As a trial run for finals week, the EMU will be open until 3:00 A.M. tonight and tomorrow night. Study up!

Just kidding. EMU Pub Night is now occurring weekly. The Buzz is serving beer on tap and certain domestic labels out of the bottle from 5pm-10pm every Thursday. All ages are welcome but bring your identification if you wish to drink booze!

Three graduate students enjoy pints of Falling Sky brew.

Pink is a color. Students line up in the EMU amphitheater to learn more.

So, the live blogging issue has been fixed. The shit hits the fan at 7:00 p.m.

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A “Kiss-in” is scheduled for 1:55 sharp this afternoon. At the moment, many are already gathering in the EMU amphitheater. All are encouraged to come put their handprints in paint on a banner advertising Pride Week as a symbol of solidarity and as a stance against the continuing hostility experienced on and around campus by the LGBTQ community.

This man holds a cross that reads, “Are you ready?” referring, of course, to the sugar-high of elephant ears and sweet smell of kettle corn. The ASUO Street Fair(e) is underway and the popcorn enthusiasts are back to tell us that we are Godless, fetus-killin’, drug-addled heathens. Grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy.

According to this juicy UO Matters post , McArthur Court was built in 1926 and paid for yearly by students until 1932. However, through some shifty Frohnmayer paperwork, Academics is helping Athletics pay 1/4 of the 30-year cost of the land under the Matthew Knight Arena, $467,538 per year (3 payments so far), “for the right to try and use an old basketball arena […] for academic purposes.”

UO Matters in a comment below the original post: “The issue is that we are paying exorbitant rates to the athletic department for a piece of land that we are not using for academic purposes…”

Well, “Das Frohn” for you.

Library Systems Department took control of the three campus labs on September 1st, leading to the inclusion of these labs on Pharos, the pay-to-print system. This means that printing now costs 8 cents everywhere on campus instead of just Knight Library. I asked Nancy Slight-Gibney about the cost of printing and the process of determining the price that students pay. She responded in an email:

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By the way, the progress on air quality in Oregon Hall has continued to be stagnant (haha). But, seriously, glad I don’t work there. UO Matters has some updates.

In reading this Register-Guard article and this one by The Associated Press, I find the arguments against Measures 82 and 83 to be silly.

Tim Raphael, Governor Kitzhaber’s spokesman, told The Oregonian that authorizing a non-tribal casino would break the agreement made with Native American tribes. Casinos are illegal in Oregon, however tribes are allowed to operate casino on Native American land under federal law. The agreement: just one casino per tribe, and no competition.

“They kept their end of the bargain,” Raphael explained to The Oregonian. “It’s wrong to break our agreement.”

Former Governors Vic Atiyeh, Barbara Roberts and Ted Kulongoski have also publicly opposed the measures.

A casino may not be the best thing to happen to the Portland area, but the last time I checked,

• competition is good for capitalism
• all demographics of people are entitled to a business
• people should be free to throw their money away

I hope everyone is perusing their voter guides! I’ve been waiting for my pamphlet to come in the mail, but I just realized that OregonVotes.org has this not-so-awesome, clunky PDF download page here. All the info you need on candidates and measures is available there– you just have to download each page individually. There are some fun measures up for ballot including amendments to regulations on marijuana (that’s hemp and cannabis separately), constitutional language, commercial fishing, privately-owned casinos and, everybody’s favorite: taxes!

Meeting was called to order around 7:04 p.m. After introductions, a representative of DPS had an announcement.

He said that the department wants to do a better job this year– at keeping the student body updated, not necessarily at protecting and serving. He talked about the name change from Department of Public Safety to University of Oregon Police Department. “This is a name change only,” he said, which is kind of true, if we are speaking in a temporally fixed context. I suppose as long as he doesn’t say this again, ever, you can’t call him a liar. There are eleven officers on “staff” (I’m pretty sure he used that word) at the moment and more will be hired in the coming months. Arming officers is intended to happen this year, given that the rest of the UO community does not oppose. “Know your rights” literature will be dispersed soon, as well.

The Mills International Center will be hosting “The Meet” Thursday Oct. 4th,  5-7 p.m. All are invited for food, fun and meeting students from all over the world.

The Emerald used a good hunk of time talking about how they’re different now.  Emerald Media Group, they would like to be called, but I will stick with Ol’ Dirty.

Public forum time. Senator Emeritus Nolan comes up with some pledge for the senators to sign, promising to keep the LGBT community in mind and not discriminate. I can’t think of a way to make fun of her that doesn’t involve sarcasm, so I will just state my view: while probably well-intended, all this pledge does is portray the LGBT community as an “other,” (precisely what the pledge aims to rectify).

Announcement from Harlan: EMU open until 3 a.m. during dead week. Fuck yeah!

LGBT dance, Homecoming Parade, Street Faire and Mallard Madness all coming up soon.

As we move on to special requests, I note that the Emerald correspondent keeps winking at me and making kissy faces.

Special requests: Women in Law (or something like that) transferred funds between line items. ASUO Executive expedited their Finance Retreat, moved trip to EMU for ease. Senate wisely used this time to discuss the amount in surplus. $790 until next week or something. Nobody knows. Oregon Ballroom Dance had a request for something. It was postponed indefinitely because of low funds in surplus. Vietnamese Student Association requested a small remainder of funds needed for next weeks event. The motion to approve passed.

Then there was a Summer Senate update. Shit was difficult to hear and when it settled down, all Miyamoto was talking about was the new polo t-shirts that Senate got.

This was followed by committee nominations. This is always funny because it’s like in a 200 level Spanish class when the teacher starts looking for volunteers.

The Sexual Violence Prevention Task Force was formed. Ben Bowman was able to bring up his character again. Senator Ewing’s LA cap was really cute. And Senator Mubaya’s family mascot is a lion.

My Twitter feed was frozen on tweet #128 and I wasn’t able to continue updating. There must be a limit or something. The end.

So, CoverItLive.com has monetized their service. Until we can switch to some other live blogging host, I am going to live-Tweet the Senate meeting tonight as @SudsyOnSenate. Later, I will post a wrap-up of that live coverage after I drink myself silly. Please follow! 7 p.m.! See the agenda here.

Every week, students like you and me congregate in the Walnut Room under the title of ASUO Senate. Every week, they make decisions that most of us probably don’t care about. Every year, I’ve paid little to no attention to this shit. But this year, I am condemned to attending these Senate meetings and relaying the information unto you. It was pretty boring at first, but things got heated and interesting with the censure of Constitution Court Justice Cedar Cosner. So here goes my first ASUO Senate meeting:

Matthew Miyamoto is acting as Chair until the election of a President or something. He calls the meeting to order at 7:03 p.m. This was followed by introductions and silly one-word recaps of summer. The agenda was approved.

Ben Bowman announces the Emerald‘s Launch Party, which starts at 8:00 p.m. Apparently there is a VIP party at 6:00 p.m. which includes a free meal? You’re not invited; he only invited the Senate and then the audience.

Well, in the wake of this revealing (though not surprising) ESPN report, detailing the presence of a “pot culture” in Oregon Football, the UO athletic department is adopting new rules regarding the drug testing of student-athletes. Now, testing is to be random according to a number generator. University spokesman Phil Weiler is quoted in this Register Guard article, citing the “safety of student-athletes” as the cause for concern of the testing policy. Read the rest of this entry »