For those who haven’t read the newest issue (or who couldn’t read the text on the page), the Oregon Commentator has officially challenged the Oregon Voice to a drinking contest. The text of the challenge:

The Oregon Commentator

would like to extend a formal challenge to

The Oregon Voice

in a feat of boasting and drinking

at the time and location of their choosing.

The Rules

1.   The Oregon Commentator and the Oregon Voice shall field a team of eight members each – four women and four men.

2.  Expected attire is business-casual. No jeans or t-shirts allowed, shirts and ties or dresses preferred.

3.  Team members are eligible only if they have contributed content to the magazine in the past – this includes art, layout, writing or any other contribution, so long as there is documented proof (name in masthead or magazine).

4.  This team must include each respective magazine’s Editor-In-Chief, Publisher and Managing Editor.

5.  Each team shall be split into four teams of two – one woman and one man. Each two-person team shall undergo a different challenge:

Four-Loko Pong

Edward Forty-Hands

Beer Bat

Quarters

6.  Upon completion of these four challenges, the full eight-person team will participate in a Boat Race.

7.  Each challenge, including the Boat Race, is worth one point each. The team with the most points at the end is the winner.

(But really, we’ll all be hammered, and winners.)

So I’ve been holding off on writing about the new EMU, cos I can’t seem to get anybody on the record explicitly about it (yet). I can write about one thing, though, because it has been discussed in public meetings: student group spaces.

Currently, many ASUO fee-funded programs have their own offices, including the Oregon Commentator, the Black Student Union, the Designated Driver Shuttle, etc. Every plan I’ve seen for the new EMU includes collaborative student spaces: complete with a desk, a computer, and a locker for personal affects. Basically, student groups will be placed in cubicles, with big desks and collaborative spaces that any student can use.

This distinct lack of student group space presents a problem at very least for us — we need our full office to produce a magazine. Every week we are in the office, working away all day trying to get the issue edited and laid out. We print over and over again, we put the pages on the ground to look at. Without this space, our issues would look a lot less sharp than they do (and they’re not terribly sharp to begin with, so just imagine the horror).

Even outside of the Commentator, other student groups utilize the shit out of their spaces. As a former Designated Driver Shuttle employee, I can tell you that a collaborative space in that environment would be detrimental to the program. I can only imagine that many other student groups would agree.

I understand that the EMU as it stands currently does not provide many spaces for students not in student groups (see: most students). That is definitely a problem, as the student union is supposed to serve all students. But a good friend of mine pointed out to me yesterday that the output of student programs often serves to benefit the lives of the rest of the student population. In the case of most programs, I would say that this is fairly true. Assault Prevention Shuttle, for one. Child Care Subsidy for another. Will a lack of a distinct office hinder the ability of these programs to do their jobs? Maybe, maybe not. That remains to be seen.

I’ve been saying for a while that the fight for student group space in the new EMU is going to be horrendous. But it’s going to be a lot worse if there isn’t even any student group space to fight for.

Public affairs news:

• Non-terrorism: Two late-breaking, not-terribly-descriptive articles about a ‘suspicious,’ but innocuous, package. (Daily Emerald, Register-Guard)
• Financial wheels a-movin’: Willamette Week reported yesterday that Gov. Ted Kulongoski and his minders have been studiously taking the measure of UO Pres. Richard Lariviere’s index finger with a view to finding just the right length of ribbon to tie around it. Lariviere’s name, it seems, has gotten connected to a few turkeys found at the Cratchit household this Christmas, or at least that’s the angle UO Matters takes on it. That is, he’s allowed UO employees to take overtime to compensate for state-mandated furlough days, in effect paying them more for less work. Probably not a tremendously favorable development for Lariviere’s restructuring plans.
• Musical chairs: UO Matters with a retrospective on Randy Geller’s career at UO to date.
• Drugs: Measure 74 supporters praise it for creating regulations. Opponents want you to think of the poor district attorneys. The Emerald’s Ian Geronimo wants you to know more. But you, internet reader, are deemed unworthy of the story’s impressive graphic element and man-on-the-street box.
• ASUO: The Emerald skims over the last ASUO Senate meeting. The Commentator slogs through it.
• Gongs: UO handed out three to community members today.
• Pulpits: A NASA official is coming to the UO to talk about global warming.
• Color news: The Emerald casts doubt on the verdure of other consumer products? (Emerald)
• Dept. of Catching a Falcon With a Teaspoon: The Oregonian decides that Oregon’s relatively high unemployment rate probably is David Wu’s fault to the extent he is a member of Congress, but there’s not really anything he could have done.
• Federal Politics and Bizarre Exchanges With Baristi: You see, Barack Obama, when you are a “woman or African American,” and  therefore seem to certain people as though you will take away their guns, this is what happens. (Oregonian)

