UO E-Clips is a daily report prepared by the Office of Communications (http://comm.uoregon.edu) summarizing current news coverage of the University of Oregon.
Media mentions for March 19
Moving through birth and death
mydigitalfc.com: It is insightful to watch the flow and direction of a flock of birds. If we imagine anything moving as a swarm -- animals, birds, bacteria, molecules within cells, cancer cells, fish, and even tiny plastic rods on a vibrating table -- we wonder what really guides them. Who gives them a sense of direction? And how? According to theoretical physicist John J Toner of the University of Oregon, US, they just keep on moving, unhindered even by deaths and births. In an article published in the February 24 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, the scientist shows that flocking persists and can withstand even individual birth and death. The finding, he said, "Is especially important for many other organisms that flock, especially bacteria, which may contain millions of individuals that are constantly dying and being replaced by the reproduction of others as the swarm moves."
Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change
Science Codex: Technology alone won't help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable. Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes alternative energy sources -- nuclear, wind and hydro -- will equally displace fossil fuel consumption. This approach, York argues, ignores "the complexity of human behavior."
Creswell skydiving mediation hits snags
Register-Guard: After the City Council voted last month to "vigorously defend" itself against a complaint that Eugene Skydivers' Urban Moore filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, someone from Seattle who read about the dispute over skydiving at the airport sent him an e-mail, he said. In a nutshell: "He said this issue begged for mediation," Moore said. The Seattle writer alerted Moore to Tim Hicks' conflict resolution program at the University of Oregon. Moore called Hicks, Hicks talked with the city and the two sides could be well on their way to hammering out some kind of compromise by now. But they're not. After six years of arguing about whether Moore's clients should be able to parachute on or adjacent to Hobby Field, after lawsuits and complaints and responses and counter-responses, the two sides need some pre-mediation mediation. ... At this point, though, it may not be an option at all. Without referring to this case specifically, Hicks told The Register-Guard that his quick review of the circumstances is one that's "certainly worth the parties considering mediation," adding that it's common for mediation to happen while a case goes forward. Whether it actually happens, though, often boils down to one thing: "It's a trust issue," Hicks said. "It's not necessary that the parties fully trust each other in agreeing to mediate, but it's a delicate dance in the beginning, a little bit." It's also an option to mediate the mediation, he added. "It's possible to (have) an intermediary try to resolve the first step," he said.
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Media mentions for March 18
WARTIME LIFELINE
Register-Guard: The world long has mourned the loss of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who was born in Germany, spent much of her life in The Netherlands and created her famous diary as she hid with her family during the Holocaust until discovered by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, where she and her sister, Margot, perished of typhus shortly before the end of World War II. ... Now comes the story of another Jewish girl, Sala Garncarz. She was born in Poland in 1924, five years before Frank. When Garncarz was 16 years old -- Frank died at 15 -- she was among tens of thousands of able-bodied Jewish people sent to the Nazis' extensive network of slave labor camps, as opposed to death camps. An expert seamstress, she spent the rest of the war primarily sewing and doing laundry for the officers in a series of seven work camps before being liberated by Allied forces in 1945. ... On March 25, Ann Kirschner will give a free, public presentation as the Singer Family Lecturer in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon, sponsored by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies and part of the annual Western Jewish Studies Association Conference, held this year at the UO.
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Media mentions for March 17
Scientists call for stronger global governance to address climate change
Forbes: Stronger global governance is needed to mitigate human impact on the earth's climate and to ensure sustainable development, according to 32 scientists who published a paper in Friday's issue of the journal Science. In "Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance," (summary
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Late mentions for March 16
State Board of Higher Education supports local governing boards for universities that want them
Oregonian: Higher education board leaders today agreed state universities should be allowed to establish governing boards, but they have not settled on what powers those boards should have. The University of Oregon and Portland State University are seeking individual governing boards that would have control over tuition, salary and benefits, learning outcomes and hiring and firing of the university president. But some members of the State Board of Higher Education do not want to see full authority for those functions going to university boards. "The key ingredient," said Paul Kelly, chair of the board's governance committee, "is a control mechanism that reflects the connection between the (state) board and the institutional boards to ensure the institutional board serves its mission and serves the state."
