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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 29, 1981)
Faculty scrubs PE requirement By ANN PORTAL Of lh* Emerald After more than four decades as part of the University curriculum, the physical education requirement hit the showers Wednesday The University Assembly overwhelm ingly approved a motion to eliminate the five-term requirement, including an amendment expressing annoyance' with academic cuts made for financial reasons Beginning fall term 1982, students no longer will be required to take PE classes, although courses still will be offered for an additional fee The department plans to keep all its faculty, says Celeste Ulrich, health, recreation and physical education dean PE department head Michael Ellis, who made the motion to drop the require ment, said he regrets having to make the change “This could be extremely disruptive to a very large department,” Ellis said But dropping the requirement is the only way to deal with a financial setback imposed by the Legislature, he said Physical education is too important to be deleted by a budget footnote. Ellis said The state Legislature cut PE general fund support during its last session The cut would have required the University to slice $150,000 from other programs to fund the department The requirement was an obstacle that prevented the PE department from becoming self-supporting. Ellis said If physical education must pay its own way with user fees, it can't require students to take the courses, he said Mathematics prof Lewis Ward, one of three faculty members who voted against the motion at a senate meeting last week, suggested faculty approve an amend ment indicating the Legislature should not solve budget problems by mandating curriculum cuts Faculty members quickly approved the amendment, which approves dropping the requirement "because of a legislative budget note and not for any academic reasons " Ulrich said she was not pleased by the situation that prompted Wednesday's action "You can't be glad when you've watched something die," she said But the amendment indicated the faculty’s support of the PE program, Ulrich said PE fees will be kept as low as possible next year by relying more on community fees, she said "The more successful we are. the lower the cost " Photo by Mark Pyncs Michael Ellis Emerald Vol 83. No 40 Eugene. Oregon 97403 Thursday, October 29, 1981 Olum relays proposed budget cuts to faculty By ANN PORTAL Of th« Emerald Budget cuts suggested by Pres Paul Olum would suspend the international education pro gram for a year freeze searches to fill a number of key adminis trative positions and leave the University with the equivalent of 85 to 90 fewer faculty than it was supposed to have in 1982-83 Olum announced the cuts — which equal another 4-percent reduction in the University's budget — at a University As sembly Wednesday, just four days before a deadline set by Roy Lieuallen, Chancellor of the State Board of Higher Education The cuts will cost the Univer sity budget another $2 14 mil lion next year They include eliminating the natural history museum, filling senior-level faculty positions by making junior-level appoint ments. closing the art museum two months during the summer, and reducing the amount spent on services, supplies and ad ministration None of us like it, but we don't know where else to get it," Olum said of the cuts, which drew criticism from faculty members at the assembly "We have tried our best to look at alternatives that are bet ter " Faculty asked Olum to dis cuss those alternatives, but he refused to identify areas that were considered Those pro grams would think of them selves as "next on the list," needlessly damaging morale, he said Olum said faculty may wonder why he is presenting additional cuts after saying in September that all reductions were in place But the chancellor’s office sent new guidelines after that date identifying several thousands of dollars in additional cuts, he said The reductions proposed Wednesday comply with cuts in Gov Victor Atiyeh's budget, underfunding of the Oregon Public Employee's Union con tract, legislative cuts carried into next year and quite a bit more.’' as requested by the chancellor, Olum said All cuts already are in place, and have been discussed by the Advisory Council, deans and department heads, he said But faculty members voiced a number of concerns Wednes day. including worries over the effects of the cuts on University quality, the priority given to re storing areas cut, and the ra tionale behind some of the reductions Much of the discussion con cerned freezing the internation al education program, which sends students to a number of countries, including France, England and Japan By suspending the program for one year, the University will save nearly $150,000, Olum said, promising the program would be the first area to be restored However, the move may not be reversible, and it could im poverish the University in terms of culture and foreign ex change, faculty members said The Advisory Council has en couraged Olum to look at all possible alternatives to su spending the University's par ticipation in the program, said political science head Larry Pierce, a council member Upcoming searches for several administrative posts al so will be shelved, Olum said Positions that will be filled by acting administrators — or faculty already at the University — include the provost, a vice provost, the allied arts and ar chitecture dean, the community services and public affairs dean. the computing director, the law librarian and several others still to come These are expensive posi tions," Olum said, and filling them with people already at the University should save $280,000 However, Olum asked faculty to keep in mind that the freeze was only to cope with the cur rent financial crisis We ought to review where we stand on all of this in two years " Regarding the 85 to 90 full time-equivalent positions to be left open. Olum said no tenured faculty or personnel in the mid dle of contracts will be laid off The number of positions cut would have been about 10 per cent of the 1982-83 faculty members Instead, cuts will be met by not rehiring some personnel whose contracts have expired, not filling positions of some who quit or retire, leaving the posi tions of faculty on leave of ab sences open, and not filling new positions For those positions that ab solutely have to be filled, Olum said there would be a "firm in sistence" on hiring faculty at the junior level to save on salaries and fringe benefits, even though the position might have been one of a senior faculty member Further cuts were made in the amount to be spent for heat, supplies and maintenance, which are ‘‘going to make it pretty tight," he said The Labor Education and Re search Center and the Bureau Continued on Page 3 Derek Bell Photo by Erich Boekelheide Panelists go after Reagan’s policies By DAWN GARCIA Of th« Emerald Pres Reagan's social policies are based on a con tradicting ideology that singles out the poor, women and other minority groups, a panel told an EMU Ballroom crowd Wed nesday night Reagans "conservative liberalism” contains con tradictions because of its simultaneous defense of the market system and the tradi tional values of family and religion, said Cheyney Ryan, an associate professor of philosophy and vice president of the Federation of Teachers “The commitment to both at the same time causes the greatest source of hypocrisy in the new right," Ryan said For example, Reagan's policies oppose abortion, yet defend the rights of corpora tions to distribute potentially poisonous baby formula to in fants in Third World countries, she said Such conservative econ omic views are translated into social policies that have hit lower-income people — especially women — the har dest, said Rep Margie Hen driksen, D-Eugene, also a founder of the National Caucus of Women Continued on Page 3
