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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Receptacle is Also True

Here's an editorial from the Daily Emerald, student newspaper of the University of Oregon, with a little UD commentary:



The University recently paid $17,250 for former Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland to advise the Athletic Department on how to best position itself over the next 10 to 15 years. He was reportedly paid $2,300 a day for his efforts [Note the amount. That's a lot, courtesy of students and taxpayers. Let's see what was done with their money.], and was asked only to give separate oral presentations to University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer and outgoing Athletic Director Bill Moos. [So his obligation was to chat with two people, one of whom is irrelevant to the future of the program.]

The fact that the University would pay so much for a report - which Frohnmayer said simply confirmed what he and outgoing Athletic Director Moos already knew - seems, at its most basic level, like a bad deal for the University. If the University simply wanted to hear a third party say that the Athletic Department was on the right track to break up the administration's echo chamber, we're certain any of the University's thousands of students who are facing massive debt would have done it for $5,000 - hell, they probably would have settled on class credit and a $300 gift certificate to the University Bookstore. The average UO student graduates with as much debt as this report cost.

But more troubling than the expense of the report is the fact that none of it was documented until faculty and the press learned of its existence and pressured the president to entreat Leland to write down his findings. [Disclosure? Public institution? Screw that.]

Because the report was not initially written down - which technically defied Leland's contract and the standard, ethical practice of departmental reviews - it calls into question the integrity of the report and whether the public will ever know what was disclosed during those private conversations. [Written down? Ah, it's only a little fun for us boys... C'mon...]

Frohnmayer told Leland to write something after the press already knew there was never anything documented. One would hope that Frohnmayer and Leland are trustworthy people, but we can't be sure if Leland mentioned something in his oral report that was omitted from the written report, which was put together with the knowledge that it was going to be publicly scrutinized.

It also begs the question: Was there something Leland reported on that the University didn't want anyone to know about? There is one thing it could be: A few months after the oral report, Moos' contract was bought out by donors for $2 million, and the donor who bankrolled most of the payment, Pat Kilkenny, is now the new athletic director. What went on behind close doors in that department will remain shrouded.

Because Leland and Frohnmayer both knew the public would comb over the written report, it is baffling that they would release it with at least 20 blatant errors in grammar and syntax [UD snaps to attention here!] that make the report difficult to understand. We can't imagine Frohnmayer accepting this if it were an assignment turned in by one of his students, let alone an expensive report that reflects the overall image of the University.

Aside from the errors in grammar, the report is seriously lacking substance. Leland says in the report that he interviewed about 85 people, distributed a questionnaire and reviewed planning documents. He dedicates most of the space to say positive-yet-vague things about the department without mentioning specifics. For example, Leland writes:

"Pacific 10 Conference: This is a real strength of the department of Intercollegiate Athletics. The Pac 10 Conference has benefited from Oregon's presents (sic) but the receptacle (sic) is also true; the Pac 10 is a great fit for the University of Oregon." [Earn big bucks! Write like a moron!]

Leland, who states in the report that "The program is well positioned to move forward and continue to ensure that student athletics have (sic) a great experience... ", only interviewed two students. How he could make a statement about student athletes while only talking to two of them is unclear.

The few improvements articulated by the report provide no insight as to why, or how, these improvements should or could be achieved. The report states that "it is imperative that the university move forward quickly with its planning for a new/renovated facility." Leland doesn't say why, but later in the report he says that the department has lost credibility with some of its significant donors, which leads us to speculate that the University has upset Phil Knight and needs to make him happy by building him an arena.

For the greater half of the school year, the Athletic Department has been embroiled in controversy. For good reason, students and faculty members are concerned that the Athletic Department and the Administration are making backroom deals and acting surreptitiously in the shadows as their work remains cloaked in secrecy. [A bit wordy and redundant here.] As the Leland fiasco illustrates, the University is all too willing to rain money down upon content-free studies as students and faculty watch silently, wondering what the point is. [Nice final image of students and faculty watching silently. It captures their knowledge that they're stooges.]