University of Oregon faculty and Oregon State University graduate employees seek union representation
Oregonian: Faculty and employed graduate students at Oregon's two major research universities have filed requests with the state Employment Relations Board to form and expand unions. A majority of faculty at the University of Oregon in Eugene have signed union authorization cards, which were filed Thursday with the employment board to establish the United Academics of the University of Oregon. The union would include tenure, non-tenured and research faculty and be affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers. ... The union would represent about 1,900 professors and researchers and, barring delays, could be certified as early as the first week of April. Faculty likely will want the union's help to stop or reduce growing class sizes.
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Media mentions for March 19
Moving through birth and death
It is insightful to watch the flow and direction of a flock of birds. If we imagine anything moving as a swarm -- animals, birds, bacteria, molecules within cells, cancer cells, fish, and even tiny plastic rods on a vibrating table -- we wonder what really guides them. Who gives them a sense of direction? And how?
According to theoretical physicist John J Toner of the University of Oregon, US, they just keep on moving, unhindered even by deaths and births.
In an article published in the February 24 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, the scientist shows that flocking persists and can withstand even individual birth and death. The finding, he said, "Is especially important for many other organisms that flock, especially bacteria, which may contain millions of individuals that are constantly dying and being replaced by the reproduction of others as the swarm moves."
He elaborates: "A flock can keep moving in the same direction for times much longer than the lifetime of any individual member. Individuals are being born and dying, but, their direction and motion can persist much longer than the lifetime of any individual creature."
He admitted that the changes in the number of such "mortal flock" -- where some members are leaving by death and joining by birth -- can create "persistent but predictable fluctuations". But, they do not significantly alter the direction of the flow. This is applicable both to living beings and to non-living flow.
Studying the movement of molecules within cells, Toner spoke of individual molecules living only for about 20 minutes, but, collectively these cells live and continue their work for days. Toner asserts: "The motion continues as dead molecules are replaced by newly synthesised molecules, as well as by molecules that immigrate in to take their places."
As reported in ScienceDaily, this study has implications in biology, and, eventually, could point to new cancer therapies. Further, "This study shows us how fundamental physics and mathematics deployed to explain an everyday occurrence in nature can spin off with potentially life-saving medical applications," said Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Oregon.
It is truly insightful to apply the lessons of swarm to humanity as a whole. Taken collectively, humanity moves forward and is independent of each one of us, although, at times, we may influence the direction of humanity decisively.
Traditional religions console us saying that the movement is guided, directed and led by god. In his hands, religions tell us, humanity can rest at ease, in spite of some turbulence that we experience in our daily life. Agnostics and atheists may not have a clear understanding of the flow of life, but, they can very well talk of the "vital force" that sustains everyone.
Be that as it may, our individual life does make sense only within the larger framework of our collective movement. Our individual destiny, even in its failure, is irrevocably linked to the collective and unconscious movement of the whole, towards which we may, even against our will, contribute something. Thus, the great marvel of my individual life -- with its own progress, regress and development -- is that I am somehow part of a larger flow of humanity. Is it guided by someone or self-propelling? Although, we do not know the answer to this perplexing question, we do know that our individual destiny is intrinsically tied to our collective destiny. That's indeed marvellous!
(The writer is a professor of science and religion)
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Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change
EUGENE, Ore. -- Technology alone won't help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable.
Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes alternative energy sources -- nuclear, wind and hydro -- will equally displace fossil fuel consumption. This approach, York argues, ignores "the complexity of human behavior."
Based on a four-model study of electricity used in some 130 countries in the past 50 years, York found that it took more that 10 units of electricity produced from non-fossil sources -- nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, wind, biomass and solar -- to displace a single unit of fossil fuel-generated electricity.
"When you see growth in nuclear power, for example, it doesn't seem to affect the rate of growth of fossil fuel-generated power very much," said York, a professor in the sociology department and environmental studies program. He also presented two models on total energy use. "When we looked at total energy consumption, we found a little more displacement, but still, at best, it took four to five units of non-fossil fuel energy to displace one unit produced with fossil fuel."
For the paper -- published online March 18 by the journal Nature Climate Change -- York analyzed data from the World Bank's world development indicators gathered from around the world. To control for a variety of variables of economics, demographics and energy sources, data were sorted and fed into the six statistical models.
