strip Dunn Hall of its name.

“Taking people’s names off buildings is something we should do very, very carefully,” Schill said while addressing the board on Thursday. “It’s very dangerous to obscure history.”

The decision marks the University of Oregon as the third university in a recent trend to rename a campus building due to its name’s historically racist ties.

In May 2015, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill renamed a building known formerly as Saunders Hall because of Saunders’ relations to the Klu Klux Klan. Saunders is known as the head of the KKK in North Carolina, according to a News&Observer article.

UNC students protested for about a year before the school voted to rename the building, the article also stated. After renaming Saunders Hall, UNC enacted a 16 year ban on renaming any other buildings, causing unrest from part the UNC community.

Georgetown University also renamed two of its buildings, Mulledy Hall and McSherry Hall last year. Both individuals, whom the buildings were named after, are weighed down with a history of slave trading.

Mulledy and McSherry, both former presidents of Georgetown, sold 272 slaves to a plantation in 1838 to partially pay for the school’s debt, according to an article from The Hoya.

In Nov. 2015, Georgetown students staged a sit-in outside of the school president’s office. Fifty students showed up, according to a Washington Post article. The article stated that it took about five months to rename the buildings after the first request from student protestors to rename the building.

“Queen Adesuyi, a Georgetown senior who helped organize the demonstration and sit-in, said activists ‘used the momentum’ from student protests on other campuses to build support for the name changes,” the Washington Post reported.

Other universities, such as Yale, are receiving pressure from students to rename buildings with a racist namesake.

Yale President Peter Salvoes established a committee to develop principals to determine a protocol for renaming a building. Yale’s Calhoun College is named after former U.S. senator and vice president – and slavery supporter – John C. Calhoun, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Audio: UO President Schill talks about his decision to rename Dunn Hall in a speech to the Board of Trustees on Sept. 8. The board then votes on the motion (at 11:57).

University of Oregon’s Dunn Hall was named after Frederic Dunn, who was born in 1872 in Eugene, Oregon. Dunn attended UO for two degrees and served as a Latin professor until 1935. But his history at the UO is tainted with racism.

“While little is known of Dunn’s personal views, it is clear that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and served as the Exalted Cyclops (leader) of Eugene Klan No. 3 in the 1920s,” Schill stated in an open letter to students regarding renaming Dunn Hall.

Part of Schill’s process for determining his recommendation included assembling a panel of three historians to investigate Matthew Deady and Dunn’s histories, after which, they produced a 34 page report.

Schill then opened a comment period from Aug. 9 through Aug. 24, allowing the UO community to weigh-in on the decision to change the names of the buildings. Nearly 1,000 comments were received, according to Schill.

“The way the comments ran was essentially … people felt very strongly that Dunn Hall should be de-named, and they were pretty split on Deady Hall,” Schill said to the board.

Schill wrote an open letter on Sept. 1, in which he established a set of principals to be used as guidelines for determining to rename Dunn Hall, and delay renaming Deady Hall until more input was received.

“Denaming a building has a strong symbolic impact. Symbols are less important than actions…” Schill said at the Board of Trustees meeting. “It’s what we do in the present that’s important.”

University of Oregon president Michael Schill released an open letter today addressing the Black Student Task Force list of demands. The demands include, among other concerns, the renaming of Deady and Dunn Halls because of links to racism.

“Many of the demands are quite reasonable—consistent with our institutional priorities and the IDEAL diversity framework—and, if implemented, would make our university a better place,” he states in the open letter.

Schill wrote that he will recommend to the Board of Trustees immediately renaming Dunn Hall. He postponed his decision to rename Deady Hall.

If the Board of Trustees accept the recommendation, Schill aims to install a plaque in Dunn Hall that “indicates that it used to be Dunn Hall and explains why it was denamed.”

Schill and the trustees will then begin the process of finding a new name for the building, seeking an individual “whose life exemplifies the characteristics of racial diversity and inclusion that Dunn despised.”

He received 969 comments, according to the letter. “Of these submissions, 434 were from students, 186 were from alumni, 143 were from faculty members, 158 were from officers of administration and members of classified staff, and 48 were from other individuals.”

Reopened until 5 p.m. October 14, the extended comment period will allow further input for the Deady Hall decision. Schill is planning a “campus conversation” to take place in October, as well as an exhibition in Deady Hall that “will educate all who enter on the mixed legacy of its namesake,” the letter stated.

“I … believe that we would miss an important educational opportunity by deciding the matter prior to the return to campus of our students and faculty later this month,” wrote Schill.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the renaming of both halls had been delayed. Only Deady’s renaming was delayed. This error has since been corrected.

