God, that pun is awful, but I’m sticking with it.

I heard about this last week on Monday from some friends in Greek Life but I wasn’t sure it was true until I came across this.

The University chapter of Theta Chi closed its doors last Monday after being on an extended probation period because the members of the house failed to meet University standards to remain part of the Greek Community. Live-in members must now find alternative housing before winter term begins.

The ODE and their best journalisting couldn’t discover why Theta Chi was shut down, but some of the juicy rumors that I came across last week included:

-Several members of Theta Chi supposedly jumping members of Lambda Chi Alpha.

-Reports of Hazing

-General Douchebaggery

My question is how messed up is the Greek Life system that Theta Chi can remain on probation for 7 years? Or that one of the fraternities has a reputation for being the rape house? Remember the stabbing at Lambda Chi last year?

In general, I don’t have a problem with the Fraternity/Sorority system. They leave me alone, I leave them alone (except Alpha Epsilon Pi. I do not like them, but that’s only because they have a guy in their house who I personally know attempted to rape someone. No biggie, though).

However, the people at Greek Life need to get a handle on their fraternities. They’ve had some great press from the Ol’ Dirty in the last couple of years but several houses on campus are really hurting the good that the others do. With incidents like these it’s no wonder that UO Greek Life hovers around 8% (if that) of the total UO population.

Those knuckleheads over at the Big O are holding a contest to create a new state flag. They’ve already narrowed the submissions down to ten, dreadful entries, and they want you, the good citizens of Oregon, to vote for the winner. Here’s my favorite (favorite as in most repulsive), which apparently displays a gravy boat floating in a sea of blood and illuminated by the star of Bethlehem:

Designed by a kindergarten class … I mean, Eddy Lyons, 42.

The winning flag will be presented to the state legislature, who will promptly laugh and disregard it.

P.S. Headline reference here.

The OC Archive has been updated with links to all issues published so far for Volume XXVI and the previously unlinked issues for Volume XXV. Enjoy.

In response to Stephen Steven Soderbergh’s swooning hagiography of Che Guevara, Reason has posted no less than four different articles in the last couple of days condemning the film and lamenting the disgusting love affair people have with the Che, the Castro regime, and its Chavista sidekick in Venezuela.

There’s way too much to try to summarize here, but they’re all worth reading. After all, Soderbergh’s “Guerilla” is almost certain to end up being screened here at the U of O by some student group or another purporting to promote “social justice” or some other euphemism for anti-capitalism.

The new issue is online and will be back from print just in time for no one to read it! Inside you will find:

• Hot ASUO happenings
• A manly opinion piece by Scott Younker
• Disgusting anonymous sex stories
• A message from the future by Drew Cattermole
• And, just for Olly, the return of the secret message

The UO administration is going to push 2010 graduations forward a week, meaning during finals week, so as not to conflict with the NCAA Track and Field Finals. From an email sent out to the deans and directors listserv on behalf of Senior Vice President and Provost Jim Bean:

We are planning ahead to accommodate a scheduling issue for June 2010. UO has been awarded the NCAA Track & Field Finals June 9-12, 2010. This coincides with UO commencement ceremonies currently scheduled for June 10-12, 2010.  After careful consultation with many groups, we are moving commencement back to June 3, 4, 5, 2010 (not this year) but not changing any class or exam schedules. This means that commencement ceremonies will be held June 3, 4, 5, 2010 and final exams will take place June 7 -11, 2010. Thus, seniors graduating spring term 2010 will march in commencement before they take their final exams. This is not ideal, but the preponderance of feeling was that it was the better solution.

It’s completely asinine to make seniors complete their finals and deal with graduation all in the same week. I usually have trouble taking the “athletics have completely supplanted education in American universities” argument too seriously, but this is just ridiculous. The email, by the way, was sent our way by everyone’s favorite gadfly Professor Bill Harbaugh, who had this to say:

I suppose the next step is to appoint our Athletic Director – a booster who doesn’t have a college degree and got the job after donating $2 million to buy out his predecessor – UO’s next President.

I’m guessing this is somehow related to the hundreds of thousands Phil Knight has given to UO to supplement Frohnmayer’s salary, and to the millions he (with some from AD Kilkenny as well) has given to the Frohnmayer’s Fanconi Foundation.

Briefly came across this on yahoo news.

The gist of the article is that President-elect Barack Obama is alienating himself from the liberals that supported him with such stances as:

-Letting the tax cuts of people who make $250,000+ expire in 2010

-A “responsible drawdown” from Iraq

-Appointing Hillary Clinton, keeping Robert Gates, and having a centrist cabinet

-Not taxing the windfall profits of oil companies

To sum up this article:

Now it’s Obama’s Cabinet moves that are drawing the most fire. It’s not just that he’s picked Clinton and Gates. It’s that liberal Democrats say they’re hard-pressed to find one of their own on Obama’s team so far – particularly on the economic side, where people like Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers are hardly viewed as pro-labor.

Apparently, what they want is a cabinet made entirely of Nanci Pelosi.