Opinion:

• Eugene City Councilor-elect Pat Farr seems to believe people sitting around a school cafeteria is as exciting as “AND BEARD WITH AN ONSIDE KICK!!!! DID IT GO TEN YARDS? IT DID! THEY GOT IT! ON THE 46-YARD LINE, SO TRAILING 21-10 CHIP KELLY REACHES INTO HIS BAG OF TRICKS! I THINK THE KICKER ACTUALLY ENDED UP GETTING ON THE FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOKIT! WHAAAAA!!!!”
• The Emerald’s Tyree Harris opines that he just released an autobiographical hip-hop album, and wants you to know it’s real.
• Editorials: The Emerald wonders if perhaps we might not like to try not voting along party lines. The Guard’s editors want us voting for Bruce Hanna and talking to bigots. The Eugene Weekly has a spate of endorsements.
• Letters: The usual suspiciously effusive praise for public officials in the Register-Guard’s mailbag, while the Weekly’s has a lot of that, but also some more entertaining fare.

Scene:

• Music: Band comes to town, suggests it may “keep on rocking.”
• Cuisine: If there is to be a most vegan-friendly college in anglophone North America, then PETA’s hip, trendy younger sister organization declares that school will either be the University of Oregon or one of 79 other schools.
• Lifestyle: Ever wonder what an Emerald reporter thinks of local pumpkin patches? Ever wonder how an Emerald reporter thinks you should dress? Now’s your chance to find out.

Sports:

• Former Oregon Running player went to jail.
• One Oregon Volleyball player can serve the ball very hard, and is more important now that other notable Oregon Volleyball players have graduated. (Emerald)
• The Emerald’s Robert Husseman describes national polls as “the most arbitrary method of measurement possible” in ranking football teams. I would argue that the players’ median nipple diameter would be slightly more arbitrary. (For the record, the South Carolina Gamecocks would be No. 1. Don’t ask me how I know. Let’s just say it was traumatic.)
• The Emerald’s Lucas Clark argues that he doesn’t know what is going to happen to Oregon Basketball this season and runs the rule over a couple of new players. The first game against the Hated Beacons is coming up.

So, in case this blog is your one and only news source (as it should be,) some Duke graduate took too many of her roommate’s Adderall and made a PowerPoint presentation detailing the sexual performance of every guy she fucked in college. It’s understandable, really, who hasn’t created an intricate digital record of their conquests, including bar graphs, photos, and a “Memorable Moments” quotes section?

Karen F. Owen’s only real mistake was emailing to her three best friends, who, as any Lifetime movie can attest, will take every chance to humiliate you on a national scale. The list went fully viral after the blogs Jezebel and Deadspin posted the full presentation, and it’s been getting attention from The Today Show and the New York Times.

Owen has pussed out, saying she regrets the list “with all my heart. I would never intentionally hurt the people that are mentioned on it.” This writer, however, sees this document as a valuable teaching tool, not only for the men on the list, but for the sexually inept everywhere. Subject 7 gives a lesson in neediness when he texts “…?” exactly every 13 minutes, and Subject 3 shows the importance of praise with his post-blowie high fives.