UOPD named its new chief today, ending the three-month search. Matthew Carmichael received the position after serving as the chief of police at UC Davis since 2011, according to the UOPD website.

Carmichael’s resume includes expertise in mass shootings and “active shooter training/preparedness,” filling a void in UOPD experience with shootings.

Andre Le Duc, assistant vice president of UO’s Risk Management, was in charge of hiring Carmichael, the Emerald reported.

“Chief Carmichael has proven experience leading a major campus department through change,” Le Duc said in the announcement by UOPD.

Le Duc said Carmichael stood out from the other candidates from his time at UC Davis.

Carmichael was hired by UC Davis police in November 2011 shortly after a group of student protesters were pepper sprayed by UC Davis police, making national news.

Carmichael helped rebuild the UC Davis police department and regain the communities trust, according to Le Duc, which made him stand out from the other candidates for the new UO police chief.

Carmichael visited the UO campus on July 15 to hold a public forum and meet with the search committee.

The committee of 13 comprised of faculty, undergrad and grad students, UOPD staff members, UO administrators and Eugene Police Department Chief Pete Kerns, The Emerald published on May 19.

“My family and I are beyond excited to join the UO community in Eugene,” Carmichael said in a quote on the UOPD website. “With a relatively new police department, the university has a great opportunity to become a national leader in campus safety and policing, and it’s an honor for me to participate in that effort.”

Chief Carmichael off to University of Oregon Police Department! pic.twitter.com/kL8q2mBiEz

— UC Davis Police (@PoliceUc) August 31, 2016

A popular idea that has come under investigation is that Math 111 is the most failed class at the University of Oregon.

The Emerald recently attained a copy of the Fall 2015 grade distributions from the UO registrar office, detailing the percentages of grade options for UO classes that term.

Of the 1,215 students who took Math 111 in fall 2015, 133 received either an F or an N (no pass) – more students failed Math 111 compared to any other class.

These students are in the category of DFWs, according to UO Math Professor Chris Sinclair. DFWs are students who receive a grade of D, F or withdraw from the class. Math 111 had 307 students that fell into that category. Chemistry 221 held second place, with 266 DFWs.

Sinclair is an associate professor in the mathematics department. He has heard that Math 111 is “the most failed class,” but doesn’t currently teach it.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Sinclair said about the course’s reputation. “Let’s suppose we make Math 111 easier, then what happens in Math 251? We have to dumb down Math 251 because we have a lot more people who know less than they should coming in.”

Graduate Teaching Fellows most commonly teach Math 111 at UO, according to Sinclair, usually while they are taking a teacher’s education class. Sinclair doesn’t attribute this to the failure rate, but rather he thinks it benefits the student-teacher relationship because GTFs are able to relate to the students more, he said.

“As you get further and further into the depths of mathematics, you forget how hard it was the first time,” he said.

Houston Greenberg, a sports business student at UO, took Math 111 his freshman year. He learned about the class’ reputation after reading it on his syllabus, he said.

While taking Math 111, Greenberg learned that a lot of students who failed the course would then revert to take Math 95 and repeat Math 111 two terms later.

“I knew a lot of people in [Math 111] that were getting D’s and F’s, which was surprising.” Greenberg said. He finished the course on his first attempt with an A-, he said.

“What was really nice about 111 was it was in a small classroom with like 20, 30 kids, so if I needed help, I could go right to [the teacher], as opposed to my calc class which was 400 people,” Greenberg said.

Another class — Math 315 — emerges from the data with the highest failure rate with about 33 percent failing, 8.33 percent withdrawing and about 16 percent with a no-pass — totaling about 57 percent. However, a mere 12 students took the course, compared to 1215 students in Math 111. Math 315 introduces the “methods of proof” necessary for calculus and related fields, Sinclair wrote in an email.

First sentence of the description of Math 111 at Oregon, “Math 111 is one of the most failed courses at the University.” Can’t wait..

— Houston Greenberg (@H_Town15) July 14, 2015

Sinclair thinks the reason so many dislike math is due to the “social attitude towards mathematics,” he said.

“If you’re in the situation, and you are terrified that you’re going to fail Math 111, then really the solution is to talk with the person teaching it, let them know of your fears, but also have some sort of expectation that you can do this.”

“We can’t have half of our population going around saying, ‘I can’t do math.’ That’s why people fail Math 111, not because it’s too hard,” he said. “There’s always going to be some class that has the most failures, unless we don’t fail anybody.”

Download the UO grade distribution report for fall 2015: grade_distributions_emerald_f15 (1)