Sweet Frustration

I was just at a graduate student orientation where the head of the office of affirmative action was bragging about the expansive non-discrimination policy at the UO, including "gender identity and expression."

I have less right than others to be chagrined about this, but it was annoying to hear the UO bragging about a policy they fought and fought. I guess it's better to be annoyed hearing it than to not hear it all.

Thank You, Come Again

In my readings about the great Phil Knight and his great donation to the "University of Oregon," I have learned a couple of things that I'd pass on to my academic friends.

By now we're all very tired of familiar with the idea that the university is a business and the students are customers. You give good grades because you want to keep the customers happy. You show movies because you want to keep your customers happy. And, if your department is in financial straights, the only reasonable solution is to attract more customers to your department by, you know, not teaching, well, history or anything else the young people might not like.

But did you know that not only students are customers in the university setting? No sir (or ma'am, if you happen to swing that way), donors are also customers. That's right, Phil Knight is the UO's biggest customer and, like all good businesses, the UO needs to be responsive to its customer. And when an employee, say a track coach, basketball coach, and/or athletic director upsets a customer, then that employee needs to be dismissed. That's the way it's done in the business world, and it's high time the eggheads realize that this is what it is like in the real world.

Another customer of the university is the taxpayer. You are probably familiar with this one. It is the university's duty to provide the customer with a product they can be happy about. And believe me, they are not happy with these egghead professors and their anti-America horseshit. Thank God at the UO we have successful athletic teams or we'd be getting even less money from our customers.

Thank God indeed.

Yes, the only people in the entire world who are not customers of the university, and therefore have nothing to say about how the business should be run, are, of course, the faculty.

March Madness Post 9

I've been watching the games and I have yet to see a team that the Ducks would not have blown away in the Pac-10 tourney, if that makes sense.

I hate to jinx anything, but...

Pac-10 Champs!

Wanna be a Dean?

We've got a funny little situation here at the UO. It started a couple of years ago when our track team didn't do so well. Phil Knight (Nike. For those not from Eugene, Knight ran track at Oregon and that is where he got involved with Bowerman and the shoes) wanted the track coach fired. For whatever reason, Athletic Director Bill Moos didn't fire him (right away, He was fired a year later). Knight, apparently, decided that Moos needed to be fired. Scuttlebutt is that to get Moos fired, Knight pledged not to donate toward the building of a new basketball arena. A couple of months ago Moos announced he was retiring. A couple days later, the UO announced that they were going to buy a security clause for Moos. Essentially, if Moos didn't take another AD job for 5 years (I think), they'd give him $2 million. Anticipating criticism about the golden parachute, the UO got a donor to give the entire buyout cost. This donor, Kilkenny, just happens to be second biggest donor to the UO and a friend of Knight. Got it so far? A friend of Knight paid the Oregon AD $2 million to "retire."

Whatever, right. Of course athletics is run by money and don't give a shit about the larger institution. This is news? Is the Pope still Catholic?

The new twist, the new Nike flash that Oregon is always bringing to the party came when Oregon announced their new AD. How 'bout AD Kilkenny. Yep, the donor took over. He, quite literally, bought the Athletic Director's job at a major sports university. The kicker, of course, is that no one seems to care. The move is largely seen as acceptable. It occurred to me that if they had name Knight the AD, then there'd be outrage. Instead, they just hired the second largest donor and good friend of Knight. Oh well, that's okay, then. As long as you didn't hire Knight. That would be wrong.