Admittedly, York said, energy-producing technologies based on solar, wind and waves are relatively new and may yet provide viable alternative sources as they are developed.
"I'm not saying that, in principle, we can't have displacement with these new technologies, but it is interesting that so far it has not happened," York said. "One reason the results seem surprising is that we, as societies, tend to see demand as an exogenous thing that generates supply, but supply also generates demand. Generating electricity creates the potential to use that energy, so creating new energy technologies often leads to yet more energy consumption."
Related to this issue, he said, was the development of high-efficiency automobile engines and energy-efficient homes. These improvements reduced energy consumption in some respects but also allowed for the production of larger vehicles and bigger homes. The net result was that total energy consumption often did not decrease dramatically with the rising efficiency of technologies.
"In terms of governmental policies, we need to be thinking about social context, not just the technology," York said. "We need to be asking what political and economic factors are conducive to seeing real displacement. Just developing non-fossil fuel sources doesn't in itself tend to reduce fossil fuel use a lot -- not enough. We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone."
The findings need to become part of the national discussion, says Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation at the UO. "Research from the social sciences is often lost in the big picture of federal and state policymaking," she said. "If we are to truly solve the challenges our environment is facing in the future, we need to consider our own behaviors and attitudes."
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Creswell skydiving mediation hits snags
By Winston Ross -- The Register-GuardCRESWELL -- After the City Council voted last month to "vigorously defend" itself against a complaint that Eugene Skydivers' Urban Moore filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, someone from Seattle who read about the dispute over skydiving at the airport sent him an e-mail, he said.
In a nutshell: "He said this issue begged for mediation," Moore said.
The Seattle writer alerted Moore to Tim Hicks' conflict resolution program at the University of Oregon. Moore called Hicks, Hicks talked with the city and the two sides could be well on their way to hammering out some kind of compromise by now.
But they're not. After six years of arguing about whether Moore's clients should be able to parachute on or adjacent to Hobby Field, after lawsuits and complaints and responses and counter-responses, the two sides need some pre-mediation mediation.
What happened after Hicks' initial inquiry was a back-and-forth between Moore's attorney and the city's. The gist of it: Creswell wanted Moore to put his complaint on hold before any mediation begins, because there's a deadline looming today for the city to respond to the FAA. Moore says that's unnecessary, that there's no reason the city couldn't talk with the complaint pending, and he refused to drop or postpone it.
So the impasse has continued. Moore said he's perfectly willing to drop the complaint if some kind of an agreement is reached, but to do so now would mean he has to "start all over again" if there's no compromise. Mayor Bob Hooker insists that it would be easy for Moore to postpone or withdraw and refile the complaint. Moore says the city ought to be able to negotiate and litigate at once, as is commonplace in civil and criminal legal proceedings.
"I've seen all of those guys walk and chew gum at the same time," he said.
Two Creswell city councilors have advocated for mediation, in the hopes that the $100,000 the city authorized last month for the legal battle could be spared.
"There's always room for mediation and negotiations," Councilman A.J. O'Connell said. "Especially when we're going to be spending this amount of money. I think that needs to be our first option, rather than our last option."
At this point, though, it may not be an option at all. Without referring to this case specifically, Hicks told The Register-Guard that his quick review of the circumstances is one that's "certainly worth the parties considering mediation," adding that it's common for mediation to happen while a case goes forward. Whether it actually happens, though, often boils down to one thing:
"It's a trust issue," Hicks said. "It's not necessary that the parties fully trust each other in agreeing to mediate, but it's a delicate dance in the beginning, a little bit."
It's also an option to mediate the mediation, he added.
"It's possible to (have) an intermediary try to resolve the first step," he said.
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Media mentions for March 18
WARTIME LIFELINE
'Letters to Sala' illustrates one woman's concentration camp life
By Randi Bjornstad -- The Register-GuardThe world long has mourned the loss of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who was born in Germany, spent much of her life in The Netherlands and created her famous diary as she hid with her family during the Holocaust until discovered by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, where she and her sister, Margot, perished of typhus shortly before the end of World War II.