The subjects themselves are not too pleased with Owen’s report, no lawsuits have been filed yet but Deadspin had to redact the names of the subjects and blur faces after getting too many angry emails and phone calls, some from the subject’s parents. But every filthy cloud has a silver lining, within 12 hours of posting the story Jezebel received emails from William Morris Endeavor talent agency and HarperCollins, who called Owen’s the “female equivalent of Tucker Max, and I admire his sense of self-empowerment!” Obviously she hasn’t read the Tucker Tries Buttsex story. A movie producer contacted Deadspin for Owen’s email address, explaining his interest in the story by mentioning his last successful movies, “Friday” and “You Got Served.”

This is not the first time in American collegiate history that a fuck list has been concocted. In 1977, two MIT students, Roxanne Ritchie and Susan Gilbert, published their own “Consumer Guide to MIT Men” in an MIT alternative weekly. The guide rated 36 men on their sexual prowess, but, even at the height of the sexual revolution, the girls were nearly kicked out of the school and over 200 students signed a protest petition against the article. Given that at the time MIT was probably overwhelming male-populated, the ladies’ table-turning exercise was probably doomed from the start.

Personally, my favorite part of this whole debacle is the media’s decision to name it “the fuck list.” So many other choices were available, “penis presentation,” “jizz journal,” “dick diary,” but even the old media was unafraid to stand up and call a spade a spade, and for that I salute. Now if only they could be this honest about Christine O’Donnell (yes, she is a witch.)

Passing by a tour group yesterday, I heard the guide mention that he didn’t know what was planned for Mac Court after the glorious Phil Knight Immortal Arena is finished. Evidently, they plan to renovate the structure for architecture classes or some such nonsense, but I think I have a few better ideas:

1. The Phil Knight Memorial Casino! Come spend your hard earned social security check on craps, blackjack, and slots! We’ve zoned the PKNC off of University property so we can serve drinks now!
2. Home base for GI Joe. With a few renovations, the court can act as a hanger.
3. Missile silo.
4. The Phil Knight Memorial Rollercoaster and Water Park! Get dished then come and get soaked!

If you want to read live coverage of the Senate meeting, click the link below.

Senate!

The time is finally upon us. The RIOT Issue is online! Complete with an interview with a hunter, riot coverage, Where In The World Is Richard Lariviere, the story of Gutenberg College, and much much more! Don’t hesitate — download it today!

The website NoSlang.com is devoted to decoding web slang for parents, which is something that should never, ever happen. It was started in 2005 as a way “to impress your kids by speaking their language,” made easy with their GoogleTranslate-esque Internet Slang Translator. You can paste any slang term into the box, press the button, and up comes the Baby Boomer-friendly translation. There are also separate boxes to check if you want the swear words censored, if the slang is in “l33t,” and one that says “include rejects?” which possibly means that it translates Jersey Shore-speak.
The site was created by Ryan Jones after “talking to his boss’s kids on AOL Instant Messenger and not being able to understand a damn thing they were typing.” Despite compiling his vast database of slang, Jone’s still seems ignorant to the times, referring to internet speak as “AOLbonics.”
Why he was talking to his boss’s kids online, we will never know, but it is certain that he is placing dangerous information into the hands of people who do not need to know that FMH means “Fuck Me Harder.”

Common Sexting Slang Terms

Warning: some of these terms are vulgar. This list is nowhere close to exhaustive, words can be combined, removed, and invented on the fly.

