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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 12, 1981)
daily%nerald Vol 83, No 27 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Monday, October 12,1981 Stop decline, Olum exhorts ANN PORTAL Of EmaraM The University must draw a line on how much it will cooperate in the significant dismantling of its academic core, Pres Paul Olum said at his inauguration Sunday For that reason, he said, plans for the future should be based on a level of funding before this year's emergency reductions "What is important is that we must not plan our own defeat in anticipation of its arrival,’’ Olum said Olum asked University departments and school chairers to submit plans for increasing educational quality, and which indicate what direction their departments or schools should take in the next five years A central committee, headed by Vice-Provost Robert Albrecht, will consolidate each department and school’s suggestions into a comprehensive plan which will be pre sented to the entire University community for discussion, Olum said The plans may provoke jurisdictional disputes, which would be resolved by broad University discussion, he added Many proposals will outline modest changes, such as indications of disciplinary areas that should be added — or dropped — as departmental vacancies occur, he said But others will propose more comprehensive plans requiring a considerable amount of reorganization, including the possiblity of moving and recombining units within one school, or combining curricula from different schools, he said Olum acknowledged that faculty may question plans built on previous funding levels, but, he said, the University must get a clear picture of what its potential really is before worrying about further cuts “I believe that before we can talk meaningfully about budget reductions and cutbacks, we must first understand the University and its real aspirations over the coming years,” Olum said "Without that vision, there is little to sustain our spirit as we face the bad days and the repeated blows of adversity." When adjustments and cutbacks have to be made, they will be done in a way that preserves the central purpose and academic core of the University, Olum said Emerald Sports “Feeling the cuts” On May 7,1981, the University administration announced that four intercollegiate sports would no longer be funded The men's gymnastics squad, consistently ranked among the top five in the nation, felt the ax, and so did the baseball team, a campus fixture since 1908 Women’s golf and soccer, two new and relatively inexpensive sports, were cut as well For the athletic department, the cuts were a financial solution to its problems — part of a $945,803 slash in the budget But for the athletes, coaches and fans, the cuts went deeper than that They forced changes in lives, in careers, in schools Now just five months later, new athletic director Rick Bay declares he's committed to restoring the four sports But where the money will come from, and how they'll be revived remain unanswered questions The Emerald Sports staff has put together a five-part series entitled "Feeling the Cuts" that probes this issue The series will report the current status of each sport along with the thoughts of the athletes and coaches, and it will speculate about the future of those sports The series begins today, on page 13, with a report on the University's successful women's soccer team, the lone survivor of the cuts Past Pres, says PNRC is unsuccessful attempt By SALLY HODGKINSON Of Hi* Emerald The Pacfic Northwest Resouce Center is an experiment that has failed and should be moved off campus, says former University Pres William Boyd, who helped create the program "When the clinic was still in the planning stages, (former law school dean) Chapin Clark and I both knew there were risks involved and that it was possible it would be a troublesome arrangement," said Boyd in an Emerald inter view before the inauguration of Pres Paul Olum "But we also saw the advantage of providing good clinical experience for students, and that seemed so important that we thought it was worth running the risk. "Well, it was risky, it was difficult, and it hasn't worked out.” Although Boyd said he doesn't regret run ning that risk, he added that the clinic isn’t compatible with the University's concern with fairness and its emphasis on control over its own programs "I think both of those principles are endan gered by the present relationship." University control of the PNRC "is contam inated” by the “essential veto power” of the National Wildlife Federation, Boyd said, adding that the clinic's choice of cases to work on "raises questions about fairness and whether or not students are getting the kind of training in what is appropriate in public policy issues." The clinic's relationship to the University would still be an administrative headache even if timber-businessmen hadn’t raised a ruckus last spring, Boyd said. "It would be a silent issue, and fewer people would know it, but the issue would be there and would have to be dealt with honestly." It's a "red herring" to assume that Olum is bowing to business interests if he decides to move the clinic off campus, Boyd said. “I’m sorry that attitude exists becasue it makes it harder to do what, in my opinion, ought to be done. The thing I hate about this is that Paul Olum and (law school dean) Derrick Bell are left confronting a no-win situation they did not create."