Her father, Otto Frank, survived the war and retrieved her diary. He eventually consented to having it published, and it has become one of the world's most widely read books and an internationally renowned icon of atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
Now comes the story of another Jewish girl, Sala Garncarz. She was born in Poland in 1924, five years before Frank. When Garncarz was 16 years old -- Frank died at 15 -- she was among tens of thousands of able-bodied Jewish people sent to the Nazis' extensive network of slave labor camps, as opposed to death camps. An expert seamstress, she spent the rest of the war primarily sewing and doing laundry for the officers in a series of seven work camps before being liberated by Allied forces in 1945.
Like Frank, Garncarz also kept a diary, amassing a secret cache of some 350 letters, postcards and photographs during her first three years of captivity when the Nazis still allowed inmates in the labor camps to send and receive mail, to persuade the rest of Europe that workers in its camps, although not free to come and go, were allowed contact with the outside world.
But unlike Frank, whose life became well-known worldwide in the years following the war, Garncarz hid her own away from view for nearly 50 years.
Although many among her family and friends were sent to Nazi death camps and died in the gas chambers, Garncarz survived the Holocaust. She turned 88 years old earlier this month and divides her time between Monsey, N.Y., and Pembroke Pines, Fla.
"Like a time capsule"
After the war, when Garncarz married a young American soldier, Sidney Kirschner, and emigrated to the East Coast of the United States, the new Mrs. Kirschner stashed her letters -- and with them any mention of her wartime past -- away in a cardboard box. Not until 1991, when she faced a serious heart operation, did she show them to her daughter, Ann Kirschner.
Kirschner, now 60 and university dean at the Macaulay Honors College at City University of New York, spent years sorting, researching and compiling the material into a book called "Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story." In 2005, the Kirschner family donated the original documents to the New York Public Library.
About 100 of the original letters, postcards, photographs and other documents from Sala Kirschner's years of captivity have been consolidated into a traveling exhibit, "Letters to Sala," on loan from the library. The collection is on view at Temple Beth Israel in south Eugene until March 27.
On March 25, Ann Kirschner will give a free, public presentation as the Singer Family Lecturer in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon, sponsored by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies and part of the annual Western Jewish Studies Association Conference, held this year at the UO.
Ann Kirschner remembers well the day her mother, worried that she might not survive open heart surgery, revealed her past.
"She was afraid I would find the letters after she died and not understand what they were," Kirschner said in a telephone interview. "Seeing them was like a time capsule -- how many people get to meet their mother, as a young girl, in that way? There is no other collection in the world like this that I have seen."
Until that time, she knew very little about her mother's pre-American life, Kirschner said. "I knew she was the youngest of 11 children, and I knew her parents' names and her hometown. I knew she had been in a camp for awhile, but I assumed it was just one. I knew that all during my childhood she had kept a picture of herself and another, older woman looking into each other's eyes on her bedside table, but I never knew who it was. After she showed me the letters, it was that picture that ignited my curiosity and set me on the path to documenting what had happened."
A watchful eye
As she pieced together the story of her mother's life, Kirschner learned that the older woman in the photograph with Sala was Ala Gertner. The day Sala Garncarz left her family for the work camp, Gertner watched the girl's distressed mother bid her youngest child good-bye. Gertner told Sala's mother that she would take care of her, Kirschner said. "Ala was highly educated, and she taught my mother German -- that was the only way she was able to send letters to relatives and friends, because the Nazis would only allow the inmates in the camps to write in German, so they could read it."
Years later, at Auschwitz, Gertner was one of four women publicly hanged shortly before the camp was liberated, for her part in a conspiracy to smuggle gunpowder to an underground group that already had blown up a crematorium and was planning an escape.
But early on, Gertner may well have saved Sala's life when she told her, " 'Whatever they say needs doing, you volunteer to do it,' " Kirschner said. "Sala became the 'clean Jew' who did all the laundry and mending. And it brought her close to a German family that was extremely kind to her."
When first in the labor camp, "there was no sewing machine there, so they sent her to a nearby tailor who had one and agreed to let it be used," she said. "The people in the tailor's family fed my mother and gave her clothes -- they even sent money to her parents -- because they had a daughter her age."
Contact with the German family ended when the camp requisitioned its own sewing machine. "But they still sent their son who was a German soldier in uniform to check on her, and he delivered little packages to her," Kirschner said. "They were people who acted with simple goodness."