8	Oral Sex
143	I Love You
cu46	See You For Sex
DUM	Do You Masturbate?
GNOC	Get Naked On Cam
GYPO	Get Your Pants Off
GNRN	Get Naked right Now
FMH	Fuck Me Harder
IWS	I Want Sex
IIT	Is It Tight?
Q2C	Quick To Come
RUH	Are You Horny?
TDTM	Talk Dirty To Me
S2R	Send To Receive
NIFOC	Naked In Front Of Computer
SorG	Straight Or Gay?
JO	Jerk Off
PAW	Parents Are Watching
PIR	Parent In Room
POS	Parent Over Shoulder
YWS	You Want Sex
WYCM	Will You Call Me

Why can’t we just leave these horny kids alone? Life is hard enough as it is without your mom nosing around in your sexts, asking if you’re GNOCing with your friends.

This is where I am right now. Here’s the CoverItLive link.

Greetings,

A quick reminder that the monthly EMU Program and Operations Staff
meeting is tomorrow (October 12, 2010) at 3:30pm in the Fir Room.
Brailsford and Dunlavey (B&D) are returning to campus tomorrow and will
lead the primary discussion during our meeting. This will be an
opportunity for all those associated with the EMU to participate in a
Focus Group where B&D will share details of the Spring survey findings,
present program scenarios and options, and solicit feedback regarding
the future of the EMU.

Also, I am pleased to present the EMU Staff representatives who have
agreed to serve on the Strategic Planning Committee:

Daniel Geiger – Outdoor Program

Margaret Veltman – Moss Street Children’s Center

Wade Jelinek – Events Services

Andy Finley – Business Office

Kristen Gleason – Club Sports

Jeffrey Weitzel – Craft Center

Sonja Rasmussen – Mills International Center

They will work together with the EMU Board House Committee and
Management Team to help define what the programs, services, and
operations of an ideal EMU could look like in 5 years. The strategic
planning process will help us take that shared vision and backward plan,
identifying all the actions steps, funding sources, program support,
facility changes, etc. necessary to achieve the desired end-state as
well as the time-line needed to implement. The first meeting with the
House Committee is on October 20th.

See you all tomorrow,

Wendy

Wendy P Polhemus
Interim Director, Erb Memorial Union

As you may know, the ASUO Executive hired a new Chief-of-Staff from within, without a search as dictated by their governing documents, the Green Tape Notebook. Because they received a bypass approval from the ASUO Programs Administrator (also on the Executive staff, for the record), they were technically within the rules with their action.

Is what they did shady? Sure. Ben Eckstein, the newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff, won’t begin work for another couple days. When the executive is citing timely transitions as the reason for appointing from within instead of going through a formal hiring process, this raises a red flag.

But it was within the rules. If someone wants to change the rules that allow the Programs Administrator to allow programs to bypass hiring processes, they should. At very least, they should stop texting me asking me to write about it. Because honestly, there isn’t much to write.

Public affairs news:

• Hey, it’s the last day to register to vote in Oregon during the coming midterm election. This can be done online here. The Democratic process — something everyone says you will totally regret not participating in if you don’t. In my experience, it’s a bit like the sex lives of the characters in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Ultimately unsatisfying and filled with heartbreak and unintended, horrible consequences, but I’m fairly sure that’s just life. Also, Spicoli is totally involved. If you do it, the ASUO will totally be your friend (Oregon Daily Emerald, Register-Guard).
• The Oregon University System’s budget fell by about an eighth this year. Frances Dyke, the UO’s extremely popular VP for Finance and Administration, says this will not increase tuition this year, although no mention is made of what effect it will have next year. I have to give credit to the Dirty’s higher education reporter Stefan Verbano (Emerald article here). Maybe he and I are both missing something, but this seems like a pretty important story and he got to it before the Oregonian or the Guard, neither of which has written about it yet.  The only other coverage I could find came from Portland Business Journal. Stefan’s article itself is somewhat opaque, but it hits most of the right points, and it’s hard to be polished when you have two articles due on the same day as a student journalist. Also, he managed to interview Frances Dyke, which is the opposite of easy. I’ve known ex-Dirty higher-ed reporters who’ve never had the pleasure, even ones who still have no idea who she is.
• The Eugene Police have stepped up efforts to thwart partiers on weekends, and they are extremely busy. The Guard’s Ed Russo takes tentative steps in the direction of analyzing the causes of the Sept. 24 Large, Spontaneous Gathering of Young People Involving Vandalism and Tear Gas. He wonders about residential density. EPD officers blame texting. If you are a minor who wants to party on weekends, you can read this article with an eye to not getting in trouble with the police. (Register-Guard article here). Meanwhile, City Council member Alan Zelenka tries to sound like he’s scolding the UO for rowdy parties while simultaneously saying exactly what the UO wants him to say. (Register-Guard article here)
• Monday was National Coming Out Day. Events have been held, and will continue to be, by the campus community. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• A Eugene couple remembers former UO biology student Linda Norgrove, recently killed by her erstwhile rescuers while being held captive in Afghanistan. (Register-Guard article here)
• The governor’s race is extremely close, and the Emerald’s Ian Geronimo, and many of his sources, wonder why there won’t be another debate and what the difference is between the two, something Rockne Roll asks in the forthcoming Commentator. For some reason, connected to an article I read too long ago to remember and can no longer find, I’m skeptical of the poll he cites, but that is what it is. (Oregon Daily Emerald)

