Oregon daily emerald., May 23, 1973, Page 3, Image 3

Sietz hopes to set precedent with job suit
“Our best defense is honesty and it will
remain that all the way through,” Stephen
Seitz said recently of the suit he filed in April
against members of the University ad
ministration, the political science department
and th< State Board of Higher Education.
Photos by Paul Klein
Seitz, who was notified of the termination
of his position as a visiting assistant professor
in March, has charged that the ad
ministration didn’t make an evaluation of his
performance and that the proper criteria for
making tenure decisions were ignored.
There are currently four visiting
assistant professors in political science, but
departmental funding changes required the
termination of one of those positions for next
year.
A department faculty vote rated the
professors in question on a 1-2-3-4 basis, and it
was decided that Seitz would be asked to
leave.
Seitz has charged that the reasons for his
dismissal were not given and he was not af
forded an opportunity to rebut the decision.
He also charged that his performance wasn’t
“compared with the other members of his
academic rank as part of the termination
process.”
Criteria set by the University’s Ad
ministrative Manual call for consideration of
teaching abilities, professional growth,
scholarly activities and services to the
University and community.
Seitz said that the record will clearly
show that he has fulfilled these crteria and
that his rights were violated in the decision
not to rehire him.
He added that the University will have
serious difficulties proving that he isn’t “up to
par as a professor.” In addition to receiving a
job offer with a salary increase from another
university six weeks before the department
decision, Seitz said his name was recently
submitted by a nationally-ranked department
for a national award for his dissertation.
In addition to that, during the last 18
months Seitz has published two articles, an
essay and an edited piece. Seitz said a
manuscript for a book is almost ready to be
sent to the publishers.
Seitz emphasized that the court case
would not be “self-serving”in that it is
disruptive to his personal life and very costly,
but he said it is necessary for other reasons.
Seitz said that if the court rules in his
favor, it could establish a precedent so that
other persons would have some recourse in
similar situations “at considerably less cost.”
Even if he loses the case, it will at least
reveal some information about procedures in
the University and the department that
“otherwise wouldn’t be heard by the citizens
of the state," Seitz said.
He said that the trial could reveal “a
minor Watergate” concerning the procedures
used in the decision to terminate.
Seitz added that some administrators
don’t condone what was done, but they are
now caught in the awkward position of having
to make “postfacto” justifications for the
decision.
In March, two students, Bill Schaub and
Jeff Jefferson, were appointed by Bill Wyatt,
then ASUO president, to represent the
student’s views in the controversy.
Schaub said, “As consumers, we’re being
cheated, but the department and the ad
ministration aren’t willing to listen to us.”
He said that even after he and Jefferson
appealed to the administration, there was no
real effort to re-evaluate the deciion.
“They chose to go along with the
department. They made no effort to check out
our allegations,” Schaub said.
He claimed that “the files clearly show
that Seitz was easily number one or two of the
four visiting professors.”
The two originally took the case to the
late Dean Burton Moyer. Schaub said Moyer
told them that the vote was an attempt on the
part of the department to bargain for an
additional position by putting their best
person last.
Jefferson said that decisions of this im
portance shouldn’t be based on personality,
but rather on professionalism.
He added, “Even dogs can differentiate
between being tripped over and being
kicked.”
Law students to pay
higher fees next year
By TODD MERRIMAN
Of the Emerald
PORTLAND (Special) — Students entering the University Law
School next year will pay $100 in new fees as a result of action Tuesday
by the State Board of Higher Education.
The new law school fees created by the board will increase to $320
for first year law students in the 1974-75 academic year and will rise to
$420 for the entering class in 1975-76.
The board made clear its position that the fee hikes may later be
accompanied by, and are not in lieu of, tuition increases.
Revenue produced by the new fee schedule is earmarked for
improvements in the law school program, with particular emphasis to
be placed on correcting deficiencies in the Law library.
The fee schedule re-organization includes three new fees:
— A $20 application fee, effective for applications for admission in
1974 and subsequent years.
— A $100 admission acceptance fee, effective for students ad
mitted in 1974-75 and subsequent years.
— An annual law school resources fee to be paid by all law school
students. The resources fee will increase from $100 in 1973-74 to $200 in
1974-75 to $300 in 1975-76 and subsequent years.
A provision of the board’s plan authorizes the law school Dean to
waive payment of the new fees in cases of financial need.
But the waiver authority is limited to 30 percent of the potential
income from the new fees in 1973-74, and is reduced to 20 percent in
1974-75, and to 10 percent in 1975-76.
Amazon
receives
new lease
of life
PORTLAND (Special) —
Thirty of the World War II era
buildings in the University’s
Amazon housing complex
received a new lease on life
Tuesday as the Oregon State
Board of Higher Education voted
approval of a $170,000 foundation
replacement project.
The thirty one-story units, each
containing four apartments, had
been rated as structurally un
The new law school fee schedule is a modified version of a plan
submitted to the board by law school Dean Eugene Scoles. Seoles’ plan
would have created $580 in new fees for entering law students. Under
the Scoles’ plan, however, the law school dean had unlimited authority
to grant complete or partial waiver or deferral of the new fees in cases
of extreme hardship or merit.
Another key provision of Scole’s plan was the intention that the fee
increases were to be in lieu of tuition raises.
Student bar association president Donald Chalmers un
successfully urged the board to include comprehensive waiver
authority in the new plan.
The creation of the new fees with only a limited waiver op
portunity, Chalmers said, would impose financial hardship on many
students. More than half of the students entering law school are
already indebted by the cost of their undergraduate education, he
added.
Chalmers told the board the fee program should extend for only
the current biennium and not to a third year of fees.
Noting that law students pay 31 percent of the cost of their law
educations as opposed to a 24 percent average for graduate students at
the University, Chalmers contended that law school needs should be
met in the future by a separate law school budget.
R.W. Nahstoll, Portland attorney and chairer of the Law School
Board of Visitors, told the board that the law school was suffering
from a chronic lack of adequate legislative funding.
Nahstoll said that, whereas, the University law school ranked
twelfth among nineteen comparable law schools five years ago, in
terms of faculty salaries, it now ranks seventeenth, ahead of only the
law schools at the Universities of Idaho and Montana.
A final provision of the plan, as approved by the board, states that
the program “be understood to be experimental and to establish no
precedent for differential treatment of students of other graduate
schools or departments.”
sound because of faulty foun
dations.
As approved by the board,
funds for the foundation
replacement will come from
repair reserves and excess
sinking fupd balances from
married student housing.
A possible policy battle over
the wisdom of performing major
maintainance on the aging
facilities failed to materialize at
Board member, Edward
Westerdahl, who has previously
criticized the project, was not
present when the board reached
its decision Tuesday.
Westerdahl has suggested
direct rent subsidies and sub
sidizations of private develop
ments as alternative methods by
which the board could provide
low rent student housing.
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