Public affairs:

• Transparency critics: The Emerald’s run an article saying the UO has “made strides to appease transparency critics” over, or possibly by, its appointment of Randy Geller as legal honcho. That’s presumably correct if “transparency critics” are what they sound like, which is people who hate transparency. Long live the opaque, no? “It’s not a politically charged job,” UO Law School cheese Margie Paris says, presumably speaking through a trans-dimensional portal from a universe in which the spending of public money is not politically charged. The Emerald’s Stefan Verbano does appear to have managed to interview Geller, which is, I suppose, another coup for him. On the other hand, though, he doesn’t seem to have managed to talk to anyone skeptical of Geller’s hire, or incorporated any understanding of why people really criticized the UO’s legal arm in the first place into his article, which seems like a moral failure. Honestly, I don’t think the UO would have liked to see the piece written any differently, which is disappointing coming from Verbano, who has been really promising. (Emerald)
• Property deals: The UO plans to buy a new property so it can build an exciting parking lot/exciting warehouse/exciting strip mall/exciting garage. It would cost $1.9 million. I promise you I’d post a map if I had any idea from the article where it was, but I can’t even tell what town it’s in, honestly. Springfield, yes? (Register-Guard)
• Buildings: The UO’s getting a $4 million upgrade to its Computing Center. (Register-Guard)
• Tragedy: After a sunny article yesterday about a program helping ‘Nam vets get back on their feet, the Emerald’s Mat Wolf writes one today full of awful nuggets of quantified tragedy. More than 10 percent of Oregon’s homeless are veterans. There are 19 separate squatter villages populated primarily with homeless veterans in Central Oregon alone, and that’s only the ones the Central Oregon Veterans Outreach group knows about. Many of them are addicted to drugs, or suffering from PTSD. (Emerald)
• Verdigris-lite: There is a competition going on. It is to see which U.S. college has the most energy-efficient dorms. The keys, the head of the Resident Hall Association says, are “sharing mini-fridges, unplugging appliances overnight, turning off lights when leaving a room, and using dryers for full loads of clothes only.” Plug-in appliances and electric lights are included but not heat or water. UO climate czar Steve Mital says it’s part of the UO’s “Climate Action Plan,” which seeks to make the UO carbon-neutral by 2050. Considering that the thunderclouds of greenhouse gases emitted whenever a plane carries a UO student to school are counted in that carbon footprint, I venture to guess that whatever dent this project makes will be relatively inconsequential. (Emerald)
• Lungs: One rally by a faction in favor of “encourag[ing] campus conversation by smoking” and another by a “pro-smoking cessation” faction happened simultaneously in the EMU Thursday. Full disclosure: the first person mentioned in the article is one of my roommates, and the other is pictured in the foreground of the attached photo. (Emerald)
• Democracy, contd.: The state house will be half-and-half after the last election in terms of party composition, which is not a reference to a defunct UPN sitcom, and the Senate is still too close to call. Republicans gained seats; Democrats lost them. If you want to read Emerald reporter Ian Geronimo’s typically understated article on the subject, you will see a quote from the Tea Party Express, presumably an articulated version of the full Tea Party that costs more to board, covers less ground, and has fewer points. (Emerald)
• More Geller news: UO Matters says Randy Geller’s contract is a sleeper hit. (Emerald)

Opinion:

• The Emerald’s Mark Costigan writes his best column yet, examining the stories of illegal immigrants.
• Editorials: The Emerald, having called on students to vote against Measure 74 two weeks ago, now laments the failure of Measure 74. I’m serious. It’s actually from yesterday, but the Emerald for some reason uploaded completely different content to its RSS feed than appeared in the paper. The Guard, meanwhile, says both parties ought to fix this budget thing, probably together. It also thinks Eugene could do with a committee devoted to transport.
• Letters: A student chides the town’s newspapers for what she sees as skimpy coverage of what she sees as abuses by police on Halloween, in a letter she may have written herself. A very similar post is up on a new blog set up to critique the Eugene Police Department. (Emerald) Meanwhile, one Guard reader wants the government to stimulate her economy with $100, and another scolds everyone who voted for Measure 73. (Register-Guard)

Scene:

• Want to nerd out to cider? Ethos has an article and a video for that! (Ethos)

Sports:

• There’s a murmur of the genuine about Oregon Football fingertip-of-choice Nate Costa in this interview with the Emerald. His reaction to being second choice feels coached, but I can imagine his eyes lighting up when he says he and his teammates “dreamed of these things when we were freshmen hanging out in Barnhart,” and he’s answering a different question, so you kind of feel like it might be from the bottom of his heart. (Emerald)
• Not being able to play seems to be a theme of this Emerald Game Day supplement, and two red-shirted running backs tell the Emerald how they dealt with it. One got in a funk, another got hard-headed. It’s actually a pretty decent story. (Emerald)
• Emerald sports-honcho Lucas Clark’s The Daily counterpart bests him at predicting a pasting for the Hated Huskies. (Emerald)
• Here’s the Guard’s OF recruiting update. (Register-Guard)
• OF’s offensive line has a very complicated job, if anyone wondered. They might want to watch out for one of the Hated Huskies’ defensive linemen. (Emerald)
• Hey, did you know the Hated Huskies will miss throwing numen Jake Locker this weekend? That doesn’t mean OF is expecting an easy game or anything, though. Also, other games involving hated rivals. (Emerald)
• Emerald sports-klaxon Andy Drukarev says baseball’s not doing so hot. (Emerald)
• The fact that Oregon Volleyball can have a losing record in its conference and still be ranked No. 20 shows how little I understand about college volleyball. “We do need some more wins,” one of the OV players said. OV plays the Hated Wildcats and the Hated Sun Devils soon.
• Oregon Basketball (M) is set to start against Hated trans-Kincaid Street rivals the Hated B(e)acons. (Emerald)
• Meanwhile, Oregon Soccer evidently needs a “.500 record” to make a post-season tournament, a number that, as I feel very passionately about soccer, I believe has no meaning in soccer, and if it does in NCAA soccer, it needs to stop. I think the writer means “28 points,” which is a real thing. (Emerald)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 5th, 2010 at 03:17 by Alex Tomchak Scott and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.