Opinion:

• UOMatters is meditating on a Mississippi State athletic department that contributes to professorial salaries (unlike at, etc.) and the appearance of questions over the financing of Oregon athletics in Inside Higher Ed.
• New-ish Emerald Columnist JoAnn Wendel wants you to know she likes science and that pigs enjoy sex. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• A UO senior gets into a self-righteous froth over pedestrians. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• Eugene’s residents fill the Guard’s inbox with letters prepared by political campaigns and crazy paranoia. (Register-Guard)
• Presented with hard economic times, the Guard’s Bob Welch gorges on perspective like Homer Simpson at a buffet.
• The Guard’s editorial jockeys endorse Floyd Prozanski (“Bro”-zanski in his upside-down visor years) and Lee Beyer. (“He’s a public servant with a heart, and a family, of gold. His opponent is a cat-torturing ne’er-do-well who wants to eat your freedom dipped in ketchup. TERRORIST KETCHUP.”)

Sports:

• Today’s Ducks sports: Third day of Oregon Golf vs. the Hated World at “The Prestige” in Southern California.
• Oregon Golf seventh in the prestige in dizzying procession of numbers. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• The Emerald’s Robert Husseman says the rest of Oregon Football’s season will be characterized by SO. MUCH. PRESSURE. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• Maybe it’s good that Oregon Football gets a break from football after the game against the Hated Cougars. (Oregon Daily Emerald)
• Oregon Volleyball not exactly the Muhammad Ali of volleyball, but everyone seems optimistic anyway. (Oregon Daily Emerald)

A poem, by Lyzi Diamond.

Is driving a choice?
Do we allow cars on campus?
What are the effects of car exhaust on lungs?
What kind of carcinogens exist there?
Can the university ban cars on campus?
Is breathing car exhaust healthier than breathing second-hand smoke?
Does the university try to create a culture change surrounding vehicular transport?
Do students live on campus?
Do students drive to campus?
She furrowed her brow in thought
and took another drag from her cigarette.

The University of Oregon, unlike many universities in this country, does not get a day off for Columbus Day. In fact, the holiday is not even present on the UO’s academic calendar, much to the dismay of the ASUO’s Multicultural Center and Native American Student Union. But, if the day were present on the academic calendar as “Columbus Day,” I can’t imagine the MCC and NASU would be any more pleased.

Today, in the EMU Amphitheater, NASU and the MCC are hosting an event for “Indigenous Solidarity Day,” complete with traditional drummers, speeches, red armbands, and t-shirts with the words “RED POWER” proudly displayed in bold, bright red text. Today’s protest, led by a Native American UO student and veteran, is considerably less abrasive than years past.

