Seriously, if you add up UO’s obvious administrative deadwood we are now over $1 million a year just in salary. It’s going to be hard to justify a tuition increase without some cuts.

Looks like another round of interviews for me tomorrow. A full story on Grier’s situation is set for tomorrow’s Emerald.

Melinda Grier (Photo by Oregon Daily Emerald)

The Oregonian reports that it has it from four sources that University General Counsel Melinda Grier is being pushed out of her position. One of the sources is state Board of Higher Ed president Paul Kelly, Jr. The University’s spokesperson Phil Weiler, when I asked him whether the rumor was true, said a statement would be coming out “late this afternoon.”

• Here’s the Oregonian’s first blog post about the subject.
• Here’s their fuller article.
• Here’s sports writer Ken Goe’s two cents.
• Here’s what UO Matters, so far the only outlet I’ve seen with the story, has to say.
• Other blogs with the story: Football Rumor Mill and Big Education Ape.

Beyond that, when I get the statement, I’ll post it.

1. Call to order
2. Approval of the agenda
3.  Special requests
a. Coalition Against Environmental Racism — $2,033 from surplus
b. Executive — $310 in line-item transfers

7. Officer Updates
a. Academic
b. Treasurer
c. Ombudsperson
d. Vice President
e. President
f.  Executive
8. Committee Updates
a. ACFC
b. EMU Board
c. Ethics & Efficiency
d. Personnel
e. Finance
f.  Rules
g. Outreach
9. Adjourn

Moving Campus Recycling off of the incidental fee was one of Alex McCafferty’s less-cited but, I think, more interesting campaign planks. It’s of a strain of old-timey ASUO conservatism that’s no longer so pronounced. That is, it’s seemingly rooted in the idea, articulated to me most recently by ASUO Sen. Demic Tipitino when I interviewed him on the radio, that students, mercurial and distracted as they are, are a worse fit for allocating the ASUO’s $12 million budget than the University administration.

You can read McCafferty’s opinion on Campus Recycling in his interview with the Oregon Commentator’s page or in a letter he wrote to the Emerald in March.

With McCafferty’s Reality Check campaign taking a majority on the DFC, I thought I’d ask president-elect Amelie Rousseau what her opinion on the idea was following her election as president. I expected her to say it would likely not happen. Surprise: “It’s trending more toward a kind of Facilities Service that we have (on the ASUO’s budget), as opposed to something for students.”

In light of that, I expected this to be a consensus issue, something everyone in the ASUO was agreed upon, including those at Campus Recycling. So I called Karyn Kaplan today to ask her about it. Wrong again.

“Nobody’s talked to me about it,” she said. She said it would be difficult to convince the University to go along with it anyway. Campus Recycling gets funding from six different sources, including the ASUO, but the parts the ASUO pays for are only the student-aligned ones; jobs, recycling in the EMU, the composting program created by a popular movement among students, etc. Even if Campus Recycling went off the incidental fee, it’s probable that the ASUO would  have to pay much of what it already pays through assessments.

Figuring I must have misinterpreted something, I called Rousseau again. She said she’d changed her mind on the idea after talking to Nick Schultz. “I think that it won’t actually save students money,” she said, since it would still fall under tuition. And students, she said, would also get less say in the creation of programs like composting.

“We’re 100 votes behind! Can you get 5 votes for Amelie & Maneesh & Campus Change Coalition before voting ends on DuckWeb at 5pm?”

Which is a weensy bit fishy because, of course, none of the candidates are supposed to know the vote count until it’s revealed publicly at 5:30-ish today. In fact, for candidates to know is supposed to be impossible. Case in point: after I got the message, I called the University techie who’s running the computer.

“There’s no way for them to get that information,” he said. The only person with access to it: him, and he said, as of when the text message went out “I have actually not checked it recently.”

So then I responded to the text, asking the volunteer where the knowledge came from. The response: “Oh i know these things tomchak” …

I guess we’ll see when the results come out.

Then CCC got a hold of it and cut it into this video of their dance number, following it with the message, “funny … that’s not what your mom said last night.”

Interesting side note: I actually met Alex McCafferty’s mother when he took her with him when appearing on my radio show, so now I am involuntarily picturing her with Jairo Castaneda. I think they would make a cute couple. I am sorry if this offends anyone. Arguably, McCafferty and Castaneda’s campaign asked for it.

