A couple of thoughts on the latest attempt to defund the ODE:
The Exec recommendation that gave rise to the decrease looks very familiar from last year. It’s based on a reader survey conducted during the 2003-2004 school year by the ODE, on its website, and it indicates that some percentage or other of the ODE’s readership is comprised of non-students. The slicing of the budget supposedly accounts for the non-student readership, although they might just as well have rolled a twenty-sided die.
This survey is completely useless, from a statistical standpoint, as the participants were self-selected. Moreover, there were only about a hundred respondents (D’oh! See below.) And it was on the website, if memory serves, which gets an unsurprisingly large number of readers from outside Eugene – a glance at all the random commenters they get from other states will convince you of this.
To reiterate: this survey was from the last school year.
That is, unless I’m missing something, they’re not just using meaningless figures, they’re using out-of-date meaningless figures.
Does this make anyone else want to just jump out of the window? Still, as my officemate put it: “Who ever heard of a university-subsidized student newspaper, anyway? It’s the kind of madness you’d only see in the liberal bizarro-world of Eugene.”
UPDATED TO ADD: According to Moriah’s story from last year, it was 300 students. My memory ain’t what it used to be.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2005 at 17:13 by olly and is filed under Uncategorized.
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