Former President Clinton will give a speech at the UO EMU Ballroom tomorrow night at 8:30. Be sure to thank him for helping torpedo his wife’s campaign and his party’s chances in the general election! Good work, big fella. Just remember to stay away from those girls at the soft serve in Carson.

And if you have $1,000 to $33,100 to spend on a man who voted for campaign finance reform, why not attend the John McCain “Portland Finance Reception” tomorrow night at the beautiful airport Sheraton? Because nothing defines a straight talkin’ man of the people better than holding a closed door $33,100/head dinner at a crappy airport hotel.

Update: More on McCain’s speech here.

Well, Vincent, Katy and I tried to get press access to the Obama rally yesterday. We didn’t have press passes, but that didn’t seem to be a problem last time. Unfortunately, some irate Obama staffer told us that having our names in the masthead of the magazine wasn’t good enough. So much for the audacity of hope. Vincent and I decided we didn’t really want to see Obama anyways, especially if he was going to be such a dick. Properly embittered, we left to cling to our guns and religion. (Actually, being deficient in both areas, we mainly ended up clinging to booze).

Apparently, Obama is returning to campus to speak tomorrow in the Memorial Quad outside Knight Library. Doors (?) open at 5:45 p.m. The only source I have for this is a Facebook Event, but it appears to be hosted by Students for Obama. I’ll keep you updated. If it’s true, you’ll be able to watch the whole thing (sans sound) through the old Obelisk Cam.

UPDATE: Yep, it’s confirmed on Obama’s website.

So this weekend I took one of those SAPP (Substance Abuse Prevention Program) seminars that seem to be a requirement for graduating seniors who need just a couple more upper-division credits.  This weekend’s topic was hate crimes.

 Anyway, at the end of the seminar the speaker opened up the floor to those students on campus who wanted to speak out against hate.

 A girl two seats away from me raised her hand and said, “Last fall the Oregon Commentator published an issue where they called girls ’scrunts’.”

 In the fall of 2006 the Commentator defined a “scrunt” as: “A female, typically a freshman.  Generally a scrunt lacks a father figure and is extremely susceptible to peer pressure and persuasion.  Scrunt is something that one rustles.  ’Hey dude, let’s go dorm stormin’ and rustle up some scrunt.’”

I don’t know what she was so upset about.  I mean she’s been carrying this around with her for two years.  It must have really affected her.  I’m just going to do the responsible thing here and blame Ted.  Why?  Because it’s fun to rile up Ted. 

Both The Oregonian and and the Register-Guard have front-page stories on Phil Knight today. The Oregonian story is huge, covering Knight’s influence in the UO and much of the controversy that accompanies it. Knight refused to be interviewed for The Oregonian. It’s funny because Knight actually requested an interview with the R-G to clear up some of the same issues that the O story brings up. He said he wanted to assure people that the new arena project was not “some kind of unseemly scam on the taxpayers.” The R-G article is mainly a Q&A fluff piece, although it’s interesting to hear Knight speak out.

One point of interest is that Knight’s $100 million donation comes with the stipulation that it can be withdrawn if the UO does not secure state-backed bonds for the new arena by June 1. The state legislature approved a $200 million bond in February, and the UO will take its case to the State Board of Higher Education next month for final approval. Coincidently, the UO spent $270,000 in lobbying expenses in 2007, up from $90,000 in 2006. I wonder how much they’re spending this year?

According to the Huffington Post’s nifty little campaign donation tracker, people who identified themselves as employees of the University of Oregon have so far donated $24,962 to political campaigns in the ‘08 election cycle. It doesn’t look like the first quarter reports have been added yet, so the real number is most likely much higher by now. How does it break down?

Of that $24,962, only two contributions went to Republicans, totalling $956. Actually, I should say Republican because both of those went to … Ron Paul. The majority of the Dem donations went to Obama with only one donation to Hillary Clinton. No contributions were listed from Frohnmayer, although his pals Melinda Grier and John Moseley both donated to Obama.

I was recently invited to the Free Speech Parade Facebook group, hosted by the one and only UO Survival Center. What struck me as interesting was the description of the group:

We support free expression, be that: verbally, musically, poetically, artistically, physically, nutritionally, literarily, meditatively, economically (barter) or otherwise.

A perfect example of this “free expression” they support is Cimmeron Gillespie’s (coincidentally the group’s founder) drumming/musical performances that, I’m sure, we’ve all had the pleasure of encountering.

Perhaps a further buried example would be a student’s right to smoke–the act of smoking as an expression. I am hesitant to jump on the freedom of expression bandwagon here, but perhaps we, as a campus, could broaden our freedom horizons a bit and accept smoking as a tool to unite students, similar to say, a FIG class, or Week of Welcome.

Even better, if we can get the environmental lovin’ kids to support smoking on campus. Can you imagine OSPIRG collecting signatures to save your right to smoke? Student dollars at work on campus? Dare to dream, people, dare to dream!