During last year’s protest, the amphitheater was decked out in posters proudly proclaiming that, “Custer got what he deserved,” along with quippy phrases, such as, “Columbus: America’s First Terrorist.” NASU also set up a table with a sign that said, “Native American Travel Agency,” and handed out one-way tickets to non-Native students back to “where they came from.” (The bottom of the ticket said, “Price: Free, just leave.”)

For those not in the know, the University of Oregon is home to the Many Nations Longhouse. Built in the 1960s, its website boasts that it is “the longest standing off-reservation public longhouse in the state of Oregon.” Used by many different tribal organizations, the Longhouse causes the UO to be a beacon for Native American activism and tribal ceremonies all over the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

I am pleased to say that this year’s Indigenous Solidarity Day event does not make me feel alienated as a non-Native UO student. I certainly find it easier to be an ally when I am not being ostracized for the color of my skin or the different uniqueness of my heritage.

The News (must have been a slow day):

• Ben Eckstein is the new ASUO chief of staff. I’m sure Lyzi will have things to say once production is complete on the magazine about this. Such as how, you know, ASUO President Amelie Rousseau — to be generous about it — appears to have blithely flaunted circumvented* ASUO rules for hiring people. My favorite thing about this article is the following, wonderfully opaque Rousseau quote: “It wasn’t necessarily choosing between (Eckstein and Hulen),” she said. “It was looking at the holistic picture.”
• Serious note: I know the outgoing Conrad Hulen from my time reporting on the ASUO and it’s depressing to learn he’s had a family tragedy so serious he can’t come back to school.
• There is also another ASUO story about an ASUO committee appointing people to officer positions. If I were a tree felled to have this news printed on paper made of me, I would be upset, despite the fact that, as a tree, I would have no emotions. That is to say, it stands out for its irrelevance.
• A guy rode a bike. A long way. For charity. Evidently Tijuana is not so bike-friendly, the rest of Baja California is a bit bland, and there’s not really much else to say about the rest of the Pacific coast of North America.

Opinion:

• The Emerald’s editorial board with a typically bland election-season argument: You should, you know, vote, even if politicians make your skin crawl. Boring. Much more interesting is the UO College Democrats president calling the president’s 2008 campaign “manipulative.” Many people are terrified to criticize the political party to which they profess allegiance, even if it’s true, so I laud her for doing so.
• Thomas Kyle-Milward opines that the UO has rescheduled graduation to Mondays to make more money and make things easier on faculty and staff, but at the expense of students.
• Slow news day supplemented by weird news column. The rubber-encased semen of Commonwealth Games athletes is a threat to India’s plumbing! Woman puts glue in eye by mistake, then visits hospital! Cocaine found in butt! Couple buys skeleton! Man doesn’t die in non-explosion!

Scene:

• Band of whom some have heard plants advertorial in Emerald! Other band throws party! Restaurant old and quirky!

Sports:

• In my opinion, this clip contains all the information you need to know about sports.
• Oregon Football won a gristly, ugly game.
• Two volleyball teams from Arizona played Oregon Volleyball this weekend, an exercise apparently geared to producing  unintelligible numbers, such as “hitting a woeful .036” (blood alcohol content?) and “19 kills” (rap sheet?) and lending support to the notion that nobody cares enough about volleyball to explain what the fuck they’re talking about.
• OREGON SOCCER LOSES IN FIVE-GOAL DERBY THRILLAH IN EUGENE! LATE BUCKLAND STUNNER SEALS WIN FOR DOMINANT BEAVS! DUCKS IN SECOND-HALF COMEBACK BUT CONCEDE LATE ON!
• Oregon Softball played Portland State in a match that evidently unfolded in banal succession of quotes and evaluations, followed by a dizzying and somewhat inscrutable series of declarative sentences in large paragraphs. Sunflower seeds were missed by all.

* I want to emphasize that this is not a barb. It is a correction. Thank you to Andrew for providing the relevant rule, which I seemingly couldn’t be bothered to seek. I acknowledge my mistake.

SENATE SENATE SENATE OCT 6