The ASUO held a forum Tuesday night to discuss several restructuring proposals currently on the table concerning funding for both the University and the Oregon public higher education system as a whole.
It is widely anticipated that the University and the six other members of the Oregon University System will be facing budget and endowment shortfalls within the 2010-11 academic year. University President Richard Lariviere attended the forum to speak for about a half an hour.
The meeting was intended to be a showcase of budget restructuring proposals, but not to necessarily promote advocacy, ASUO Legislative Affairs Coordinator Ben Eckstein said.
“What we want to do here is inform students. The ASUO hasn’t taken a stance, and we don’t want to make a decision on this, but just to provide information,” Eckstein said.
There are currently multiple proposals for restructuring the Oregon University System, but Tuesday’s meeting gave special attention to University President Richard Lariviere’s “white paper” proposal. Lariviere outlined his concept for providing adequate funding for the University specifically and not necessarily the entire Oregon University system.
Other funding plans, including one pitched by Lariviere’s predecessor, David Frohnmayer, outline revisions for the current Oregon legislative budget for all seven of the state’s public universities. Meanwhile, Portland State University is the only other OUS university to pitch a similar independent budget proposal.
Lariviere’s proposal is multifaceted, but essentially instead of requesting a standard endowment from the Oregon State Legislature, the University would instead request a bond of $800 million that would be matched dollar for dollar with private funds collected by the University. This bond would be managed and monitored by a proposed 15-member board of directors. The proposed board would conceivably control tuition rates and would make the university’s budgeting and tuition rates nearly independent of state control.
“We talked amongst ourselves and we took input from other state universities to address the current reality and to come up with a plan that would address the reality of our situation, and the reality of the situation is that there is deep underfunding in the public higher education system,” Lariviere said.
Opponents to the Lariviere proposal feel that it may increase tuition too much for middle-income students and their families, and essentially privatize elements of a public university. 
“The exorbitant amount that tuition is going to be raised by this is going to create a situation where the middle class will not be able to afford the tuition because it’s going to become a privatized setup,” University student Ryan McCarrel said.  
Former ASUO President Emily McClain, now legislative director for the advocacy group Oregon Student Association, also gave a presentation highlighting proposals and systematic procedures for potential reform within the OUS.
The meeting took place in the EMU’s Walnut Room, and its attendees primarily consisted of outgoing and incoming ASUO executive and legislative members.
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