“Arrogance” by an employee was the phrase the University used to justify its pursuit of women’s basketball coach Jody Runge that ended with her resignation. That’s an ironic choice of language. Arrogance seems better suited to describe the behavior of the University administration in a variety of areas in recent months.
First, the University succeeded in getting the Oregon University System to agree that identifying major donors to the school was no longer was necessary. That got overturned by the state Legislature after many newspapers complained, citing the state’s public records law. But weeks later, coziness with the governing body was revived when the OUS gave the University permission to renege on its decision to join the Worker Rights Consortium because — among other things — the WRC was going too far in seeking fairness for underpaid and mistreated workers.
Now the arbitrary behavior has spread to varsity athletics, adding to the unsettling signs of dogmatic arrogance on the campus. First it was the decision to ignore the University’s academic mission by agreeing to a December date for the Civil War football game that concludes the 2001 season. The president of the University Senate protested that this broke the long-standing rule to not schedule games at the time of final examinations. It was the meek statement of a “toothless tiger,” and it resulted in a not-surprising response from the office of a University vice president: “We gave the question serious consideration.” But the exception stayed in place, he explained, because the TV money and national exposure that came with the change were too tempting to turn down.
The latest example of failing University integrity came with the refusal to make public the independent review of coach Runge that was used to justify her resignation. Once again, when asked by the mass media for the report, the vice president responded directly and bluntly: “No.”
When told the report had to be released because of the state public records law, the answer was that the law did not apply because the $500,000 settlement with Runge to get her to resign came from money raised independent of the fiefdom of intercollegiate athletics. Conveniently ignored was the fact that the state of Oregon underwrites varsity athletics at Oregon (and Oregon State and Portland State) with an annual grant to each of about $1 million. The money comes from the state’s lottery revenues.
Captive accountants of the University might claim otherwise. But it is state money that made possible the massive buyout, as well as the payment of $25,000 to the independent reviewing agency. Without seeing the results of the review, the public — whose taxes paid for the buyout and the review — has no way of knowing whether her resignation was justified, or whether it was part of a vendetta against an outspoken woman coach.
That question becomes secondary to the major issue: When did public universities in Oregon suddenly earn the special privilege of secrecy that no longer makes them accountable to the public that pays the bills?