As for me, I’ll see you at the Smoke-in on Monday, May 12th, sporting a large cigar.

I would like to thank all the parties involved in the Laughing Planet / Holy Cow / EMU business for finalizing the issue the day before our Holy Cow Issue, in which nobody said anything.

This doesn’t change the fact that Holy Cow should serve meat.

The Willamette Week and several local news sources are reporting that Dave Frohnmayer will announce his upcoming retirement tomorrow, to be effective in 14 months. He’s served for 14 years thus far as University President. Love him or hate him, that’s quite a run and just one more accomplishment for someone who has held some distinguished positions over his lifetime.

So, what’s next for the Frohn? Full, relaxed-living retirement, or perhaps something else?

On Friday, the Pacifica Forum met to discuss President Frohnmayer’s recent letter denouncing the forum and one of its more notable members, Valdas Anelauskas. PF founder Orval Etter drafted a letter to Frohnmayer, telling him to “get over it.” There was also talk of bringing “revisionist historian” Mark Weber back to campus on May 16. Finally, today’s ODE has a good write-up of the meeting. I’ll address all of this after the jump, in case you’re getting sick of reading about the Pacifica Forum. (more…)

You know, if there’s one group in football that doesn’t get as much press as it deserves, it’s the offensive line. Well, the Duck’s offensive line is looking to put a little glamor back in the position. They just put out a calendar full of humorous, surreal beefcake shots of themselves. All the proceeds will go towards the National Childhood Obesity Foundation (natch). If you’re wondering how surreal, well …

I’d make a lot of snarky comments, but Everyday Should Be Saturday is already on top of things. Thanks to OC Alum Ian Spencer for bringing this to our attention.

This is the lede of the ODE’s front-page story on Ben Linder, a university student who was killed by contras while working in Nicaragua (emphasis mine):

Inspired by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a socialist political party that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and helped some of the nation’s poorest people, Ben Linder of Portland moved to Nicaragua after graduating from the University of Washington in 1983.

That’s odd, considering what the Library of Congress Country Study on Nicaragua has to say (once again, emphasis mine):

In its eleven years in power, the Sandinista government never overcame most of the economic inequalities that it inherited from the Somoza era. Years of war, policy missteps, natural disasters, and the effects of the United States trade embargo all hindered economic development. The early economic gains of the Sandinistas were wiped out by seven years of sometimes precipitous economic decline, and in 1990, by most standards, Nicaragua and most Nicaraguans were considerably poorer than they were in the 1970s.

The ‘Ol Dirty’s front page today has a big spread on all the Earth Day events on campus. Below the fold, however, is a nice little story headlined “Researchers link biofuels to food price increase.” From the opening paragraphs of the article:

A sign outside of the SeQuential Biofuels retail fueling station in south Eugene reads “fight global warming.” But recent studies and media reports have increasingly questioned biofuel’s side in that and another life-and-death planet-scale fight.

As food riots erupt across the globe, researchers and analysts have been scrambling to explain why food prices have exploded in recent months, and the crosshairs are increasingly focused on corn-based ethanol biofuels.

The article goes on to mention the increasing criticism of biofuel production coming from sources such as The Economist (subscription wall), The New York Times and Science. Reason has been all over the subject as well. With all this scrutiny, you would think the government would be less eager to push through new biofuel subsidies and laws. Well …

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As I previously wrote, President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter where he addressed, as he called it, the “gutter bigotry” of the Pacifica Forum. Here’s the full text pertaining to the PF:

In moving forward, there will always be a diversity of opinion about our approaches to equity by constituencies both on and off our campus. Our efforts benefit from continued open and honest engagement in these differing perspectives. Yet, even as we talk about our different perspectives, we must remain committed to advancing these efforts.

Even as we make notable progress, there have been challenges to the inclusiveness of the community we attempt to create here. Just last term, a student writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald was the subject of a viciously personal anti-Semitic posting for expressing her journalistic views on American foreign policy. In another incident, a group meeting on campus, in an unabashedly racist manner, mocked efforts by others to honor contributions by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And, finally, larger issues of First Amendment freedom of expression were raised once again by the Pacifica Forum, an outside group that holds its meetings from time to time on campus, and which hosted as a speaker the person who targeted the Emerald writer.

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President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter denouncing the Pacifica Forum for its sometimes “unabashedly racist” content. The letter came at the urging of the community board of Oregon Hillel, a Jewish student group on campus; they were prompted to action by a disturbing, anti-semitic screed written by PF regular Valdas Anelauskas attacking ODE columnist Deborah Bloom.

While Frohnmayer spent plenty of time denouncing the forum, he was careful not to call for their outright banishment from campus. From the Register-Guard article:

Frohnmayer said in his letter that groups such as the Pacifica Forum may use UO facilities but do not speak for the university. The appearance of any speaker on campus does not imply the UO’s “endorsement, support, or even its moral indifference to the content of a message,” he wrote.

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