A ripple effect
After her mother revealed her past, Kirschner tried for years to find the German family, without success. "After my book was published, I realized that all that time I had the wrong spelling of their last name," she said. "After that, I was able to locate the family. The tailor and his wife were no longer living, but I met their grandson, still living in Germany. He is very proud of his grandparents and his mother for what they did for my mother."
Of course, Sala Garncarz Kirschner's own half of all her correspondence is irretrievable, "because no one else survived the war to save it," Kirschner said. "But I have found other documents that show more about her own role during those years."
For example, when she visited Prague recently, Kirschner found a list of the women who had been in the camp at Schatzlar, Czechosolovakia, just before liberation, "and my mother's name is on it," she said. "I also found the manuscript of a play that was written and performed by the inmates, just three days before liberation -- it was a thinly disguised allegory of life in the camp -- and it was signed by all the performers to the (female) overseer of the camp. My mother's signature is there."
Historical records show that the overseer of the camp was arrested after the war, "and the women all rallied around her, saying that she had been as good to them as could be under the circumstances," Kirschner said. "That document also has become part of the record, and I digitized it immediately. It reminds me that my own project has ripple effects that will go on long after either my mother or I are still alive."
Once reticent about sharing her past, Sala Garncarz Kirschner now realizes how important it is to share her history, Kirschner said.
"She told me that she hid it all partly because she didn't want us to feel guilty about what she had suffered, but now she realizes that we only get one chance to influence the next generation. Now, when she thinks about her long silence, she says, 'I must have done it for a reason.' I believe the plan eventually made itself known."
letters to sala
A lifeline of letters written during the Holocaust document the survival and courage of one young Jewish woman, Sala Garncarz, during five years of captivity in a Nazi slave labor camp.
Exhibit: Temple Beth Israel, 1175 E. 29th Ave., Eugene; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to noon Friday through March 27, or by special arrangement
Lecture: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Temple Beth Israel, by Ann Kirschner, daughter of Sala Garncarz Kirschner and this year's Singer Family Lecturer in Judaic Studies sponsored by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon; free
Book: "Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story," by Ann Kirschner, available at Temple Beth Israel, or online at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, indiebound.com or booksamillion.com
Information: 541-485-7218
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Media mentions for March 17
Scientists Call For Stronger Global Governance To Address Climate Change
Stronger global governance is needed to mitigate human impact on the earth's climate and to ensure sustainable development, according to 32 scientists who published a paper in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
In "Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance," (summary
In a podcast accompanying the article, lead author Frank Biermann, an environmental policy specialists from VU University in Amsterdam, cites climate change as the most prominent example of the failure of global governance to meet the needs of global society:
"It just takes a long time normally to get new agreements in place," Biermann says. "One example is climate change where the first Framework Convention has been negotiated in 1992. And since then, there is no change in the emissions trends of major countries.
"I mean the current state of global climate governance is surely not effective in dealing with the challenge of global warming that we see today."
The scientists recommend changes both within and outside of the United Nations, including:
- A shift in the UN from consensus decision making, which requires all nations to agree to a new treaty, to qualified majority voting: "Not necessarily majority voting on the one country-one vote principle, but a system of voting where also larger countries can protect their own interest in a more meaningful way."
- Creation of a new council within the UN, the Council on Sustainable Development, that would consolidate the many agencies and more than 900 environmental treaties currently in effect. The call for environmental policy to be administered on the model of global economic governance--the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. "We also argue for the upgrading of the existing U.N. environment program toward full-fledged specialized U.N. agencies, which would give this agency better possibilities, better mandate to influence norm setting processes, a better source of funding, and a higher influence in the international governance."
- A stronger role for civil society--for non-governmental organizations—in international decision making. This is necessary, Biermann says, in part to ensure accountability: "The key question that we also have to ask ourselves is, 'How can we hold these global systems of governance accountable to citizens? I mean, how can we invent in a way democracy, accountability, legitimacy at the global level?' Civil society organizations should gain more rights in getting information and assessing information and also a stronger right to be heard in international norm setting procedures."
