The University of Oregon’s board of trustees held its quarterly meeting on Dec. 1 and 2. Members discussed topics including safety, critical race theory, housing and food insecurity, support for graduate employees and the university’s updated finances.
On Dec. 1, the university Senate passed a motion protecting faculty’s ability to teach about controversial topics — namely, race and gender justice and CRT — on Dec. 1. ASUO is also working with the UO Provost’s Office and university professors to implement a CRT requirement for undergraduate students at UO.
Boyd said at the meeting that students have come to him with safety concerns, mostly regarding lighting. He said certain parts of campus, including the area around the Living Learning Center, are unlit at night, which makes students feel unsafe.
UO does not currently have any quantifiable standards for light levels. Students and community members can submit lighting requests by dropping a pin and filling out a form on the university website.
Boyd also discussed ASUO’s focus on accessibility. He said that means ensuring everyone has access to the university financially, mostly in terms of tuition, food and housing.
UO President Michael Schill said PathwayOregon — a program that fully covers tuition costs for eligible students — helps many students with tuition, but he agreed with Boyd that food and housing costs are major issues.
“For a Pathway student, we can cover tuition, but they still have to be able to afford food and shelter,” Schill said.
Local non-profits like Homes for Good and ShelterCare work to provide Lane County residents with affordable housing. However, neither of those organizations specifically caters to UO students.
UO has several initiatives to help students with food insecurity, including the Student Food Pantry, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — often known as SNAP — and weekly produce drops.
A spokesperson for Eugene Community Fridge at the Day of Demands protest on Oct. 22 said the university is not doing enough to help students with food insecurity. They advocated for students with food insecurity to get a monthly allowance from the university.
Nationally, Sara Goldrick-Rab — a professor at Temple University — has spent over 13 years researching how students pay for college and the biggest hurdles standing in their way.
“The best estimates suggest that food insecurity affects as many as 1 in 2 college students — much higher than the rate in the general population,” she said. “Just as many struggle with housing insecurity, and a significant number are homeless.”
Sam Schwartz, a doctoral student, said the university should be doing more to support its graduate employees who are also struggling to afford their food and housing.
Schwartz said the pay versus expense gap for the median graduate employee is now over $550, and the cost to close this gap is about $12 million per academic year.
“Graduate employees supported UO in its darkest hours of COVID,” he said. “UO should support its poorest employees now that they are facing the highest cost increases in decades.”
In response, Schill said the university offered to bring “generous health insurance benefits” back down to the national average and give the savings to graduate employees in the form of stipends. Schill said the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation declined the offer.
Tensions have been high between graduate students and the UO administration. Earlier this year, UO Housing designated one of the two buildings in Graduate Village to be used for housing students with positive coronavirus tests. The move forced many graduate students out of their current housing, requiring them to find a new place to live on short notice.
Later on in the meeting, UO chief financial officer Jamie Moffitt discussed updates to the university’s finances. The yearly tuition revenue projection has increased by $5.8 million since the last meeting. Moffitt said this is due to a large freshman class as well as a large percentage of non-resident students.
However, because of the small sophomore class, the university’s overall enrollment has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Moffitt said this means that overall enrollment will not return to normal levels until this sophomore class graduates.
The treasury also updated its tier-based investment strategy to improve liquidity and maximize the amount of money put into Tier 3, which is managed by Jasper Ridge Partners and has the highest return on investment of the three tiers.
The full audio recording of the meeting will be posted on the board’s website in the coming days. The board will meet for its next quarterly meeting on March 14 and 15.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the university Senate’s motion doesn’t mean that a CRT requirement will be implemented at UO, but that both the university Senate and ASUO are focused on CRT-related initiatives this year. This story has also been updated to reflect that Schwartz was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of GTFF.
