For the first half of Wednesday’s faculty senate meeting, UO legislators worked together to tidy up faculty housekeeping. For the most part, debates over legal matters and committee qualifications were flowing unanimously and without too much confrontation. That is, until Senator Bill Harbaugh’s proposal to request academic funding from the UO Athletic department sparked some lively debate.
In his opening remarks, President Michael Gottfredson addressed the senate with a reminder of two pieces of higher education legislation currently working their way through the Oregon state Legislature in Salem: Senate Bill 270 and House Bill 3120.
The former would create an independent governing board for the University of Oregon. The latter would consolidate various higher educational departments under a highly licensed Higher Education Coordinating Committee. Both bills are currently pending legislation in their proper Subcommittee’s On Education.
“This issue is a very important matter for us, of course,” Gottfredson said of SB 270. “It’s a matter of considerable consequence for how we are governed and in turn how we finance ourselves in the long run.”
After giving a brief congratulatory statement regarding recent faculty success in various research departments and Oregon Softball’s Pac-12 Championship win, Gottfredson turned the meeting over to Senate President Robert Kyr.
Motions presented over the next hour included a Legal Representation Policy proposed by Senate Chair and Law Professor Margaret Paris, which was postponed pending more accurate wording and moderate revisions by Kyr to committee requirements under tenth year review, all of which were passed despite some banter over technical terms.
With roughly thirty minutes left in the senate meeting, Kyr read the final motion on the agenda: Harbaugh’s legislation entitled “Payments from the Athletic Department for Academic Purposes.”
Over the last eight years, the proposition stipulated the UO Athletic Department has made repeated promises (first in 2004 and then again in 2008) to contribute financially to the UO Academic mission — a promise that it has failed to realize except in terms of granting scholarships to it’s athletes and making contributions to the Knight Library. Over the same period, UO Athletic expenditures have more than doubled, and the University’s academic budget has been depleted to help finance the purchase of the Matthew Knight Arena land.
Harbaugh’s motion proposed that the UO Senate request Gottfredson to require the Athletic Department to pay “the full cost of providing tutoring and academic support for student-athletes,” as well as “the full cost of the bonds used to purchase the Knight Arena land,” and “set aside from its budget a sum equal to two percent of the athletic department’s prior year spending on athletics, and redirect these funds toward UO’s academic purposes,” specifically for scholarship distribution.
After multiple speeches for, and against the motion, an interjection from Associate Mathematics Professor Dev Sinha and its amendment from legislation to a resolution, the motion was passed 19-4.
“We’re asking the athletic department to pay their bills,” Economics Professor Glen Waddell said when the floor was opened for comments. “It’s about time.”