The Ol’ Dirty isn’t known for the high quality of its letters-to-the-editor, but one Chelsea Beebe really brought her A-game in the latest issue:

My personal experience with the Department of Public Safety has been a terrible one. Freshman year, my car was parked in the dorm parking lot, literally 20 feet from the dorm, and it got stolen. Where was DPS? Luckily my car was recovered, but it needed repairs, so while it was in the shop I got a rental. I went to DPS to get a temporary parking permit for my rental car, and not only did they make me pay for it, they would only let me have a permit that lasted two days at a time. I was busy and didn’t have time to renew the permit at one point, and only two hours after it had expired I had three tickets. So, lets recap: My car got stolen under DPS’s watch and it doesn’t have the courtesy to give me a free temporary permit for my rental car? That’s just not right. I wrote to you because four years later, I still fume about it and other DPS injustices (such as ticketing my fiancee’s car 10 minutes after his meter expired). I think UO students need to be represented and DPS needs to realize it has some unfair ticketing practices.

Unfortunately, it’s Finals Week and, with Christmas Break nearly upon us, the likelihood of the Emerald publishing a response to Ms. Beebe’s philippic seems slim. The Commentator would therefore like to address the following open letter to little Chelsea:

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Over at Reason, Catherine Mangu-Ward has a long piece that helps to deflate the notion that Congressional Democrats and many on the left have been pimping lately: namely that “excessive deregulation” is chiefly to blame for our current financial woes.

I don’t really have time to summarise the whole thing right now, so I’ll just offer this quote:

Letting Freddie and Fannie get away with murder wasn’t deregulation. It was bad governance. And letting deregulation take the primary blame for a credit-fueled housing bubble and its aftermath isn’t an argument. It’s misdirection.

Today’s economy has done a lot to discredit the free market in the minds of a lot of people. Nanci Pelosi and friends are doing their best to put even more nails in the coffin and drooling over the prospect of the Federal Government assuming even more control over the commanding heights of the economy. Why let them go completely unchallenged? Read the rest.

Celebrate the repeal of the 18th Amendment by getting shit faced tonight!

Today’s cover story in the Eugene Weekly purports to be a debunking of the gun rights lobby’s concerns about the incoming Obama Administration. The author, Rick Levin takes as his starting point a random, poorly written blog comment on Politico.com in which the the poster claims to be scared of Barack Obama and insists that the NRA is deterring an “open attack” on America’s heartland. Having managed to dig up this unquestionably authoritative representation of gun rights advocates nationwide, Levin feels comfortable announcing that “likely it is just this breed of hysteria that has caused local and national gun sales to spike.”

Well, color me convinced.

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Today’s Eugene Weekly cover story is on the recent surge of gun sales in light of Barack Obama’s victory. The writer, Rick Levin, chalks it up to the usual suspects: NRA hysteria and rednecks.

But is stocking up on guns and ammo really such a bad idea? Consider that Obama has tapped Eric Holder to be attorney general. Holder is a notorious supporter of gun control and even signed an amicus brief in support of D.C. in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court case that struck down D.C’s unconstitutional handgun ban.

It doesn’t help that Levin also happens to be a self-aggrandizing dumbass. To wit:

Apparently, I’m a very good shot with the high-powered stuff. A dead eye. The first time I squeezed the trigger of a 9-mm Glock, I drilled a kill-center shot into a paper target strung about 20 feet away. Almost took off the thumb on my left hand, too, when the slide kicked back and hit my second and third knuckle, opening up a bloody wound that — once I realized I hadn’t accidentally killed myself or anyone else — only added to my feeling of bad-assedness.

Loading a gun, holding a gun, shooting a gun like that is no joke. It’s like wielding the power of God.

Perhaps when addressing such topics in the future, the EW could choose a writer who doesn’t have his head stuck up his ass.

Tonight the ASUO Senate will be hearing a surplus request that would extend LTD bus service to campus until 2 a.m. along the 79x route.

The 79x route is considered vital because it runs past the Stadium Park apartments, where the Administration decided to house overflow freshmen this year. Without the bus route, freshmen are forced to walk through Alton Baker Park at night to get home.

The plan, constructed by ASUO exec Sam Dotters-Katz, would cost $40,257, roughly half of which would be covered by the UO Administration. It’s good to see the Administration covering some of this cost, considering it created this boondoggle in the first place.

The off-campus freshmen have put a big strain on other university services, such as the Designated Driver Shuttle. In lieu of bus service, the freshmen hitch rides with DDS, meaning the people DDS is actually intended for (drunkards) are left out in the cold (or, worse, decide to drive anyways).

I’ll have a summary of the meeting tonight, and, as always, you can get live updates via Twitter.

President Frohnmayer just announced the long-term plans of the UO Athletic Department:

EUGENE, Ore. — (Dec. 2, 2008) — University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer and Athletics Director Pat Kilkenny today announced their succession plan for several key positions in the UO athletics department. Frohnmayer said he intends to promote Mike Bellotti, head football coach, to athletics director when Pat Kilkenny steps down from the position at a time yet to be determined. When that occurs, Chip Kelly, offensive coordinator for the UO football program, will assume the role of head coach.

Which is funny in light of today’s column in the ODE, “Could Kelly leave Oregon?“

I don’t normally visit the website of the Daily Emerald, mostly out of sheer laziness and some spite, but I was looking today and found this near the bottom of the page in the right-hand column:

The actual hot link says “Sex Toys” and redirects the viewer to vibrator.com. Mostly I’m just curious as to why their only sponsored link is to a vibrator clearing house. I’m not bringing this up to blast them due to some social conservatism that I have, but I’m wondering: Since when can college students afford to buy sex toys?

Maybe it’s just me and my broken wallet, but the last time I dropped $50 or more dollars on sexual pleasure I was on a date.