He must have called me while I was on the phone with Cassi Gritzmacher, who ended up calling me back at around 9 p.m., because I didn’t see that he’d done so until tonight, long after the story had been filed.

It’s too late to change the paper now and a correction won’t be able to run until Monday because the paper’s not published over the weekend, but that’s an evolving part of the story.

President/VP

• Jairo Castaneda/Alex Esparza (Campus Change Coalition)
• Cassi Gritzmacher/Lucas McAdams (Change & Leadership)
• Pete Lesiak (no slate, no VP)
• Alex McCafferty/Alden Williams (Reality Check)
• Amelie Rousseau/Maneesh Arora (no slate)

Seat 1 (Programs Finance Committee)

• Kelsey Jarone (Campus Change Coalition)
• Brennan Lowes (Reality Check)
• John Stephens (Change & Leadership)

Seat 2 (Programs Finance Committee)

• Laura Himan (Reality Check)
• Justin Schultz (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 3 (Programs Finance Committee)

• Erin Altman (Reality Check)
• Emma Newman (Campus Change Coalition)
• Dylan Scandalios

Seat 4 (EMU Board)

• Janet Brooks (Reality Check)
• Sarah Lazzeroni (Change & Leadership)
• Ryan Riddick (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 5 (EMU Board)

• Kaitlin Lange (Reality Check)
• Liliana Villanueva (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 7 (Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee)

• Devon Duquette (Campus Change Coalition)
• Diara E. Melendez
• Brianna Woodside-Gomez (Reality Check)
• Josh Wasserteil (Change & Leadership)

Seat 8 (Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee)

• Ben Eckstein
• Katie Ericson (Campus Change Coalition)
• Ian Fielding (Reality Check)
• Kaitlin Kernan (Change & Leadership)

Seat 9 (Department Finance Committee)

• Jena Iangham (Campus Change Coalition)
• Blake Sedgley (Reality Check)

Seat 12 (Architecture and the Allied Arts)

• Jackson Hite (Reality Check)
• Nathan Howard (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 13 (Business)

• Chris Bocchicchio (Reality Check)
• Edrice Wahed (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 14 (Social Science)

• Kamal Ararso
• Douglas Holloway (Change & Leadership)
• Evan Thomas (Reality Check)
• Alexis White (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 15 (Social Science)

• Morgan Henry (Campus Change Coalition)
• Doug Holloway (Change & Leadership)
• Brian Powell (Reality Check)
• Samantha Wiggins

Seat 16 (science)

• Zachary Stark-MacMillan (Campus Change Coalition)

Seat 17 (graduate and law)

• Marissa Elena Garcia

Seat 18 (graduate and law)

• Tom Schally (Reality Check)

Seat 19 (Journalism)

• Andrew Helms (Campus Change Coalition)
• Grace Hochstatter (Reality Check)
• Cameron Shultz (Change & Leadership)

Seat 20 (Education)

• Amanda Hilts
• Michael McInerney (Reality Check)

ASPAC (1 year)

• Christopher Baker (Change & Leadership)
• Laura Johnson (Campus Change Coalition)
• James Neste (Reality Check)

Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee at-large (1 year)

• Eric Cole (Campus Change Coalition)
• Andrew Quinlan (Reality Check)

Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee at-large (2 year)

• Christine Erquiza (Campus Change Coalition)

Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee at-large (term duration not specified)

• Brian Williams (Reality Check)

Department Finance Committee at-large (1 year)

• Matthew Gander (Reality Check)
• Nick Warren (Campus Change Coalition)

Department Finance Committee at-large (2-year)

• Robert Hawkes Greene (Campus Change Coalition)

EMU Board at large (2-year)

• Cara Meredino (Reality Check)
• Jo Yeojin Niehaus (Reality Check)
• Katherine Prince (Campus Change Coalition)
• Curtis Haley (Campus Change Coalition)

Programs Finance Committee at-large (1 year)

• Lingheshwari Kakkanaiah (Campus Change Colition)
• Rachel Koppes (Reality Check)
• Stephanie Tuski (Reality Check)
• Noah Wolf-Prusan (Reality Check)

Programs Finance Committee at-large (2 year)

• Katherine Stover (Campus Change Coalition)

SRC Advisory Board (2-year)

• Matt Crocker (Reality Check)
• Michael Johnson (Reality Check)
• Brandon Morelli (Reality Check)

* Denotes a candidate who did not appear on the list sent by the Elections Board