All 32 scientists are members of the Earth System Governance Project, so their views should come as no surprise. The project is a decade-old effort to coordinate research on global governance, with a stated interest in reforming the United Nations, in order to mitigate human impacts on the environment.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently plays the most prominent role in attempting to forge international agreements in response to global warming. It hosted the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, which produced the Copenhagen Accord (pdf), a voluntary "political agreement" that has produced little progress in halting or mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
The 32 scientists describe efforts like this as proof that current institutions are unable to effectively address what the paper describes as "human activities [that] are moving several of Earth's sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years."
Biermann elaborates:
- We know from the natural sciences that there are a number of core processes in the Earth's system that are changing fundamentally. This is why natural scientists have coined this term of "The Anthropocene" that has been described as a fundamental transformation of key planetary systems. And we know what the demands are for the social systems and how to change current trends. But we also understand from our social science research that the social systems are not at the current condition to really change these trends.
- So the governance systems that we have, the international treaties, the national policies, they are all not effective enough dealing with these challenges. And for this reason, we argue for a structural change in the global governance systems that are dealing with sustainable development and global environmental change."
The authors are primarily public policy experts affiliated with universities including Yale, Oxford, the University of California, the University of Oregon, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Colorado State University, among others.
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Late mentions for March 16
State Board of Higher Education supports local governing boards for universities that want them
By Bill Graves, The OregonianHigher education board leaders today agreed state universities should be allowed to establish governing boards, but they have not settled on what powers those boards should have.
The University of Oregon and Portland State University are seeking individual governing boards that would have control over tuition, salary and benefits, learning outcomes and hiring and firing of the university president.
But some members of the State Board of Higher Education do not want to see full authority for those functions going to university boards.
"The key ingredient," said Paul Kelly, chair of the board's governance committee, "is a control mechanism that reflects the connection between the (state) board and the institutional boards to ensure the institutional board serves its mission and serves the state."
For example, a university board could take the lead in a search for a new president and narrow the candidates, but the state board should have the final word on who is hired, said Kelly during the governance committee's meeting Friday at Portland State University.
The board must make a recommendation on independent governing boards for universities next month to a Special Committee on University Governance established in February by the Legislature. The board's governance committee will meet again next month to settle on what authority it wants to grant institutional boards before reporting to the special committee.
Oregon State University and the four regional state universities have not expressed an interest in establishing their own governing boards. But leaders of the smaller schools worry they could lose support if the larger universities, which help subsidize them, become too independent.
Student leaders also have expressed concerns that independent governing boards would lead to higher tuition as some studies have suggested.
Robert Berdahl, interim UO president, said his university would have more flexibility and options to raise money and sustain excellence with its own board.
"I don't think mediocrity serves the state, and that should not be our goal," he said.
Jay Kenton, vice chancellor for finance and administration, estimated it would cost $300,000 to $450,000 a year for a university to support its own board.
The UO and PSU have proposed taking charge of other services now handled centrally by the Oregon University System – such as legal services, payroll and labor relations and internal audits. If they took over those services, Kenton said, their increased annual costs would range from $3 million to 8 million.
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University of Oregon faculty and Oregon State University graduate employees seek union representation
Bill Graves, The OregonianFaculty and employed graduate students at Oregon's two major research universities have filed requests with the state Employment Relations Board to form and expand unions.
A majority of faculty at the University of Oregon in Eugene have signed union authorization cards, which were filed Thursday with the employment board to establish the United Academics of the University of Oregon. The union would include tenure, non-tenured and research faculty and be affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers.
"One goal of our new union will be to restore budgetary alignment with the university's core mission of teaching, research and service to the state of Oregon," said Karen McPherson, associate professor of romance languages, in a prepared statement.
The union would represent about 1,900 professors and researchers and, barring delays, could be certified as early as the first week of April. Faculty likely will want the union's help to stop or reduce growing class sizes.
Graduate students, primarily research assistants, have asked the employment board to confirm their representation at Oregon State University in Corvallis by Local 6069 of the Coalition of Graduate Employees, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers–Oregon.
The union now represents 900 graduate employees in collective bargaining and is seeking authority to represent another 700.
The university declined to voluntarily recognize the union as representative of the additional group of employees so it must seek that authority from the board, said Richard Schwarz, executive director of AFT-Oregon.
"We had a substantial majority of those employees designate Local 6069 for collective bargaining," he said.